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When you have a diving family, it is best to just chill out and let the divers choose the next destination. Well, I suppose it depends on your divers. The divers in my family look for experience and adventure. They love the deep and want to see it with as few other humans around them as possible. This means we are always lugging equipment on planes, boats, cars, wagons and three wheelers, sometimes travelling for 48 hours to get to THAT place. So what do they look for? SUBJECT What will they see? This drives the trip: Lembeh for macro, Fiji for pelagics, Tojean for incredibly clear water and beautiful reefs. If there is something interesting to see, my guys are game to go. Click here to see our Top Ten Dive Sites DIVEMASTERS This one is key. They want dive masters who enjoy diving and understand that you don't need to P ut A nother D ollar I n just to go an extra few metres. They want dive masters who have the experience to gauge divers' experience and comfort under water, regardless of the papers and cards they hold. They don't want policemen. There are a lot of great divemasters out there. Look for those who have local experience, and who still look forward to sharing their own love of diving. THE BOAT The best boat for my divers is one that only accommodates our group. But, they do enjoy other visitors who provide a few laughs and good conversations. The worst boat holds too many people, is impersonal and focused on getting the trip done. The worst boat doesn't care about your camera, what you hope to see. They care that you will follow their programme regardless of any other opportunities that may come during the trip. The Resort Actually, the resort isn't a factor. Unless it's spectacularly horrific. My guys are going to dive; we spend most of every day on the boat. Getting a cocktail with an umbrella in it isn't important. However, we've been to some ace places. Small homestays, quiet boutiques, home made food, but perhaps no electricity, faint wifi and really chillin'. Along the way there have been some not-so-great places, but these make for much better stories.

If it's good enough for Wallace.... Who is Wallace anyway? Alfred Russel Wallace was a British (Welsh) naturalist, explorer, geographer and biologist, amongst other things. He is known (though not as much as he should be known) for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection. Only, the story goes that when Darwin heard that Wallace had come up with the same theory, he convinced Wallace to allow him (Darwin) to present both their findings - okay that's hearsay. So you know lots about Darwin, but have probably never heard of Wallace, who I feel was just as intrepid and incredible as Darwin. Wallace developed many of his ideas on natural selection during an eight-year expedition to modern-day Indonesia, specifically in the area of Sulawesi and the Togean Islands. He discovered that the animals in Sulawesi were more closely related to those found in Australia than to those found in Asia. Wallace concluded that Sulawesi was located on a sort of boundary line that separates the two biological regions, now known as the Wallace line and the transitional region around it is called Wallacea. Wallace found that 64 percent of the mammals in this area are not found anywhere else on earth. I find Wallace fascinating, perhaps mostly because living in Thailand, we are so close to this incredible history of the understanding of evolution. The National Geographic has a brief introduction to Wallace and there is a lot more to read online. Unlike the Galapagos that served as the impetus for Darwin's similar theory of evolution, the Togean Islands are not touristy and very quiet. The seas are spectacularly clear, but they do lack the abundance of large fish as the area was overfished before it became protected. It's not easy to get to the Togean Islands, but I don't mind that.

The Banda Islands are just a few tiny specks on world maps and many times they are not even shown. There was a time when these islands were amongst the most prized for the Netherlands, England and other European nations, and were better known as the Spice Islands. The islands first came to my attention after reading Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton. The tales of ferocious war, subterfuge and finally treaties caught my imagination. Not so for the rest of my family who rolled their eyes, until they read that there were great scuba diving opportunities in Banda. The area is particularly famous for schooling Hammerhead sharks. Suddenly, these islands didn’t seem so far away! Well actually, they are far away! When we began to make enquiries, we quickly learnt that flexibility was key. Although there are scheduled planes and ferries, they sometimes don’t leave or arrive! It takes about 24 hours to get there from Bangkok and the closer we got the more remote they seemed. After flying in overnight from Jakarta, the ferry from Ambon took six hours, and for most of those hours there was no land in sight, just occasional sightings of dolphin pods. Finally, a rocky top appeared on the horizon signaling we were entering the Banda Sea. Around us were islands that seemed to be green with forests, curved crescents of beaches and along the edges a few dwellings, jetties and small boats. We had pictured remote islands, not very populated, electricity for part of the day and perhaps spotty wifi. Banda is certainly for the intrepid traveller, those looking for more than a beach, a sunset