Gameboys in Paradise

Is a perfect beach enough to keep children and their gadgets apart? To find out, Ian Henderson took his family to the Maldives. 


(This article first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph)

As experimental labs go, it could be worse. The floor is clean white sand, the walls and ceiling a range of very fetching blues and it’s fully equipped with loungers, palm trees and waiters bearing chilled drinks. The ideal scientific facilities, in fact, for the challenging but vital research we are about to conduct. We are here to establish just what kind of holiday it takes for the modern child to willingly forsake their Gameboy.

Clearly, not just any old holiday would do. From experience, a wet weekend in Norfolk means more Gameboy not less, and a truly outward-bound trek beyond the limits of civilisation wouldn’t be fair on gadgets or children. (Nowhere to charge up the Gameboy, for a start.) So we find ourselves on an island in the Maldives not long after Santa had thoughtfully provided the necessary gadgets and games, attentively observing our research subjects (Children A, B and C) with a notebook in one hand and a nicely-judged mojito in the other. Someone had to do it.

As a benchmark, our research subjects ranked Gameboy in importance comfortably above parents and food but well below the family dog. All three are equipped with Nintendo Gameboy DS handhelds and an assortment of games. Child A: male age fourteen, hormones just starting to fizz, likes shoot-em-ups and maths challenges – Zelda and Brain Age. Child B: male age eight, likes soccer and not much else – FIFA 2008 and Herbie Goes Racing (unplayed – from a kind but ill-informed relative). Child C: female also aged eight, likes animals and magic – Madagascar, Nintendogs.

For sound scientific reasons, our experiments had to be held just after Christmas and during the school holidays. Inconveniently one or two other families seemed to think this was a good time to go on holiday as well, but the nice people at Kuoni still found an ideal location for our research team. Kurumba is one of the original Maldive resorts, just refurbished and reputedly good enough for Bill Clinton. Being fairly close to the main airport and to Male the capital first impressions can be a bit more Canvey Island than tropical island if you’re expecting total isolation; but the staff are charming, the food excellent and, as we shall see, the surroundings have a lot to offer even in comparison with Super Mario Land.

Exotic gardens that are home to giant bats, chameleon, tame herons and those lizards with back legs that whizz round and round in circles like Tom and Jerry’s. White coral sand that covers your feet like flour on a baker’s hands. A warm lagoon, protected from the current by breakwaters and more inviting than any swimming pool. Outside the lagoon, a house reef that is home to all the spectacularly baroque inventions of natural selection for which the Maldives are famous. Jewel groupers, dories, Moorish idols, clownfish, parrotfish, angelfish, lionfish … you can almost hear early naturalists groping for metaphors to describe these outlandish creatures to folks back home more used to grey cod.

So for the first few days the Gameboys lay mostly abandoned in rooms while snorkels and masks took over from Zelda and Herbie. Snorkelling on the reef was accompanied by almost constant shrieks of discovery from Child B and Child C, while Child A was extremely satisfied with the schoolyard bragging potential of a visit from eight reef sharks. So popular was swimming that only scientific rigour prevented encouraging Gameboy use as a way of getting the children out of the sun for a while.

At sunset, swimming pool, tennis and people-watching in the beach bar took over. Ever observant, we spotted another exotic species on the island – Russians. Of course, the louder and more noticeable pairs may have skewed our analysis and there were probably just as many quiet, courteous and well-matched Muscovites, but a surprising number did look and sound a lot like Boris Yeltsin on a big night out with Maria Sharapova on his tractor-sized arm. You couldn’t help wondering what drew these slender, attractive young women to some of the more boorish Russian billionaires.

Of course, eventually even the most exotic fauna lose their early fascination. We got bored with watching the Russians in their sparkly outfits and when we discovered Child C up a palm tree one afternoon playing Nintendogs while Child A and Child B were in their room with curtains drawn taking turns at Brain Age we realised they were all now probably on first-name terms with most of the fish on the reef. It was time to move on to phase 2 of the experiment.

Child A, who at home would be capable of spending the entire holiday moving lethargically between bed and computer screen with the occasional snack in between, was surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea of a PADI scuba diver course. So under the care of Momo the instructor and accompanied by another slightly less enthusiastic dad he watched videos, read books and took to the water with tanks and flippers. Turns out diving is the perfect adolescent sport – lots of cool gear, you feel weightless and free, and it’s guaranteed no-one will ask you to tidy your room while you’re underwater.

Child B and Child C needed less complicated (and expensive) distraction from the Gameboys – other children to play with was enough to keep them busy for a while longer. Nevertheless, there were signs of backsliding into gadgetry so it was time to engage the services of Mr Saeed and his splendid motor launch. Over the horizon lay a deserted island where we swam ashore in the company of rays and turtles to spend a blissful afternoon collecting coral and shells. Then back aboard the Capri on what seemed an unlikely mission – looking for dolphins out beyond the atolls in the open Indian Ocean.

For an hour or so we drifted on the deep ocean swell, the surface unbroken by so much as a flying fish. Mr Saeed just grinned under his mirror shades as the children began to mutter mutinously about not being allowed to bring the Gameboys onto the boat. The cans of Fanta and packets of crisps were running dangerously low when, off in the distance, a splash; Mr Saeed spun the wheel towards it and gunned the big diesel. As we arrived, all was quiet again – then as if on cue sleek fast-moving shapes were everywhere. The boat was surrounded by a pod of dolphins hundreds strong, leaping and diving, playing under the boat’s bow wave as the children leaned over the bows banging the boat’s sides and yelling with excitement.

As light began to fall, the dolphins returned to the deep and Mr Saeed turned the boat for home. But there was one more surprise ahead. Anchoring in a narrow channel, we let down baited handlines more in hope than expectation – then Child C pulled up a gorgeous jewel grouper; Child B a larger trevally. Child A hung on in quiet determination and as Mr Saeed was sending one of his crew to pull up the anchor finally caught his fish – a very large, beautiful and, as we found out later, delicious red snapper.

The long flight home a day or two later gave everyone plenty of time to make up for lost Gameboy time and presented the chance to do a little more research. The results were reassuring on one level - it seems that electronic games aren’t nearly as interesting as dolphins, snorkelling, fishing or chasing lizards. But for parents the findings have another, rather more worrying implication. If the children are playing too much Gameboy, is it just time to find another perfect beach?

Kuoni Travel (01306 747008 or www.kuoni.co.uk) offers 7 nights at Kurumba Maldives on bed and breakfast basis in a garden villa, including flights with Sri Lankan airlines from Heathrow with transfers in resort.