LIVEABOARD BOAT, RESORT OR HOMESTAY
About a year ago, I was looking at my longtime friend, Mark Strickland’s Bluewater Travel’s website, when I first read about Raja Ampat. Since I travel to Thailand about twice a year, I am always looking for destinations via Bangkok – and Raja Ampat, Indonesia sounded amazing!
Sadly, I couldn’t join Mark for his liveaboard dive trip to Raja Ampat, but his pictures and description of the far, far off the beaten path dive destination had me super intrigued. I began my usual research of Raja Ampat, reading blogs and talking to friends who had been there. Everyone raved about the place.
Decision made – my husband and I were going to Raja Ampat.
How to get to Raja Ampat from Bangkok
Coincidentally, my daughter Amber and her husband were planning a trip to Bali, while my husband Eric and I were planning to be in Bangkok.
“Let’s meet!” I suggested.
Thus, began the long and involved search to a place I never even knew existed until last year. As usual, we were all flying on credit card points. My husband and I were using United points from Denver to Bangkok and Amber was flying with United points from Denver to Bali.
To save us some money, I routed our free United tickets from Denver to Bangkok, with a return ticket from Jakarta, including a stopover in Bangkok, to Denver. By using my free United stopover, I only needed to purchase our one way flights from Bangkok to Jakarta, where we would meet Amber and her husband.
I booked my Bangkok to Jakarta tickets on Air Asia, which I highly recommend for really inexpensive flights!
Next we booked our flights with Batik Airlines from Jakarta via Makassar to Sorong (4 hours 30 minutes). Since the flight from Jakarta was overnight, we would arrive in Sorong early in the morning. Perfect – no overnight stay in Sorong.
Next we needed a place to stay in one of the islands off of Sorong. When we first looked at Raja Ampat Homestays, we were thinking the accommodations were just a bit too rustic.
Why not pamper ourselves, since our flight to Asia was free?
It didn’t take long before the exorbitantly expensive resorts, made the Homestays look far more appealing.
Besides, we would be helping the locals and getting a much more cultural experience.
Since our main plan was to dive as often as possible we chose the Corepen Homestay, located on Gam Island, which had great reviews and would only cost us $28 per night for food and lodging! The Raja Ampat Dive Center was also located at the same location, and also had fantastic reviews.
The following is my daughter’s excellent recap of our trip, including a shocking incident that happened to me on our last night at Corepen.
Traveling to ‘So Wrong’
Guest Post by Amber Dunlap
It was close to midnight, when we met Mom and Dad in Jakarta’s ‘Ja KAR ta’s, massive ghost town of an airport. The airport consists of a spiderweb of gates, that are a half mile long and appear to serve absolutely no purpose.
From Jakarta, we had two more overnight flights to get to Sorong, which is pronounced ‘so wrong’, but if you pronounce it ‘soar wrong‘, the locals stare at you like you’re insane.
It was a new experience being in an Asian country, where I didn’t speak the language. Actually, a first — since I am fluent in Thai and all of my previous trips to Asia as an adult, were always to Thailand.
In our previous week in Bali, I had mastered a few Indonesian phrases that we all had practiced before leaving Denver. Selemat pagi (good morning), and a handful of other useful phrases and of course the most important word: toilet (which is the same word in Indonesian).
We were all a bit nervous flying in Indonesia, so soon after the ill-fated Lion Air crash, but we leaned our chairs back (the one inch that they reclined), and tried our best to relax.
Relaxing on an overnight flight on Batik Airlines is a bit of a challenge. The lights were never dimmed and throughout the night it was: Lights on, Lights off.
Our two flights were both about 2-2:30 hours each, one departing from Jakarta at midnight, and the second one departing from Makassar at 4 am.
We were completely passed out when the LIGHTS came back ON and dinner was being served. NONE of us ever expected meals on our cheap flight and at 2 am, does anyone really need crappy chicken and rice?
I would understand if I was jet lagged and it was the middle of the night, flying from Tokyo to Bangkok. But no, TWICE at 2 am and 4:30 am, the flight attendants physically shook me awake, so I could tell them that I didn’t want dinner.
