Back in January this year, our local travel agent for our private island segment exclaimed in surprise when she learned that we were planning for a ten day trip to the Maldives. She asked if we were absolutely certain of spending this amount of time on the islands, as there really isn’t that much variety of tourist-y things to do around the area. In a sense, if you’re looking to pack each morning-afternoon-evening cycle with different activities and don’t want to repeat activities, you really might be hard-pressed indeed then to find enough varied things to do. Chances are that it won’t be long before you’ll find yourself repeating activities: whether it’s just lazing around, swimming, snorkeling, or just walking about to explore the area. Our ten day stay is indeed a somewhat unusually long period of time for the Maldives. But in return, we enjoyed a laid back vacation that was basically split down just off the middle in tone and pace: our seven day segment on Huraa Island, then a four day stay at the Olhuveli.
If I could first write a couple of recommendations for travelers seeking to have their own Maldivian holiday too:
A private island stay is indeed truly exquisite, though after the fact now I’m not convinced that a water villa stay is worth the expense for most people – the caveat of course being if you have gobs of money to throw in vacations, then go for it. But you really do get very nifty picture-taking opportunities on the beautifully manicured lawns, grounds, and beaches with white powdery sand, if imported from elsewhere. Short of a sand bank, you’ll unlikely to get the same kind of beaches on public islands.
A public island stay with a guest house however is what we recommend you use as a springboard for your excursions: whether it’s fishing, snorkeling, or visits to sand banks or uninhabited islands. It’s not just the high cost of activities if you were to do these from a private island, since many of the exclusive resorts will no doubt offer the same palette of activities as the guest houses on public islands would – you’d just pay a lot more for them. Beyond that, it’s also to do with the kind of host-guest ratio – important if you’re traveling with younglings. I don’t for a moment expect all guest houses to show the same level of care and hospitality we got at The Sunrise Huraa. But even if not, guest houses simply have lower maximum occupancy than hotel and resorts would and you’re just likely to get more individual attention. We did quite a bit over our seven day segment at Huraa Island, deducting the first day we spent just reaching the island: we had four snorkeling outings, a visit to a sand bank, sunset fishing, crab hunting in a swamp, a visit to the local private beach, and frequent afternoon naps – and still had sufficient time to basically walk the length and breadth of the island looking for grub or just observing what island living seems to be like. We never at any point felt as though we were rushing to head off elsewhere.
All that said; if you’re pressed for time, e.g. in lieu of flight dates and timings, then I reckon you can cover the same spread of itinerary over an eight rather than ten day stay @ Maldives by setting aside 5-6 days @ the local island and another 2-3 days at the private island.
We also finally spent less than originally expected. Firstly, there was the cost of flying the four of us over via Scoot: we paid SGD1,843. There would likely had been better fares than this had we waited for the right booking windows. The private island segment by far at SGD2,680 was the singularly huge but fixed cost, and it included all meals and transfers, excepting the tiny amount we topped up for beverages i.e. water. The variable cost was always going to be the local island stay. We paid about SGD592 for a six night stay at the The Sunrise Huraa – pretty low rates – and there were also the private speedboat transfers that constituted separate charges. But it was the price of excursions that turned out to be a lot lower: the final charges were about SGD800 for six days worth of excursions – which was in itself already relatively low, and the level of care and hospitality shown by Sameer and his team was just incredible. The other variable cost that turned out lower than expected was dining on Huraa Island itself: we averaged around USD25 to USD30 for a decent family meal at various restaurants on the island each time, and putting aside the amount of time orders took to get prepped, we saved quite a bit there too.
Many travelers we read up prior to departure also commented that there’s no reason not to take advantage of off-peak travel to the Maldives if you’re able to travel during the May to November months, as the savings you get on stays during this period is substantial: as low as 30% off the rates you’d otherwise pay for a visit to the Maldives during peak months in the year. True, the waters aren’t as sparklingy clear, but they were still decent enough for the GoPro to get some outstanding undersea footage, the relative lack of live corals notwithstanding.
The initial weather forecast we checked before departure also reported all kinds of worrying conditions: including expected daily rains and the occasional thunderstorm. But our fears turned out to be unfounded: we experienced three spots of rain: a fierce thunderstorm on Day 02 late night that cleared by the time we woke up, though the following Day 03 morning was somewhat overcast. That same afternoon when we had snorkeling trip #02 likewise saw rain when we were already off boat and in the waters – we were honestly worried for the kids, but Sameer assured us that all is fine in his safe hands, and true enough, the rain cleared up in minutes. Trust the experts! And finally, on Day 10 morning we had a brief morning shower @ Olhuveli which cleared up quickly enough again. That’s all the rain we had: the rest of the ten days we had as clear and sunny weather as one could hope for.