and a drink with an umbrella; however, although remote to us, they are well populated with a thriving economy. They are a group of eleven volcanic islands in the eastern part of Indonesia between Papua and Sulawesi, part of Maluku province. This area is still a big producer of nutmeg, mace and cinnamon. Speculation is that the Arabs, Chinese and Indians were amongst the first outsiders to trade in nutmeg and mace from the Banda Islands. In the 16th century the Europeans arrived. Nutmeg became a miracle cure to Europeans and fierce battles were waged as the Dutch sought to control the nutmeg trade. At one point, anyone who was not Dutch and came upon the islands was beheaded resulting in almost a complete wipeout of the ethnic population. The Dutch East India company (Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie or VOC) was so focused on the trade monopoly that in 1667 the Dutch agreed the British could keep the swampy island of New Amsterdam in North America and in return, the British would vacate the small island of Pulau Run in the Banda Sea. With this, the VOC established a monopoly on nutmeg until the 19th century and by that time the island of New Amsterdam was already making its mark on the world as Manhattan, New York. Die hard scuba divers seem to love the Bandas even though they are difficult to get to. The Banda Sea sits in the middle of an area known as the Coral Triangle. The busiest season is in October and November when schools of divers drop down to experience the larger schools of Hammerhead sharks. The area offers great visibility, usually 30 – 50 metres, and pristine coral reefs are abundant. There are magnificent walls facing the open blue ocean dropping to 50 or 60 metres with many varieties of large gorgonian sea fans and barrel sponges. These walls attract schooling barracuda, jacks, tuna, mackerel and other large pelagic. The big reef favourites are Batu Kapal, which is a rock rising out of the water with several bomis; Pohon Miring is situated on the northeast of Banda Besar known for strong currents and an abundance of fish with a nice swim through; Pulau Hatta has some nice sites including Umbrella Rock where big pelagic, schools of bumphead parrotfish and turtles are often seen. There are only three or four dive operators in the area. We chose to go with Blue Motion Divers who work out of Baba Lagoon Guesthouse. Tuta and his crew run a well organised diving operation with a good balance of safety and freedom to explore. Typically, four divers are paired to a dive master and the boat drops them off at five minute intervals to avoid crowding. With so few dive boats in the area, divers often get to experience the dive sites on their own. Most people arrive in the Bandas through the port of Banda Neira. The Bahari ferry from Ambon only comes in twice a week and its arrival galvanises activity on the island. The ferries disgorge supplies, tourists and business people while motorbikes with coolers precariously balanced race through town with ocean-caught fish that will get better prices on the mainland. In harvest season, sacks of nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and almonds will compete for space. We were lucky enough to hit durian season and the impassioned haggling for the most stringent smelling, ripest fruit! Tourism makes up only a small percentage of the local economy here, and the upside for tourists is very easy going, friendly people who are genuinely interested in talking and not always trying to sell you a tour, a souvenir or a t-shirt. Banda Neira gives you the feeling of being caught in time. Colonial architecture intersperses with local homes. Wander around the village and you will see many remnants of history – old tombstones, old walls with Dutch inscriptions and empty colonial homes that are now used for government offices, schools or tourism. We enjoyed exploring Benteng Belgica, the better preserved of the two 17th century Dutch forts on the island. It is open every day from 4pm and you can wander freely. Go at sunset to get a stunning view of Gunung Api, still classified as an active volcano, and which sits just a five minute boat ride across the water. If you head out to Gunung Api in the morning, you can walk up to the top of the volcano, sit amongst hot, smoking stones and take in the bird’s eye view of the Banda Sea. The path is clear, but can get tricky on the way down with many loose stones. A spice tour is a must while you are in the Banda islands. One night over a dinner of kesar (almond topped) eggplants, nutmeg chicken and Banda fish, we booked ourselves into a tour the next day. By mid morning, we jumped in a boat with Ayu, our young guide and within ten minutes we were at Banda Besar, the largest island in the Bandas and home to many nutmeg plantations. The island seems even more laid back than Banda Neira, and for good reason. Most people on this island are relatively well off and own small scale nutmeg plantations in the forest. The nutmeg grows in the shade of hundred year old Kenari almond trees. The fleshy outside fruit is used in jams and cooking, the red mace covering is dried and sold separately from the innermost nut which is nutmeg. We wander down shady streets and take care not to step on mats of nutmeg and mace drying on the side. Halfway up the hill, we take a quick sidestep to the Hollandia fort which offers another view of Gunung Api and a wide view of the closer Banda islands. Ayu is one of those quiet but determined types. Originally from Banda, she did a BA in English