Eating vegan in the Maldives on a budget, it’s possible!
The first thing that you may think about the Maldives is the unaffordable price of the famous resorts, but a few years ago the government granted permission to private individuals to establish guest houses for foreign tourists, so you can find the right choice for you, even if you are a vegan and on a budget. Here's my guide.
BB or full board?
When you book a guest house you may be able to choose between Bed and Breakfast, Breakfast and Dinner, or Full Board.
Guest houses have different price ranges, but the difference seldom reflect a huge improvements. Sometimes a higher price reflects a more beautiful or spacious room, but sometimes it just means that they are ripping you off because you think that the Maldives are expensive (especially beware of guest houses managed by non Maldivians). Now everyone wants to sell you "the experience", make you have dinner "with feet on the water" so that you can post it on IG, is it worth to pay more for that? For me it's not. Looks like you cannot just travel the simple way anymore these days.
For me a good price is 80-120$/room for 2 people in Full Board, more than that makes no sense for me. Some guest houses will ask you up to 300$/ night. If you are willing to pay that price you can go to a top resort anywhere else in the world.
In my experience a good offer would be a 30 $ difference per room between BB and FB. Think about it, a curry and rice in a local restaurant would cost you less than 5 $/person, in the guest house you are going to eat more than that so that price difference is ok.
I have seen guest houses giving Full Board for a price difference of 60$/room, which is totally non sense for me... they explain that they offer you the best food etc etc, but as far as I am concerned, rice is rice, lentils are lentils and potatoes are potatoes, I doubt they will offer you a resort fancy dinner (when I see the pictures of their reviews I see the same exact food that I had in my guest house).
Buffet or meal sharing?
When it comes to full board some houses offer buffet, some other what they call "meal sharing".
I would recommend a buffet, as it's not the huge buffet you may see in the Red Sea, just to make an example. Maldivian guest houses accommodate few guests and the buffet is small, it may be good for omnivores but as a vegan you may end up having rice and noodles with one or two veggie dishes.
I loved the meal sharing option instead. Our guest house in Omadhoo, Rayva Inn, had a wonderful chef from Sri Lanka that knew what "vegan" meant and prepared us great food every day.
For breakfast we often choose to have roti bread with coconut sambal (be sure it doesn't have tuna salt) or coconut milk pudding.
For lunch and dinner we usually had rice with 3 vegetable dishes: lentils, chickpeas, eggplants, mixed vegetables...
Unfortunately chefs are not always resident, so you need to ask every time and make sure your guest house is hiring a professional for the food.
