Overall
Cabins
Food
Guides
Safety
Dive Spots
On the diving ship Emperor Voyager we liked it very much. Super service, detailed briefing, good rental equipment, tasty and varied food in buffet form, helpful and well-positioned staff. Also the diving group was well mixed from different countries, which we found very interesting.
Drinking water can be refilled free of charge at large water dispensers. There is 100% biodegradable body and hair shampoo in the bathroom.
Since neither of us were Nitrox divers, we were encouraged to take the course. At one point the dive leader actually let us surface on our own as the rest of the group (all nitrox divers) had not yet reached no-decompression time. I would have appreciated it if the whole group had surfaced together. We have about 100 dives but still feel a bit insecure diving alone.
As also WeDive mentioned this, from our point of view experience is really important for such liveaboards; i.e. at least 50 logged dives, as it has partly quite strong current & "Washingmashines".
Another minus were the bed pillows, which smelled quite penetrating müffelig. At certain dive spots it also had up to 10 dive boats at the same time and corresponding traffic under water, but Voyager can not do anything for that.
Split-stay requests are made on site by the hotels or ships easily and uncomplicated, be it from island to island or from island to safari boat or vice versa. Some require a new PCR test when changing. Various guests of our ship including ourselves have made use of the split-stay.
Malé City can be visited since a few weeks without any problems, i.e. the capital is open for tourists with the usual restrictions (mask in indoor areas and in crowds).
The entry and exit form Maldives is a bit cumbersome to fill out, especially with mobile devices. Finally and after some error messages and crashes, however, everything worked out fine. The form must be filled out mandatory before check-in but max. 24 hours before entry.
Since there was a lot of wind, the visibility under water was unfortunately not so good. Unfortunately we didn't see any shark in the Southari Atoll. But many other fishes incl. mantas and various sharks & turtles, unbelievable this biodiversity and how the nature is still intact there, apart from the coral bleaching. We even saw shining sea plankton. On early morning dives and even on the last night on the ship in the port of Malé - fluorescent plankton was flashing in the toilet bowl in the bathroom during the flushing process in the dark; unbelievable: what a nice farewell gift!
(Automatically translated from German)