Overall I would give the pilots a B+, and with all the horror stories we had read about delays, we would fly them again. Everything was just fine, except the waking me up part.
When we arrived in Sorong, a flock of vultures descended onto us for a taxi and we picked our guy and off we went. Sorong is a sad city of poverty, hardship and trash. Who knows where the money goes in this area, because obviously they don’t have it.
If you ask, the locals are Papuan, not Indonesian. There is a lot of turmoil in the population. The further east you head, the less government presence and support and the less money. The Papuan people look different and seem to have to fight for every $.25 they have.
Our taxi ride from Sorong airport to the ferry harbor, was less than 10 minutes. The ferry harbor is a barren dirt parking lot, where people crowd in a sort of line, buy their tickets, board the ferry with 500 other passengers and wait. And wait.
“The ferry leaves at 9, but not on time,” a friendly Papuan man told us as we waited to depart.
It was as if, “9 but not on time” was an actual measurement of time.
I think they basically leave once the ferry is full, so finally at 9:40 am after many games of peek a boo with the cute and extremely well-behaved Papuan children sitting next to us, we were on our way to Waisai.
Two hours later we arrived in beautiful Raja Ampat, in the “city” of Waisai, on the island of Waigeo. But, this is not where our traveling ends. We are then greeted by this massive construction site of a boat terminal which I believe will never be completed.
Each of us purchase the Raja Ampat Marine Park Entry Permit, which costs $100 and are good for a year, so we might pop back over in the next 340 days. Who knows
This is also our last chance to buy drinks and snacks, or use a flush toilet. Apparently, there is a toilet behind the ticket office. We didn’t realize this until we wandered over to the large empty building located across the vacant dirt parking area. That toilet ranked in the top ten of worst toilets ever. Absolutely filthy.
The “speed boat” to our Homestay on Gam Island, is a long fiberglass long tail style boat with two 15cc motors on it. That baby sped along at, at least 10 mph! What was interesting is because of the archipelago, they were okay having such kettle power. The seas really didn’t get terribly rough and we would be close to land the whole time, popping from island to island.
After 3 flights, a ferry passage and a 30 minute “speedboat” ride, we were at long last home, for the next 6 days.
The lay of the land
I forgot to mention that on all those boats and planes, I had a fever. My husband Bradley suggested that maybe I had dengue, or malaria, and that really calmed my nerves. Nothing like traveling to a place a million miles from a hospital or a doctor clinic, whilst wondering what type of tropical ailment you’ve caught.
After a lot of reading, I learned that my fever would need to be much worse and likely accompanied by a rash, to either be dengue, or malaria, so I eliminated those vacation killing diseases from my google-self diagnosis. And of course, I am never, never sick, unless I am on vacation in some remote corner of the world.
Thankfully, my fever broke in less than 24 hours and I could dive without fear, until quickly being replaced by an incessant cough. Not so great for diving or those sleeping near me, but luckily the cough drops I remembered to bring did manage to help.
We checked into our bungalow and couldn’t have been happier. The range of awful that homestay bungalows could have, was potentially huge — but the Corepen Homestay bungalows were great!
There were clean sheets, a hole-less mosquito net, a raised bed and hammocks! And the beachfront view was unbelievable!
A fan would’ve made it 5-star, but you get what you get. For $28 a day, we were fed 3 meals a day for two people, and provided water and an over water hut! Sold.
Exhausted from our long trip to reach Raja Ampat, we happily swung on our hammocks over looking the sea, and napped for most of our first day.
The dining shack was a few huts down, where you mingled with other weary travelers. Not any other Americans were staying at our homestay, nor seemed likely to be arriving.
There was the guy from Vancouver who wasn’t even a diver, but loved to snorkel; 2 Belgian women; a mother and her daughter; a couple from Holland; and a girl from Australia. The oldest of the group, the Belgian mother named Miriam, seemed to be the one in the know.
She told us who to talk to when you needed things and how she had been begging for fruit all week; where the toilet paper was; where a secondary western toilet with a seat was located. And I’m sure more in the know advice, that we really didn’t care about.
