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Reggie Ho

The benchmark keeps rising in the booming luxury resorts business. There is no such thing as the 'ultimate' resort experience. You do not stay in a room, you take a villa, sleep in a designer bed, eat Michelin-star food, have a personal butler to wait on you and cruise the surrounding turquoise waters in a luxury yacht. You do not have to buy an island when you can own one for a week, with all the luxury trimmings. Here we look at four of the most exclusive resorts.

Urban luxury in a tropical haven

One&Only Reethi Rah

North Male Atoll, The Maldives

960 664 88 00

www.oneandonlyresorts.com

Celebrities are gravitating to this sublime 130-villa resort built on an atoll. The natural features have been enhanced with 1.5 million tonnes of fine sand and 15,000 palm trees, making the site four times bigger than the original and raising the ground to two metres above sea level.

It is not that the islet wasn't beautiful as it was, but the owners wanted to raise the privacy level for guests by creating a minimum of 20 metres of space between the villas. The  atoll now covers 109 acres, with 6km of coastline and 12 silky-white beaches. So Nicole need not worry about bumping into Tom. 'If your villa is on one side of the island, you wouldn't  know who is on the other side,' says Jean-Michel Gathy  of Denniston International Architects, the designer of the resort.

Your paradise isle experience starts with a 75-minute luxury yacht ride  from Male International Airport. There are eight classes of villa, ranging from a simple beach villa to the optimal grand water villa complete with private  pool. This latter ultimate luxury lodging boasts  157 square metres of indoor space, 33square metres of sheltered terrace, 51square metres of uncovered terrace and a 20 square metre pool.

Decorated in teak, rattan, mahogany, coconut shell, sea grass and silk, the villas fuse  urban luxury and   tropical paradise. But it's not like you would want to stay indoors for long anyway, with so much to be enjoyed outside.

When you have had your fill of natural beauty, fill up at the Reethi Restaurant. The glass-case cellars contain 9,000 bottles of wine. Labels include Latour, Petrus and Yquem. There are also wines from Austria, Portugal and Chile. When it comes to food, the world is your smorgasbord here. Dishes range from Peking duck to tandoori chicken, and hail from anywhere between the Mediterranean and East Asia.

The food du jour is sushi. The fish, flown in twice a week from Japan and served on slightly warm, slightly vinegary sushi rice, is dished up on a granite stone table by the sea or at the sushi bar, where a saxophone-playing chef presides.

You can also order freshly caught fish. The sea here abounds in fish and lobster. The seafood can be enjoyed at the island's regular beach parties. These get-togethers are likely to be at Fanditha, the seaside restaurant and bar, where the champagne comes in stone-carved buckets and the guests puff on  shisha pipes as they relax on wicker loungers, colonial chairs and Arabian rugs.

'People spend an average of 10 days at a resort, so if you are not eating well you are punishing yourself,' says Michael Luible, Indian Ocean regional director, One&Only.

The party goes on at Rah, where Dom Perignon is served by the glass and the mineral water comes under 20 different labels. A Voss please, chilled with no ice.

You wouldn't want to get too drunk because there's the next day to enjoy and you may want to continue with the yoga, the Spa by ESPA, the diving  and the fishing on a dhoni.

A beach villa starts at US$750 in the low season. The price goes up to US$6,050 for a grand beach villa with two bedrooms. The range of packages on offer includes the 'aquatic discovery' for two at HK$5,060, which starts with a luxury yacht ride from the airport to your four nights in a beach villa and ends with you and your partner  collecting scuba diver certificates that qualify you to  scuba dive anywhere in the world.

