The Maldives had been on my list for a long time, but we almost skipped them as we were getting a little travel weary after two months of moving every few nights. In the end, I figured I will never be closer to them than I am now as I’d just finished two weeks around Sri Lanka, and my next stop was Morocco.
I’ll be honest, I knew nothing of the Maldives other than that they were an expensive archipelago with white sand beaches surrounded on all sides by turquoise waters. What I learned on the flight over was, well first of all, I learned that the Maldives was a country. I also learned that it was 98% Muslim and that we would have to abide by many Muslim customs, most notably abstaining from alcohol.
While researching Covid restrictions, I came across the list of things we could not bring into the Maldives: drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, live pigs, pornography, and bibles. While I had no plans for proselytizing or bringing my own source of bacon, the alcohol restriction was a bit of a concern. I’d become accustomed to my five o’clocktail over the past few months, though there had been some terrible variations.
Joan and I carried mixers just in case we had to concoct our own, but not being allowed to import or purchase alcohol was going to be a problem. We did find out later that one could charter a boat to one of the resort islands to get a drink, but that involved paying 50 dollars in boat transfer and at least $100 for the resort fee before we even got the sweet elixir into our bodies. There were other concerns too like the prohibition of cohabitation by non-married adults.
All of our concerns quickly faded when we were met at the airport by our guest house host. He and his partner grabbed our bags and whisked us out the front door of the terminal and across the street to the line of boats docked there. I think Boston is the only airport that I’ve heard has a ferry terminal at the airport, and I’ve always thought my hometown of San Francisco should leverage such a thing. Still, this was the first time I’d ever walked out of an airport terminal and onto a speedboat.
As the boat pulled away from the terminal, we passed the waterfront of Male, the capital of the Maldives. It was strange to see an island with an entire metropolis built upon it. There weren’t any skyscrapers, but the city was densely packed with multi-story buildings, and a grand mosque stood perched on a point in front of the city.
People from the Maldives are called Dhivehin, meaning islanders, and the five Dhivehin boys in the front of our speedboat reminded us of Jamaicans. They were all slender with dark skin and full heads of long, curly hair. We immediately tried to resolve our expectation of conservative Muslim culture with these boys who looked like, at any second, they might pull out a joint and start smoking.
Instead, they just sang joyously while their curls whipped around their faces in the wind, and we were exposed for the first time to Dhivehin music. Had we not been in the Maldives, I couldn’t have differentiated it from Indian or Islamic, but I was later to learn that there was a huge Dhivehin music scene that was showcased on a TV show called Maldivian Idol.
Travel to our island was not direct as the boat had to make a few wide arcs to avoid the coral atolls which extended from the various islands. The Maldives consists of about 1,200 islands and sandbanks, of which 200 are inhabited. Most of these islands barely clear the surface of the water and it is hard to imagine anything but absolute destruction of the entire country if a Tsunami were to strike. The owner of our guest house even told us the story of a morning when everyone woke up, and an island had appeared offshore that was not there the day before.
Having so much variation in the water depth made for a kaleidoscope of blues from almost pale white to dark blue that border on black. These dark colors defined the deeper channels that the boats used to navigate into the harbors on each of the islands. I imagine it would be impossible to navigate these atolls at night.
We pulled into the harbor for Gulhi, our island home for the next five days, and our boat was met by two more curly haired boys wearing no shoes and pushing a wheelbarrow. They loaded our bags onto the wheel barrow and told us to follow them to the other side of the island, a trip that took less than five minutes. In fact, I found if you placed yourself in just the right intersection, you could see the sea on all four sides of the island.
All of the streets on Gulhi were composed of white sand and just wider than a car, which was fine, because there were none on the island. There’s nowhere on the island you could have gotten faster than walking anyway. As it turned out, a walk around the entire island could be accomplished in about 10 minutes.
