The Maldives are made up of 1192 islands, mostly coral atolls, only 200 of the islands are inhabited.  The economy is mostly tourism and fishing.  The city of Male' is the business center with the high end resorts on other islands, even the international airport is on another island.  We anchored in the late afternoon and many people had afternoon tours but we decided to stay on the ship and plan on going ashore in the morning. During the evening we had the "Gala BBQ" on the pool deck with entertainment. It was quite a spread that included suckling pig, lobster, sushi and everything else you can imagine.
The country  is Sunni Muslim and Friday is their holy day so most things were closed but we did see the fish market and the produce market.  It seemed like motorcycles and scooters outnumbered the cars about 100 to 1.  The city is mostly built on reclaimed land and the buildings are jammed together but it was surprisingly clean.  We did a quick walk around for about one hour then went back to the ship as it was getting quite warm.  In these hot, humid climates it is always a relief to get back to the air conditioning on the ship.

The airport runway starts right on the ocean

City of Male'

Pool deck is decorated for the Gala BBQ

Fancy bread sculptures

There were lots of ice sculptures as well as carved fruits and vegetables

There about one hundred fishing boats tied up in the harbor with our ship visible in the background

Fish are displayed in tiled bins in the fish market

Thousands of motorcycles and scooters line every space at the curb

There were about a dozen Maldives Coast Guard ships of different sizes in the port