Because the Maldivian islands can be far from Male and its international airport, it made sense to burn a "shoulder day" in Male to make sure we made our flight, stress-free. This also allowed wiggle room for a cancelled interisland ferry (just in case).
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| The Male-Hulhumale bridge |
Hulhulmale is a man-made island... and it ain't small! Literally the entire island is under construction. The building is vertical - every city block has at least 5, +5-story concrete buildings being slapped up, concurrently. I have never, ever, seen so much construction... the skyline has maybe 30 cranes viewed from any street angle. Every 5th store on mainstreet is a construction tool or supply store... it's very, very strange.
The bridge in the cover picture only opened a few years ago - apparently engineered by the Chinese. Actually, the Maldives is heavily supported by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Our hotel in Hulhumale included breakfast... on our first of two mornings, they assumed we'd want the continental breakfast... but I jumped right on that and ordered up a Maldivian breakfast for the following morning.
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| Tuna and onion chop with homemade pan bread and a fried egg |
The hotel had a bubble tea shop downstairs in the lobby... so, of course, the kids helped out making tapioca balls!
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| Making bubble tea tapioca balls at 7pm with the dudes in the shop |
We decided to take a historical tour of Male city - just across the bridge. Our tour guide, Ahmed, was superbly informative, fluent in English and jazzed about his culture.
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| Ahmed, our tour guide - government building in the background in the city square |
Together, we toured the oldest religious building in the Maldives - well over 1000 years actually. Its wall blocks were cut from coral - commissioned by the Buddhists who ruled the roost at the time.
The country was converted to Islam in the 1100s.... and the Buddhist imagery and carvings were replaced with non-iconic, geometric ones.
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| Inside the +1000yr old coral Mosque |
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| Islamic text bolted onto the outside of this multi-religious historical building |
This mosque is also known as the Friday Mosque. This is because the Maldivian atolls were united under a single King in the 1500s after a secret Friday meeting of all the local island kings at the mosque.
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| A crypt for the family and entourage of the Sultanate |
Male city, and the Maldives in general, have traditionally been an important shipping and transit stop for people and goods. Maldivian fish is shipped to Asia and Oceania where it fetches big $$. It's fruits are shipped to Sri Lanka and Male imports plenty of goods too. Everything passes through Male city.
We also stopped by another important Mosque - at Ramadan, the entire plaza is filled with worshippers - not just the interior.
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| The biggest mosque in the Maldives |
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| The famous Male fish market |
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| Fishy business |
Yellowfin tuna - this guy's a real artiste!
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| Yellowfin is no joke man - these are 1' floor tiles - 15Kg/ea |
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| The Male fruit and veg market - Ahmed got us some samples of unique-to-the-Maldives treats |
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| Screw pine cones - you cam eat 'em... and they taste sweet! |
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| The prime minister's residence |
We spent 3hrs walking around downtown, taking in the sights. Male gets a bit of a bad wrap - there is a lot of garbage hanging around... but we found people friendly, polite and warm.
We were quite keen to learn as much about Maldivian history from our guide as possible. The ethnic background of Maldivians is 3-fold. North-African Arabs, Portuguese and Sri Lankans.
Portuguese you ask? For a short blip in the 16th century, the Portuguese occupied the Maldives to score a bigger piece of the shipping business through the Maldives.
Want more? Checkout the Coles notes
here.
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