The Ultimate Maldives Travel Guide | Visa, Money & Island Hopping

maldives i'm sure you've heard of the name anytime someone mentions this name the first thing that comes to your mind is that it's a beautiful country full of luxury resorts and beaches and islands and that's pretty much it and it's mostly for the rich people wrong maldives is located south of india in sri lanka and it's made up of roughly 1200 islands and 26 atolls atolls are not islands but a sort of like a combination of islands built around a common coral so they're giant structures and one atoll could have multiple islands they have complicated names in dhivehi which is the local language but they have like snappy codeword names like ba or ra or ari or malay which is the capital it's also atoll where do you even start it's a beautiful country so there are tons of resorts but there are so many local islands as well i'm gonna show you what maldives is all about i'm gonna help you plan a trip to maldives and i hope you will have an amazing experience just like i did maldives has one of the most liberal and easiest visa policies in the entire world no one needs a visa everyone gets it on arrival and it's free so what are you waiting for moving around in maldives is not easy at all if you're not in the same atoll it's pretty complicated and most of the time you will have to come back to malay and then get transferred back to the other atoll especially if you're between local islands so there are four options number one is dhoni that's a public ferry it's the cheapest one and very very slow so you can check the link in description and get the details from there it doesn't run every day and on fridays there's no dhoni so the second option is getting a speedboat this could be private or this could be the public one that the hotels or the resorts arrange so if you're staying at a local island check with them about this the third option is domestic flights again quite complicated and i would not recommend booking them on your own because the locals actually get them about one third of the price ask your hotel they will arrange it for you and the fourth and the most convenient option is the seaplane it is ridiculously pretty i mean imagine seeing all the islands from above but you know why it's convenient right it's expensive so it's like 400 to 700 per person per way so when you're booking your accommodation check with them whether it's a resort or a local guest house or a hotel and then go with what they recommend you i would recommend checking rakuda.com or booking.com and then from there you can book your resort there's a few options when it comes to food so you can get bread and breakfast in that case your breakfast will be covered but you will buy your lunch and dinner as well as your drinks half board also includes your dinner full board includes all three meals and all inclusive means you will get the drinks as well but you need to get the list of drinks that are actually included email them also check the price of transfers um mostly speed boats or a combination of domestic flight and speedboat or a seaplane so a seaplane transfer could cost as much as you know 400 to 700 per person per way that is all when it comes to booking a resort holiday you're here everything's taken care of i also want to add it's a little tip i would not recommend staying in a water villa on your whole time especially if you're coming in off season because if it rains and there's storm it's not a pleasant place to be in honestly i have basically sat through the storm day before yesterday and yesterday with the proper solid ceiling it just felt like it was gonna fly off so i would recommend booking a couple of nights in our water villa and then doing the rest on a beach bungalow it's also a good money saving tip on local islands the accommodation is fairly simple and straightforward you book a place which is going to be a hotel or a guest house most of these places are newly built and are really well serviced which is great the accommodation standard is also quite high you can easily get a place ranging between 40 to 100 a night and most of these places also operate their own kitchen which is really great because you get good food since most of the local islands don't have independent resorts when you arrive in maldives there are a few things you need to do at the airport and these are vital get a sim card a local sim card there are two companies both have shops one is dirabu the other one is uridu there's no difference in prices for both the only difference is the duration for which your plan will last uridu offers it for 30 days dirabu offers it for 14 days if you want to come for the bioluminescence of the glowing beaches the best time is november december but it can happen anywhere at any time during this entire october to february stretch if you just want clear beautiful skies and beautiful sea a good time is to come between october sort of early april beyond that it gets the monsoon sort of starts to kick in make my ish onwards is the monsoon season which is also the low season so there will be this one or two weeks period in the middle but it's gonna rain non-stop that's been happening outside the last five days but after that it gets quite pleasant and this is also the time when you get to see the whale sharks and the manta rays depending on what you want you can plan your trip based on that when it comes to local island tourism i would suggest that you sort of calibrate your expectations because this is not a country where you just pop in and get something from the store there are limited supplies limited variety when you go to local islands make sure you have some backup of your cameras whatever because if you need something you will have to go back to malay or it will take a bit of time basically when it comes to food the options are also a bit limited if you like fish seafood you're gonna be good but if you're expecting a lot more you'll be happy at the resorts but you won't be happy at the local islands i would also recommend that you order well in advance so what i used to do is just go to the restaurant take their whatsapp number and then just tell them a little bit in advance usually an hour hour and a half is the standard and then you won't be disappointed otherwise you'll be sitting there waiting for your food because they make everything absolutely fresh from scratch which is i mean amazing i love it maldives is a muslim country you cannot go topless on most of the local islands except for designated areas and these areas are called bikini beaches you can still wear clothes if you want but that's the place where women can wear bikinis and men can wear you can go topless if you want please be respectful of the communal areas and another really good thing i really like about the local islands is the streets are all sandy so you can just get rid of your shoes and walk bare feet oh i just love the freedom maldives is a very safe country crime is almost unheard of and people are really really friendly and cooperative i