MALDIVES - Welcome to paradise

The Guardian, 18-12-2006

For holiday-makers, the Maldives are an idyllic retreat. But among the islanders there is increasing anger at a repressive regime. There's a cafe just outside arrivals at Hulhulé airport. Sit at one of the little aluminum tables, under the sign reminding passengers of the harsh penalties for drug traffickers, and you'll see the holiday-makers arrive.

The ones on the cheaper packages - families and budget divers - wait for their holiday reps. The richer types, perma-tanned middle-aged couples and upscale honeymooners, are greeted by neatly-uniformed men who whisk them off in speedboats to islands with $3,000-a-night water villas, personal butlers, infinity pools and brochure copy peppered with phrases such as "redefining luxury".

These are the places you read about in travel pages, usually under headlines containing the word "paradise". You may have noticed that you read about paradise rather a lot. There always seems to be a free trip for a writer to suffer a week of pampering in return for a few bland paragraphs. You may have also noticed what's missing from all those articles: people.

The Maldives of the travel brochures is an eerie place, a culture-free series of coral dots adrift on a deep blue sea. This is no accident. Tourism here is a highly regulated activity: visitors and locals are carefully segregated. By law, resorts are located on uninhabited islands and you need written permission to stay elsewhere. Most people arrive and leave without knowing where they really are.

>>Full article