According to Wikipedia, Indonesia consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles). With over 280 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most-populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world’s most populous island, is home to more than half of the country’s population. We were travelling half way around the world to visit one tiny island; Siladen, off the coast of North Sulawesi.

The flight out with Singapore Airlines was long, 13.5 hours, but uneventful. We arrived in Changi Airport, Singapore at 05:30 local time (22:30 UK time) and killed four hours in the airport before the onward leg with Singapore AIrlines’ subsidiary Scoot for the five hour flight to Manado, North Sulawesi. The final leg from Manado to Siladen Island was in one of their fleet of diving day boats.

“Tropical Paradise” is a bit over-used but it is hard to find a better way to describe Siladen. It is a small, sandy island with a footpath running through the trees from the landing pier to the resort. The wooden accommodation cabins are clustered around a central pool and dining hall, although dinner is a likely to be at tables on the beach. Our cabin in the trees had a four-poster bed – with mosquito nets – and an outdoor bathroom and shower. Rustic but very comfortable.

Each day was much like the one before; get up, have breakfast, check which dive boat we were on, wander to the dive boat and confirm our kit was there, dive, post-dive beer and swim, shower, dinner, a cocktail or two, bed… and repeat!

Variations to this routine were minor, perhaps being dropped off at a different beach because the tide was too low to use the jetty and driven back through the locals’ village on a golf buggy. But it was very much “life is a beach, and then you dive!”

Diving was all local with dive sites around Siladen Island and its bigger neighbours, Bunaken Island and Manadotua Island as well as along the coast of the mainland. It was a great mixture of wall dives with loads of turtles and baby sharks (do do di do di do!) resting in crevices, and muck dives looking for small creatures. This was definitely not Steve’s trip for technology though. The LED head failed on his dive torch after a couple of days and then his GoPro also gave up the ghost, but there was still enough footage to make a video (see below).

Dive Logs

Date	Location	Notes
22/9/22	Jalan Musak (Mainland)	Check out dive with Debbie and dive guide Ferry. 8kg and slightly heavy. Baby white tip reef shark, porcupine fish, different types of pipefish, decorator crab, blue spotted stingray, couple of nudibranchs, lionfish, black cuttlefish… many other things I don’t know the names of!
23/9/22	Bualo, Manadotua Island	Wall dive with reef on right. Saw a squat lobster as we descended then torch battery ran out! Was overweighted at 8kg
23/9/22	Siladen Timur (Siladen East)	Wall dive on the other side of the island where we are staying. Saw blue spotted stingray and hawksbill turtle. Dropped weight to 7kg. Much better buoyancy.
24/9/22	Tiwoho (Mainland)	Muck dive on sandy bottom, ending at the solitary pinnacle that was like a rick in the desert. Mainly looking for small stuff. Saw a couple of ribbon eels, one black with a yellow stripe (juvenile) the other blue and yellow (adult male).
24/9/22	Pangalisang, Bunaken Island	Very pretty wall dive. Saw a lobster when we first descended, leaf scorpion fish, crocodile fish, scorpion fish, titan triggerfish, several nudibranchs and four turtles.
25/9/22	Fukui, Bunaken Island	Coral rubble trough between two reefs. School of barracuda on top. Got some nice video of turtles that were very indifferent to divers and just ignored us.
25/9/22	Lekuan 2, Bunaken Island	Wall dive famous for the number of turtles. We saw around 20 but also leaf scorpion fish, moray, titan trigger fish. Fantastic dive!
25/9/22	Tiwoho (Mainland)	Night dive. Struggled to take photos with GoPro in one hand and Debbie’s torch in the other – mine had broken. Crocodile fish buried in the sand, nidibranchs, cute box fish, decorator crab, yellow ghost pipefish, grey moray, scorpion fish, stargazer, conch, green and white banded eel, shrimp.
26/9/22	Budo 1 (Mainland)	Muck dive. Dancing fish, crocodile fish, scorpion fish, nudibranchs.
26/9/22	Tanjung Pangi, Bunaken Island	Wall dive, turle on shelf, white tipped reef sharks on shelf, couple of pipefish, masked puffer fish.
27/9/22	Tanjung Usai, Bangka	Go Pro failed! Cuttlefish, pair of fire dartfish, giant mora, two white eyed moray, garden eel, schools of yellow fusiliers, small boxfish or cowfish, long nosed hawkfish.
27/9/22	Sahaung, Bangka	Beautiful soft corals (dark green, orange, yellow, purple) on basalt pinnacles rising to the surface. Loads of nudibranchs, lizard fish, crocodile fish, pygmy seahorse, green frogfish, black saddled toby.
28/9/22	Yellow Coco, Bangka	Sandy Bottom, garden eels, juvenile ribbon eel (black), manta shrimp, scorpion fish
28/9/22	Leukan 1, Bunaken Island	Wall dive. Many interesting creatures; tiny aran octopus, tiny Indian scorpion fish, two titan trigger fish below us, juvenile yellow sweetlips and orange spotted boxfish at the end.
28/9/22	Tanjung Pangi, Bunaken Island	Fast drift along wall. Dropped down to 25m at the start then about 18-20m for the rest of the dive, moving fast with wall on right. Saw loads of turtles resting in the wall and free swimming, spiny lobster in a crevice, four orang-utang crabs in an enenome, two pipefish, titan trigger fish, grey and yellow puffer fish at end while doing safety stop. A fast paced exhilerating dive.
29/9/22	Negri, Manadotua Island	Wall dive, very pretty but didn’t see anything unusual.
29/9/22	Alung Banua, Off Bunaken Oasis resort, Bunaken Island	Wall dive. Baby cuttlefish and crabs, tiny blenny in hole in coral, huge scorpion fish, three titan triggerfish, yellow frogfish, coral grouper in a cave. Black spotted pufferfish with yellow markings on abdomen at end of dive. Loads of turtles.

Logistics

Outbound:	Singapore Airlines SQ 305 depart: London Heathrow (LHR) 20/9/22 09:10 BST arrive: Changi, Singapore (SIN) 21/9/22 05:30 GMT+8 Scoot SQ 8486 depart: Changi, Singapore (SIN) 21/9/22 09:25 GMT+8 arrive: Sam Ratulangi, Manado (MDC) 21/9/22 13:15 GMT+7
Accommodation:	Siladen Resort and Spa Address: Pulau Siladen, Bunaken Marine Park, 95111 Bunaken, Indonesia
Inbound:	Scoot SQ 8469 depart: Sam Ratulangi, Manado (MDC) 30/9/22 15:00 GMT+7 arrive: Changi, Singapore (SIN) 30/9/22 20:30 GMT+8