Even when I first heard about Maldives as a tourist destination, it was always marketed as being a honeymoon-type destination where you’d land at the airport and be whisked away to your resort island without ever seeing anything of the actual country. Indeed, I have a recollection of in those days, tourists not even being allowed to visit Malé itself anyway; they very much kept tourism and domestic life very separate.
Things have obviously opened up since, but even so much of what I’d heard about Malé was from the few guidebooks and websites to talk about it, and they gave the impression of it being quite a grim, dour, city with not that much do to, and also it not being terribly safe to visit. I’m here to tell you that this is not true.
The central island Malé is located on is just under 2 square kilometres (1.952), which makes it smaller than Monaco, and one of the most densely populated islands in the world. The entirety of the island is urban; there’s no countryside to speak of at all – which makes it remarkably at odds with most of the other islands in the country.
You might think that that would make Malé some kind of dystopian urban hotpot of noise, chaos, light, smoke, and people. And you’d be absolutely wrong.
How do you get around Malé?
Most people who visit Maldives arrive at the airport and go straight to their resort island. Budget travellers however are more likely, either by design or by pure logistics, to spend some time, probably at least one night, in Malé. The city proper is built on one of the islands in the centre of the country; the airport and the suburb of Hulhumalé are built across two others and are connected to the city by long bridges.
A plane lands in Malé, flying low over the cityscape. Note the bridge to the far right – that loops round to the airport.
Or ferries. There’s a regular ferry that runs 24/7 (even including Fridays) between the Airport and Malé, which costs $1 or 15 Rufiyaa, and takes about 10 minutes. Cash only. Which is inconvenient if you’ve just arrived from a non-dollar-using country, so just be aware. Check though, if you’re staying in a Malé hotel, whether they offer free airport transfers. Ours did.
Ferries also leave the airport to any number of other islands and resorts. You walk out of the main entrance of the airport, and the channel separating it from the city is literally the other side of the service road – quays, rather than bus stops.
The airport to Malé ferry, at the airport quayside.
Public transport within Malé is mainly buses; there’s quite a few routes across the cities, including the occasional double-decker which caught me by surprise. Obviously there’s also ferries to local and distant islands – on the north side of the island are a series of jetties (at least nine) along a 700m stretch of promenade. The airport and ferries to the other Malé islands go from the far eastern jetty, beyond number nine, while many of the tourist ferries go from jetty one, on the western end, opposite Republic Square.
Malé’s harbour, with lots of speedboats and fishing boats. The two might be the same.
As Malé itself isn’t very large, very flat, and some of the edges aren’t generally places you’d need to go to anyway (the western side is predominantly the port and the hospital, while the southwest is given over to a sports complex), it’s just as simple to walk around the city as it is to take transport. And even in the heat of the day, the buildings and trees on the roads are such that there’s a decent amount of shade anyway. As such we didn’t feel the need to catch any of the bus services; there seem to be a handful of routes operating roughly every 10 minutes, but I don’t think they’re really that useful.
One of the main streets heading east-west in central Malé.
There is a heck of a lot of traffic, but the majority of it is motos rather than cars, and therefore just that bit easier to manage. One thing you will notice, especially if you’re coming from Sri Lanka, is the complete absence of TukTuks. In truth they’d feel a bit out of place here. Regardless, there’s almost no noise and no pollution. Most of the vehicles here seem to be electric, or at least hybrid, and that makes an incredible difference when you compare it to somewhere like Sri Lanka, where they’re … not. And I guess that makes sense – even in the early days of electric vehicles when the range of them wasn’t great, in a city the size of Malé, range isn’t an issue so they’d be able to be early adopters. Plus of course, contributing to global emissions wouldn’t really be a great vibe for a country as precarious as Maldives.
What is there to see and do in Malé?
In truth, there’s not a lot in Malé itself to interest the average tourist. There’s no real museums of note – the National Museum in Sultan Park is more of a ‘things belonging to the Sultan’ museum and the outside is more interesting than the inside – and the most interesting other buildings are mosques. There are also very few parks and green spaces – Sultan Park and neighbouring Republic Square (home to the flagpole and some government buildings) are some of the only ones in the city, and they’re not very big – they’re more like plazas rather than parks. There really is no room on the island for anything that isn’t directly related to work, sleep, or eating.
The main square in Malé – Republic Square.
Indeed the largest green spaces are in the south of the island and are the sports complexes – football, volleyball, and cricket amongst others – and the perimeter of the cricket pitch also serves as an athletic track, making maximal use of available space. There is also a National Stadium, which on our trip was advertising football, but it’s really hemmed in on all sides by businesses and housing.
One of the only notable sites in the city is the weird and unexplainable monument to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. This was one of the biggest natural disasters to befall the country, causing 82 deaths and leading to several islands being completely flooded by between 2m and 4m high tidal waves. Remarkably, the monument is located in an insalubrious area behind a ferry terminal and near the port, very much out-of-the-way of everything else.
