Togean Islands

The Togeans are deliberately hard to reach. There is no airstrip; the ferry from Ampana is half a day on a slow boat, and that filter is the point. Once you arrive, you stop checking your phone — there is nothing to check.

Stays are simple wooden bungalows, often built over the reef on stilts. You snorkel from the deck, eat what the kitchen caught, and move between islands on a hand-pulled boat.

The Togeans are a marine national park, and the reef is in remarkable shape. Atoll edges drop into deep blue 100 metres from most homestays. A week here resets something.