Memoirs of Maldives...

I can go on writing about Maldives for ever. There is so much that we experienced there. I am writing this blog coz during our research, we couldn’t find the consolidated information all in one place. I thought it might be a good idea to share a few of our trip details.

Feel free to add your experiences, ask questions if you need more details, or simply, enjoy this memoir.

The Choice of Destination:
The journey for choosing the honeymoon destination was quite eventful. It involved months of research and discussions. We started somewhere in July'07 with a long list of foreign and domestic destinations. It included places as far and exotic as Switzerland, Italy & Mauritius to as near as Kerala & Kashmir (at one point of time when it seemed that I might be in US during January & visiting India for just about a week, we also thought of Jodhpur & Jaisalmer).

Two elements, which attracted us equally, were the height & the depth, i.e. mountain & the sea. We chose water over heights as our final candidates were Andaman & Nicobar (A&N) and Maldives. However, at this time of our search, Maldives seemed expensive of the two.

We almost decided on A&N after hearing so many good things about the place and more so because of the fact that it is not a typical crowded destination. Apurva, a friend of ours, helped immensely by sharing her experience as a honeymooner there. Well, I'd say that we were destined to go to Maldives. Actually, our marriage was supposed to be in Nov' 07 but because of the non-availability of dates, we had to postpone it to end of Jan' 08. This gave us some time to re-look at our choices and we realized that the rates were more economical for a Feb travel to Maldives.
The Country:

We started looking at what constituted Maldives. It is a group of islands scattered across the Indian Ocean. There are 26 atolls (which are islands/island groups of coral that encircles a lagoon) that forms about 2000 coral islands. Many of the large islands are just a single resort.

Reaching Maldives:
The choice for travel was easy as there are not many carriers flying from India. They include the national carrier Indian Airlines (rechristened Indian), Jet Airways, Sahara (JetLite now) and Srilankan Airlines. We decided on Indian for the flight convenience and the cost advantage. The round trip fare cost us around 14,000 per person from Bombay – incl. of taxes (with base ticket price of 10,000, we were luckier to have lesser taxes then). The itinerary constituted early morning Mumbai to Bangalore , Bangalore – Male reaching there local time at about 11 AM. Return was the same way. It was about 1.5-hour flight from Bangalore to Male.

You get the transit visa on entry in Maldives, so needn't worry about that before hand. Just carry your passport along with. The customs and immigration is pretty much simple on both sides. Maldives being a tourist destination, they try to make things as simple as possible for their guests.

Selection of Resort:

Our first criteria was that if not for the complete stay, at least a part had to be in the water bungalow. Based on our budget, we planned to go for a 4 night trip, which we planned to break in 2 nights in water bungalow and 2 nights in super deluxe suit. We realized later that most of the deals are based on a 3 night or 5 night basis. However, we were lucky to get a few good 4-night deals from Prasanna, our agent.

Our second criteria was to select a good resort but not a very expensive one. We went through the exhaustive list of resorts in Maldives categorizing them according the stars and ratings. Few of the resorts which we liked were either fully booked, were expensive or did not promote Indian tourists. Don’t get surprised. For us also, this realization came the hard way. I got negative response from some of the good resorts which were in our list. When I contacted the agents, I was told that few of these resorts, which have a major crowd coming from UK, do not highly encourage Indian tourists.

We wanted to go for an island, which was not very close by to the Male airport. We wanted to enjoy the seaplane ride actually. Our choice was about 100 kms giving us about half an hour ride and an awesome view of the atolls & resorts below us.

Our fourth criterion was that the island should be large enough to keep our interest span as we had plans to spend most of our time on the resort property. Based on this, Sun Island resort proved ideal choice being one of the largest island resorts in Maldives.

For the February first week, we were getting deals ranging from $100 - $150 for a night's stay in a 1-2 star resort to about $400 - $1500 per night for a deluxe 5 star resort (rates only for the stay).

