Inside the world’s first underwater hotel villa, where you can spend the night sleeping with sea creatures for $50,000

Why go swimming with sharks when you can sleep with them?

That is precisely what The Muraka, the world’s first underwater hotel villa, provides. The Muraka is a two-level aquarium located more than 16 feet below sea level in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with glass walls that allow you to fall asleep to fish swimming overhead and wake up to coral swinging arms.

The Muraka, which debuted in November 2018, is linked to the Hilton’s Conrad Maldives Rangali Island resort, which is known for its firsts.

“The resort was the first hotelier in the Maldives to perch villas on stilts above the water, the first to open an underwater restaurant, and now they are the first to sink a residence into the briny depths,” wrote Melissa Locker for Architectural Digest.

The surreal experience at The Muraka, which translates to “coral” in the indigenous Dhivehi language, does come at a cost, however: $50,000 per night before taxes. That’s not even close to the staggering $15 million cost of construction, according to Bloomberg.

According to Architectural Digest, the 600-ton bottom level was built in Singapore before being transported to the Maldives on a specialist ship and submerged near a coral without harm. Ten concrete piles keep it stable during bad weather.

In the video below, take a look beneath the waves.