White Tern Maldives

The property was in an awesome location - it’s right on a beach. The island itself is completely natural, so you can walk through unedited beach, reef, jungle. It’s really special. Many times in the week we were the only tourists on the island and the only people in sight! Breakfast every morning was really tasty and varied (it’s pre-set) and lunch and dinner options were a good range too. Haleem facilitated some incredible excursions for us, we got to swim with a Whale Shark alone, we swam with Manta Rays and went hand line fishing. He knew the waters very well!

To get to the island you need to get a 2 hour boat to Digurah and then the property owners will pick you up for a 15min boat trip to the actual island. It’s not bad, but the timings are only twice a day so you need to account for this. There is also a 3 hour boat from Mamagili to Male for the way back - we would strongly recommend you don’t do this as the waves on return are so strong and the journey is really uncomfortable. The room and facilities are really simple and basic, it worked well for us as we wanted an escape from the normal and digital detox.

Its not often i give such a low score, but this is because of the very poor quality of the rooms. Out of 5 local islands / guesthouse we stayed in Maldives Below, the rooms in White Tern were far below the standard. Below the score for the different aspects of our stay in White Tern. Friendliness: 10 Haleem is superfriendly and helpful. He is a very good boatsman and we went on whaleshark and manta excursion with him. We only saw 1 manta and no whaleshark but he did everything to find them. 1 day we were snorkeling out on the reef and he came by boat to warn us that bad weather was coming and we had to return to the beach. Island / bikinibeach: 9 We liked the deserted feeling on the island. As there is only 1 guesthouse its not many tourists. The bikinibeach is around the corner of the guesthouse and there are some sunbeds and hammocks. We spent lots of time there, also at night watching movies on our ipad (as we had no urge to come to our room) Housereef / snorkeling: 8 The reef near the sandbank at the nortwest side of the island is quite good and we saw lots of fish. First you have to swim ca. 300 meters through sea grass. Food / dinner: 8 curries are very good. Grilled fish is very dry. Prices are very reasonable

Breakfast: 3 very limited, no fruits (even though we asked and the shop around the corner sells fruits, so we bought ourselves). Inflexible timings, we woke up late after a long travel from europe and were 15 minutes too late for breakfast. Haleems wife simply refused to make it and there are no other places in the island you can go to. Rooms: 1 humid, mold, extremely worn out and uncomfortable mattresses, no ventilation possibility, no small soap to wash your hands. In 5 days the rooms were never cleaned and we never got new towels. I write this review after staying in 5 local guesthouses in 5 different islands. Luckily the quality of rooms and cleaning was much much higher in all other places and in my opinion the price we paid was far too high for the quality we got.

We absolutely loved our stay. The host family are amazing, kind, helpful and knowledgeable. The rooms are clean, comfortable and modern with great hot water showers. The wifi was also reasonably good. The in-house restaurant is very reasonably priced and the food was absolutely delicious with most dinner meals being around 10US dollar or less. The free breakfast was huge and delicious. Their boat excursions were also reasonably priced 60US each to go and hunt for whale sharks is pretty good! The walk to the bikini beach was less than 20m. We borrowed snorkels and fins for free from the property for the duration of our stay. The house reef is a 300m swim from the shore and one of the best reefs to swim on. Sooo many schools of fish, hawksbills turtles, eagle rays, we even saw a leopard shark nearby. The property also helped us organise our transport to and from the island. We caught the government ferry to the island which left from Male and arrived after 7 hours after a quick stopover at Maamingili. It was a great experience for us and cost us 5US dollars each. We caught the speedboat back 60US dollars each (2hours) directly to Male as the government ferry doesn’t run on all days. It was also a good experience.

White tern is amazing place to stay, it feel like home and comfortable, only guest house on Ireland, it’s relaxing, beautiful, and next to beach, beach has sub beds swing and beautiful walkway along the beach. Our stay was made very comfortable by hosts, food was AmZing cocked by host, there is variety of food options and small shop around the corner, our transfer was arranged by the host, highly recommended place.

Haleem and Sifa are very kind and helpful owner of White tern Maldives. They always make me stay comfortable. Also, their little boy is so cute and friendly. He made me smile all the time. Haleem is wonderful guide for whale sharks and Mantas. He always tried to drop me in front of whale sharks. He made one of my dream come true.!! Staying there and spending a time with them were unforgettable memories. Thank you so much!!

Little heaven for 2 of us :) It was hard to get there because it's located 2 and half hour from Male airport. But after getting didhdhoo island, everything was perfect! Private beach just in front of the accommodation was the best part. And Didhdhoo is just near the whale shark habitat, I could meet a whale shark just in 30 min after departing! Also thank you for packing breakfast when I take a ferry in early morning :)

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Great hosts. A great offer to spend time and explore the atoll. A quiet place without the tourist crowd. Thank you for a fantastic time spent on the island.

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Very good. Perfect.