We finally chose Sun Island resort, which is a regular 5 star resort. We decided for a full board package with 2 night in super deluxe and 2 nights in water bungalow. There was some confusion between our agent and the resort who had booked our 2 nights in deluxe instead of super deluxe. When we reached the property, all the super deluxe were booked for our stay. So we stayed for the first night in deluxe, and got a free upgrade in water bungalow for one extra day (we surely did not mind that J)

Reaching the Resort:

The islands are scattered in a long radius around Male, the international airport. There are two options to reach the resort – speed boat (called Dhoni) or sea plane transfer. I would suggest that if your island is more than 20-30 kms from Male, it is worth spending extra for the seaplane transfer. Flying in the small aircraft that carries about 15 passengers, not very high in the sky, the experience is simply amazing. And the journey in speed boat might not suit everyone for longer distances. Since our resort was slightly over 100 kms from airport, we chose the seaplane. We were charged $150 per person for roundtrip seaplane transfer.

There are two seaplane taxi services, which take passengers of near by island resorts together. There is a separate seaport for these planes. So, if you have chosen seaplane ride, someone with your name placard would be waiting to take you from Male airport to the sea port. This is a small and comfortable ride in an air-conditioned coach for about 10 mins. The seaport has an electronic display showing the status of the planes and the wait time, like any typical airport.

Unfortunately for us, the plane was delayed by almost 2 hours. We utilized this time by having snacks and a couple of drinks at the small bar within the seaport. There is a open deck / terrace area where you can relax and wait other planes landing and taking off. It seemed kind of funny watching those small planes land in water instead of actual land.

As these planes are shared for passengers going to near by island resorts, it lands (again in sea) near a wooden harbor which is more or less in center of these islands. Speedboats from each of these resort comes to pick up their passengers. You get to enjoy the boat experience for a small distance to your resort.

Don't get surprised to see your pilot acting as a bell boy, transferring your luggage from plane to the boat.

Accommodation:
There is a great choice of stay based on the budget you are looking for. The heavy tourist season is from November through March, which also is the best season to visit. Avoid going in rainy months of June – August, unless going out in sea is not a necessity for your vacation.


There are a few categories of suites available in most resorts. The classification is not rigid, but I observed the below pattern in most places:
Deluxe – A nice comfortable suite with all necessary amenities in the mainland of the island.
Super Deluxe – Deluxe suite just next to shore. You get a piece of beach right in front of you. Mostly, these are the suites, which line up the circumference of the island.

Water bungalow – A separation from the world. A luxurious suite on the sea, few yards to few hundred yards from the beach. Most of the water bungalows have the sun decks, which provide adequate level of privacy. They also provide the stairs to walk below the bungalow to the corals. Yeah, you guessed right, it is the one that shells most of your money too.

Food:
Most of the resorts have three choices of food packages:
Half-board – Breakfast and one meal (either lunch or dinner) is included. Tea, coffee, milk, juices included only with meals. No extra beverages in the day are included.
Full-board – Three meals are included, without any in-between snacks or beverages. Tea, coffee, milk, juices included only with meals.
All inclusive – Three meals, unlimited snacks, non alcoholic beverages along with house beer included. Tea, coffee, milk, juices included all 24 hours.

Most of the resorts and travel agents try to sell half board plan. This gives them the ala-carte business for the third meal. Be assured, this option will prove out to be more costly then the difference you pay by going full board. For us, the difference came out to be $50 per day for the two of us, which we realized was anytime worth it.

There are ample food options in most of the resorts. Many large resorts like ours have at least 2-3 other specialty restaurants, which can be worth a try.

An interesting aspect in buffet is that you have a dedicated table and waiter for your entire stay. They place your name tag and the waiter in charge on the table. The day you arrive and visit the restaurant for the first time, the head waiter allocates you a table. This gets fixed for you for all your meals. The advantage is that you needn't worry about the rush hour. Also, you can inform the waiter about your preferences on the first day, and be assured that it will be taken good care of for your entire stay.

There were two main restaurants, the larger one for deluxe and super deluxe suites and the smaller one with a little more privacy for the water bungalow guests. Since we stayed in both, we got to eat in both the places.

One needs to find the kind of packages offered in their choice of resort. For us, the all inclusive plan did not include specialty restaurants (like the Thai and Italian restaurant we had on our island). Nor does it include most of the alcoholic beverages other than the house beer (not most of the international brand beers either). Based on these factors, we chose to go for full board plan.

