Review of Serene Sky Guest house 3*

This is a WARNING to avoid this guest house. 1. We were victims of sexual harassment on the public beach on Thoddoo. The complete reluctance & lack of interest in our safety, safety of other guests at Serene Sky & other female travellers on Thoddoo island was absolutely shocking! One day, my mum & me stayed on a local beach (dressed up properly), within 15 minutes 2 local men came, were disturbing us and masturbated in front of us! Karam (the manager) told us that he'd not tell the council and the police about it. He said he didn’t want the police from another island to come as it'd destroy the reputation of Thoddoo, it'd be on news and would ruin the tourism on Thoddoo! We knew exactly how the perverts looked like. It would have been so easy to find them on such a small island! The two perverts are still wandering around Thoddoo and nobody has done anything to find them and punish them. Therefore Thoddoo is not a safe place for solo women travellers anymore. 2. Lies & postponing the return of our passports Karam offered us to arrange an extension of our visas because we wanted to stay longer, of course before the incident on the beach happened. It was easier for us & we trusted him at the beginning. We knew that the extension takes 2 working days but we didn’t get back our passports until 2 weeks later! He gave our passports to an agent in Male. He hadn't informed us beforehand about it. Neither of them paid or cared about the extension. Karam lied every day saying he had already paid for the extension and that the delay is the fault of the officers. After we called the immigration office 12 days later, we found out the truth. The fee for extending our visas hadn’t been paid, although Karam told us it had been paid and that’s why the officer couldn’t proceed the application. We immediately called Karam & made him pay & arrange it. If we hadn’t called that day the Immigration office, we wouldn’t have had the visas ready before leaving the Maldives. 3. Invasion of our privacy & dreadful service/absolutely incompetent & uninterested staff Our stay at Serene Sky block C — Relax Residence — was a nightmare. SOMEBODY WENT THROUGH OUR MESSAGES ON THE PHONE when we left the phone charging in the room and went snorkelling! Some people from Ibrahim’s family were constantly entering the plot, sometimes were even sitting there late in the night. They often entered without saying ‘Hello’ and pretended like we were not there. We had only cold water in the bathroom. There was something wrong with the boiler and even if we told Karam, they didn’t repair it. After 5 days we asked the staff to clean outdoor space and the kitchen. They came and were shouting at 7 a. M. In front of our room, so we told them not to come anymore. Raifa, who was supposed to bring us food in the morning, was trying to get in our room one morning at 7 am, but we were locked. She came back at 8 am, knocked very loudly at our door without a reason and run away! We saw her through the window. Some days there was no food for breakfast in the morning. Once we got even old mouldy bread for breakfast! They were giving us rainy water to drink and didn’t tell us it was rainy water, so we got sick. The list is endless! When we complained to Ibrahim, he told us we were f***ing liars! If we had had our passports, we'd have left the island much earlier. 4. Karam’s aggressive behaviour When we got back our passports, we moved to another guest house. After all of these horrendous experience (1-3), we decided to pay only for the little amount of food for breakfast we were given and electricity that we consumed. Karam became furious. He was screaming at us, threatened us and said to my mum that she is an old filthy woman. Then he became aggressive, coming closer and wanted to hit my mum! Fortunately, the manager of the guest house we moved to, protected us. If he wasn’t standing between Karam and us, Karam would have beaten us up. The last thing we heard from him was: “I don’t want any money from these two lesbians. ”