I’m one of those people who has a list. Not a bucket list exactly, more a rolling document of places I’ve decided I’m owed, updated at 1am whenever Instagram decides to remind me that other people are having a nicer time than me somewhere warmer. The Maldives sat at the top of that list for roughly four years, through two lockdowns and one extremely misguided attempt to convince myself that a staycation in Cornwall was “basically the same thing.” It was not.
So when I finally booked, I did what any self-respecting Londoner does before committing to Maldives holidays: I spent three evenings scrolling through resort comparisons instead of watching whatever I was supposed to be watching, then panic-messaged a friend who’d been the year before asking whether it was “actually worth it or just an Instagram thing.” Reader, it is not just an Instagram thing.
The Bit Where Everything Suddenly Makes Sense
Here’s what took me embarrassingly long to understand: there is no “popping into town” in the Maldives. There is no town. Your resort occupies its own private island, full stop, which means the usual all-inclusive scepticism, the buffet queues, the sad carvery energy, simply doesn’t apply here. The better properties have multiple restaurants, proper à la carte menus, and enough variety that you’d genuinely struggle to eat the same thing twice in a week even if you tried.
Once that clicked, the whole trip stopped feeling like a compromise and started feeling like the single most sensible way to holiday I’ve encountered. Everything sorted before you land. No decision fatigue. No group chat debate about where to eat at 8pm while everyone’s hangry. It’s genuinely made me reconsider all inclusive holidays as a category, which is not a sentence I expected to type in my thirties.
Getting There Is Half the Show
The seaplane transfer deserves its own paragraph, so here it is. You take off from Malé and spend the next thirty-odd minutes skimming over what feels like several hundred tiny islands, water somewhere between turquoise and a colour that shouldn’t legally exist outside of a filter. By the time you land, you’ve already taken the best photo of the entire trip, before you’ve so much as located your room key.
Villas come in two flavours: over the water or on the beach. I went overwater and spent an unreasonable amount of time just lying on the floor looking through the glass panel at fish going about their business beneath me. The beach villas, though, tend to sit closer to the house reef, which meant better snorkelling straight off the sand for anyone who couldn’t be bothered with a boat. Worth asking about before you book, depending on which version of lazy you’re going for.
The Days Blur Together, In the Best Way
Mornings start slowly, obviously. Breakfast with a view that makes you forget what’s actually on your plate, a few hours in the water where reef sharks cruise past like you’re not even worth the effort of acknowledging, lunch, more water, an unplanned nap that somehow eats an entire afternoon. Evenings do that specific orange-sky thing that every single photo underplays slightly, and dinner happens somewhere new each night without anyone opening a wallet.
I’d read a lot of advice before going about “not over-planning” the Maldives, and I’ll admit I rolled my eyes slightly at the phrase. Turns out it’s correct. The best moments of the whole week were entirely unscheduled.
A Few Honest, Slightly Boring Practical Bits
December through April is the peak season, with the best weather, highest prices, and the most crowded resorts. May through October is quieter and considerably cheaper, with the trade-off being the occasional short, dramatic downpour that clears within the hour and somehow makes everything look even better afterwards. I went in the shoulder season and got exactly one rainy afternoon, which I spent doing absolutely nothing, which felt appropriate.
If you’re comparing options, Travelodeal had a genuinely decent spread of Maldives packages when I was looking, useful for weighing up transfer types and villa categories without doing the comparison manually across fourteen different resort websites, which is exactly the kind of task I will avoid at almost any cost.
Pack reef-safe sunscreen, it’s not optional here, and don’t bother bringing anything remotely resembling evening wear. Nobody dresses up. Nobody needs to. I brought one nice dress and never wore it.
I left already trying to work out how soon I could justify going back, which I’m reliably informed is the standard reaction once you’ve actually done it.
