Finally I’m travelling again; backpacking
to Maldives with my spouse. Maldives may sounds like a luxury resorts to many
and charging sky high prices to whomever that visits them, nevertheless I do
believe there is definitely a way to enjoy this beautiful place the more
economical way.
Kudo Bandos (Picnic Island)
Republic of the Maldives, is an island
nation consisting of 1,192 coral islands grouped in a double chain of 26
atolls, spreading over approximately 90,000 sq. kilometers, orientated to the
north and south with Male city as the capital city, so theoretically, it’s kind
of impossible to explore all Atolls within a trip; probably exploring some of
the nearby Atolls will sound more reasonable.
Approximate Currency exchange rate: 1$usd
to $1.27sgd 1$usd to 16.50MVR
(Maldivian Rufiyaa) actual rate 15.47MVR
$1sgd to 11.76MVR (Maldivian Rufiyaa) actual rate 12.01MVR
Bring more USD if plans to book for
excursions or snorkeling trips and approximately 200sgd worth of MVR for food
and expenses in their main town. (Their money changers and bank do not trade SGD
with USD, SGD can only change for MVR.) Excursions are charged in USD and if we
want to pay in MVR, their own currency exchange rate is applied! Which can
gives a difference of around $20-$30sgd! Actual exchange rates are 1$USD to
15.47 MVR, BUT they will convert between 1$USD to 16-18MVR! That is how much we
lost after converting back to SGD. Anyway they only have money changers at the
airport, other places like hotels and western unions or banks will be even
worse.
Maldives are highly restricted when it
comes to transportation and travelling; as the nation has island scattered all
around the place and their main mode of transport will be by ferry or
speedboats, sea-plane is another alternatives for much further Atolls (very expensive).
Travelling around the Maldivians Island is very costly as their fuels are
imported and the country main source of income is via tourism. Also Maldives is
a 100% Islamic countries and no alcohol are allowed to be brought, alcohol are
only available in resorts (imported).
We manage to grab a deal from Tiger Airways
as they are having promotion, newly launching flights to Male (Maldives) which
cost around $350/- SGD per pax inclusive of pre-ordered inflight food and
drinks (which you can opt not to have for a cheaper airfare). The flight
duration is about 4hrs 20mins. Alternatively, Singapore Airlines do offer
flight to Maldives as well.
So how do we goes about having a much more
economical way of enjoying this beautiful place? Objectives are the main
priority in deciding on fund management;
1) to enjoy the luxury resorts without
considering of stepping out of the hotel for any excursions or water sport or
snorkeling.
2) Visit different islands, snorkeling, and snorkel with whale
sharks and leatherback turtles, whale submarine, night fishing and excursion
and will not be spending most of the time in hotel, other than putting your
luggage and resting when night falls.
For option 1, its pretty straight forward,
search online and constantly looking out for hotel resorts promotions and good
deals that include alcohol and food and transit from airport. These 3 are the
most important as these can really help to save a lot. A simple Resort meals
cost approximately 100$usd for 2 [e.g.; Chicken Fried noodle is 28$usd or a
western main course around 50$usd excl tax (18%)]. Non promotional rate will be
around $300sgd minimum without transit or food or alcohol (I didn’t really
check out the full range but it can go up to $2000sgd per night).
Let’s go to option 2, which is our main
objective.
Day 1:
We landed in Hulhule which is the island
for the airport; it is also connected to Hulhumale which is where all the
transit hotels are situated. It is relatively small, but transport from Hulhule
to Hulhumale has to be by bus or taxi or motorbikes or cars, meaning no walking
is allowed as part of the route will have to cut across the runway. So we asked
around the area, asking the same question to different people so as to have a
higher probability answer, Taxi ride from Hulhule cost 10$USD and Airport
transfer domestic bus ride cost 16MVR per pax! We manage to figure out how
these transport system works and gotten a bus schedule, seeing we still has
some spare time, we had our meal at Burger King which cost 9$usd for a single
fish fillet meal.