Seat or no seat, I won’t be sitting, thanks.
They complained about how badly they wanted papaya, and that there was a tree down the beach.
We walked to said papaya tree, and there wasn’t any ripe papaya on it. Not sure what they expected the villagers to do with that!
After dinner, we got our first nightly dive briefing from Sandy, (the Indonesian owner of the Raja Ampat Dive Center) and were ready for our first day of diving the next morning. I think we went to sleep around 8 pm and couldn’t have been happier.
The next few days were diving, diving, eating and sleeping. The coral reefs were as good as promised, if not better. So much diversity in fish and soft coral and hard coral. We saw black tip, white tip, reef sharks, manta rays, blue spotted sting ray, marbled sting ray, dolphins, turtles, barracudas and two wobegon sharks!
This was our first encounter with a wobegon during our night dive and they were so cool and prehistoric looking.
Our Indonesian dive master Harry told us, “Sometimes you see the tail, sometimes you see the head, sometimes you don’t see them.”
I thought this was a missed opportunity, so I modified it to:
“Sometimes you see the tail, sometimes you see the head, sometimes wobeGONE!”
We also saw our first two seahorses, which were a “drab brown” — I was really hoping for something more magical in the coloring.
Our night dive was beyond incredible! We simply met at the dive center, geared up, then walked right from our huts into the house reef.
It was so magical, I couldn’t believe my Mom didn’t want to do it AT ALL.
I literally twisted her arm and dragged her in. Now she can’t stop talking about it, as one of her all time favorite dives.
Moray eels, electric clams and the elusive walking shark. I sadly missed him, but my parents loved him. He’s less than two feet long and quite adorable I hear. They “walk” through the sea grass on their front fins and graze along the bottom at night and are only found in Raja Ampat.
The Fight for Blue Magic
One story worth sharing, is that the elder Belgium lady and my parents, got in a bit of a skirmish. My Mom wanted to return to Blue Magic, where we saw 3 manta rays on our first day, because my father had issues on that first dive and had to surface early, which meant my Mom (as his dive buddy) also ended up surfacing only 30 minutes into their dive.
So on the last day, she begged Sandy to change the agenda and return to Blue Magic. He easily obliged her and the rest of the guests could just deal with it.
Well the current was stronger on this dive than the last — side note: current is strong everywhere in Raja Ampat. The Blue Magic dive site is a cleaning station where mantas come to have other animals eat off of them, so they hang out and we all love seeing mantas.
But, we learned you needed to hook onto a rock formation and basically blow in the wind to stay in place.
We mentioned to our dive guide Harry, that we didn’t own reef hooks and Miriam, the Belgian lady, begins to give us yet another unsolicited piece of advice, telling us that we can deflate our BCD’s and just sit on the bottom.
After six days of Miriam’s all knowing presence, my extremely patient father had reached his limit.
He gave her THE LOOK and said in THE TONE; “I don’t need you to educate me — I was a diving instructor for ten years.”
Silence.
Nothing else was said by anyone until after that dive.
At lunch, Miriam and her daughter ate at a different table than the rest of the guests and tucked their noses down like beaten dogs.
I don’t believe they were sad to see us leave. Whoopsies.
Stairway to Heaven
Of course, we had to see the famous Pianemo Island viewpoint — the place where a million selfies get raving reviews.
Located about 38 kilometers from Gam Island, our boat trip to the viewpoint in West Papua, would take a few hours there and back.
Thankfully, Michelle, the young Tasmanian lady who had become our fearless leader, had the brilliant idea of including a dive stop on our day long outing.
It was stunning!!! But HOT! I would’ve paid $100 for an ice cream cone, but lack of electricity seems to eliminate frozen things. There was absolutely no alcohol to be found on many of the islands.
The people were very devout Christians and said that’s why they didn’t drink beer. I found that a bit odd, but didn’t push it. The British couple, who showed up half way through our trip with a fancy drone, arranged with Sandy for beer to be delivered to our homestay, but we didn’t bother at that point.