Drinks:
Drinks can be ordered in any of the restaurants, bars or the suite. There is a mini bar in each of the suite, which is adequately stocked. However, the rates for mini bar are pretty steep compared to the common bar rates. The rates are more or less same for most of the bars.

As with food options, there were bars scattered all over the Sun Island resort for the comfort of the guests. The rates were not too expensive for a 5 star standards.

Maldives has a policy discouraging bringing of liquors from outside. Even though you happen to pass through the security screening at the airport, the resorts do inform their guests about the fines on using liquors not purchased in the resort.

Note - In Maldives, water is not provided even in 5 star resorts. With almost $2 a bottle, it might constitute a sizeable amount for the trip. Even with meals, water is provided only in all-inclusive plan, which forced us to buy our own water during meal times.

Things to do:
There are so many things to do on an island that four days proved less for us.

Sea activities – Depending on your choice, you can go for snorkeling or diving (prefer early morning hours when you see a lot of under sea activities). If you are not carrying your own gear, you can rent the gear for both at very reasonable rates. We rented the snorkeling gear for two days and used to snorkel below Italian restaurant where the water was slightly deep as well as below our water bungalow. There are instructor led diving sessions for beginners too. Well for the less-enthusiasts, the option of lazying on the beach sun bed with a cool beer is never too bad.

Sea sports – There was a farther end of island with good many options of water sports. You can book the times for these or can just walk in for them. The choice included parasailing, sea biking & kayaking.
Daily excursions – There are daily trips which you can opt for. These are published in the reception area on a notice board. You can put your name and room number against the ones you want to be a part of. The excursions included a good many choices: Dolphin spotting, day on an uninhabited island (with lunch on the island), deep sea diving, etc. (I don’t remember many since we didn’t take these)

Spa – Something not to be missed. After the weeks of hustle bustle of marriage, we needed some good relaxation. Sun island had a lot to choose from, we went for the Laobi-Laobi massage (this was the only couple massage).

Biking – The island is almost 2 kms long and a km wide. Does not seem that big, but when the only way to go from one place to another is to walk, it might seem tiring. The only other alternative is to rent-a-bike. This is a must and to avoid the rush, I would suggest the first thing you do after check-in is to rent the bikes. These are normally sold out early everyday and there is a waiting period. For us, we could get them only on the second day of our trip.

Pool – There were two pristine clean pools on the island. Though we had almost equally clean sea in front of us, we didn’t opt for using pool though.
Cultural Evenings – There is a schedule of activities for each evening, which is published in reception for the entire week.
Shark Feeding - The resort had a shark feeding session in Thai Restaurant every night.

Miscellaneous Pointers:
We started our search by fixing up the budget. Needless to say our final expense was close to one a half times that. Always leave a scope at least for 20-30%.
Tipping – The general thumb rule is to tip everyone who services you. The standard tip is $2-4 per person per day for the room cleaner & waiter. To both of these, you can pay together at the end of your trip. For all other misc services and in the bar & specialty restaurant, you can make the standard tip of about 15%.
Shopping – as you'd expect in any good resort, there are ample shopping options here too. If you missed anything at all, there are shops on the resort to take care of the needs. Also, there is a wonderful souvenir shop with cute gifts and memories to carry back.
Unlike other tourist destinations, in Maldives you don’t have a list of places and things to do. You don’t have to rush every morning to visit the places and the famous restaurants to eat. You spend your entire vacation on just one island. There is no hurry for anything, you have come here to relax.
Dress Code – On the island, as casual as possible. We carried a pair of formal hoping for a formal night, but realized that people were at ease and wanted to enjoy. In evenings, it was not uncommon to see most of the guys in shorts/khakis and girls in skirts/wraparounds. Some people did dress up a bit more elegantly in evenings. Though in Male, it is suggested to be slightly more conservatively dressed, a jeans & T-shirt would be just fine.
I loved www.tripadvisor.com for providing insights on everything, selection of resort, things to do and not to do, and what not.

I hope you enjoy this memoir and your stay in Maldives when you visit there as much as we did in our trip.