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| Map of Hulhumale and Male City |
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| Hulhumale bus schedule |
When we arrived at Hulhumale, we tracked
our way to our hotel using the Google map screen shot from my phone and it is
only about 10mins walk from the bus stop. Hotels in Hulhumale cost around
$70-$120sgd per night, we stay in Hulhumale (Newtown Inn deluxe room @ $90sgd
per night) for the first and our last night and 3 nights in Male city. Hotel
condition is good and new, I’m very satisfied with the condition. A decent meal
(2 main course, 1 soup and 2 drinks) in Hulhumale and Male city (bistro) will cost
between 250-400MVR ($21sgd - $34sgd), it is cheap as compared to hotel resorts
prices but it is definitely not as cheap as indulging in South-East Asia. For
cheaper alternatives, it will be dining out in their local eateries which will
be shabbier and not as well English spoken and that will be half the price of
the bistro that I have just mentioned.
Newtown Inn
As Hulhumale is still very much developing,
so it will be a common sight to see construction sites around, and on the
outskirt will be some rubbish dumping grounds; but Hulhumale deluxe rooms are
definitely much much more comfortable and clean as compared to Male city
hotels.
We saw local tour packages in Hulhumale
transit hotels and thought that it will be slightly more costly as compared to
Male city and so we took a few picture of the prices and gonna use it as
comparison when we arrive at Male city the next day.
Local ferry services are available for
transiting between Hulhumale to Male city, and for the same destination; there
are 2 way of pricing. Airport Ferry terminal (Hulhule) to Male city will cost
10MVR per pax and Hulhumale ferry terminal cost 5.50MVR per pax (45% savings!),
additional to that; Hulhumale has 3 type of buses, namely Airport Bus,
Neighborhood 1 Bus (N1) and Neighborhood 2 Bus (N2). Airport bus fare cost
16MVR and N1/N2 buses bus fare cost 3MVR per pax (81% savings)! We will need to
take Airport bus to Airport Ferry Terminal which will have a total cost of
26MVR per pax, alternatively, we can take the N buses to Hulhumale Ferry
Terminal which will have a total cost of 8.50MVR (Average of 67% savings!) At
this point, we might be thinking that it is only a few dollars difference, but
what is going to happen is that we will be traveling a lot in these modes of
transport and that will increase the magnitude of our overall trip spending! So
more alternatives make better choices.
Day 2:
Woke up at 6am local time (GMT+5, 3 hours
behind Singapore), and we hurriedly rush up to the sky deck of our hotel to
witness the Maldivian Sunrise, rising up from behind the horizon. Beautiful.
After which Cheryl went back to her room, and I continued with my overseas
morning run along the coast of Hulhumale.
Back from run, breakfast-ed, backpacked, checked out and off we go, on the move again to our next hotel in Male city (via local bus and local ferry).
We arrived at Male City (Capital of
Maldives); generally the town is in a mess as we sees a lot of people, few
cars, and a lot of motorbikes, congested. Advertisement posters pasting
everywhere, rubbish lying around, don’t ever stay in Male City.
The hotel is about 500 meters from the ferry terminal as measured from my wonderful Google Map screenshot, so we backpacked our way there and found it. We are greatly disappointed when we first entered the room; service wasn’t as great as compared to the well-mannered hotel staffs in Hulhumale. More expensive but lower quality rooms in Male city (approx. $140sgd per night), don’t stay in Male City.
After checking in, we took a walk around
Male city, and I really mean walk around, it is about 1.7km in length and 1km
in width; a walk around the island takes probably 2hour? Inclusive of stopovers
and asking around. We did not see any tour agencies around or places where we
can book our next day tour, so we just have to make our way back to our lousy
hotel and check with them for tour packages.
Our hotel (Surf View Raadhugandu)
does have day tour packages which cost slightly more than the ones we saw at
the Newtown Inn (Hulhumale), and so we chose our package and have the hotel
staffs to liaise for us to contact the tour guides.