Literature in Makassar and now is applying for scholarships to study sustainable tourism. While doing her BA she assembled a group of friends who started education programmes on plastic waste and tour guiding. She wants to educate the generations younger than her, to give them the knowledge to protect the area from the plastic waste that is destroying many other places. Like most of the people we met, she was fiercely proud of her heritage on the islands and could spend hours chatting about the history and folklore of the area. Surprisingly, there are quite a few guesthouses to choose from. Baba Lagoon Guesthouse and the Maulana Hotel are amongst the oldest and are located on the water facing Gunung Api. The Maulana was a regular stop for ocean explorer Jacques Costeau and has seen the likes of Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, Sarah Ferguson and others. Cilu Bintang has beautiful large rooms in true colonial style and overlooks the two 17th century forts. Other smaller guesthouse such as the Delfica and the Nutmeg Tree offer cheaper but still good accommodations. We stayed at Baba Lagoon Guesthouse, whose friendly staff over-fed us with breakfasts of local-style pancakes with homemade nutmeg jam and eggs, an abundance of local specialties for afternoon snacks and always good coffee. As the location for Blue Motion divers, Baba Lagoon also gave us the convenience of wandering out of our rooms and directly onto the dive boat. This guesthouse doesn’t serve dinner, which was a great opportunity for us to wander the town at night. Although there are many places to get good food (The Maulana and Delfica were our favourites), the best was at the local market. Stop at one of the fish vendors, choose your fish and pick it up after 30 minutes when it will be grilled for you. Accompany that with some spicy nasi goreng and vegetables which will be wrapped in paper and get your fingers ready for eating! Six days in Banda passed magnificently. The two scuba divers went out on the boat every day, and the non-scuba (me) enjoyed snorkeling and found plenty of places to explore on land. We had planned on seven days, but at dinner on the fifth night, we learned that the Bahari ferry had been chartered by government officials and had arrived a day early, which meant it was leaving a day early. In the end, everything fulfilled our expectations, even the unscheduled ferry! We’re already booked for high season in October and getting our cameras ready for the schooling hammerheads! Getting to Banda Neira: From Jakarta it is best to take the Lion Air flight to Ambon, which connects well with the six hour Bahari ferry. The ferry is scheduled to leave on Saturday and Tuesday mornings from Ambon and returns on Sunday and Wednesday. You can also fly from Ambon to Banda Neira but are allowed only 10kgs of luggage. The Pelni company operates overnight and 14 hour ferries with cabins. We recommend booking your return flight from Ambon to Jakarta at the last minute to avoid change fees. Contacts: Blue Motion Diving and Baga Lagoon Guesthouse: Rafa or Tuta contact@bluemotion.com Maulana Hotel: Mita Alwi info@themaulana.com Tour Guide Ayu: srirahayukadir88@yahoo.com

A group of 31 islands in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesia offers prolific sightings of marine life. When you have a mixed group of people, it is always difficult to find a destination that suits all. In August 2018, our group of seven people ranged from very experienced divers to snorkelers and non-swimmers. We headed off to Derawan. Getting to Derawan from our home in Bangkok would take us 24 hours. Geographically it is not far, but when we travelled it necessitated a Bangkok - Jakarta flight, an overnight in Jakarta, a flight to Balik Papan, four hours of driving down the coast to Tanjung Batu and a 20 minute speedboat to Derawan Island. As the capital of Indonesia moves to Balik Papan, expect the journey to get easier, but not sure that will be such a good thing? What will you see? Aside from turquoise seas that travel magazines love, look out for turtles, mantas, dolphins, lots of bat fish, the biggest school of barracuda we've ever seen, jellyfish that don't sting, clear, clear water.... Don't go to Derawan if your main motivation is resort life with bars. Not that these don't exist, but that's a far way to go for just that. If you are in search of marine life and appreciate a local vibe, small scale dive boats and really good diving, you're in for a treat. Full Disclosure I'm not a diver. The divers in my family are not writers, but they are photographers so head on over to the photo section of this website for their photos. Breakfast with Turtles Come quickly, there's a huge turtle, oh there's another and over there another..... Having had plenty of time to rest during our 24 hour journey, we were up early and ready for some adventure. None of us had really done much research, we blindly followed @bromar, secure in the knowledge he wouldn't go back to a dive spot he didn't like. He'd been here about a year earlier for a few days with some Indonesian friends. so it was with much excitement that on our very day that eggs and coffee were left to cool, while we looked over the deck down into incredibly clear water as hawksbill turtles swam below us making it the best breakfast ever. What a way to start! Kakaban Island Want to go for a swim in a lake full of jellyfish? Kakaban is a large coral atoll in the Derawan Archipelago. It has very little actual beach area, and is heavily covered with mangrove