How to Travel The MALDIVES - ON A BUDGET in 2024!

[00:00] I'm going to show you how to travel the Maldives on a budget. The secrets to visiting this beautiful country, even if you don't have much money. As we go through this video, we're going to unlock all the secrets to travelling the Maldives, starting with transport, accommodation, food activities, the best islands to visit, some

[00:16] of the negatives to travelling the Maldives on a budget, and finally how much we spent on our trip. As you're looking to travel the Maldives, there are two types of trips you can do, a private resort stay, which is going to cost you thousands a day or a local island holiday, which is

[00:30] only going to cost you $60 a day plus. What you need to understand is, whether you spend $60 a day or $2,000 a day, you're going to get the same beaches, the same waters, and the same boat trips.

[00:42] A little bit of context, back in 2009, they actually opened up the local islands to tourism. Previously, you were only allowed to stay in the resort islands, but now, from 2009, you can stay on these local islands, and that's how these affordable islands came about.

[00:56] It is still quite a new way of travelling, and so it is becoming more and more popular as the years go on. Let's start with transport, and as you land in Marley International Airport, this is where you wave goodbye to your rich resort friends.

[01:08] The difference between private resorts and local islands is the private resorts can only be accessed by private boats, whereas local islands can be accessed with public ferries, which are super affordable. For most local islands, there are two options.

[01:20] The local ferries and the speedboat transfers. Let's take the loose do, for example, and if you take a speedboat transfer for just $25, it's only going to take 30 minutes to get to this local island. However, if you take the local ferry, it's only going to cost you $1.50, but it does take

[01:37] an hour and 45 minutes. As you can see, this is a huge saving, and if you are on a shoestring budget, this is the way to go. Moving on to accommodation, and this is arguably going to be the most expensive cost of your trip.

[01:49] Now, on the local islands, you can stay in small hotels, homestays, guest houses, which are super affordable. For example, in Foulouse, we spent just $38, a private bathroom with a room which is freaking

[02:01] insane for the Maldives. Now some local islands are more expensive than the others, depending on the demand, but this gives you a rough idea. In Diggero, we actually spent $75 a night as that was the cheapest option. Moving on to food, this can vary quite a bit.

[02:14] If you go to a local restaurant, then you can just eat for a few dollars. I'm talking three to five dollars for a Maldivian food. One of the most common meals you get is actually tuna, whether it's tuna fried rice, tuna

[02:26] steak. It's very affordable as tuna is abundant in the Maldives. If you're looking for more Western food, then this is where the price is going to increase significantly. A lot of accommodation actually include breakfast in the room rate, so you can actually save

[02:38] money there too. Now, if these tips haven't helped you enough, it's time to go down and hit the subscribe button. It helps me to keep making these videos, keep traveling, and sharing you how to travel the Maldives, or wherever you're going to go on a budget.

[02:51] Hit subscribe now. Please. Thank you. Moving on to activities, these were the best things we did in the country. We did a total of five different activities, and I would do them all again, and do more next time I revisit the Maldives, because this was the best experience as we had.

[03:06] Let's talk about pricing. We did a dolphin cruise, which costs just $25 per person. We also did another dolphin cruise the next day, which cost $100 for a private boat. For about one and a half hours, now one of the most popular things to do is the whale shark

[03:20] tours. As the Maldives is actually one of the best locations on the planet to see whale sharks all year round naturally. There's places in Southeast Asia, which feed them, and it's not natural, but the Maldives

[03:32] super natural. We stayed on a local island digger, which is very close to where the whale sharks live, and this cost us just $70 for a tour. If you stay on other local islands further away, then it's going to cost you over $100, maybe $120, $150 per person.

[03:47] The great thing here is, if you stayed in a resort, even a resort very close to the whale sharks, it's going to cost four times, five times the price. I actually did a little bit of research because I wanted to know actually how much they would

[03:59] charge you. It cost $1,000 for a boat, a lot more expensive. Another great tour we did was a stingray and shark snorkeling tour, and this was a chance to swim with sharks, reef sharks, not massive tiger sharks, or bull sharks, which was an incredible

[04:13] experience. We also swam with stingrays, which I've seen a lot sort of before I visited the Maldives, and it was an incredible experience. They're really peaceful creatures, and they didn't sting me. I thought this trip was probably the best value of any of the trips we did.

[04:27] It cost just $35 for the trip, which lasted about three hours long. Now again, I did a little bit of research and thought how much would this cost in a resort and for just a stingray snorkeling tour, this is going to cost $200 per person.

[04:43] There's other activities you can do including snorkeling with turtles, going to sand bars, going on surf trips, so there's different options for you as well. But these activities will be the best things you do, and I would advise spending your money on these rather than a fancy accommodation.

[04:57] The best islands to visit in the Maldives, I'm going to give you four islands that are obviously all local islands, so more affordable, and the first one is Maffushi. We didn't actually go to this island, but this was like the first local island which came

[05:09] about. This place is really good if you want affordable accommodation and affordable food, affordable tours. It is quite a built up island, so if you were looking for more privacy or more nice beaches, then you either going to have to take boat tours or best go to a quieter island, which I'll

[05:24] tell you about in a minute. Now the second island I highly recommend visiting is Thelusdo, and this is actually a surf island. So if you're into surfing, this is an island to come to. Again, it is a more affordable island, and you can do loads of affordable boat trips,

[05:37] costing just $25, $35 per person. The beach is beautiful. There's lovely cafes to eat at, and there's also a sunset sand bar you can visit on the other side of the island. Now Fluiddo is a more smaller local island, which we didn't visit, but it's supposed to be incredible.

