What to See on Thoddoo Island, Maldives

What to See on Thoddoo Island

Excursions and attractions 2023

• Fruit farm excursion - $20 per person. It is not even worth booking!!! You will see all these farms yourself while walking around the island. The guide will not tell you much either, because this excursion is not exactly his favorite. The locals grow what needs little care, ripens quickly and gives big harvests - the "laziness formula" is simple) Here you will find papaya, drinking coconuts, cucumbers, watermelons, bananas, chili peppers, passion fruit, lettuce, something like zucchini, pumpkin, a few mango trees, garlic and onions. Farms occupy half of Thoddoo. Building new hotels here is forbidden by the government. They will not let you buy or even pick anything...
• Manta snorkeling "Manta snorkeling" - $50 per person. Departure at 6-7 am. You spend about 1 hour with the mantas, and the whole excursion takes about 2 hours. This is what makes Thoddoo, and the Maldives in general, worth the trip) The manta spot is right beyond the reef, almost on its outer side, so it takes only 5-10 minutes to get there.
• Snorkeling on the outer side of the house reef - $35 per person. At any time of day a boat will pick you up and take you to the house reef, just to the outer side. This is a must-do activity! In one hour of snorkeling we saw dolphins (a pod near the boat), a white ray, a baby shark, a moray eel and of course a turtle and lots of fish), but most of all you will see the place where the coral reef drops off into the deep sea - a mesmerizing sight! But the reef around Thoddoo is dead everywhere( You can also swim out here on your own from the local "dump" - the open sea starts right there. But this is only for confident swimmers, and fins are a must. The outer side of the reef has a strong current, and you will essentially snorkel along with this current - from the dump toward the Bikini beach. The convenient thing about having the boat nearby is that if you get tired, you can climb in right away. The reef begins near the dump, and if you swim along the outer side toward the Bikini beach, in 30-40 minutes you will already be beyond the house reef, and crossing it to get out onto the bikini beach is absolutely unrealistic, while swimming back means going against the current... So there is only one option - book snorkeling with a boat.
• Excursion to a sandy uninhabited island - pure marketing... They take a group of people out in the morning, leave them on a sandbank in the water, and pick them up after lunch... There is nowhere to go, no vegetation and no shade. We do not recommend it.
• every day you will swim on the inner house reef with plenty of fish, from tiny to big, from harmless to "not so much". There are many turtles on Thoddoo. Every day you can swim with turtles almost a meter long, and not just one - if you do not stay in one place, you can meet about 10 of them in an hour of snorkeling.
• Glowing plankton - this miracle and magic is available in February on the windward side of the island. In other words, there can be no plankton at Sunset beach, but there is some at Sunrise. The other side of the island, where the dump is, also has wind and open sea, but the wind blows away from the island there, and the plankton needs to be pushed toward the shore.

Thoddoo island infrastructure

Where to buy fruit on Thoddoo

On Sun set beach there is a "shop" called Issey Fruit shop (4° 26' 4.48" N, 72° 57' 19.08" E). It has the widest selection and the fruit seems to be fresh. In the other shops the situation is many times worse. Below are photos of the fruit stalls, and on the map their locations are circled.

Shopping on Thoddoo - to find anything you will have to run around all these shops, but it will take no more than 40 minutes))) The shops are listed in decreasing order of value:

• Honey Mart - the best supermarket, the fruit is relatively decent and there is a small assortment. There is a "big" choice of flip-flops and slippers.
• Bright Store - considered popular, but we did not find anything special here. Though the shop is large by local standards)
• Moo Ces Mart - has good peanut butter, fruit and local pastries.
• Unique Zone - nothing special, a small shop.
• Ari Brothers - nothing special, a small shop.
• Evilla Store 2 - nothing special, a small shop.

There are a couple more shops on the island, but there is definitely no point in visiting them.

ATM: AA.Thoddoo ATM on the pier / port of Thoddoo island

Nationality of the holidaymakers on the island: mostly Russians (80%), plus some Czechs and Poles.

