Bunaken

Bunaken is not a beach destination dressed as a marine park. It is, in plain terms, a flat-topped coral mountain rising 1.5 km from the floor of the Celebes Sea, and the entire reason to come is the moment you cross the rim.

The plateau holds the island itself — five villages, a small fleet of outriggers, a lighthouse — and around all of it, a vertical wall covered in fan corals, sponges and the long, slow swim of green turtles. Visibility is, in season, thirty to forty metres.

What makes it readable, as opposed to merely beautiful: every dive site is a feature of the same wall. There is no commute. You give the briefing thirty seconds, drop in, and drift the edge.