One Week in the Maldives
Newsflash! The Maldives is fucking awesome!
Stop the fucking presses!
WHEEEW! Aren’t you glad you came to some random person’s travel blog to get that pearl of wisdom?
I could end the blog there. I mean there isn’t much else to say about the Maldives that people probably don’t already know. There are no world-famous hikes, no world-famous monuments, no world-famous museums… and yet it’s one of the most incredible places we’ve ever been. The Maldives is the travel epitome of “do one thing and do it well.”
What does the Maldives do well? That’s a hypothetical question…. a hypothetical question that I’m going to answer. The Maldives does luxury beach life like nowhere else in the world!
Now that we got all that sarcasm out of the way, in this blog post I’m going to share how we stayed in a water bungalow at a Maldivian island resort for $100 per night (with many other perks). Then I’ll give you a basic rundown of how we got to the Maldives and how we traveled around it. And finally, I’ll just share our overall experience and try to inspire you with pretty pictures and all that shit.
I hope you enjoy it!
Staying in the Maldives for cheap
Alright, so our Maldives trip manifested itself thanks to a combination of insomnia, phone addiction, dumb luck, subscribing to too many emails, and spontaneity. We were sleeping in a cabin on a weird hippie commune outside of Santa Cruz, CA during peak COVID in the summer of 2020. It was around 4 am when I was awoken by a very persistent creature trying to break into our cabin. Of course, being a fan of fantasy movies/books my mind immediately jumped to a spider the size of a German Shepard - and with that, I was now awake for the day. So I flipped open my phone and started going through all the apps. I got so deep into the rabbit hole that I found myself in the Promotions tab of my Gmail account when a subjectline caught my eye, “Maldives Vacation - Fully Refundable & Flexible Dates.” So I opened it.
The email was from TravelZoo and felt too good to be true…
8-night stay on a private island resort
Water bungalow rooms
Free one-way island transportation (the international Maldivian airport is in Male - otherwise you need a boat or seaplane to get to your resorts from there) - typically these are about $200-$350 each way
Breakfast and dinner included
15-minute beach photoshoot
Massage package
Sunset cruise
All for the price of $800/each.
Since the deal was fully refundable AND flexible dates, I purchased one for Nicole and myself while Nicole was still sleeping. If she thought it was a bad idea then I’d just get my refund. It’s a good thing I pulled the trigger too - I forwarded the email to two of our closest friends and it sold out at least 30 minutes later.
After speaking to many people at our resort it become clear that this was not a unique deal. And not just for our resort. Almost everyone we met had been to the Maldives before at another resort on a similar type of package.
So what I’m trying to say is, subscribe to TravelZoo or at least proactively visit their website because they have Maldives travel packages frequently. Try looking for Maldives deals here.
Getting around the Maldives
When you land in Male things can get a little bit confusing despite it being a relatively small airport. This is because landing in Male is more than likely not the end of your journey - you have to actually get to your resort!
There are two main methods of domestic travel: sea place direct to resort (most expensive) or a combination of domestic flight and speedboat (time-consuming). Because we arrived in Male after 5pm we were forced to do the latter, as seaplanes don’t typically fly after 6pm.
It seemed that most resorts will provide you with an agent who will walk you through the transfer process. Our resort, Reethi Faru, was no exception. We were immediately greeted by our guide, Abu (like the monkey from Aladdin - his words). Abu was so friendly, he stayed with us throughout the entirety of our 3-hour layover, walking us through every step and piece of paperwork needed to get to our final destination. It can definitely be confusing to get the right transfer to your specific resort since there are literally hundreds of them - I have to give props to whoever is in charge of logistics because there are a lot of moving pieces for a lot of people.
Our domestic flight took about 30 minutes then a quick 5 min shuttle to the speedboat, which actually then took another 90 (mainly because we had to drop off several guests at island resorts that we passed along the way).
General info:
Airport: Male (MLE)
No VISA is needed from the US
Flight cost from Washington, DC - $700
Travel time from Washington, DC to Male - 13 hours to Dubai + 4.5 hours to Male
Internal travel depends on where your resort is but you will likely have some combination of a speed boat (long) and/or seaplane (pricey)
Boat ride = $100
Seaplane = $250
Where we stayed in the Maldives
Reethi Faru Bio Luxury Resort was amazing. Located about 90 minutes by boat / 35 minutes by seaplane north of the Male airport, this tiny island resort is part of the Raa Atoll and is one of the few resorts in the Maldives with a house reef located around the island itself. This means you can literally walk straight out from the beach and within 20 meters you’re on a reef teeming with sea life. And I’m not talking some bullshit sealife either - we had sharks, octopus, sea turtles, and rays all just a few steps off our beach.