lost my go pro on fullerto and someone found it and they actually went from hotel to hotel to check actually who lost the go pro they are so friendly and amazing here i didn't feel the need to lock my room throughout my stay on four different islands that says a lot actually in terms of the people they're really friendly and sweet actually there's two types one who are really friendly and nice and sweet the other ones are a bit reserved and keep things to themselves but when it comes to being helpful maldivians are amazing i don't think anyone's as great as them when it comes to helping you planning your trip doing things they want you to see the best part of the country in the best light possible i'm really thoroughly impressed are they racist though i hear you ask i don't think so but there is a general concept that white people generally have more money so it just plays a little bit of a part in the whole but other than that i mean everyone is just so nice and friendly to the guests they just want you to have the best time so i don't think it's a racist country this is the money of maldives it is actually pretty colorful and really nice looking but this is dangerous why because it's a non-convertible currency what that means is that you cannot exchange it outside maltdives when you withdraw the money at the airport from the atm check the link in description for who doesn't charge transaction fees at the airport by the way or if you exchange it at a currency exchange make sure you keep the receipt and on the way back you can exchange it at the airport if you leave with this there's no way you can get your money back except for you know if you're coming back tomorrow if you're going to a resort you don't need to withdraw any money if you're going to local islands you will definitely need some because the shops etc some places just don't take cards not every place takes dollars especially local islands you will again need this but most other places diving centers snorkeling blah blah blah guest houses they all accept money and money in dollars so that's quite convenient but there are some places that will charge you up to four to five percent uh transaction cost per transaction so it's good to keep a bit of cash and not every local island has a cash machine or an atm machine on it how expensive is small leads you already know the answer to that it is really expensive but if you do a few things it doesn't have to be you mix a few excursions together like going to sand bank mixed with going for you know snorkeling and you know snorkeling with the turtle or going for sharks etc and that's actually going to give you some discount and you can cover more things in a single day i would recommend that you break your trip into at least one local island and a resort if you have limited time and that's also going to bring your costs down an average is roughly 100 to 120 dollars a day in maldives on a local island you know what it is on a resort so that's quite easy so the main language here is which actually started as a code writing or a cryptic language but it turned into the official language of maldives but english is very common and pretty much everyone speaks some level of english don't arrive on friday nothing works here on fridays the public transport dhoni's most of the places are just closed on fridays so friday is not a good day to do anything you cannot bring in any pork any alcohol any idols any religious printed material than islam but you can get alcohol in the resorts one other thing i would recommend is being very careful around the sea because when you a lot of people drown every year because it's very easy to see that it's a very nice calm beautiful day but it could be pretty strong currents and a lot of people drown every year because of that the best way to get in touch with people guest houses diving centers pretty much anyone in maldives is not google it is instagram just search the name and you'll be there like a bullet honestly it works amazingly fast i've never made such good use of instagram in my entire life if you're coming to maldives to snorkel to meet some beautiful animals marine life there's one rule you must stick to please please please do not touch anything underwater it's really fragile do not touch any mantas any whale sharks anything sharks dolphins anything do not touch them remember you cannot take any sand any corals or any shells out of maldives it is illegal and it could get you into serious trouble another quite interesting thing is there could be more than one island with the same name and i'm gonna give you the example of vaadhoo which is in three different atolls so always check the atoll name with the island name and then you'll be sure you're getting to the right place it's quite important so you want to know what to do in maldives there's tons to do the best is obviously to go in the sea for a country that's like 96 97 percent ocean obviously a lot of it is around the water and the sea so that pretty much every island has a diving center and water sports so you can jet ski you can snorkel on that note if you don't want to book through your hotels just get your own snorkeling gear when you're coming but if you're booking excursions they usually provide it to you pretty much all islands have their own reefs as well they're called the house reefs so you can go snorkel in those and find some interesting things you will get to meet some stingrays some nurse sharks you can swim with the nurse sharks which i did it was a little scary at first but it wasn't too bad you can swim with like hundreds of dolphins honestly hundreds and it's it's amazing i've never been so close and had a chance to to swim so close to them you obviously have to go to a sand bank and most islands have one nearby you can also arrange a lunch um on the sandbank as well but they're great to spend time in it's like a little island all to yourself and if you want they usually just leave you there and then they come pick you up there are shipwrecks you can go have fun with those but they're not that common obviously don't forget to bring some insect repellent because the mosquitoes can be pretty brutal and don't forget to bring tons and tons of sunscreen but please use a sunscreen that is reef friendly because otherwise the chemicals sit on the reef and they destroy it so you want to be friendly right one other piece of advice when it comes to doing things in maldives do not use the underwater you know the scooters where you hold on and it just kind of drags you around because i saw some people using those the marine life they just run away like that the dolphins the moment they hear that noise they just get so scared they're like gone all four 500 of them gone within seconds please even if you get the option don't use those this is brown boy travels let me know what you think of the video in the comment section if i've missed something please let me know also give me some suggestions about your country i will see you in the next video until then you have an amazing day ahead