Light lends a sculptural feeling. [Photo by Zhao Xu/China Daily]

I am hardly an inveterate traveler who has sampled the golden sands of the world's best beaches, I am not exactly adventurous or athletic, I have lived the entirety of my 36 years in cities, I wear thick glasses and I have never learned how to swim.

And yet here I was sitting on a speedboat after arriving in the Maldives at midnight being taken from Male International Airport to the Sheraton Hotel on Full Moon Island, where we would spend the night.

My fatigue from the 10-hour flight (four from Beijing to Hong Kong and then six from Hong Kong to Maldives) was brushed away as I opened the French window of my hotel room to welcome the ocean breeze. I was on Mother Nature's doorstep, so why not rest in her lap, sleeping under the stars, on a settee-bed on the balcony overlooking the water?

At first, it all seemed perfect. Fatigue set in and drowsiness took hold of me, but it soon became apparent that I would be unable to sleep, not with that monotonous sound of ocean waves licking my ears. From time to time, I felt that someone was walking up to me from behind, only to realize that it was only the waves romancing with the pillars on which my water villa was sitting. How intimate can you be with nature? The answer no doubt varies from person to person, and in the Maldives I was about to come up with my own answer.

The next morning, we－there were five of us－took a seaplane to the island of Vommuli, our planned destination the newly ordained luxury addition to the famed paradise on earth. A St. Regis Hotel had opened in November, a month before our arrival.