The resort is small but doesn’t feel super small, it takes about 20-40 minutes to walk around the entirety of the island and the island itself is a lush tropical paradise with sand walking trails surrounded by tropical palms and trees through the middle. When you arrive the staff advises that you take your sandals off and enjoy the sand between your toes as you walk around.
There are three types of rooms at the resort; the water bungalows, which is where we stayed - there are about 50-60 of them on a long pier off the island. Then there are beach bungalows, which are packed together but still feel isolated due to the dense vegetation around them - the beach bungalows also have small pools that look out onto the water. And finally, there are the garden villas, which are on the interior of the island.
Food/Drink
There are 11 bars/restaurants onsite and we ate/drank at all of them. All the seafood is super fresh (you’d hope!) and the views are unbeatable. The buffet place for breakfast was shockingly delicious - the food skewed pretty heavily toward Indian but if you have a sensitive stomach they did have alternatives during all the meals. The buffet spot is where we had breakfast and dinner included in our meals, the other locations were not included. There were 2-3 restaurants that required a reservation ahead of time and they were expensive but not as bad as we would have thought for a resort in the Maldives - talking about the range of $50-80 per person (including drinks).
Things to do
The dive shop has tons of excursions to pick from diving the house reef/diving reefs offsite to snorkeling with Manta Rays (FYI - snorkel with the Manta’s - don’t dive. They like to stay near the surface.). There are sunset cruises, jetskis, flyboarding, kitesurfing, the list goes on. You can find the water sports pricing here.
Otherwise, there is a very nice spa at the resort that offers standard massage variations and other things. Ultimately, we found ourselves spending our days relaxing and unwinding by the water on the beach or in our room.
If you’re interested in seeing the resort, we sped up two videos of us walking around most of the island from the main entrance below.
What we did in the Maldives
We slept in a water bungalow! Who doesn’t dream of living a life of luxury in a water bugalow? Any water bungalow. But a Maldivian water bungalow is really the cream of the crop. Okay, I’ll stop saying “water bungalow,” now.
It was exactly as advertised. Waking up to the sun rising over the Indian Ocean was a true once-in-a-lifetime experience (I hope not). When you’re spending a week on an island resort there really is only so much you can do, so there were probably about two days where we just took it slow, read books on our deck, walked right down for a dip when we got hot, and literally snorkeled right off our bungalow when we got bored. When we woke up in the mornings we made coffee in the room, put on our swimsuits, and took a dip with the schools of fish flying around under our room. One morning there was even a shark chasing them! It was fantastic.
We swam with Manta Rays! Swimming with Manta Rays was right up there for me, alongside Whale Sharks, Great White Sharks, the Loch Ness Monster… it’s big. So when I found out that I could make this bucket list item a reality it was a no-brainer that we had to do it. Between procrastination and misinformation, we almost didn’t get to do it! We spent a bunch of our week diving thinking that we would dive with the Mantas. Then we were told that the best way to do it was actually on a snorkel trip and the last one was literally the morning before our flight! So we actually hopped on a Manta snorkel excursion at 8 am and got back by 2 pm to make our 2:30 seaplane off the resort. It was definitely cutting it close - but we made it! Even had 10 mins to spare for a shower before our travels back around the globe. Thank god!
We snorkeled and scuba-dived, everywhere! As I said in the opening, Reethi Faru is one of the few resorts with a house reef, which means that you can basically walk right into the water and you’re snorkeling in one of the most diverse aquatic regions in the world. Directly off the beach and/or our bungalow we saw sea turtles, parrotfish, octopus, reef sharks, starfish, you name it! There is a steep drop not too far out where you can dive well below 20 meters (which is all we are certified for).
We relaxed like never before! Look this is what you do here. We like adventure and I get a little anxious when it’s time to stop working and slow down but after the first two days, I was able to get with the program. We had a great routine of bringing our fins to lounge on the beach with tropical drinks and our books - when it got too hot or we got bored, we just jumped in the water to snorkel to cool off. It was as simple as that. And it was worth every minute and every penny it took to do it.
We ate amazing seafood! …. and of course we didn’t take any photos of it. But take my word for it, the seafood was fresh and it was prepared perfectly at every meal. Everything from lobster to the mahi to the snapper - it was world-class through and through.
We got engaged! Yes! I don’t like to toot my own horn too much but I (Pep) did good on this one. Nicole totally didn’t see it coming! Our vacation package came with a photoshoot so I met with the guy beforehand and discussed our strategy. Since it was part of the package it played right into our original plans. It started on the beach then we went to the pier where the water bungalows are and midway through snapping some photos I started with my pitch - it was a tough sell but somehow I managed to convince the most amazing woman to stick with me forever! Woo-hoo!