We were thrilled to have Michelle, accompanying us on our day trip. She was a riot, traveling alone, 25 and a school teacher. She was a vegetarian, dairy and gluten free when possible, and really couldn’t eat anything.
Her love for animals courses through her. When we saw dolphins, she jumped off the moving boat to try and swim with them. It killed me. Like a 25 year old child, she was just so adorable.
I thought she was nuts, thinking she could keep up with dolphins. But she said she could hear them, and then I was immediately jealous. It was a wonderful day trip and the coral at Melissa’s Garden was amazing too!!!
The Shocking Swede
Salamet Mayam or Goodnight
Mom made a Swedish friend named Magnus on our last night. He seemed like a cool dude, had just come from Komodo and visited Sipadan and other bucket list dive locations. He was a roofer in Sweden and worked 9 months on and 3 months off. Yes, we were quite jealous!
We exchanged stories and photos at dinner and really thought, too bad Magnus had not been with us for the past few days.
Then we all left the dining shack and Mom and Magnus stayed to have a smoke. Within seconds he started to tell her about this pornographic video game, which he and his buddies spent most his nights playing.
He was quite detailed, and there’s a chance, she will never be the same.
Unbeknownst to me, I decided to wander back and offer him my sunscreen and mosquito repellent, because that crazy white giant brought neither. I didn’t hear any part of this story, but Mom’s eyes had told me that I had saved her.
She quickly saw her opportunity to escape with me and we strolled back to our huts. Since we were all sleeping in huts made from coconut tree leaves, a private conversation is not totally guaranteed. But the waves crash on the beach all night, so you are probably just fine.
Fearing my father would once again, confront another Corepen guest, with THE LOOK and THE TONE, my Mom waited until we were safely on the ferry to tell us this story and was still grossed out 14 hours later.
And to think, I was just going to follow that creep on Instagram, guess I’ll pass.
Thoughts of Dying Before Reaching Home
We took the ferry back to Sorong, only this time we were much wiser and opted for the VIP seats. Believe me, the small increase in price is well worth the comfort.
Oh how So Wrong does live up to its name.
A short 3 mile taxi ride back to the airport, turned out to be one of the more questionable taxi rides of our trip. The driver was quite sick, but people had been coughing throughout our entire trip, so what’s a few more closely flying germs. Besides, I was coughing pretty badly too, so who was I to judge.
In addition to his coughing fits, our driver had to apply gas at all times to keep his bucket of nuts running. At some point he lifted the console cover up, got out a screwdriver and I swear adjusted the idle. How he could do that from his seat was confusing and yet so impressive, but these little vans were likely built right on top of the engine, as there was no front, or hood.
We got to the airport and swung the door on the bungee cord open (no joke) and were headed back to the real world.
At the Sorong airport, there were a group of four Thais waiting in the check-in line behind us. I tried to discreetly explain to my Mom that her secret language, wasn’t a secret.
We tried about 5 ways of protecting her from saying something like; “I’m gonna go take a poop” in Thai, or worse. But she couldn’t catch my drift and then turned, looked right at them and said: “they’re not Thai.”
Some points to note; they’re wearing matching shirts that have a crest on the sleeve with the Thai flag within it.
They’re eating snacks.
Thais love to eat, and oh yes, they’re speaking Thai.
This became a good laugh, when my Mom finally realized they were indeed, obviously Thai.
And of course, since Thais love to share their food, we were given delicious fruits to eat. I was complimented on my Thai, but when they heard my Mom speak, they remarked; “oh, she doesn’t speak as well as her daughter.”
We swapped a few diving stories and passed the time, as no one was in a hurry to check us in.
An hour later, we boarded our 4th questionable Batik Air flight, heading back to Makassar where just two days prior, the airport had closed due to torrential rains and flooding. All we could do was hope for the best. This time, I welcomed the food cart as I had eaten nothing but rice and chunks of more bone than meat fish and chicken for six days. Oh good, rice and an unidentified protein, yay! Starving Marvin (my Mom) behind me tried to steal my pound cake. I quickly put my headphones back on and slapped her hand.
