Ride Round The World

Above is my villa from behind.

The rest of the resort is equally spectacular:

Obligatory cocktail on the beach photo, but at £20 a go there might not be so many. These are £4 in the Philippines!

Living room has a coffee table over a hole so you can look down into the water. The top slides open if you want to feed the fish:

Both bathroom and bedroom are much nicer than these photos show, and look out over the lagoon.

Living room opens out to the terrace:

Terrace leads down to the deck for access to the lagoon:

Looking back at the bedroom end:

Living room end:

My swimming pool:

View from the bedroom:

If you don’t want to feed the fish, you can instead have one cooked in a delicious coconut crust and served on the terrace with a Tahitian vanilla sauce and a glass or two of wine:

Moorea to Bora Bora, a 50 minute flight. If you sit on the left you get to see the stunning turquoise lagoon inside the coral reef from the air on approach:

There’s only one way from the airport to the resort and that’s by boat, so here’s the most expensive hotel airport shuttle ever:

But you’re pretty sure it’s all going to be worth it because this is the view you have during check-in:

I’m in the villa at the far end of the pontoon:

This is my terrace with steps down to the deck, which has a ladder to take you into the lagoon:

Post from RICOH THETA. #theta360uk – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Sunset glass of wine at my stunning £1450 a night overwater villa at the Intercontinental Thalasso in spectacular Bora Bora.

However good it looks, it’s 1000 times better in reality.

Link if the above 360 image doesn’t work for you: https://theta360.com/s/dqk3pb3CfwLlrPD4xVSKG9lx2#

Post from RICOH THETA. #theta360uk – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Some of the early morning visitors to the villa included:

Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo.

If you don’t know that bloody song, consider yourself lucky…

Sharky was about a metre long and very fast.

The only problem with this villa is that it’s on the ocean side and it’s quite windy, so when you’re in the water the current is quite strong and you have to keep swimming back.

Having seen what’s in the water, I might spend less time in there today, and be a bit jumpy when something brushes past. Maybe stick to the kayak today…

The octopus would change colour to blend into the background, sometimes being almost completely disguised, other times snapping back to a slimy white colour that would put you off your breakfast.

Some examples of how hard it is to get a decent shot from the water. My only waterproof camera is the GoPro, but without a screen to see the image and while swimming/paddling/bouncing around on a jet ski, the results are usually rubbish. I thought it would look a lot can closer than this. The last shot is my villa after 20 minutes paddling against the wind from the resort beach.

It’s a bit cloudy in Moorea, but my standard room booked on points got upgraded to a “premium one-bedroom suite overwater villa” with direct access from the deck into the lagoon, and I’ve seen sea-turtles and bottlenosed dolphins: