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It’s always a good idea to find out what happens “officially” within a country and one way of sourcing Maldives tourist information is from the Maldives tourist board, known as the Maldives Tourism Promotion Board (MTPB). If you happen to find yourself in Malé, then you can saunter over to the 4th floor of the Bank of Maldives building and acquaint yourself with maps and other printed material… but if that seems like a bit of a task then your in luck as you can there is an MTPB airport information desk found at… you guessed it Malé International Airport so you can pick up maps and leaflets when you arrive. Hurrah! Other than that Maldives tourist information can be found in two ways.The first way involves you scouring the internet to glean information from various travel sites and the second involves you actually travelling to the Maldives, passing through customs and then heading to the Maldives information desk found at the airport… OK maybe there’s a third way… reading our page about Maldives tourist information – Huzzah! So here is what we call your quick win page. You’ll find out all the bits and bobs (sorry Bob!) you’ll need to make sure your holiday is effortless as a tourist in the Maldives. 
The Maldives doesn’t have a plethora of foreign embassies so if you find yourself in a bit of a scrape it’s more than likely that you’ll find your country’s embassy in Sri Lanka; Colombo to be exact and they usually have jurisdiction over the Maldives.Whoa..! There shouldn’t be any reason to get into any scrapes - unless you snorkel too close to coral and graze yourself – or perhaps that’s just Charley (sorry Charley!) If you follow some of the well known and established guidelines/laws found in most Maldives information resources, then there shouldn’t be any reason for you to ever need your country's embassy… speaking of guidelines… what are they? No alcohol can be brought into the country – it’ll be confiscated from you at customs and returned to you when you leave. No pork products of any kind can be brought into the country. And whilst we've seen people wear small items of religious jewellery, the Maldives is an Islamic country and expects visitors to have due regard for that. … See, painless really. The reality is that with any holiday, we should all consider travel insurance. It’s probably a good idea to think about holiday insurance for your Maldives trip or if your break is a series of multi-trips then perhaps insurance for the whole shebang. There’s a wealth of information about what your Maldives travel insurance should cover and cost so tread carefully and get all the facts. If you're thinking about hiring a car in the Maldives then you should think again, as there is no such thing as car hire since the islands are too small. The local time in the Maldives is GMT + 5 hours. The electrical current for that all important hair dryer is 230 volts, 50Hz. We’ve found a combination of two and three pin sockets in use, so we always take a multiplug adapter... well we couldn’t allow Charley to have frizzy hair on holiday! What did you say? Dhivehi is the national language, but all resort staff speak English and many speak other languages such as German, French, Italian and Japanese. Most Maldives tourist information sites might not mention it, but it’s worth mentioning that there’s one hospital on Malé and first aid facilities are available on all Maldives island resorts. Resorts with Dive schools should always have a decompression chamber available – so look out for this when book your diving holiday in the Maldives. Our Maldives tourist information top tip for first aid is take along a supply of your own paracetamol/asprin along with your one small first aid kit - you'd be surprised the number of "accidents" that can happen on holiday, especially if you’ve got children, so items like calpol are worth taking as they're not available on resorts. The international access code for the Maldives is +960. The outgoing code is 00 followed by the relevant country code (e.g. 001 for the United States). No city/area codes are required. 
You’ll have noted from our resort pages that IDD facilities are available at all resorts. We’ve also found out that card phones are available on all inhabited islands. If you’ve got a mobile phone, then we should say that it seems that only the major islands are covered by the mobile network; the local operators use a GSM 900 network, which is well-suited with many international cell phone operators… a word to the wise it’s best to check what your network roaming costs are for the Maldives before you travel as they can be very expensive. If you simply must stay in touch but don’t have a phone, the Maldives Telecommunications Company Dhiraagu, can provide mobile telephones for daily rental. Or you can use your resort’s Internet. According to most of the Maldives tourist information sites and brochures we've come across, we've read that officially tipping is not encouraged. Phil and I aren’t quite sure what is meant by “officially” since the tour reps and the resorts themselves give out information about “recommended” tipping amounts! We’re not going to proselytise here, tipping is a personal thing. All we will say is that we know resort staff aren’t paid western wages… typically waiters and housekeepers earn around $150 US dollars a month. We’ve always had such good service from the staff that we’ve always tipped our housekeepers and waiting staff, but again, this is our personal choice at an amount that we’ve chosen. You’ll notice that there’s a 10% service charge added to everything and we’ve found out that this is shared amongst all the staff that you don’t see… so when you have that fabulous meal in your Maldives restaurant and want to thank the Chef, by the 10% service charge added, you will have! Now for some sobering Maldives tourist information... For all you lovers of all things natural dare I say naturists, we have to mention what’s becoming a regular question… Is nude sunbathing allowed? The short answer is no. No it’s not allowed. Not anywhere in the Maldives. And just in case we haven’t been unequivocal enough we’ll say it again... Ladies: Topless bathing/swimming isn’t allowed. Return from Maldives Tourist Information to Home Page
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