Our hotel was a small guest house of five rooms, and we’d chosen the top one with a deck so we could see the ocean every morning when we woke up. You never know what you’re going to get when you’re traveling, but we were pleased to find a working shower, fan, and air conditioner. The WiFi was also strong, which was important for working.
We’d chosen this tiny island of 900 people because it was cheap and not too far from the airport as any boat transfer subtracts time and money for your holiday budget. The islands in the Maldives are sparsely populated, and many islands are owned by the resort built on them. The islands are differentiated by the word inhabited, which is applied to islands that have locals living on them, as opposed to a resort island, whose only population is tourists.
Inhabited islands have guest houses, hotels, restaurants, shops, and of course local residents. Resorts have only the hotel rooms and a dining room. Because you are trapped without local service on a resort, all of your services have to be provided by the resort. This is part of what generates the high price tag. That, and the fact that people are willing to pay it.
By choosing an inhabited island, we reduced not just our accommodation costs but our food and supplies costs. Granted, we weren’t sleeping in a room constructed over the water and enjoying luxurious meals in a common dining room, but we were able to afford a week in the Maldives with a view of the water from our room.
The island of Gulhi had a scattering of guest houses, and in a way had the feel of a resort as you kept seeing the same people throughout the week. We met a Serbian couple at dinner the first night, who told us they’d been to all three of the island’s restaurants and settled upon the one where we met them as their favorite.
Though we later chose a different one as our favorite, we also tried all of the restaurants. Choosing a favorite was not so much about the food, as we learned all the restaurants offered the same items just on a different menu. To our relief, there were more food choices than we’d expected: fish, lobster, pasta, Chinese, Dhivehin, even soups and sandwiches.
I decided to be bold one night and order one of the house specialties, deviled chicken, but it turned out to be nothing too different than sweet and sour chicken. Of course, any time you ordered something that traditionally used pork, it was substituted with beef or chicken.
Since the food wasn’t a defining characteristic of any of the restaurants, we chose our favorite because of the atmosphere. I admit, we were being a little western in our selection, but a concrete floor suggests more cleanliness than a sand floor, which the town’s other restaurants had.
The building of our restaurant was on the first floor of an unfinished concrete building. It was clear they were building a modern hotel above to match the restaurant. In fact we saw the concrete skeletons of many hotels under construction during our visit. It reminded me to really take in the place we were visiting because we probably wouldn’t recognize it when we came back, with the handful of guest houses being overshadowed by several modern hotels.
Besides meals, the only other thing to be consumed on the island, ironically enough, was coffee. There was really only one coffee shop, but they served the kind of coffee we were accustomed to coming from Oregon. Of course, with every day being over 90 degrees with 100% humidity, we tended to order our coffees iced. I was pleased to discover that “iced” in the Maldives actually meant with ice cream!
I was a little surprised that there was a coffee shop at all, being that caffeine was on the list of contraband items. The locals seemed to have no problems with coffee, or cigarettes for that matter, and every afternoon, you can find the tables filled with local men laughing and talking.
Island life was pretty leisurely, and that was reinforced by the dispersal of chairs throughout the island. No matter where you walked, you were never more than a few yards from a braided cord recliner, some held up by wood frames and others hanging from trees.
Almost all of the islanders were employed in either the tourism or fishing industries. The former didn’t have much to do with the low number of visitors arriving during Covid. The fisherman worked long and hard, sometimes going out for days. Our boat captain explained that it could be a challenge to make money because it all depended on the price that wholesalers were willing to pay for fish.
Apparently, the fishermen head out to sea and then call the wholesalers to see where the price is. If the price paid is high, they rush to port with their catch. If it’s not, they are often forced to simply return home with their catch to feed their families. This is all made more difficult because the fisherman must also account for gas prices.
Perhaps it is this uncertainty that makes the Dhivehin people so faithful to their religion. Several times a day, you hear the call to prayer coming from the mosque in the center of the island. Many times we noticed the men bowing in prayer as we walked past the mosque.
