Maldives - dhoni/water-taxi/getting around.

[Barquentine]

Does anyone know if it's possible to arrange boats to take you back and forth between resorts and Male instead of relying solely on the hotel's (seemingly overpriced) excursions? I imagine it ought to be possible to phone for someone on Male to come and pick you up, then drop you back at your resort later in the day. Has anyone tried that or do the resorts have travel arrangements pretty well sewn-up so they can milk you for more cash?

[buildersmate]

In the absence of any other replies, I'll offer an opinion.
I've never been to the Maldives but in every other country I've been to it has always been possible to bypass the 'tour-operator preferred' service and find the means by which the local people travel. In Mexico, for example, it means normal service bus. The buses deliver all the workers in the hotels to their places of work and the cost of using them is peanuts. OK, so the service bus doesn't drive up the plush boulevard to the hotel - it drops the workers at the front gate. But that is the method I would try to exploit. The hotel workers in the Maldives must cross by boats somehow.

[Barquentine]

Thanks for your ideas. The resorts there are isolated islands - the hotel owns the whole island. Even if I get a local boat owner's number there could be restrictions on who can land at the island - but I'm going to try to get their mobile number and see if we can't call them over. There are no scheduled services though.

[bushbaby_de]

The Maldives are different to anywhere else on earth in that every island is a separate hotel or a separate town, and tourist islands are completely separate to local islands. There are no general boat taxi services, the only boats that operate are owned by the hotels. Even the sea planes are owned by the hotels. So you are limited to what your particular hotel island offers. The prices only seem high at the moment because of the diabolical exchange rate.