First Time to Malvides? Here’s What I Learned

I was dreaming of going to Maldives for quite some time, not going to lie.

So when it came to choosing our familiy vacation destination on Easter holidays, I put some serious effort to convince my family members to a) spend way more money than we usually do on such things b) believe that Maldives were real, and photoes were not “photoshopped” nicely.

Today is the last day of our 7-day stay, so I decided to journal my takeaways on this absolutely amazing place.

Key takeways

• The beauty of Maldives is 11 out of 10. Paradise on earth. Don’t doubt. Period.
• Ocean, weather, hotel staff, cleanliness, rooms & villas, food, ambiance – everything is just perfect.
• A trip to Maldives might be time and energy consuming.
• Imagine, but Maldives can be boring a bit! Not recommended for 2+ weeks stay, there is not much to do.
• Some downsides: Random mosquitoes, flies, and high humidity. Also, getting sunburns is quite easy.
• Budget breakdown: for a 7-day full board stay (everything is included except for the drinks) at Sun Syiam Hotel (Kaafu Atoll) for a family of 2 adults and 1 child, we spent approximately $5,000. Another $5,000 were taken away from us with the flight (Valencia – Istanbul – Male – Istanbul – Valencia). Dates: Easter.

1. Flying to Maldives

Depending on where you are, it may take from 6-8 to 12-16 hours get to Hulhumale airport of Maldives. That will not be the end of the trip, and you will have to take another flight to the island where you hotel is located. Or, preferrably, a boat ride.

We had two flights: From Valencia to Istanbul (which took around 4 hours of flying time and another 4 hours of wait for the connecting flight), and from Istanbul fo Male, the capital of Maldives (this flight took 8 hours).

Then, we had to wait for another 40 minutes for the boat ride, and another 45 minutes we spent in the bumpy boat transfer to the hotel. By the way, my 11-year-old was scared of the boat’s speed for the first 10 minutes.

When we finally arrived, we were pretty tired, to say the least. Another 30-50 minutes of greetings and checking in, and we were finally in our villa … to collapse on the beds. As I say now “To get to paradise, you have to go through hell.”

What I would do the other way next trip to Maldives:

Flying to Male:

• Try to get better seats/airlines, whatever it takes (saving money, miles, sniping deals, etc). That really matters on longer flights. I mean, Turkish Airlines were good enough for us, but economy seats are not great for your sleep. Also, they were constantly announcing turbulence warnings, and that was not helping for the sleep either.
• Try to get as tired as possible before the flight, and maybe not to eat.
• Having only hand luggage really helps.
• They gave us eye-masks, socks, and light blankets, which was the good thing.

Male airport & getting to the hotel:

• Prepare for the humidity, swelter, and the absence of air conditioning. Pro tip: If you have to spend some time in the airport, go to the Burger King area, they have AC.
• Not sure if the boat ride is better than local airlines. I would choose boat if your island is closer to Male airport. Otherwise, it will be an exhausting ride.
• Prices are crazy, we paid 22 US dollars for two coffees and a muffin.

Read also: How to Sleep Well on a Plane

2. Islands, Hotels, Ocean

First off, this is the most beautiful ocean waters I have ever seen in my life. Could just stare at it indefinitely. It is really bright, emerald, crystal clear, and less salty (which is nice for the skin and hair). You can see that straight from the entrance of the airport.

The second thing that impressed me was the tidyness of everything around us. Although the roads in the islands are mostly made of sand, it gets swiped every once and a while. There is no trash, everything is well organized, and the staff is sooo nice! I just instantly went from the alert mode to relaxed.

Next, the water temperature – it is so comfortable. You can swim any time of the day. For the night swim, beware of crabs. No, they are not dangerous, just running around the beach at the nighttime.

The sand! Again, the most beautiful sand in the world, very fine and pleasant.

Ambiance and greenery: Everything is telling you “Relax. Take a sip. Enjoy every minute.” It is a very tranquil place.

Pools – clean and tidy water that feels like the new milk.

Spa – a must.

Gym, tennis, and other activitites are optional. Could be too hot and humid to enjoy.

A bit of disappointment: The drinks and cocktails were not the best ones in my life. Whatever, not going to complain.

3. Snorkeling, sharks, turtles

To my surpise, there is not much to see in Maldivian underwater world when it comes to snorkeling! With one exception – you’ll have to take a boat ride to a nearest designated place to do that.

We didn’t do that. Instead, we rented snorkeling equipment for a couple of days, and enjoyed some random fish around the beach. Why not to go for a boat ride? Because we were close to get sunburns, and the idea of spending more than two hours somewhere in the sun was not attractive to us. Also, we got snorkeling experience from diving in the Red Sea, so the decision was to skip and enjoy a slow-paced vacation.

As for the sharks, this is not something to worry about. They don’t have great white sharks there, and the ones that they do have in Maldives are not aggressive.

For swimming with turtles, Komandoo island is a no-brainer, and you can book an excursion there from any hotel in Maldives.

4. Food

I converted myself to a full-board enjoyer! It was nice to forget about the cooking, grocery stores, and searching for recipes.

The food in our hotel was healthy, lots of dishes and options, and was not repetetive at all. Another huge win for me was that there were little deserts, with way less sugar than we are used to.

Yes, they have some grill / thai / seafood restaurants over the island, but we were so satisifed with the full board restaurant that didn’t feel like going to other places (and spending $$$).

5. People

I am happy to say – the hospitality staff of Maldives is well-educated and friendly. Yes, I know, the country get almost 40% of its GDP from tourism, but anyways, it is nice to have nice people around you.

Tourists that stay in Maldives are also well educated and very firendly. I guess, the higher entry level for vacation in Maldives is limiting less pleasnt people to spoil your stay.

6. Sunrise

Maldives are great for greeting the dawn and shooting some stuff for the memories, Instagrams, and TikToks, etc. Here are mine:

7. Worth mentioning

If you are coming from other countries than US or UK, you might want to bring a universal adapter with you to charge your devices. They can give you their adapters in the hotel, but we got two and both of them were quite loose and kind of dropping our adapters.

We also found that they have a limited number of allowed devices to use their WiFi in our hotel. Well, having Internet on Maldives is already a big deal, I don’t want to complain, but we had 2 laptops, 2 tablets, and 3 phones, so we had to switch off wifi on them constanly in order to use them.

Can you have a late checkout in Maldives? Depending on rooms’ availability, you can. For example, we had a late departure flight at 22:25, so we asked for the late checkout, which cost us $200 for 4 hours (staying from 12 to 16). That was a blessing, because we could chill in the room in the hottest hours.

Conclusion

While being one ot the best vacations in my life, the visit to Maldives have raised some serious existencial questions: “Who am I? What am I doing? What am I living for? What is happiness?”

I still don’t know the exact answers, but I’ll do my best in finding them.

And the last question I ask myself is “When I am going to be in Maldives next time?”. I really want to come back here as soon as possible. Will be working on it!