I booked ours from the kitchen table on a wet Sunday in March, with a cold cup of tea going scummy beside the laptop and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I work three days a week in a dental practice in Canterbury, and I’d never been further east than Dubai. My husband had wanted to dive in Raja Ampat since a documentary we watched in 2019, and I agreed on the understanding that I could snorkel, nap, and be left alone. Eighteen months later we came home with sunburnt shoulders and a lot of opinions.
I’m writing because the planning section was difficult to understand and I couldn’t find a plain-English explanation. There’s a fair amount to get right before you book.
Raja Ampat sits at the far eastern end of Indonesia, past Bali, past Java, off the coast of Papua. It’s roughly 1,500 islands with almost nothing built on them, and the reefs are spread so far apart that day trips from any one spot don’t really work. So you sleep on the boat, and it moves while you sleep. A Raja Ampat voyage is best understood through its itinerary rather than its accommodation alone, so Neptuneliveaboards.com is a useful reference for how liveaboard Raja Ampat trips balance time underwater with exploration between islands. Ours carried twelve guests. I’d assumed we’d be crammed in with forty people and a buffet, which shows how much I knew.
This is a collaborative post.
First: Decide Where in Indonesia You’re Going
This is the bit nobody told me. Liveaboard Indonesia trips run in several different regions, and they don’t all run at the same time of year, because the monsoon flips the conditions around the country.
- Raja Ampat is at its best roughly October through April, when the water is calmest, and manta ray sightings are most reliable.
- A Komodo liveaboard runs largely the opposite way round, April to September, and it’s known for dragons on the islands and strong currents in the water. Hence, it suits confident divers more than nervous snorkellers like me.
- The liveaboard Banda Sea crossings only happen in two short windows each year, usually around March and again in October, and they’re long passages between tiny volcanic islands with hammerhead sharks as the big draw, which is either thrilling or awful depending on who you are.
We nearly booked Komodo because it was cheaper and the flights were simpler. But my other half talked me out of it. He was right, and I don’t say that often.
The Mistake That Cost Us £340
Right. Our booking error so that you can avoid it.
I booked our international flights before the boat was confirmed, because there was a sale on and I got twitchy. The boat then came back with a departure date two days later than the one I’d been quoted over email, which meant two extra nights in Sorong (the gateway town, and not somewhere you want two extra nights) plus a change fee on the domestic leg from Jakarta. £340 down, and a very dull Wednesday afternoon spent in a hotel lobby with intermittent air conditioning and a television showing badminton. Confirm the boat first, then the flights. Always that order.
Getting There From the UK
It’s a long way, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Gatwick or Heathrow to Jakarta or Bali, usually via Doha, Dubai or Singapore, then a domestic Indonesian flight east to Sorong which often leaves at some unholy hour. Door to boat took us thirty-one hours including a night in Jakarta. And I’d recommend that overnight stop rather than pushing straight through. We disagreed at the time and then my other half fell asleep face down on a table at Soekarno-Hatta airport.
A few things worth knowing before you go.
- Your travel insurance almost certainly doesn’t cover diving as standard, and the boat will ask to see proof.
- Bring a soft bag rather than a hard suitcase, because cabins are small and there’s nowhere sensible to store a big Samsonite.
What It Costs
Ours came to £4,180 each for the boat for eight nights, covering the cabin, all meals, My husband’s dives, my snorkelling sessions, and the marine park permit. Flights added around £1,150 each. We saved for it over two years using a separate account, and I still felt slightly sick pressing pay.
Boats vary enormously. The cheap end is bunks, shared bathrooms, and a lot of enthusiastic young divers, and the top end is a hand-built wooden schooner with a chef and a masseuse. Ours was somewhere in the middle, a phinisi with eight cabins and a crew of fifteen, and the thing I remember best is the little brass reading lamp above the bed that my other half kept banging his head on.
Do You Need to Dive? No.
I’d worried about this for months, and it turned out to be a non-issue. The coral in Raja Ampat starts about a metre below the surface, so I saw turtles, reef sharks and once an enormous manta from the surface with nothing but a mask and a pool noodle I’d borrowed from the crew. Mixed boats are normal. Divers and snorkellers go to the same sites, get in the same water and come back to the same lunch, and nobody made me feel like a passenger.
Raja Ampat diving, when done properly, runs three or four times a day. My other half logged twenty-two dives in eight days and came up grinning every single time, apart from the Thursday when the current caught him, and he lost his favourite torch.
A Small Digression About the Fruit
A woman on the crew named Ratna cut fruit for us every afternoon at four, on a wooden board on the back deck while the boat moved. Pineapple, papaya, small green bananas, mangosteen, and a spiky red thing I never identified. I’d sit there with my feet up and eat it and watch islands go past. It wasn’t the point of the holiday, and I think about it more than the reef.
Book It Earlier Than You Think
Good boats fill six to twelve months out for the October to April window, and the better cabins on the better boats go first. If you’re set on a particular week, start looking at least a year ahead, get the boat confirmed in writing with a date, and only then book anything else.
I’d go again. What I still can’t decide is whether I’d choose Raja Ampat a second time or try the Banda Sea crossing instead, and I’ve been turning that over since we got back in February.