The beautiful Maldives, ahhh. Where do I even start?
It’s been a dream destination for the whole family for years, and my dad decided to take us all last December (super late writing this blog post, I know!).
The trip started in Dubai for us, as we came to see our parents first. We then packed our sunscreens and hats, and headed to Male, Maldives. With a layover in Colombo, Sri Lanka for a couple of hours, we reached our destination at nearly midnight.
We spent the first night in Male to explore the capital city.
We walked around. Went to a few souvenir shops (where some shopkeepers spoke English, Spanish, and Italian to keep up with their diverse tourists!) and ate at local restaurants. The main port was just opposite the airport, and we hopped on a speed boat to our destination for the next three days – Fihalhohi Island Resort.
Zakariya was 10 months old during the trip. We decided against taking a stroller since we would be on boats, beaches and on the island majority of the time. We did bring our baby carrier and it helped loads! Nahyan wore Zakariya on the speed boat, and he slept the whole journey. I do highly recommend wearing your baby because the boat ride is fast and bumpy!
We spent the next three days out in the sun, at the beach for hours. We snorkelled in the clearest blue water, we swam with fish of every color. My favourite memory is helping my Abbu snorkel. He’s never done it before and wasn’t sure if he wanted to, but we forced him to gear up and jump in the water head first. He couldn’t stop talking about it! Seeing life under water is magical, and I am so glad he got to experience it with us!
I was a little worried about being on an island with a little one for 3 days. I will share more about traveling with babies in another post, but for now, I will say that preparing in advance and having the essentials makes it much easier to travel with kids. And Zakariya totally could be an island boy, he wobbled all around the beach and refused to put on shoes and walked everywhere barefeet!
I’m almost sad that he won’t remember how much fun he had traveling with his parents, grandparents and aunts!
Fihalhohi Island Resort had great activities (that we realized all too late)! My sisters wanted to go parasailing, but we put it off for our last day and it was just too windy for us to do it safely. We missed the dolphins on our spotting excursion and but got to watch the sunset from the boat!
As a foodie family, of course the food was an important factor for us.
We were pleasantly surprised to not only find everything was halal, but some of the best buffet items we’ve ever had! There was a rotating roster of like 50 items at every meal! The variety also meant there was something for Zakariya to eat.
Out of everywhere I’ve been, this trip really stood out. Not only the magical place, but how much time we spent together as a family.
To be honest, the wifi was kind of weak, so we didn’t have any option but to just hang out. We probably lapped the island like 20 times in those 3 days!
These photos capture a bit of that experience, and I’ll forever cherish them, alhamdulillah. I can not wait to go back one day inshaAllah!
iBakeMemories 