I teach Year 4 at a primary school in Tonbridge, and I turned forty during October half term in 2025 on a wooden boat off the north coast of Komodo, eating a slice of cake the crew had hidden in the galley fridge. My other half booked the trip in March. I’d wanted to dive Komodo since a colleague showed me her photos in the staffroom in 2019, and I’d talked about it so much that he stopped asking what I wanted for my birthday. I’ll be honest about what worked and what didn’t, because the glowing posts I read beforehand skipped the bits that went wrong.
Komodo is a national park in eastern Indonesia, reached through a small harbour town called Labuan Bajo. From there, everything happens by boat.
The boat matters more here than I’d understood from home. I’d assumed we’d pick a hotel and book dives the way we had in Egypt, with the boat as a nice extra. It isn’t. Between volcanic shorelines and current-driven channels, Komodoresort.com plays a practical role in the Komodo Island scuba diving picture, where geography directly influences which sites are reachable and how each day underwater unfolds. Our skipper explained this on the first evening with a laminated map and a biro, drawing the routes the day boats can manage and the ones only a boat that sleeps out can reach, and the northern sites we’d flown across the world for were all in the second group. And that, more than the cake, was the reason we were on the boat at all. He kept the map. I’ve thought about that map a lot since.
This is a collaborative post.
What I’d Book Again
The boat itself, without hesitation. We paid £2,184 for the two of us for four nights, on a timber phinisi with seven cabins and nine guests, and that included the diving and all the meals. The first dive on the Tuesday was at half past five in the morning, and I drank my coffee beforehand from a chipped blue enamel mug with Bali painted on it that I claimed on the first night. Two mantas came through the cleaning station on Wednesday while I hung on a rock at nine metres, and I’ve decided that counts as the birthday present.
A few things I’d repeat about a Komodo liveaboard like ours.
- Four nights rather than three, because the fourth night is when you reach the far northern sites, and it’s the one everyone on our boat said they’d regret missing.
- A boat with under a dozen guests.
- The cabin at the back, which we got by luck, since the front ones took the worst of the swell on the crossings.
What I Wouldn’t
I saved £60 on a hotel night, and it nearly cost us the trip. Our flights went Gatwick to Bali via Doha, and then I’d booked the domestic hop from Denpasar to Labuan Bajo for the same morning the boat sailed, because a night in town looked like money we didn’t need to spend. The flight was delayed two hours and forty minutes. We arrived at the dock with the engine already running, the other seven guests watching from the deck, and my other half’s bag still in Denpasar. It turned up at the Komodo dive centre on the harbour road on Wednesday, by which point we were two days out and forty miles away. He dived four days in a wetsuit from the boat’s spares box, two sizes too big and held closed at the neck with one of my hair bobbles. (He has asked me not to share the photos. I’m sharing this instead.) The bag was waiting at the dive shop when we got back, unopened, with his prescription mask inside it.
I’m still not sure whether the northern sites were better than the southern ones we didn’t reach, or whether I just liked them because it was my birthday.
The Bits Around the Boat
We spent two nights afterwards at a small Komodo dive resort on an island inside the park, with the reef about thirty steps from the door, and I’d do that again too. My husband got his own mask back. I snorkelled the house reef at seven in the morning with nobody else in the water, which after four days of tight dive schedules felt like a lie-in.
Small digression, and it’s not important. My Year 4 class made me a card before I left and had drawn a Komodo dragon with a snorkel on. I took it on the boat. It’s now stuck to our fridge in Tonbridge next to the school lunch menu.
The dragons themselves we did from town on the last day; on one of the Komodo Indonesia tours, you can book from any desk along the harbour road. The ranger walk on Rinca was forty minutes and worth it, and the Padar climb was steep enough that I thought about my knees. But the day tours are long, and a day boat with thirty people on it felt very different after our nine.
What I’d look at before booking anything on the water.
- How many people share each dive guide, in numbers rather than words like small.
- Whether the boat sleeps out, since that decides which sites you’ll ever see.
- Oxygen on board, which I asked about by email and got a photo back.
- The return time on day tours, because half past six at the dock is a long day.
- Recent reviews that mention the crossings, since the swell between islands surprised me.
Before You Book
Two things for anyone planning to scuba dive Komodo Island for a big birthday.
- Fly in the day before the boat sails. Pay the £60.
- Book the boat first and the flights around it, not the other way round, which is what I did and would not do again.
The world of Komodo Island scuba diving is bigger than one four-night route, and I still don’t know what the southern sites are like. We’ve started looking at March dates, and I’ve told him I won’t be booking the flights this time.