forests. Arriving on the beach, you can follow a set of wooden steps all the way up a hill, coming down on the other side to a brackish lake. This is one of only two places on earth hope to stingless jellyfish. That's right, you can jump into this lake with jellies all around you, and even touch them! If you ever felt the urge to know what it would be like to touch a box jelly without a sting, here's your chance. Unfortunately, we got to Kakaban after a large tour group had just landed, so it wasn't as incredible as it could have been - but a part of that was probably that we hadn't expected to see so many people in an area that seemed quite hard to get to! Barracuda! As if non-stinging jellyfish weren't enough for one day, we climbed back into our boat and headed out around the bend. The divers dropped into the water with their gear and quickly disappeared from sight, leaving us snorkelers to leisurely get off the boat.. Everytime we were in the water there was always lots to see; it was really tempting to hover close above the coral shelf, but fear of finding ourselves standing on coral, kept us a little further out. We had only just got back into the boat after exploring the area, when the boatman insisted we jump back in! Not far from where we jumped in we could hover over an incredibly large school of barracuda, it was absolutely incredible - something I never could have thought I'd see as a snorkeler. Our divers came up from 25m through the middle of this school. Watch their video here. Turtles, Turtles, Turtles The area around Sangalaki island is known for its large population of turtles. The island has a turtle nursery run by the local government. Fortunately for us, the manager of our dive resort has a connection with the nursery and arranged for us to have a visit. The turtle nursery is open for all visitors. Rangers watch the turtles lay their eggs and night and mark the spots, noting the time so they know when the eggs will be ready to hatch. A ranger called us over and asked Matthew to start digging in a seemingly unmarked spot. matt used his hands to dig into the sand. soon h e was down to about a foot and appeared hesitant. "Keep digging,"was the instruction and not long after he saw a little baby turtle, he carefully kept digging some more and more and more and more turtles appeared! It seemed that within about three minutes there were about fifty baby turtles all trying to scramble out of that hole! We caught each of them and dropped them into a bucket. We saw hundreds of baby turtles in buckets and in larger tanks. Amongst the other tourists was an angry woman accusing the rangers of being cruel to the newly born turtles by crowding them into buckets from which they were furiously trying to climb out. She hadn't taken the time to find out that these babies were being given the opportunity to strengthen their legs and bodies so that on their scamper from sand to sea, they could be fast and strong enough to swim away from predators. Our experience on Sangalaki was magical. I had been looking forward to going to the turtle nursery, but seeing the turtles hatch in the sand was absolutely incredible! HooRAY! We had barely got over our turtle excitement, but the next day was to bring even more. We headed back to the area near Sangalaki island with a promise of seeing manta rays. We wandered around a bit and it seemed like not much was going to be happening. The divers suited up and headed into the depths, and having the boat to ourselves, I opened my book and settled in for a relaxing read. Barely a page in, the boatman was shouting excitedly. ""Jump in, Jump in, he said, "Quickly, quickly!" Popping my head under water I saw a little far away two mantas, their smooth glide through the water was so mesmerising I couldn't get enough. Something made me turn around and I realised there were three mantas around me - two fully black and one with a white belly. They were really close, they spent a good 15 minutes 'playing' with me, moving all around me, sliding underneath and then around. At one point I turned to see a fourth in the distance, and when I turned back the three had moved far away into the distance - so quickly and smoothly I had to check that I hadn't been dreaming. Absolutely incredible! Sadly, no whale sharks Bromar had arranged a trip to see pods of whale sharks. They were quite a long way from our island, we would have to leave at 4am to get there and back. That wasn't the problem. Unfortunately our time in Derawan was during the time of the full moon and local lore prevented anyone being willing to take us to see the whale sharks. It just means we have to go back! ...But the dolphins wished us farewell A bit disappointed not to be heading out to see whale sharks, we still enjoyed a day around Maratua island. It was our last day and as we headed back, we were treated to a pod of dolphins who kept with us for a good length of time enjoying the bow wave. It was the perfect ending to seven days of non stop WOWs. Accommodation While in the Derawan Archipelago, we stayed at Borneo Divers. The rooms were simple, clean and comfortable. Each room had its own toilet. Our package included our meals - at the time we were there the kitchen was led by a chef who used to run a Japanese restaurant. He provided very tasty meals. One of our group, stayed behind a couple of days and he allowed her to observe in the kitchen as he cooked up his catch of the day. Bromar and Jon appreciated the space they were given to manage and set up their cameras. All in all, a great stay.