In exchange for the occasional rain spots, we had what was essentially an uncrowded experience across the ten days, whether it was at Huraa Island or at Olhuveli. We pretty much had our corner of Huraa Island to ourselves for the first seven days of the trip, and saw only the occasional other visitor staying at other guest houses during meal times at The Harbor cafe. And for our remaining stretch, Olhuveli was a large enough resort to spread everyone out – certainly so for the Dream Island we were on – and we encountered relatively more guests only when we were on the main island, e.g. to explore around or for meals.
Of activities: I was very much looking forward to snorkeling, and the experience turned out to be as enjoyable as I’d hope. Our Ang Mo bud is funnier even: he was adamant that he wouldn’t snorkel, but ended up also enjoying it so much he eventually spent more time in the water than all of us did haha! What I found harder to handle were choppy waters: the first snorkeling outing was in relatively rougher waters and depths of about two meters, that it took just 10 minutes for my nausea to kick-in. The visit to the sand bank was also worth the expense. There were other parties visiting the island the morning we were there, but the sand bank itself was large enough to spread all of us around it that we never felt crowded out. More importantly was the very calm waters surrounding the little island, which made snorkeling or just lazing around real pleasures.
The Internet access throughout the islands were a mixed bag. We picked up several traveler data/voice SIM packages both through ChangiWIFI @ Changi Airport, and also on-site at Male International Airport upon arrival. 4G access was reasonably stable and sufficient for posting of pictures to social media and light browsing. The bundled 4G data was generous, and I reckon the USD20 for 17GB of data will be of particularly good value for most visitors for a week stay. But 4G data throughput speeds as a rule were low on such prepaid data SIM service, and posting videos was almost impossible, unless the thought of you find seeing a persistent posting hourglass appealing!
The in-house WIFI, oddly, was even less satisfying across both properties we stayed at, though for different reasons. Sameer said he used to be on unlimited data plans for his property, but the bandwidth shaping got so bad he changed to a higher-speed Internet package that required him to periodically transfer a portion of the Internet data allowance from this package to the property’s Internet package. That sounds pretty complicated: but basically, Internet access at The Sunrise Huraa is very good… until you hit the data allowance cap for the current allotment. And each time that happened, we had to contact Sameer for him to transfer more data allowance over. Sameer constantly assured us to simply post away real-time, but I never quite got past the feeling that we were intruding whenever we had to call him to transfer additional data allowance just for us to get our Facebook fix!
Olhuveli’s in-room WIFI access on the other hand was just awful: connection was quick yes, but they limited each room to three connected devices. If that wasn’t bad enough, the room apparently locks everyone out if you exceed the number of devices, even accidentally, instead of just removing the oldest device on the list. A call to reception will reset all connected devices, but this approach I found just plain silly. Worse still was the very low data throughput speeds in-room, which made it hard to post photos, let alone video files of any sort.
Visitors to our blog would have observed that I dislike tourists from a certain country up north, on account that, well, they are well-known for letting everyone know they are around wherever they go. There were few other visitors at Huraa Island so we had at least a good part of our stay feeling exactly what vacationers should feel – a sense of exclusivity – and we didn’t run into any of these visitors at Huraa. A couple of these northerners were indeed at Olhuveli, but thankfully not nearly in large enough numbers for us to notice them too much, and there was plenty of space between them and everyone else even then too. So, in short, the experience with other visitors were positive or at least neutral and on account that this was off-peak season.
The private speedboat transfers between islands were pricey. We opted for private transfers between the airport and Huraa Island, and the rates were between USD150 to USD180. But it was per boat. So if you have more persons traveling to the same property or island, you can share costs. There’s also the public speedboat transfers too between local islands where you can save a substantial amount at the expense of some inconvenience i.e. there’s a boat schedule you’d need to work around, but our time and day of arrival on FRI night meant that public speedboat transfers had ended.
On the other hand, there are no alternate options for speedboat transfers to the private islands: you’ll have to bite your tongue and pay what the resorts charge. Our transfers between Male International Airport and Olhuveli were thankfully already included in our package price. But if yours isn’t, then expect to pay hundreds of USD pax. The current rates are Adult (15 years and over): USD229, and Child (2-14 years old): USD115. That’s not chump change, and we would have paid an additional SGD942 just to speedboat the four of us over were it not already included in our package. Still, the rides were at least comfortable if finally also necessary just to get our butts from arrival to private resort.
In all, this trip turned out well, the bout of dengue fever notwithstanding. The kids really enjoyed themselves this trip, and thankfully have fared none the worse, given the layers of sun protection Ling piled on them every day. I doubt if we’ll be returning to the Maldives any time soon though: it’s a really pretty region, but there are simply so many other places on our list of places to visit each school holiday period. My next imminent trip will be to Western Honshū this coming September: it’ll be a work trip, but hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in some days of exploration – so more to come soon!
Two more final posts to round of this series: one on Equipment Comments, and another on the Olympus TG-5!
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