Indian retreat

The Oberoi Vanyavilas

Ranthambhore Road, Sawai Madhopur

322001, Rajasthan, India

91 7462 22 3999

www.oberoi-vanyavilas.com

If you have had enough of beaches head into the jungle for relaxation. This resort is between the Aravali  and the Vindhya  mountain ranges in southeastern Rajasthan - one of the most culturally colourful states in India. The eight hectares include landscaped gardens, lakes and fountains, and adjacent to the property is the Ranthambhore National Park and Tiger Reserve - home of the Indian tiger, deer, leopard and crocodile. You do not stay in a room, but in a tent. The 25 luxury tents are 790 sqft, sparsely positioned and each comes with a private garden and a sundeck. The decor includes tasteful teakwood floors, embroidered canopies and regal-style furnishing. You sleep in a king size four-poster bed and bathe in a colonial-style free-standing, claw-footed bath. The modern amenities include DVD player and minibar. Spas are a way of life at any resort, but you may find an ancient Ayurvedic massage in the middle of a jungle all the more holistic. The luxury tents start from US$775 in the quieter season and up to US$875 in peak seasons. Call to check for special offers. The Dining Room serves a wide variety of western, Thai and Indian cuisines and there are plenty of wine varieties, spirits and cocktails in The Library Bar. And a ride on the elephant through the jungle is on the itinerary. The closest airport is Sanghaner in Jaipur,  about 3? hours' drive away. Jaipur is well connected to New Delhi and Mumbai with daily flights operated by Jet Airways, Sahara Airlines and Indian Airlines. The flying time from Jaipur to Delhi is 30 minutes and from Mumbai to Jaipur is 11/2 hours.

Breathtaking Bali

Bulgari Resort, Bali

Jalan Goa Lempeh, Banjar Dinas Kangin, Uluwatu, Bali 80364, Indonesia

62 361 847 1000

www.bulgarihotels.com

This 59-villa, eight-hectare resort, on the Bukit peninsula (home to the famous Pura Luhur Uluwatu Temple), is the second Bulgari resort after the flagship in Milan. Indonesian arts and crafts can be found at every turn: wood carvings, stones, statues and pots from Flores Island, Toraja, Sulawesi, Celebes, Java, East Java, Sumba Island, Nias, Sumatra and, of course, Bali. The Italianate mahogany-and-glass interior is designed by Antonio Citterio and Partners. The bar is perched on a cliff  that overlooks the Indian Ocean. Think resort and you think that going down to the beach is a simple matter. Not here, where the beach is at the foot of the cliff and you have to take an elevator to get there. The sandy strip may be hard to access, but that does not mean you cannot order a cocktail  from the Beach Club. The peak experience at this resort is the Bulgari Villa, a grand 1,300sqft  space with two living rooms, four bedrooms, a kitchen, a terrace, a garden, a swimming pool and a private pavilion. Your food could be Indonesian or Italian, or you could blur cultural boundaries by ordering a 'risotto with Balinese five-spice seasoned ocean scallops and organic asparagus'. A personal butler will remind you that you have a helicopter ride to a volcano, followed by market tours and a night out in Kuta. Bulgari means Bulgari jewellery, accessories and watches, all available in the boutique. A night's stay at the Bulgari Resort, Bali starts at US$1,100.

An island all your own

The Rania Experience

Faafu Atoll, Maldives

960 674 05 55

www.raniaexperience.com/

Everyone in the jet set knows about The Rania Experience, where up to nine people can rent an island and a yacht and live like royalty for as long they have signed up for. At Rania you get a three-suite villa with an infinity pool and a retinue of butlers, chefs, holistic therapists and dive instructors to wait on you at every turn.

A half-hour seaplane ride from Male International Airport delivers you to this patch of paradise, complete with a lagoon.

Your yacht, Rania (a Gulf Craft Majesty 86  speed cruiser bought from a sheikh in Dubai), is a luxury lodging in its own right. It is fitted with two double and two twin bedrooms, en suite bathrooms stocked with Molten Brown beauty and skin-care products, an open-air barbecue, jacuzzi, satellite television and satellite phones.

You can go diving with PADI-certified instructors and game fishing in the surrounding waters, where your chances of catching garoupa, wahoo, hack fish, barracuda and sailfish are high.

The first two guests pay HK$78,000 (until the end of September) and they can bring up to seven guests, who each pay HK$5,840. It seems little to pay for all that luxurious relaxing and pampering.



Prelude to paradise