Jakarta Globe - AFP, Adam Plowright on 5:25 pm October 13, 2013
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| This photograph taken on September 9, 2013 shows an aerial view of one of the many luxurious resorts that dot the many islands that comprise the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. (AFP Photo/ Roberto Schmidt) |
Male. The Maldives is one of the world’s most exclusive holiday destinations but it has quietly opened up to backpackers in the last five years with a reform that has upset religious hard-liners.
Most
visitors arrive at the country’s airport island, take a speed boat or seaplane
to their expensive coral-fringed private resort and spend the next week
relaxing in blissful ignorance of the country around them.
It has been
this way for decades, the result of a deliberate policy of keeping the wealthy
holidaymakers — mostly Westerners and often newly-weds — on uninhabited islands
separate from the local Muslim population.
The Islamic
Republic applies different laws for both: travelers are free to drink alcohol,
eat pork, and for those not on their honeymoon, enjoy pre-marital sex.
Elsewhere, Maldivian women can be flogged in public for fornication.
“Since
Maldives is a Muslim country, we have always supported the idea that the
tourism industry should be separate from the inhabited islands,” says Mauroof
Hussain, vice president of the conservative Adhaalath Party.
“If the
hippy-type of travelers come, along will come drugs and narcotics which even
now our society is suffering from,” says Hussain, whose party has been a
minority partner in successive governments since 2008.
While the
archipelago is still far from the hippy trail, the sight of backpackers
wandering around Male and the nearby island of Maafushi is growing thanks to a
new policy to attract budget travellers.
“Things
like nudity are not acceptable in a place where people are living,” adds
Mauroof. “The people complain that they are praying in the mosque and just
outside there are tourists in bikinis.”
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| Men enjoy a nightly game of chess outside a corner restaurant in Male on September 6, 2013. (AFP Photo/ Roberto Schmidt) |
‘Very welcoming people’
Since a
reform under the country’s first democratically-elected president Mohamed
Nasheed in 2009, Maldivians have been allowed to open their own guesthouses on
populated islands.
While
fundamentalist interpretations of Islam imported from the Gulf and Pakistan are
progressively taking root in the Maldives, Mauroof’s views lie far outside the
mainstream and are ridiculed by many.
What
started as a trickle of guesthouses has become a torrent with entrepreneurs
like 25-year-old Ibrahim Mohamed converting properties and profiting from what
is the islands’ biggest business and foreign exchange earner.
“Maldivians
are very welcoming people. It wasn’t Maldivians that wanted separation, it was
the government and a few businessmen saying that they should be isolated,”
Mohamed told AFP. “The Maldives can’t hide from the world anymore.”
His
three-roomed Sundhara Palace located on a busy street of the cramped capital
Male opened at the beginning of September, offering basic en-suite
accommodation for $30 a night.
The
cheapest resorts are usually about 10 times this, with prices stretching up to
several thousand dollars a night — with expensively priced food and drink on
top.
Mohamed
stresses that the guesthouse policy is also “a good system to get money to the
people instead of to wealthy businessmen.”
A handful
of well-connected resort owners who prospered under the 30-year autocratic rule
of strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom continue to control the Maldives economy and
are active in politics.
These
oligarchs have united against Nasheed, who was ousted in February 2012
following a mutiny by security forces, which he branded a “coup.”
His efforts
to return to power through the ballot box have since been thwarted with the
country wracked by protests and uncertainty after the Supreme Court annulled
elections he won on September 7.
The court
order came in response to a legal challenge from the third-placed candidate
Gasim Ibrahim, one of the country’s wealthiest tycoons who is in alliance with
the Adhaalath Party.
A re-run of
the polls has been ordered for October 19, with the British government warning
travellers to avoid demonstrations and take precautions in the capital.
If
re-elected, Nasheed has promised in to expand the guesthouse policy as part of
his ambitious social and economic reform program.
“The
industry is flourishing very rapidly. We feel there is so much more scope for
that,” he told reporters days before voting in the first round of the election
in September.
One of the
people to take advantage of the changes is Dutch tourist Chris Constandse, a
27-year-old web designer who works for a travel website in Amsterdam.
He booked a
few nights at a hotel in the capital, but plans to spend the rest of his
two-week holiday staying in guesthouses dotted around the country of more than
1,000 islands.
“Backpackers
go to India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and I was like ‘I always do things different,’
so I thought I’d go backpacking in the Maldives,” he told AFP shortly before
leaving on a ferry for one of the nearby islands.
“The most
important thing is that you get in touch with the people. I’ve stayed in Male
for three nights and I’ve already met some people and made some friends.”
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