Ferry: In the morning at 6:30 a ferry runs Thoddoo - Rasdhoo - Ukulhas, and it returns in the evening. The trip from Thoddoo to Rasdhoo takes 1 hour and from Rasdhoo to Ukulhas another 1 hour. Of course there is also a ferry from Thoddoo to Malé, but it takes 3-5 hours. The ferry schedule is on the website http://wildmaldives.ru/ru/ferry-schedule, but always check the details with your guesthouse owner. Ferries and speedboats depend on the season and the weather! Thoddoo has two departure ports, the main one and an additional one on the Bikini beach side, which is used when the sea is rough and boats cannot enter the main port...

The map of Thoddoo island shows the main locations

• The main road runs across the whole island, marked with blue arrows. It starts at the port, passes the main shops from the list above and reaches Sun set beach.
• Around the island, blue arrows show where you can walk right along the beach. Blue crosses mark the part of the island's coastline where there is hardly any way to walk along the shore, and where the local dump is, too.
• The red circle on the island outlines the entire residential area; there are no houses beyond it. Outside the residential zone are the fruit and vegetable farms that supply the whole country of the Maldives through the city of Malé.
• The red circle in the water marks the corals close to the shore, where all the tourists swim / snorkel. This is also where the few patches of living coral around Thoddoo are.
• 1 - the start of Sun set beach and the only fruit market right there, Issey Fruit shop. Sun loungers, benches, swings - all free. The beach is quite wide and beautiful. The sunsets here are hard to describe in words - magical and breathtaking) The beach has a wonderful sandy entry into the water, and the depth starts right away. There are corals close to the shore. This is very convenient - you can lounge in the water by the shore and snorkel just 5 meters from the beach on a reef with lots of fish. The beach is fairly long and well equipped.
• 2 - the end of the bikini beach Sun set beach. Beyond the 1-2 zone tourists can swim too, but women must be dressed.
• 3 - a small bikini beach for tourists, Sun rise beach.
• 4 - Thoddoo port
• 5 - the dump / garbage site of Thoddoo island
• 7 - the outer reef, where a boat can take you for $35 per person for an hour of snorkeling. Keep in mind that the outer reef is dead.

Below are photos of the road to the beach, but this is the best section) Most of the road to the beach looks more like a mix of a construction site, a dump and thickets of tall grass) A walk along Sun set beach and on that side of the island is the best thing Thoddoo has to offer.

Sunsets in the Maldives

Please note that sunsets in the Maldives, including Thoddoo, are different from day to day! There is a type of sunset where the sun starts to "spill" over the horizon 5 minutes before it sets, and 15 minutes after sunset the sky turns orange-red! And then there are late "tricky" sunsets - the sun goes below the horizon and for 30 minutes nothing remarkable happens! But half an hour later the sky suddenly flares up and glows for about 20 minutes... Many tourists miss this kind of sunset because they do not know about it)))

The other stretches of the island's beaches are not as colorful or as pleasant to walk along. Sun rise beach is right next to the port, and the entry into the water is over a small number of dead corals. There is not much to see in the water, and the wind blows here all the time.

If you have never been to Asia, on Thoddoo you can stroll around the farms and see how exotic fruits grow) You can skip the part of the island with the dump.

Thoddoo is a fairly large local island (1.5 x 1.2 km) and yet there is nothing to do here for more than 4 days. If you want to splash around to your heart's content and walk to all the sunsets, you can stretch it to 7 days. But more than that... it is really boring here))) Sun set beach is undoubtedly a great bikini beach - clean, equipped with a shower and a toilet, with sun beds and swings, but most importantly, a couple of meters from the shore there is a reef, even if completely dead... but there are fish and turtles on it, and that is what matters! The easy entry into the water is worth noting - a sandy shore with depth a couple of meters out, and corals right there. Would we come here a second time? Definitely not)