After traveling to the Maldives as a young man in 1988, this little patch of earth has been especially appealing to me. At the age of 21, the world was unbelievably big and you felt that you were infinitely far away from everything. The mere fact that you could only see the ocean around his island was more than impressive. And the 6-hour trip with the Dhoni instead of a seaplane today brought additional peace to the island life. At that time you could book islands only on a weekly basis. Nobody could leave after 4 days or stay for 10 days, but there were strict rules. If you did not have time, you better stay home.

At Kuramathi, nature is just as impressive as we were at Mayaafushi in 1988, but today, in 2019, you will need far more cash to visit this paradise. Unfortunately, we humans have already destroyed the environment so strongly that even in the Maldives the first damage is noticeable. This concerns above all the incredible underwater world. Coral reefs simply can not handle temperatures above 30 ° C and die. It is our fault and it will take millennia for all the reefs to recover. Unfortunately, there will be no Maldives for a long time, because with a sea level rise of just 1 meter from the current level, there are no more 189 tourist islands left.

Also, the average Maldives vacationer has changed a lot. In 1988, when it was still about being interested in and diving for the underwater world, in 2019 I have the feeling that it's all about showing off at the champagne bar and sipping expensive cocktails. You want to be seen and all are constantly posting worthless photos on Facebook and Twitter. And since China has also allowed its citizens to travel, 40% of every island is made up of noisy people without any shame or manners.

The Maldivian Conservation Commissioner on our island was shocked by the Chinese people's lack of understanding, who saw them daily standing on corals in the water and defying all admonishment. These people evidently think that by paying the room price they have also bought all of nature and are allowed to destroy it as well. It is a shame that just one of the oldest cultures on our planet has brought such environmental criminals without manners. I am ashamed to be a human being when I hear from the Maldivians what destruction has been done by Chinese in recent years alone on Kuramathi. But not only the visitors of the Maldives have changed. The islands themselves have become more luxurious and are much more sustainable today. Anyway, that would make us believe many a Sustainability Report. In reality, however, all garbage on an island is still being picked up by ships and simply burned uncontrollably on a Maldives island in the south. Without any control and without waste incineration plant.

At eleven luxury restaurants on a single island, no one asks where fresh strawberries or ice come from. How is the electricity produced here and where does our feces go? Because a sewage treatment plant I would not have seen so far ....

But all these things are of little interest to tourists, as he has already paid more than enough for the trip and now wants to be treated princely. Hardly anyone knows that there are more than 1,000 employees on Kuramathi Island alone, some of whom share a small room with six of them. It is not that important, because most of these wage slaves come from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Thailand.

Due to the ever-present environmental pollution, which can not be expected of the Maldivian tourist, a true army of gardeners from Bangladesh is required which does not even do the same during the day, or twice, no, all day long, but to clean the beach and the ways. Everything has to look perfect and nothing that might look remotely crap like lying on the beach.

This actually works, because already at 6 o'clock in the morning you can see the first of these gardeners cleaning everything around their own bungalow. And when the tourist wakes up and enters the beach, the Paradis is as it should be, perfectly pure and no crap spoils the perfect Instagram photo that will be shared with the world within seconds.

Needless to say that all those left behind are jealously eyeing the turquoise-blue beaches and wondering why they can not be there. After all, today it's all about appearing and not being.