Makassar was the same joke as the last time. Get off the plane, walk in a circle, get a new boarding pass, go through security, get back on the exact same plane in the exact same seat and fly to Jakarta. Check.
Fifth and final flight of the world’s 150th safest airline. (I’m making that up, it’s not a stat. It could be better or worse? We will never know.)
We were now in Jakarta with 24 hours before our flights back to our respective countries. We booked all this cushion time because everything we read spoke of delays and problems between boats, taxis and planes. But, everything was as on time, as anything on an island is, and went according to plan.
Mom had already done some digging with curbside informants and learned what metered taxi to use and how not to get swindled. Great! We walked passed all the vultures, briefly talking to one who offered a ride for 250,000 rupiah which is less than $20 for a 45 minute ride and seemed reasonable enough.
Eventually getting in Mom’s Bluebird taxi and paying only 160,000 rupiah, did turn out to be a better deal. Again, Mom was right, although the guy couldn’t find the roundabout to get us to the Ritz Carlton Jakarta and dropped us off in front of the mall.
At least it was the same building. We lugged our stinky selves and stinky bags, looking quite classy and walked around to the Ritz.
Judge us they should, but no one did. They greeted us with smiles and warmth, heard my name and whirled us up to the 21st floor for the “Club Level” check in. Works for me.
At the Club level, they informed us that one room was upgraded due to my Elite status (I live for people to talk to me like this) and that we could complete the check in process in the room.
Up again we go to the top floor, walk past the Presidential Suite, (bummer not my upgrade) and arrive at corner suite that rivals many I’ve ever been in. There were two bathrooms, two couches and two TVs! If ever a time we could’ve shared a room it was this one, but we were all thrilled that I had booked two rooms.
After our first heavenly hot shower in a week, we headed down for our free dinner followed by a complimentary chocolate hour and all sorts of other yummies.
The next day we took a little excursion to the National Museum, where a large group of students, followed us like paparazzi. We couldn’t understand why they were so keen to take our photos, giggling and excitedly posing with us, since foreigners these days are commonly seen in Jakarta.
At first, we were happy to oblige, but after the tenth request we realized our photo shoot was never going to end. Fortunately, we found some reprieve in an area of the museum where no photos were permitted.
After wandering around a little market, we got massages in the mall and returned to the Ritz for our complimentary luncheon. Traveling on points has so many perks! My Marriott points covered both of our rooms, all of our meals and even complimentary drinks at Club Level!
It had been an A+ trip with the folks and we hugged them good-bye leaving them at their gate to fly back to Bangkok, as we headed to our gate to fly to Singapore.
On route to Denver, my mystery illness flared up with a vengeance. I puked in a plastic duty free bag, my Singapore Airlines puke bag, and a few more times in the airplane toilet.
I curled up in a pretzel and thought: this is where I am going to die.
Karma’s a bitch. Never again will I tease my husband for his bouts of vacationitis.
A grueling 24 hours later I was back in Denver. The doctor confirmed that I would live and that I was not contagious. I honestly think that I willed whatever bug I caught in Bali, to go dormant while I was in Raja Ampat.
Is a Six Day Stay in Raja Ampat worth the Traveling Time and Cost?
Absolutely, although I recommend a longer stay if at all possible. With such a short window it was difficult to coordinate transfers from Sorong to other islands, but Corepen Homestay was super flexible with their transfer boat.
The ultimate itinerary would be to spend at least two weeks in Raja Ampat, since some of the top dive sites were quite far from Gam Island. That said, Blue Magic and Chicken Reef definitely qualify as world class sites and were only a short boat ride away from Gam Island. Additionally, you would be hard pressed to experience a night dive as spectacular as the house reef in front of Corepen Homestay.
Loved reading this blog article!!
Thanks Larry. Can’t wait to hear about your trip to India!
Its such as you read my mind! You seem to grasp a lot about this, like you wrote
the guide in it or something. I think that you can do with a few % to pressure the message house a bit, but instead of that, that
is wonderful blog. A fantastic read. I’ll certainly be back.