[05:54] It's really famous for its beaches, and it's house reef where you can see turtles and stingrays. And if you want a bit of a quieter experience, then this island may be for you. And the last island I'm going to share with you is Diggara. Diggara was our favorite island.

[06:07] We visited, and it has a humongous, long sand bar, one of the longest sand bars in the moldies. And also, it is very close to the whale shark. So if you want to do those affordable whale shark tours, which cost just $70 per person, then

[06:20] this is the place to stay. The only downside to staying on this island is accommodation is going to be more expensive. Again, here, the food in the restaurants was a little bit more expensive, but you are paying for beautiful, long white beaches, which you can actually get more privacy than

[06:36] smaller local islands, which can be very busy. Another important thing to mention is the wet and dry season, and which season you should travel to. The dry season is between December and April. This is the driest time of the year, and the most popular time people will visit the moldies.

[06:50] So there's a lot more people, and so all the prices for accommodation are going to be more expensive. However, in the wet season, which is from mid-May to November, this is the time where less tourists visit, and the prices of accommodation is going to be less.

[07:04] Obviously, in the wet season, there will be rain, but it's not usually all day, and you can still get a lot of sunny spells, and you're going to save a lot of money. This is just something to take into account, a way out which season you should go in. Now, I hate to tell you guys, but it's got to be honest that there are negatives to staying

[07:19] on the local islands. And the first one is, if you like to drink, this is not possible. So the moldies is a Muslim country, and it's actually under Sharia law, which means there's no alcohol allowed. The only way you can actually drink alcohol is if you take a boat out to a party or booze

[07:34] boat, which is mord off the island, and you can actually drink there. The other thing you can do is actually a private resort, day-stay, where you can stay on a private resort just for the day, and you can drink all the alcohol you can.

[07:47] But again, it's going to be expensive. As it's a Muslim country, you need to be really careful with what you wear. And the bikini beaches are the specific beaches in which you can wear your swimwear. Your bikini is your trunks. You can't walk around with your top off all over the island.

[08:00] You have to only stick to the bikini beaches. The public beaches or the local beaches is where you need to cover up, even if you go in the sea. There are signs all over the island, so it should be quite clear and you won't get mixed up.

[08:12] This is why the island diggero was really nice for us, because there was a bigger bikini beach and it allowed more room on the beach for everyone. It's really important to follow these rules, because there are locals who have lived on these islands for probably hundreds of years, and suddenly having half-naked tourists is probably

[08:27] not what they want all over their island. Now one of them frustrating things about local islands is that a lot of them only take cash. Some do take card, but smaller restaurants, which are cheaper, usually only take cash.

[08:41] This can be more difficult, as ATMs are found on a lot of local islands, but not all of them. The best thing to do is take out your cash when you're in Marley. Now we need to talk a little bit about the negatives of the whale sharks.

[08:53] As you can see, there are so many people who do the whale sharks snorkeling, and people from all over the Maldives come to this specific point to see the whale sharks, as it's the most common area to see them.

[09:05] And so with all the people you do often get kicked in the face, and it is quite a stressful situation, and you could say it is not super ethical. Now one of the confusing things, and I didn't like, is that most things are quoted in USD,

[09:19] and usually you can use both currencies, but you can't get USD out of the ATM. You can only get Maldivian Rufia. I often found when you use Maldivian Rufia, and it was quoted, say, 30 USD, they would rip

[09:32] you off with the conversion fees, and even when I argued it, they were like, no, that's the rate. The other thing is, if you've got Maldivian Rufia left over, you need to get rid of it in the airport, because you can't convert Maldivian Rufia out of the country.

[09:46] It's virtually impossible. To save you from all this stress, what I will do next time is bring USD to the Maldives, and it's just going to make everything so much easier. You can use USD practically anywhere. Another thing if you're staying in Marley, it is not the best city in the world, let's be

[10:00] honest. It is super busy, and the best thing is to get straight to the islands. And if you have an early flight, or a late flight, then you're probably going to have to stay there at night or two. How much we spent in the Maldives for our 14-day trip.

[10:13] Now let's start with activities. The best thing we spent our money on. We spent a total of 410 USD, and I would not hold back. We did five tours, and I would do more next time. On transport, we spent $224. This included two speedboats and two local ferries.

[10:29] And the difference between these are huge. And our most expensive cost was 825 USD, which was on accommodation. Now this varied quite a bit, because on Foulouse, do we only spend $38 a night, but on Diggero,

[10:43] we spent the minimum $75 a night plus. So as you can see, these vary quite a bit, and this is an area you could save a lot more money. Talking about food, we ate every meal out, even if it was just a little small Maldivian

[10:56] curry. And this is an area we probably could have saved more money, but we didn't really hold back at all. And this cost 460 USD, let me check. Yeah, 460 USD for the whole 14 days.

[11:09] Our total cost for 14 days in the Maldives for two people was $1,876. Now if you're staying on a resort, this could easily cost you $2,000 for just one single night.

[11:21] So this is a very good deal, and the Maldives is a beautiful country. So I highly recommend staying on the local island, supporting the locals, getting to know their culture, and visit the Maldives. Thank you so much for watching this video.

[11:33] Again, hit subscribe, helps us keep traveling, sharing these videos, information with you, and I'll see you in the next video where we're going to Sri Lanka. So excited.