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| Poseidon Undersea Resort/ photo: hotel |
FOR INSOMNIACS LIKE ME, sleeping with the fish is, at 3am, an alluring prospect of ironclad laboratory seclusion, devoid of light and TV chatter, and not just something the Godfather might recommend, along with a pair of the finest concrete shoes, to an errant capo di tutti. It is something travellers the world over will soon be doing in droves. Not because they forgot their wife’s birthday, or sent Hezbollah their mother-in-law’s GPS coordinates, but because, like Everest, the opportunity is there. So how deep is your love?
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With underwater hotels and venues sprouting everywhere, why sweat all the way down to 20,000 leagues under the sea when you can dine five metres below at the Conrad Maldives (www.conradmaldivesrangali.com). This Maldives luxury resort features the glass bubble Ithaa undersea restaurant where fish gawp at exhibits like the ebullient and colourful Americanus Ravenous. Also underwater is the Wine Bar which will leave you spoilt for choice with over 800 wines and 100 cheeses. The furtive, bottom-feeding Journalistus Impecunious is not a common visitor to this habitat. Ithaa is a breathtaking sight that provokes instant awe. My teen son stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the undulating coral and the swirling fish. “Not bad,” he said.
Luxury underwater resorts will soon be making a splash. Perhaps the first true underwater hotel is the Jules Undersea Lodge (www.jul.com), a former research laboratory that saw service in Puerto Rico before being hauled across to Key Largo, Florida, to finally rest seven metres below, hosting tourists, weddings, and divers. You can dump your high-pressure modern life and head for a somewhat different high-pressure escape below sea level. Enter through the wet room chamber to enjoy two private bedrooms, a living room with DVD player, and 42-inch glass portholes.
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| Utter Inn Sweden/ photo: hotel |
Guests need a scuba diving certification – it can be done in three hours – as they’ll need to don gear and flipper down to their pad. If you are short on time, take advantage of the three-hour stay option with unlimited diving. Open since 1986, Jules Undersea Lodge is best described as “mad scientist rustic”. Don’t plan on butler service and spa. This is a bit like living inside a large washing machine. Amidst the mangrove, wave to parrotfish, barracuda and angelfish. Just don’t open the window.
The Utter Inn in Vasteras, Sweden, is nothing more than a bobbing buoy – a tiny red doghouse with a small wooden terrace – offering a single room 3m below the surface of Lake Mälaren. Solar panels on the roof power the bathroom, kitchen and provide heat. With only the most basic amenities, the main (and only) entertainment is the aquarium outside the windows. The owner of this whimsy, artist Mikael Genberg, occasionally serves dinner. Otherwise guests are left to their own devices and have a canoe to paddle around. It’s the sort of place you will be cornered into having a deep and meaningful CONVERSATION. Brush up on your vocab. The Utter Inn remains wildly popular in the summer months when Swedes, customarily given to doffing their clothes and shocking the world with cheeky displays of rosy bottoms and hugely healthy genitalia, head to Vasteras for a spot of underwater contemplation. “So, Nikolas, why don’t you like my mother?” Utter bliss.
Utter madness, you’d say if anyone suggested an underwater missile defence system, but this is exactly what the Hydropolis (www.hydropolis.com), a luxury Dubai underwater resort, will boast, along with glass-bubble accommodation 20m below and a giant ballroom and concert hall that rises above the sea surface enabling open-air shows and views of the surrounding skyline. In architecture-mad Dubai, this could be quite a sight. With an opening date in late 2009, there is time as yet to save up for the US$5,500 per night at one of the 220 suites.
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| Hydropolis amphitheatre/ photo: hotel |
Guests will arrive at a grand entrance on Jumeirah Beach from where they are whisked by train through a 515m transparent undersea tunnel to the resort. What more could you want? Plastic surgery perhaps? No problem. But there’s nothing they can do about the deepening hollows in your formerly smooth, botoxed wallet. Lie back and enjoy the marine carnival. “Look ma, a whale being chased by a dolphin.” “No son, that’s the USS Nimitz and bin Laden.” Look out for this amazing confection – a standout among the new underwater resorts set to launch.
Also opening in Fiji in late 2009 is the five-star Poseidon Undersea Resort (www.poseidonresorts.com), set 12m underwater on the sea floor of a 5,000-acre lagoon. The panoramic-view underwater rooms, for up to 144 guests, will be complemented by 457sq m Beach Front Bungalows (or bures) with private plunge pools and wraparound verandahs to offer a multi-experience resort that should fare a lot better than The Poseidon Adventure.
The pressurised rooms at this underwater hotel have a safety dome with an entrance hatch for divers in the event of any emergency, barring guest flatulence. And sections of the hotel can be hermetically sealed off. A typical package here would be two nights underwater and four by the beach. A corporate retreat isn’t out of the question either. Starting January 2010, you can have underwater meetings and business events too. The Poseidon Mystery Island will also serve up a wedding chapel, library, lounge, theatre, tennis courts, and a nine-hole golf course so it's not all stir-crazy underwater here. Catch some rays when you're not kissing mantas. Or fulfill your Verne fantasy by staying at the Nautilus Suite, designed after its namesake. Channel the Captain Nemo in you and learn to pilot your own three-person Triton submarine. Triton cruise missiles are extra.
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| Jules Undersea Lodge/ photo: hotel |
If your wife is still unimpressed, rent the entire island for a trifling US$3 million a week’s stay. Or wait for the underwater hotel in Istanbul, slated to open in 2010 right in the city centre.
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