Discovery of discoveries,
the guide came over to our hotel and chat up with us to discuss with us on the
packages he has to offer, we are offered tour to Picnic Island (Kudo Bandos)
where activities includes Snorkeling, Speed Boat and Ferry transfer, Sand bank
visit, snorkeling gear rentals, Fun tube (where we sat on a stupid float and
get drag around high speed by speedboat), Banana ride (another dumb floating
rubber thing), Jet ski, and Wind surf and most importantly LUNCH @ 150$usd per
pax.! Ok deal, we go as it is much cheaper as compared to resorts prices which
can be up to 300$usd per pax or more for some resort hotels. They seriously
charge usd like they are charging baht. The guide told us that we must have 300$usd
cash to pay to him tomorrow and we later knows why he meant it.
Rise and shine
the next morning where we had our early breakfast at the hotel, and here comes
the guide, of course like I had mentioned, there isn’t any place to change USD
and so we did not have sufficient usd to pay him. Anyway it does not matter
anyway, because we have to charge via hotel for a ‘broker fee’ of 5%! So it
is 315$usd, charged to credit card (I presumed the safest way out for the
currency rate that they offer) the hotel manager allows a changing rate of
$1SGD to 8MVR, that is crazy! Where the rates are actually 11.76MVR.
We had our
dinner at Seahouse Maldives, situated just at the ferry terminal, don’t try,
other than its scenery; the food does not taste good.
Day 3:
Ok. Done with a morning of miseries of deviating
through all the ‘weird’ payments and avoiding their extremely unreasonable
forex rates. We made our way to the ferry terminal to set off for our trip;
surprisingly we are actually making our way back to Hulhumale ferry terminal to
board the speedboat to Kudos Bandos! Check with our guide, and later we
understand that most of the speed boats will set off from Hulhumale and their
tour group is attached to Hulhumale hotels. Understanding this fact, we will stay
in Hulhumale in future and book tour directly from the hotel for our excursion
(much cheaper for the same thing!).
Picnic Island (Kudo Bandos) is a small and
non-resort occupied island where we have our water sports and visit to one of
the sand bank (one of the famous attractions as it only appears during low tide
and be fully submerged during high tide. There we did our snorkeling around the
brim of the shallow sea bed, exciting, interesting and nice! The café in the
island charges in USD and fortunately we had our lunch provided as a plate of
fried noodles will cost approximately 11$usd and drinks around 3$usd. I found
beer! Yes! Immediately I purchased 2 cans! Tiger and Heineken, happily gulping
my beer, I turned the can and saw ‘Brewed and canned in Alexandra Road’ and
this cost 5$usd per can…
The Sun is merciless when we are out doing our snorkeling and swims, and we are applying sunblock continuously but that did not change the fact that we still got tanned, fortunately not burnt.
In fact there are really a lot of China
tourists everywhere we go, and these 2 groups that are with us on this island
are just freaky. A group was gathered around on the beach sitting in a circle,
with a few of them dancing in the center of the circle without music; those ‘kampong’
dance, but generally they are just enjoying themselves. Another group was
fascinating, equipped in full wet suit and swimming cap with flippers and
snorkeling at the shallow part of the coast, with another few young ladies,
camwhoring themselves continuously; in dresses and heels and thick makeups and
hairdos – to do snorkeling! Enough of these wonderful characters.
We tried the fun tube in the morning, where
we sat on a float together with a Nigerian guy and a Sri Lankan guy and get
drags around by high speed boat, being flung around and drag and tow and toss!
It’s fun, but the speedboat is only 200bhp, (no problem la…).
Up next is visit
to the sand banks and so we took a motorized sampan out, and indeed it is nice
and we can also snorkel around the sandbanks. Cheryl and I snorkel all the way
out to the edge of the shallow sea bed where we witness a significant slope
down of the seabed to the deeper part of the sea; we couldn’t see the bottom
after the slope (that deep!) This is our first time personally seeing the fall
of seabed, snorkeling in Maldives really feels totally different. We saw coral
reefs, school of fishes and eventually got our way out too far, the guide has
to Jet Ski to our location to pick us up to send us back to the sandbank, where
we took the motorized sampan back to shore for lunch.
