nwflyboy
Contributor
I'm looking around for an appropriate destination for a week following Christmas 2019 (roughly 12/26/2019 through 01/03/2020). I'm looking for, well, the usual stuff that everyone wants...Great diving, good viz, healthy marine environment with lots of fish, comfy accommodations, good food, etc. etc.
We (a couple) are experienced divers (stopped logging dives long ago after 500+), we don't have anything to prove so we're not interested in "aggressor" posturing, we enjoy easy and challenging dives alike. We've been to Indonesia a few times before (Bali, Bunaken, Misool - enjoyed them all of course) and lots of places from the Caribbean to the Andaman Seas. This time we've got just a week, and it's at peak-holiday season (I know this is working against us, it can't be helped) so I know that complicates things a bit (busy, crowded, expensive) - and rainy season in some places that might be otherwise perfect.
Sniffing around for destinations, I'm finding lots of things that at first look intriguing, but then find that many of them are not ideal (some not even open) at the time we want to go (end of December-early January).
So before drilling down into specific resorts (or boats), it might be best to filter simply on: what's good at that time of year?
We're not obsessed with any single thing in particular, instead we prefer a nice mix of stuff (so for example, someplace that is all about muck muck muck, for us that's kinda meh meh meh - some muck and weird little critters is fine, but I don't want to spend a whole week in that); a mix of large and small stuff, walls/reefs plus macro, large dense concentrations of fish plus maybe some pelagics would be ideal.
I'm leaning towards land-based, but would consider a liveaboard (as long is it doesn't require a second mortgage). For land-based, we prefer a nice comfy resort with a bit of luxury (doesn't need to be 5-star); for liveaboard we prefer boats that have their sheet together rather than something that's cheap and funky or struggling to get by.
We want to avoid crowds (to the extent possible), avoid a party destination, and avoid a very, very long slog to get there (starting from Bangkok, I'd like to keep the travel time to the destination to 24-36 hours max if possible).
Places I've been starting to consider include:
Thank you!!!
We (a couple) are experienced divers (stopped logging dives long ago after 500+), we don't have anything to prove so we're not interested in "aggressor" posturing, we enjoy easy and challenging dives alike. We've been to Indonesia a few times before (Bali, Bunaken, Misool - enjoyed them all of course) and lots of places from the Caribbean to the Andaman Seas. This time we've got just a week, and it's at peak-holiday season (I know this is working against us, it can't be helped) so I know that complicates things a bit (busy, crowded, expensive) - and rainy season in some places that might be otherwise perfect.
Sniffing around for destinations, I'm finding lots of things that at first look intriguing, but then find that many of them are not ideal (some not even open) at the time we want to go (end of December-early January).
So before drilling down into specific resorts (or boats), it might be best to filter simply on: what's good at that time of year?
We're not obsessed with any single thing in particular, instead we prefer a nice mix of stuff (so for example, someplace that is all about muck muck muck, for us that's kinda meh meh meh - some muck and weird little critters is fine, but I don't want to spend a whole week in that); a mix of large and small stuff, walls/reefs plus macro, large dense concentrations of fish plus maybe some pelagics would be ideal.
I'm leaning towards land-based, but would consider a liveaboard (as long is it doesn't require a second mortgage). For land-based, we prefer a nice comfy resort with a bit of luxury (doesn't need to be 5-star); for liveaboard we prefer boats that have their sheet together rather than something that's cheap and funky or struggling to get by.
We want to avoid crowds (to the extent possible), avoid a party destination, and avoid a very, very long slog to get there (starting from Bangkok, I'd like to keep the travel time to the destination to 24-36 hours max if possible).
Places I've been starting to consider include:
- Alor (but its rainy season I think, so wrong time?)
- Komodo (definitely a bucket list destination, but seems to be getting crazy popular so crowded, and I'm not sure if the season is wrong?)
- South Maluku/South Halmahera (Sali Bay, Kalimaya, others???)
- Someplace else that I haven't heard of?
Thank you!!!