Back to back luxury resorts with the transfer in between by boat with diving.

First resort in the Siladen Resort and Spa, right in the middle of the Bunaken Marine Park. It is known for massive wall dives. Off the wall there are schooling fish like barracudas, reef sharks, jacks, tuna and napolean wrasse. The park has the nickname "city of turtles" which is mostly green and hawkbills" then there is intense coral diversity and reef life including copious nudibranch species, orangutan crabs, ornate ghost pipefish, pygmy seahorses and frogfish.

The resort is decadent luxury. Siladen.com some of the images have been added to this description, you can see more at their website.

We do five days there and then transfer to the Coral Eye for 5 more days, also in northern Sulawesi on Bangka Island. There is a mix of reef and black and white sand much diving at this location, but with a 4:1 dive guide to diver ratio you get to make the call daily. More stunning coral triangle actions with pinnacles and big life. But also with macro critter diving.

Best part of transfer Day: you dive on the way to the next resort.

Again the resort in luxurious Coral Eye resort to see more images of the find resort surroundings.

Nothing about this trip is not high end, however, there are two basic packages:

1) Luxury Villa at Siladen and Beachfront Pool Villa at Coral Eye

and

2) Garden View Villa at Siladen and Superior room at Coral Eye

It is all pretty over the top awesome, but you can explore the difference on the websites:

Siladen.com

Coral Eye resort

Siladen resort is only 20km away from MDC airport (Manado)

Manado Sam Ratulangi International Airport (MDC) is well connected, with regular international flights to and from Singapore operated by Scoot (part of the Singapore Airlines group).

Within Indonesia, the airport has daily connections to Jakarta (CGK), Denpasar–Bali (DPS), Makassar (UPG), and Surabaya (SUB), served by major airlines such as Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Batik Air, and Citilink.

There are also daily direct flights from Manado (MDC) to Sorong (SOQ) , the gateway to Raja Ampat, operated by Lion Air and TransNusa, with a flight time of around 1 hour 15–25 minutes.

To get to Coral Eye we will use resort included boat transfer, and Coral Eye will get us to airport on the way home or onward.

For those on the Samambaia immediately preceding the this trip, we get off that boat the morning of the 21st and will make our way to MDC over the course of a full day with an overnight on the way to break up the trips. I will send my flights to the group as a point of reference as I normally do.

No add ons for this trip, everything included already!

Because you don't live forever and you can't take it with you!

Also, it starts one day after we get off the Samambaia in Triton Bay, so we will be connecting the two luxury trips.

This is our first time to the region, and we want to do it in style. North Sulawesi (Manado Airport code MDC) is world famous diving, and it is a overdue check on the bucket list.

These two resorts are very well respected in the industry and we really like that the day we change resorts is not a wasted day, you dive on the way.

You can skip this section if you have been on a trip before, you know us already!

For those of you thinking about your first trip with this dive family, welcome! One of the best reasons to come along is the other people that will be there. Good people and fun - and mostly (but not all!) divers. On any given trip it is 2/3rd or more repeat travelers.

The only people that will be there for sure though are Matt and Sheila. While we do take input, but the travel plan is mostly "where do Matt and Sheila want to go?" then, "let's invite our friends!" This leads us to the world's best diving destinations, and some non diving trips that are bucket list worthy!

Matt grew up in Friendswood outside of Houston, went to Texas A&M, got a Ph.D in molecular biology at UCSD, then started Island Divers Hawaii in Honolulu and ran it for 25 years and is now retired except for this travel program. Sheila grew up in California, moved to Oahu at 19, worked in the tourism and maritime industry with many hats (including boat captain at Island Divers) until she retired with Matt in 2024.

We welcome everyone to try traveling with our group of dive friends. Return invitation is curated, but all reasonable people are welcome back - be nice to local staff, hold off on political rants, dive reasonably safely, no incessant complaining if things don't go your way. We call our return guests/friends Dive Travel Alumni. We keep a special email list for them. Would love to put you on it!