Nothing amazing about lunch, as it is just fried noodles with egg and some minced chicken meat. We have to eat along with ketchup and chili sauce.
The Jet Ski session was fun as Cheryl and I
took turn to ride all the way out to about 3km from coast, in search of
dolphins! She saw them, but I didn’t as I’m concentrating on not capsizing the
ski. This Jet Ski can really go full throttle to high speed riding and jumping
over waves! Damn good, but when my wife is riding it, oh man it suddenly feels
so safe! ‘Rolling’ over waves (as if they are road humps) and slowing down when
turning (hahaha).
It’s kinda tiring after all these activities, especially after whacking the Jet Ski where I have to grab the handles firmly and balancing while bashing through the waves. So we decided not to try wind surf and banana ride, and chose to play beach volleyball instead! A Match of 6 players consists of Singaporean, Arabian, 2 Serbian, Sri Lankan and Nigerian! Awesome! Later part the China ladies joined in too and I decided to take a break.
Finally it came towards the end of the day
excursion, fruitful and eventful; I bought a can of chilled Tiger Beer and
lazed on the beach enjoying the scenery and breeze. Speedboat back to
Hulhumale, where these amazing China female tourists were so happy and dancing
and hugging the local guides while the boat sped its way back to pier.
The 2
Serbian tourists Schok and Maria actually has an offer by their hotel manager
to snorkel with 30 meters long whale shakes in the Southern Atolls (3 hours
speedboat rides) but they need a group of 10 people minimum, Cheryl and I are
interested and so we adds up to the number, and now we need at least 6 more
people! Never ever tried these before, we started to approach every single
group of tourist on Hulhumale suggesting this trip to them and if they are
interested to join us, and we find that it is actually quite fun talking to
every tourist on the street!
Night falls, and minutes clicks by, we are still not able to grab anyone that can join us, and so this will seems to be destined that we will not be able to make it for the trip. We headed back to Male City for dinner back in our room.
Day 4:
We did not able to go for this Whale Shark
Snorkeling excursion, and neither did we plan for anything today and so it will
be a slack around town day. We further explore Male City and walking around,
lazing at cafes and enjoying pizzas; literally doing nothing. So Zen.
We were reading the news on our phones
regarding the search of MH370 around Indian Ocean near Southern Atolls of
Maldives; and it is actually quite near to our Whale Shark Snorkeling
expedition, search has been halted due to stormy weather around that area.
Fortunately, our attempt to grab this deal to snorkel is not successful.
We discussed and were thinking of what
shall we do on day 5, still enthusiastic to go snorkeling again and we headed
back to hotel and called the tour guide once again, but this time round the
guide is smart, he advise us to go over to his hotel lobby in Hulhumale instead
to discuss about other tour packages that they offer (for this, we can avoid paying
the 5% commission to our annoying hotel in Male City).
We took a ferry ride to
Hulhumale and took a local bus to his hotel area to meet up with him, and they
do has a package for us, Snorkeling excursion at 4 different island at 60$usd
per pax from 10am to 430pm; good deal! We went over to ‘Ravins’ restaurant to
have our dinner while he did the speed boat arrangement with us. Just nice when
we finish our dinner, the guide came over and said that it has been confirmed
and we exchanged contact numbers. Happily we strolled our way back to bus stop
and make our way back to Male City
Day 5:
We woke up early and packed our bags, as it
is our last day in Male city hotel before transiting back to Hulhumale for the
last night. With bags packed and everything intact, we proceed to the hotel
restaurant for breakfast. Feeling excited about the snorkeling trip that we are
about to go, we hurriedly finish our breakfast and make a phone call to the
tour guide; telling him that we are checking out soon to meet him at the jetty.
Stumbled upon his reply, he said that we need to wait for about an hour or so,
as he is not able to start the boat. I really start to have some not smoothed
sailing feeling, fine with it we went back to our room to wait first. 1.5hour
has past, I went back to hotel lobby to call him again, to our great
disappointment, he told us that the boat has broken down and he is not able to
proceed with the trip and so our Day 5 activity is cancelled! Damn it!
