Ok, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, you know where I’ve been for the past week. YES, THE MALDIVES! And this Desi Girl Traveler has had blast! Here’s the recap of my epic vacay (one blog at a time) so hopefully – aside from being utterly jealous *grin* – you’ll pick up a whole lot of useful tips for when YOU decide to go live the #clubmedlife 🙂
The thing about Male (that surprisingly most people fail to mention online) is that it’s an alcohol-free city. So if you were thinking you’d land, kick-back and get your cocktail on while you watched the world go by, you thought wrong. While all the resorts in The Maldives are allowed to serve alcohol the capital city is 100% dry (all except for the airport hotel “Hulhule” which actually has quite a fancy sports bar!)
This probably explains why most travellers simply transit in Male for a few hours on their way to a resort. BUT should you decide to be a little adventurous like us, here are a few things we recommend you do! #ReadySetGo
Male, Maldives Day 1
It is really THIS blue and this beautiful from the second your plane starts to land. Soak it in so you can make it your happy place when you come back to the city.
Oh, allow me to introduce our awesome travel companions on this trip 🙂 Sujal Shah and Surelee Joseph aka our Travel BFFs for Life!
Your plane will almost sweep the ocean on it’s arrival. We’ve discussed it and next time we plan to parachute off immediately into the water!
There is a main road in Male where all the action appears to happen, this was of course my favorite sign 🙂
If you get bored just hop on a ferry back to the airport and grab a non non-alcoholic beer at the Hotel Hulhule!
It is quite amazing how many things you can find to entertain yourself with, given you have the will (and vodka.)
Now THIS I totally recommend. Instead of taking a regular closed cab back to your hotel *boring* take one of these tempos that function as semi-legit taxis. The ride down main street will be ever so much more entertaining.
Male, Maldives Day 2
We discovered quickly that our two-day city sojourn was probably not time well spent (especially since you can pretty much walk the perimeter of the entire city in under 2 hours.) So we booked a day trip to a nearby island which picked us up at 9am and dropped us back at 5 (to Hotel Hulhule of course.)
Yes, this was the first of many seaplanes we pointed out to each other over the next 5 days!
Swimming in the Maldives is like taking a warm, gentle bath (with harmless little reef sharks in it.)
We even found a quaint little spot with a tree swing to play on! So that was our welcome to The Maldives, next stay tuned for the pièce de résistance – Club Med Kani – where we spent the next three utterly blissful days…
More photos from Male & our day trip here! Psst, leave me a comment if you like our pix! xoxo
Pix by Surelee Joseph for MissMalini