US Edition Here's a good pub quiz question. Which tropical islands in 1981 experienced a coup attempt by Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare and 43 mercenaries posing as a South African rugby team and members of the Ancient Order of Frothblowers?
Answer: the Seychelles. This group of Indian Ocean islands was under the one-party rule of a communist president, France-Albert René, when Hoare was engaged to return control to the islands' former president, the poet and playboy James Mancham. Like the addled plot that landed Mark Thatcher in court recently, the coup attempt went wrong. As the Frothblowers arrived on Mahé, a Seychelles customs official spotted an AK-47 assault rifle in their luggage. There was a skirmish, most of the mercenaries escaped in a hijacked Air India plane and René remained president until 2004.
This perhaps explains why the Seychelles are not quite like their slick, tourist-savvy Indian Ocean neighbours Mauritius and the Maldives.
In the 1970s the Seychelles was the place to be seen, a playground for film stars and the international jet set. But René, seeing little of their money filtering down to the islanders, took a strong line, discouraging over-dependence on tourism and declaring that he wanted "to keep the Seychelles for the Seychellois". As a result, standards of service and accommodation dropped off - and so did the tourist numbers.
However, by the 1990s the Seychellois were beginning to cast longing glances at the planeloads of affluent holidaymakers jetting in to Mauritius and the Maldives. Now they're trying to catch up, and several luxury hotels have opened in the islands in recent years. They include North Island, Lémuria on Praslin - and Sainte Anne, where I spent a week with my family last summer.
Like many of the hotels here, Sainte Anne occupies its own exclusive little island, a forested hummock sticking out of azure water in a marine reserve four miles off the main island of Mahé. The resort forms a fringe around the island, its terracotta-roofed villas, with Indonesian-style interiors, set in lush and closely tended grounds. Rooms vary in size but most have a view of the sea. The best have large shaded terraces that open straight on to the white-sand beach, with views to the green forested spine of Mahé across the water. (Do check when you book, though, that you're not overlooking a seasonal influx of seaweed.)
While most Seychelles hotels are awash with honeymooners, Sainte Anne is keen to tap into the family market as well. They've laid on plenty of facilities: big pool, with shallow children's pool attached, villas with inter-connecting rooms, a small, staffed mini club -suitable for children from about three to seven years - and tennis, sailing, gym, snorkelling and wind-surfing for older children. And although the islands are only a few degrees south of the equator, there are constant trade wind breezes in summer, ensuring that the heat is less taxing than in the Mediterranean during July and August. "This place is just amazing," my sons -aged 12 and 14 - decided. "The only thing missing is other children our age."
It was tough, but they survived a week of hanging out with their parents. We took out the resort's (free) dinghies and Hobie Cat for wave-skimming sails in the trade winds and played floodlit tennis in the cool evening as the fruit bats circled slowly overhead.
We ate unbelievably good fish and seafood in the hotel's two restaurants, talked about English football to the Mauritian waiters (who now know an awful lot about Ipswich Town) and took the hotel's free boat rides out to the coral reef to snorkel among parrot fish and trumpet fish and myriad others in rainbow colours.
"I feel as though I've fallen into a giant tropical fish tank," said my younger son, Henry. "I can't believe this is real."
What certainly wasn't real - or real life, at least - was staying in a luxury tourist resort on an otherwise uninhabited island. Relaxing as it was, I wanted to explore the Seychelles' capital, Victoria, whose lights twinkled invitingly across the water at night. Unlike some of the Seychelles' island resorts, which are remote dots in the ocean, Sainte Anne is only 15 minutes by boat from the archipelago's largest island, Mahé (a gargantuan 16 miles by five), and the resort provides a regular shuttle service.
Victoria seemed a bit ramshackle after the perfection of five-star resort life, but that was part of its appeal. I liked wandering around the uneven pavements, among the shops selling an apparently random selection of goods: dog flea powder stacked up against food choppers, or a breast pump balanced on a plastic model kit of an Apache helicopter.
The town's only set of traffic lights seemed to be used more as a rendezvous point than to control traffic flow, although Victoria's most famous landmark (apart from the very jolly Pirates Arms pub) is a mini replica of Big Ben, unveiled in 1901 when the Seychelles was a crown colony.
Of the same vintage are Victoria's beautifully kept botanical gardens, where cigarette bushes flashed their red flower embers and golden showers trees scattered their blossom. White tropic birds swooped like kites among mahogany trees and the rare coco de mer palms.
We saw more of these sex bombs of the plant world on a day trip to Praslin Island. In its granite uplands lies the spectacular World Heritage-listed Vallée de Mai forest reserve, home to about 4,000 coco de mer, which reach up to 100ft from the dim green valley floor. Male trees sprout long and flamboyant catkins while the huge, bilobed seed of the female tree looks uncannily like a shapely woman's bottom. For the 17th century sailors who discovered them, they were the equivalent of a porn movie. Now Japanese tourists pay hundreds of pounds to lug them home as erotic souvenirs.
Praslin is quieter than Mahé, its low-key hotels and fishing villages dotted around the dazzling coastline. Beaches are pure white-sand-blue-sea idyll - Anse Lazio, for instance, is a regular contender for Best Beach in the World. A white crescent of sand sloping to milky turquoise water, it's ringed with granite boulders, palms and takamaka trees. Yachts bobbed in the bay and beautiful people played among waves that swept up in perfect curls.
Travelling among the islands was like opening a Russian doll - each was smaller and simpler than the last. La Digue, our next stop, was so laid back it was almost horizontal - though the locals did rouse themselves to rip us off at the bike-hire shop. This is where stressed-out Seychellois from Mahé come to unwind and it's a little like a tropical version of Sark, with bikes and oxcarts on the roads instead of cars.
Dodging the ripe mangoes dropping from the trees around us, we cycled down to L'Union, an abandoned coconut estate on the coast, now home to a community of the giant tortoises that inhabit the Seychelles. Several of them were stacked up like dinner plates in the shade of a large tree, and despite the heat of the afternoon a male was on the prowl, getting a slow-motion brush-off from every female he approached.
Back at Sainte Anne, courting techniques among the honeymooning couples were slightly more refined. We spotted the full panoply over dinner in the hotel's romantic beach restaurant: the luminous stare, the arm stroke, the finger-twine, the foot caress… "Oh, rank!" groaned Henry. Caught up in the romance of the warm tropical night, the couple at the next table had leant forward to rub noses over their spider crab soup.
Will Page, 14
Best bits The hotel was fantastic and the food was amazing. Everyone was so friendly and I loved all the sailing and snorkelling.
Worst bits It would be brilliant to come here with another family. There was a lot of seaweed in the sea but the pool was lovely.
Henry Page, 12
Best bits Definitely the giant tortoises. I loved watching them and feeding them leaves. I'd give the food at the hotel five stars too, especially the fish curry. And our friendly waiter who brought us fresh pineapple juice.
Worst bits Nearly capsizing while sailing with Dad.