Choosing island was very hard. But Kamil makes big Exel table and thought about everything 😉 After comparing 40 islands we decided for Ukulkas. We did this comparison based on informations from google and by writing emails to hotels on each island with questions.
We considered
- bikini beach- usually on local islands you have some small part of beach reserved for tourists where they can swim in a bikini. This is very important to check if the island that you want to go is providing touristic beach. If not then the woman and man need to wear t-shirt and shorts on the beach.
At Ukulhas all beach is bikini beach! Locals are using the same beach as tourists and there is no problem for them to see bikini 😉 Locals are coming to the beach late, around 4-5PM local time, the beach is very big and no one is disturbing anyone. Beach was clean and almost always empty 😉
- light pollution- we were very interested in seeing as much starts as we could. So when the island is not light polluted you can see them all
- distance from Male- this is a very important point, you need to remember that from the airport in Male you need to get to your island.
There are few ways to do this: local ferry, local speedboat, a speedboat from the hotel, airplane (several islands have an airport) or hydroplane. All depends on how much you want to pay and when each transport is available. Here you can check http://tiny.pl/gfs28 time schedules for public ferries. From the beginning, we knew that we want to spend one day in the capital, Male.
We wanted to do it after coming to the Maldives or before going home- it would depend on the ferry. We came to Male on Wednesday at morning and our ferry was on Thursday at 9 am. So we decided to stay in Male for one day, take the local ferry to Ukulhas, to save money (ferry- 3$ per person, speedboat- 50$ per person), experience local life and when coming back to Male take a speedboat to be sure that we will be on time for our flight. We knew that from Ukulhas we have speedboat at 7 am and a plane was at 4 pm, so we were safe.If you want to take speedboat or hydroplane you need to speak with your hotel so they can arrange your transport regarding your arrival. We were told that we need to be at the port at 8 am to buy tickets for public ferry. When we arrived at port Kamil went to buy tickets and conversation looked like this:Lady: no ferry today
Kamil: why?
Lady: maintenances problems
Kamil: when is next one?
Lady: Sunday
Kamil: <silence>
Kamil: is there any speedboat?
Lady: no speedboat, no speedboat.So funny story 😉 No speedboat, next ferry on Sunday. We met one American guy who was also going to Ukulhas but to a different hotel. We joined forces and we were thinking what we can do. And what is very important in this story- locals are extremely nice and helpful! Two guys saw us, how stressed we are and offered help. They start to call to some people, they stop one taxi guy and they told us, that there is another port and there will be speedboat at 9:30! Taxi guy took Kamil, me and American there and this two locals took their scooters and followed us ;). We get to the port, locals start to speak with a guy from speedboat but… speedboat was from American’s hotel and they told us that there is no place for me and Kamil as they are taking locals to Ukulhas… We were telling them, that we want to pay as tourists 50$/person but they said no and that’s all. They told us that at 4 am (!) is another speedboat. Kamil asked them to call to our hotel and try to explain our situation. Our mistake was that we didn’t have a phone number to our hotel. But the guy from speedboat called to our hotel and after 15 minutes of conversation between Kamil, the guy from speedboat and hotel we get good news- there will be speedboat in 15 minutes to pick us up!Uff it was very stressful, we had only 7 days in Maldives and no place to sleep in Male. We read that these local ferries are not working perfectly and some times they are canceled. But we thought that it won’t happen to us 😉
And actually, we want to recommend you to plan your trip with speedboat from the beginning, not to use a local ferry. To avoid our situation and stress and to have a fast and comfortable trip. To Ukulhas local ferry is swimming 3,5h struggling with waves. And this is not pleasant. You can feel sick… You can save 90$ but I think is not worth it. Waves where bad on a speedboat and even some locals were feeling sick… So think about this big, slow and old ferry. You will try ferry experience from airport to Male and trust me you don’t want more 😉
To sum up- when you are thinking about island check how far is it, how you can get there, write to hotels and ask them what they can offer you. - coral reef- this one is not so obvious. Nowadays in Maldives coral reef is a little bit dying because of people and sun. That is why around the inhabited island there is no coral reef at all or it’s a poor one. It was important for Kamil (I’m scared of the underwater world 😉 ) to have some nice coral reef at the beach so we were asking hotels about it. At Ukulhas we had really nice coral reef 🙂
- restaurants- we decided to take hotel only with breakfast and lunch and dinners eat in restaurants. So we were asking hotels how many restaurants they have on the island, how much regular meal will cost and how much we need to pay for meals at the hotel. At Ukulhas you can find 5 restaurants but we visited only one 🙂 Food in our hotel was amazing. Every day we were choosing from the menu what we want to eat (local and European dishes), we were ordering it on paper for an exact hour and the local lady was cooking it especially for us. Always fresh and delicious 🙂 Cook was very nice and we spend some time to speak with her.
Remeber- in the Maldives, everything is very spicy. When I was asking for not spicy this light version for me was still to hot to eat 😀 - hotel- here all depends on how much you want to spend for a hotel. We decided that not too much 😉 as we are only sleeping there we don’t need much. We were also asking about trips, what hotel can arrange for us and how much we need to pay for it. On each island in hotels prices for trips where similar.
So we took a lot under consideration when choosing island. And I can honestly say that we’ve made the perfect decision. Ukulkas is amazing. Very local, peaceful, clean for Maldivian standards with great and big bikini beach. We want to recommend you this island 🙂 Ukulhas was the best 🙂