There was no mistaking that the Maldives is a Muslim country as you never saw a woman without a head covering or exposing any skin except for her face. In fact, foreigners were asked to respect local customs by dressing appropriately when walking around the island.
When I first started looking at maps of the different islands where I was considering staying, I saw a beach labeled Bikini beach. I thought it was a unique beach until I noticed that each island had one. It turns out that bikini beach is the designated place on the island where foreigners can wear a bathing suit. Signs also direct you to dress properly when you are leaving the designated area.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the young boys of the island would try to find a good hiding spot where they could watch over the semi-nude swimmers. I did see one father playing soccer with his son on the edge of the bikini beach area. I worried about the repercussions when shared with his mom that his dad had taken him there to practice soccer there and not on the soccer field on the other side of the island.
The bikini option only applies to foreigners though. Whenever locals came to swim they had to remain fully clothed. It was like watching an octopus squirt ink when the women entered the water and their black dresses fanned out around them. Swimming fully clothed was not restricted to women. You also saw men enter the water in pants and a shirt. It was odd seeing the two cultures sharing the same space in such different ways.
One other rule, that one of the beach attendants took very seriously, was the use of beach chairs. While a few of the guest houses had collectively purchased some lounge chairs, two of the hotels had their own dedicated chairs. The problem is that there was no indication that you weren’t supposed to sit in the hotel chairs, and we often saw a frustrated beach attendant school innocent tourists on the difference between the hotel chairs and the guest house chairs. On our first day, we received this schooling, and we entertained ourselves over the rest of the trip by watching the frustrated attendant coming out to reprimand other newcomers.
We had tried a different restaurant on each of the nights of our stay, having decided we would return to our favorite for our last night. That turned out to be the one with the more modern interior on the first floor of the unfinished hotel. The servers were happy to see us back, and we were happy to order the exact same delicious meal we’d ordered the first time.
On the day of our departure, our suitcases were loaded into the multicolored wheelbarrow and transferred to the other side of the island where our speedboat ferry awaited. Again we wove our way out from the atoll. It’s hard to imagine how one could do this after dark when you couldn’t see the different colors of the water that indicated the depth.
We were headed to the capital city Male for a couple days before our flight departure because we figured after several days of eating the same food, we’d be ready for some variety. Our hotel in Male was surrounded by restaurants serving pizza, burgers, pasta, and a wide variety of western foods but no alcohol.
Aside from that the neighborhood was very modern, and we were able to replenish our supplies. We even ordered some of the most amazing burgers we’ve ever seen. We got the KFC style fried chicken burger with cheese oozing from all sides. I was tempted to get the $100 Abu Dons A5 Wagyu Burger but was informed by the waiter that they were out of Wagyu beef.
On our last day, we took a taxi to the capital city. It was only a 15 minute ride, but there was a surprising amount of traffic given its 3.2 sq mi. Most of the waterfront was dominated by boats that ferried workers to the resort islands. In the distance we thought we could see a couple of the Russian super yachts that had evaded capture by hiding out in the Maldives, which has no extradition agreements with the US.
The city was gritty, crowded, and restive. It made quite the contrast to the rest of the country, but it was here that most of the Dhivehin people lived and did their shopping. We walked the town from end to end looking for a nice commercial center, but it became clear there was none, so we returned to our suburban retreat on the northern peninsula of Male island.
The next morning, a taxi drove us to the airport, where we stood in line for almost 2 hours to clear customs and security. I was surprised because I only saw a few planes on the tarmac when we arrived. We had just enough time to grab some coffee and snacks before our flight to Switzerland, which is itself another story.
While I enjoyed my visit to this unique archipelago, it will probably be my only visit because in the end it is a little disappointing to have a tropical holiday where you can’t wear beach wear or enjoy a little tropical cocktail every night. Still, the people were delightful and it was nice to share what one of our tour guides called “our paradise”.
