On my fifth visit to the Philippines, I chose to begin my trip at a dive location that is still relatively unexplored: Anda, at the southeastern tip of the island of Bohol. I departed from Rome, with a stopover in Taipei, one of the most convenient and functional airports in Asia, before landing in Cebu. It was a practical choice, allowing me to avoid the traffic of Manila and gradually enter the archipelago.

Last year, I took a job in a remote location with far less travel and vacation time than I was used to. After slogging through the months without booking flights or planning dive trips, my collected time off finally reached numbers that would justify a plane ticket. But then the question arose of where to go. The long time away from home and family tugged me toward visiting my mother. However, she resides in the Midwest of the United States, which lacks warm waters and abundant critters to dive with.

I had not previously considered the Halmahera region and had to look it up to find out exactly where it was. For those who do not know, it lies northwest of Raja Ampat. Our liveaboard tour on the MS Gaia Love started in Ternate and Halmahera and then took us via Misool and Raja Ampat back to Sorong.

“Goooood morning, Philippines!” The time was 3:30 a.m., and the voice of Robin Williams^[1] echoed in my head as I drowsily crawled out of bed to turn off the incessant alarm. The goal for the morning was to hike to the top of Alicia Panoramic Park in time to see the sunrise.

The first article, in issue #132, focused on Mark Erdmann, Vice President of Asia Pacific Marine Programmes for Conservation International (CI) and architect of the innovative, broad-based, bottom-up strategy that underpins conservation efforts in the region. Central to Erdmann’s approach was the need to quantify Raja Ampat’s extraordinary biodiversity. The person who played a pivotal and sustained role in that critical undertaking was Gerry Allen, whose contributions have been instrumental in shaping the conservation narrative of this incredible area.

Facing the great blue yonder of the Solomon Sea, Milne Bay opens eastwards like the gaping jaws of a giant saltwater crocodile. Located at the southeastern end of the island of New Guinea, at 10°22’00” S latitude and 150°30’00” E longitude, it has a maximum length of 35km, a maximum width of 15km and a surface area of 525km². The bay is surrounded to the north and to the south by the heavily wooded Stirling Range. The narrow coastal strip on the northern shore is soggy, with sago and mangrove swamps.

On my previous trip to Sumatra, the diving had been stimulating, but I had got a bit carried away with the time underwater on one particular dive. The boat returned to the village of Iboih on Pulau Weh, and I disembarked on the black sandy beach with my equipment and underwater camera. Half an hour later, I was back in my room when I suddenly felt dizzy and was seized with intense vertigo. The walls started dancing in all directions. I crashed onto the bed, nauseous and with a bad headache.

As I slid backwards down a steep slope of black sand, trying desperately to hold my camera steady and focus on a tiny critter no larger than a grain of rice, I could not help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Bali’s underwater world is as challenging as it is breathtaking, and beneath the surface of the warm, turquoise waters lies a treasure trove of marine life, especially for those passionate about macro and super macro underwater photography.

Since arriving in Dili, I had been woken every day by the call of the muezzin at 5:30 a.m. With its historical Portuguese background, I had been under the impression that Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor) would be predominantly Christian. But the mosque behind the guest house where I was staying reminded me that the country had also been under Indonesian rule for almost 25 years, from 1975 to 1999. So, the Muslim influence made sense.