I went up back to my room and break this extremely disappointing news to her, but not to be affected by this impromptu disappointment. We check out immediately and source for our own activity for the day! We went to the ferry terminal and see if there is other ferries going to other island and saw this ferry going to Villigili island (not the Shangri La Villingili resort), developing island, nothing there other than just a few residences. So we take a ferry back, and headed straight back to Hulhumale pier to see if there is any speedboat that is setting off for any day tour that we can hitched on. As it is about 1030am local time, all day trips has already set off.
We are not beaten by reality of
cancellations and disappointments and we insisted that we must find activities
for today! We took the N2 bus and headed straight to the hotel that we are going
to stay for the last night and chatted up with the hotel young reception lady
on our path forwards for the day and her suggestions. She is very pro-active
and immediately she went out of the hotel and source for any possible
activities still available for this time. While we went back to our room to
settle down and unpacked.
10 minutes is all she takes to return to our room with an offer for us to go to the Adaaran Prestige Vadoo Maldives Hotel Day visit (about $750-$1,100sgd per night). Our day visit tour cost us 100$usd per person, which is inclusive of speed boat transfer to and from Hulhule as well as use of hotel facilities with towels and life jacket included. Deal! We set of in 30mins time to Hulhule to catch the speedboat transfer to the hotel.
Indeed a beautiful place, with very good hospitality staffs and crystal clear water around the island. Shark, Black Tip Reef sharks are swimming at coastline, about 5-6 of them, around 1.2 meters long. The beaches are quiet with very few guests around although occupancy rate for that day is full, I brought my potable speaker and we were just lazing at the beach listening to songs and enjoying the scenery.
Lazed enough, we went to snorkel after receiving life jackets from the pool attendant, despite with dead corals around, there are still many fishes swimming around but it wasn’t as satisfying as snorkeling at the sandbanks. Probably is because we do not have flippers on and so our bare foot hurts when we step on the corals on the seabed.
After an hour of snorkeling, we lazed our way to the swimming pool. Guessing on how expensive will the hotel food be, we called for the food and drinks menu. Beer is acceptable, charging at 9$usd per bottle of Corona, which is Singapore bar prices, but food, is not acceptable! Chicken Fried noodles cost 28$usd (cheapest), Lamb Steak at 76$usd and Fish and Chips cost around 58$usd; before 18% tax. We had 4 bottles of Corona Extra and a basket of fries which adds up to 57$usd ($72sgd), I’m comfortable with this pricing for snacks, given the services and facilities that we enjoyed.
Sunset at Vadoo is beautiful, seeing the sun set behind the chalets; which I believe that sunset will be even more beautiful if we are in the chalet. As we finish our beer on the beach enjoying the sunset, and listening to Tara songs playing from my potable JBL speaker; the feeling - life is good.
While waiting for our departure speedboat, we saw something big swimming just below the waiting lounge, around its stilts. Guess what? They are tunas swimming there, big tunas around 40-60cm in length and 15-20cm in width, alongside with them are the reef sharks and small fishes. We saw 2 stingrays with body diameter around 50cm wide with long 1 meter tail. It is so nice to see these fellows in the wild, swimming freely and actively.
Finally back in Hulhule, I will say that we do miss such resorts, because it feels very peaceful and comfortable, we will go to such resorts one day but definitely with good promotions.
Day 6:
Last day in Maldives, time flies, a lot of
uncertainties and impromptus during this trip, but this is what backpacking is
all about I guess. We will be back in Maldives for more adventures as well as a
dedicated trip there just to enjoy the resorts.
Next adventure trip to Maldives will definitely be much cheaper and more interesting than this trip, thru the budget way of going to excursions and snorkeling trips. Probably staying in Hulhumale for the first few days; participating in adventures, the 2nd last night spent in a resort, and the last night in Hulhumale for transit before flying back.
Snorkeling at different islands and trying
out night fishing will definitely be my top priority for the next trip.
Full trip expenses for 2: $2,400sgd nett (incl. of airfare and 6 days 5 nights accommodations)
For more pictures:
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