The 2004 Tsunami memorial. I have no idea … what.
I’m not saying Malé is more Dubai than Delhi, there’s no large business district filled to the brim with tall skyscrapers – the tallest building in the city (and indeed the country) is part of the hospital, at 100m, which in comparison would make it the seventh tallest building in Salford – but it certainly gives over a vibe of a slightly chill business city rather than a hectic metropolis serving everyone’s needs.
Even access to the sea is quite limited – the jetties and the port area to the north, and the south side made up of yachts and speedboats, and rocky inlets. I mean obviously if you’re coming to Maldives for a beach holiday you’re not going to spending it on Malé island anyway, but regardless, the nearest you get, and the easiest access to the water, is a rough and unkempt stone ‘beach’ on the eastern side near the roadbridge to the airport.
Typical shop in Malé’s backstreets.
One of the best things to do as a tourist in fact is just to wander around the city. There’s only a couple of main roads heading east-west across the island, and away from those the city feels quite charming. The streets are relatively quiet and lined with colourful buildings and plenty of trees, and it’s built in a kind of grid pattern so it’s easy to just wander without getting too lost.
One thing in Malé’s favour though is the sunsets. Our flight arrived not long before 6pm so as we were walking out looking for our hotel transfer, we were greeting to an absolutely stunning sunset over the city. It really didn’t feel like we were at an international airport at all.
NGL even from the airport the sunsets are awesome.
What this means is that, while not the ugly, dour, city Malé used to be, it is very much a city that exists for its residents rather than for tourists, unless those tourists are there on business. But it’s definitely more pleasant than you might imagine. I’m not saying Malé is a must-see world city, and for sure it’s not the reason to come to Maldives but it certainly has a lot more life and aesthetic than you might expect from its reputation.
Where did we stay in Malé
Either side of our trip to Gulhi we stayed in Malé, both times on Malé island itself. This was because of our international flights being at the extremes of the day. Our first night was a last-minute change due to logistics, and we were in the Marukab Plaza, close to the Airport ferry. It was a very nice hotel, quite posh, much better vibe than a Premier Inn. It had good aircon and the best Wi-Fi we’d experienced since we left India. That was something by the way that was interesting – despite staying in decent enough hotels in Sri Lanka, the Wi-Fi was uniformly dreadful everywhere, either because our room was too far from the routers or because the connection itself was low-bandwidth. But everywhere we stayed in Maldives, the Wi-Fi was brilliant. The hotel also served up a huge buffet breakfast included in the price that had a bit of everything; it was definitely catering more towards I’d say business travellers rather than backpackers, and yet as you’ll hear, the hotel itself wasn’t too expensive, relatively speaking anyway.
Inside the Marukab Plaza’s bedroom.
On our last night, before our early plane back, we stayed in a hotel a couple of blocks away, near the national stadium. This was the Tour Inn, which doesn’t look much from the outside but occupies the top three floors of an 8-storey tower block. The reception area had its own canary just wandering about on the balcony. We left too early for breakfast, but the room was quite nice; possibly a little small but the bathroom was decent and spacious. The only downside being the electric plug sockets were all in very awkward places – it felt very much as though it was normally a double room but they’d split the beds for us and moved one of them against the wall with all the sockets on.
Outside of the Tour Inn, in the centre of Malé.
While we only stayed in two of the hotels, that quite a few hotels came up in our searches, all of which seemed quite similar in terms of price point and facilities, very much suggests as cities go, it’s not a bad one to be stuck overnight in.
Where did we eat in Malé?
There’s a lot more eating options in Malé, and covering a wide variety of cuisine. They also seemed to be quite a decent quality too; not backstreet takeaways of the kind you might find in Glasgow. We didn’t go to it, but it was interesting the nearest restaurant to the Makhtab Plaza on our first night was, of all things, Mexican.
Better than the average shawarma in Manchester.
We ended up getting a takeaway shawarma from a small café otherwise filled with locals on the first night – it may have been called Subtown and it was very much an unpretentious place selling sandwiches and the like. We took them back to the room and they were fab.
On our last light we had some trouble finding somewhere open when we wanted to eat, because it was Ramadan and many places was closed because everyone was otherwise breaking their Ramadan fast. We didn’t want to eat too late as we had a very early start the next morning, so we found a Thai restaurant that was open all day. This was Sala Thai Restaurant, where there was so much choice and all of it looked pretty good. Laura had a pad thai and I had a Khao Soy Gai – a yellow curry noodle soup that was delish. Arguably the best Thai food we’d had in a long time.
Don’t be fooled by its luminosity; it was absolutely gorgeous.
We didn’t eat anywhere else in Malé because we weren’t in the city terribly long, and things were closed in the daytime because, well, Ramadan. Not our best-timed adventure.
if you want to know how the rest of the trip felt overall, here’s a link to my podcast episode all about it.