Honeymoon on the Maldives

A dream coming true for couples around the world. For us it wasn’t a dream but we’d rather go before climate change would make the islands disappear.

After the 6-hour flight from Singapore to Male, we had to wait for the regional flight to the resort which would take 1 hour and then another 20-minute boat ride.

The trickiest part about choosing which resort is what reef you prefer. The healthiest reefs are usually the ones furthest away from civilization and add a few more hours to your journey, potentially a whole day depending on local flight schedules. And of course, they are way more expensive. We chose the Dusit Thani resort for 5 nights and booked all-inclusive through the Korean agency “Tourmin” at discounted off-season prices. We went there just after the main season was over and before the rainy season kicked off in early May.

We got an Ocean Villa that had a pool, ocean entrance and overall great interior.

The view from the villa, but actually from everywhere on the island was remarkable and exactly what you would want from a Maldives trip.

The Island had 3 restaurants so we switched each day and made our way through the menu.

The breakfast buffet was great too. I particularly loved the strawberry juice.

Besides eating we spend most of the day snorkeling. We saw lots of fish, two turtles, stingrays, and some dolphins in the distance.

The corals of the reef were mostly dead though, which is a shame but almost natural if you let humans loose on the island.

The downsides of the trip were the two evenings on which we found cockroaches in our villa (I’ll spare you the pictures). Even after the staff had checked the villa, they kept appearing and even the villa they moved us to had them. We got upgraded to the family suite for the last night and received a refund for one night afterwards.

Would I recommend Maldives for Honeymoon or a trip in general? Maybe.

I haven’t travelled to other resorts or place similar to Maldives so I can’t give a comparison, but some things stood out to me:

The Maldives are a Muslim county. Woman are not allowed to work, so the woman you see working in the resorts are all foreigners. Of course, you never really have to interact with the locals, but they clean your house and make your food, and you are paying them.

The financial and ecological price of an isolated resort holiday is way higher than something more local and closer to civilization. All the islands are run on tourism and wouldn’t exist otherwise. Traveling to somewhere as isolated as Maldives is usually a once in a lifetime trip, but there are other places on the planet that can give you a similar experience with food as amazing or better. I liked it, but I would not try to convince you to travel there.

The deserts were amazing. Just looking at the images waters my mouth again…

After a week long break in Korea, we unexpectedly stayed in New Jersey for two weeks and explored New York and Washington DC. More to come in the next post.