Let me take you guys (and myself) back to 2015.
As you will eventually notice from my posts, I am a total sucker for the waters, islands and beaches. And the further and harder to get to, the better! Very few tourists? Perfect! Bad internet/telco signals? Sure! Rustic bungalows with no AC? Bring it on! Tho having at least a fan with our own toilet are must musts.
So back in June 2015, we decided to explore islands in Indonesia that weren't too commercialised yet and came across Maratua Island and Nabucco Island during our research. They are located at East Kalimantan. Getting there required hopping onto 2 different flights (KL > Balikpapan > Berau), staying a night at Berau to catch morning boat the next day, couple of hours by land and another 3 hours by speedboat to finally get to Maratua.
Yes, our bums were aching from the long boat ride in a tiny speedboat but when we were approaching the guesthouse we stayed at, the views we saw (pic below) immediately took all our aches and pains away. Long journey but well worth every minute of it!
Maratua is definitely an Island that I would like to visit again. But I hear that they were building an airport on the island so that it'll be easier for tourists to get there. This also means that it will be more commercialised, which means more people :/ But still, definitely worth a visit for its beauty.
Note: All photos are mine.
THIS!:
And THIS!
Our rustic guesthouse for 3 nights:
Food at Maratua Guesthouse is delicious, however a little pricey. Everything is in USD here. The owner of the guesthouse is Pak Jun, a very friendly guy who's jack of all trades. His wife Anna helps out and they have a quite little baby boy who's probably about 4 years old now.
This guesthouse is great for solo travellers and couples looking to just soak in the fresh air, breeze, sun...relax, read and do almost nothing else. It's also great for those who dive and love to snorkel.
And of course, we did our fair share of island hopping, right here:
Kakaban Island - Where you get to swim with millions of stingless jellyfish. There are only 3 places like this in the world - Kakaban island, the Togean islands in Indonesia too, and on Rock Island in Micronesia. Once at Kakaban, the boat man will guide you for a 10 min walk to a lake and that's where you'll start to spot small fish and a plethora of jellyfish.
The pics below don't do justice to how amazing and mesmerizing it was to be able to not only swim with them, but also get to touch them. What do they feel like? Like soft bouncy sponges. Or very soft rubber balls. Very cute.
We then went to Sangalaki Island to look for manta rays! Most times, you'll have to dive to be able to be so close to them, but here, just snorkel and you see more than a dozen of them!
After staying at Maratua Guesthouse for 3 nights, we then took a short boat ride over to Nabucco Island, a private island with only one resort called Nabucco Island Resort. This resort is slightly more modern, with rooms having AC and the likes. Everything here is in Euros. They offer full board stays = room + all meals.
We didn't do much at Nabucco except for lots of relaxing, sleeping, eating, reading, sleeping, eating and sleeping :D
But! We did follow a boat of divers out we snorkeled while they dived. The highlight of the boat ride out was being able to see dolphins swim beside our boat! I have a video of it somewhere, will add it here when I've found it.
Our chalet and the spectacular view:
After saying our goodbyes :( , we headed back to Berau airport, flew to Balikpapan, spent 2 nights there before ending our 8 day journey back to Kuala Lumpur.