Fly me to... Indonesia
Sometimes all it takes is a warm current, a slow sway, a slant of light over the sea for everything to shift. Bali. Komodo. Raja Ampat. From East to West, five breaths, five rhythms, one continuous line, an archipelago barely above water, where islands follow one another like silences. “The islands are the tears of the gods,” they say in Sulawesi. Each stop is a feeling, frangipani wind, the snap of sails, light sketching memories on skin. Every fragment of land floats like an unfinished sentence, meant to be read slowly through water, jungle, incense and volcanic stone. Nothing is rushed here. You sink in, as if inside a dream too beautiful to be real.
The Inner Sea
Beneath spirals of incense, Indonesia awakens like a sacred stage. Fire dances tell the stories of ancient gods, drums echo the heartbeat of volcanoes, and the waves rise as if answering the call of the sky. In the rice fields, work becomes prayer, a gesture repeated for centuries. Each offering laid at a temple’s foot, each bell that chimes at dusk, weaves an invisible thread between earth and water, the living and the unseen.
Here, beauty blends with devotion, and everyday life becomes ritual.
We love the Indonesia for…
In one of the island’s oldest temples, deep in a valley covered in moss and prayer, a Balinese priest welcomes you for a purification ceremony.
Gongs echo, water runs over stone, flowers drift in the basins. Dressed in a traditional sarong, you follow the ancient gestures, hands together, head bowed, and feel time unfold, as if the island were finally acknowledging you.
In Uluwatu, surfers carve the sea like verses on water. The ocean is warm, the sun drops low, and freedom tastes of salt.
At sunrise, the anchor lifts. The wind rises, sails snap. Between two islands, the world feels endless, the horizon seamless.
On a few remote islands, the shore blushes with coral dust. Pink sand melts into a lagoon-blue sea, clear all the way to the horizon. You swim as if inside a mirage.
Under the burning sun, dragons move with ancient grace. Each step echoes the dawn of time.
Beneath the surface, light scatters into silver threads. Mantas drift by, vast, serene, winged shadows. Time slows. The world breathes differently.
Weisse’s selection
You must leave Bali behind, its offerings, its petals, its garlanded scooters. Cast off eastward, where every island carries a name from legend. The journey begins in Flores, aboard Aqua Blu. Once a British Navy patrol ship, now a discreet yacht, she glides between Rinca, Padar, and Komodo. At night, the anchor drops in deserted bays. Monitor lizards prowl, water buffalo drink in the mangroves. At dawn, you climb Padar’s ridges, slanting light, dense beauty. Then comes the encounter: the Komodo dragons appear, massive and ancestral. Further on, Pink Beach unfurls its rose-tinted sand, coral and light intertwined. At Manta Point, you dive among giant rays, carried gently by the current. Between stops, yoga facing the tawny islands, paddleboarding through quiet coves. Dinner on the aft deck, sashimi, silence, starlight. Each island has its own texture, and amid them all, the feeling of having left the world to return to the origin of things.
A change of scenery, the same intensity. At the edge of Papua, the Four Kings spread into a labyrinth of limestone islets, turquoise lagoons, and hidden coves. More than 1,500 species of fish, 600 types of coral, turtles, dolphins escorting the bow, sometimes even whales, a profusion that defies any map. Aboard Amandira, a hand-built, two-masted phinisi, time slows and thickens. Snorkel at Cape Kri, where schools of fish swirl in hypnotic clouds of color. Paddle at water level, through golden jellyfish and coral gardens. Further inland, animist villages where songs and masks keep the ancestors’ spirits alive. Night falls suddenly, dense, black, fragrant with warm ginger and hurried notes scribbled in a journal. No boxes to tick, no destinations to claim. Just fragments: a reef, a pearling village, a limestone peak. You think you’re exploring the archipelago, but it’s the archipelago that’s reading you.
Nothing announces Amankila. It appears suddenly around a bend, clinging to a hillside facing the sea, a sanctuary turned toward the open horizon. Far from the crowds, on Bali’s untouched eastern coast, it watches over a stretch of island still intact. Inspired by the water palaces of Ujung, its architecture seems born from the earth itself: three cascading pools carve soft lines toward Manggis’s black-sand shore. The air feels lighter here, purer, more mineral. In the early morning, drive toward the rice terraces of Sidemen or the mountain sanctuaries above. Afternoons are for reading in the shade or drifting across the bay by canoe. As night comes, dine beneath clouds gathered around Mount Agung. Then silence. Bells. A warm mist on the skin.
At the end of the journey, Bawa Reserve reveals itself like a vision, a private island ringed by white sand and lush jungle, rising from the Indian Ocean. Far from roads and noise, the resort unfolds as a secret enclave, where architecture blends seamlessly into the landscape. Villas, vast and refined, open onto the ocean and Sumba’s rolling hills. At dawn, join the local fishermen or hike toward waterfalls hidden deep in the forest. In the afternoon, read by the infinity pool or dive into the coral reef encircling the island. Dinner by lantern light on the beach, the sound of waves keeping time with the wind. Then darkness, total, starlit, infinite. Here, time simply stops.
The story
“We arrived on these islands as if stepping into a world of many faces.
Each shore had its own gaze, each sea its own voice. From Bali’s volcanoes to the lagoons of Raja Ampat, nature unfolds here with an almost unreal power, teeming wildlife, dense forests, and underwater worlds alive with colour.
We walked, we dived, we sailed, carried by the telluric energy that runs through both land and sea.
Everything feels alive, charged with an intensity no photograph could ever hold. And even as we leave, we already long to return, as if these islands, with their shifting beauty, had written us into one of the world’s great adventure films.”
— Olivier Weisse
Localisation
Looking for a tailor-made journey across Indonesia?
With Weisse taking care of every detail, all you have to do is sink your feet into warm sand and surrender to the rhythm of the islands. Ancient temples, crystal lagoons, living jungles, each day here invites slowness and wonder. Are you ready to feel the world differently?