The Banggai Islands are the sort of place where you can have an entire day that feels almost too beautiful to be real. On this particular day, we paddleboarded through a turquoise mangrove bay in the rain, discovered a hidden spring, swam above an underwater heart and finished the day visiting a local school.
It was a magical day, so we wanted to highlight these hidden gems!
Watch Our Banggai Islands Adventure
Our Day Exploring the Banggai Islands
After already spending time exploring the famous Paisu Pok Lake and some incredible beaches on the Banggai Islands, we set off for another full day of adventure. We’d already discovered just how much incredible scenery is hidden around these islands, but this day somehow managed to amaze us all over again.
One of the best things about exploring this part of Central Sulawesi is that you don’t necessarily need to spend your day ticking off a long list of attractions. Instead, you can get out on the water with a local guide, explore some of the more remote corners of the islands and simply see where the day takes you.
And that’s pretty much what we did.
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1. Paddleboarding Through Kawalu Bay
Our first stop was Kawalu Bay, and the weather immediately made the experience feel like something out of a movie.
It was raining when we arrived, and we had to climb aboard a traditional local outrigger boat to make our way out towards the bay. At first, we weren’t sure what we’d find with the weather looking so gloomy, but the water was an incredible turquoise blue, with huge trees and mangroves surrounding the bay.
Even in the rain, it was absolutely beautiful.
We eventually got onto our stand-up paddleboards and started making our way through the mangrove area. Then, almost as if nature had timed it perfectly for us, the clouds started to break.
The rain stopped, a little sunlight appeared, and mist was still hanging over the trees.
Suddenly, we were paddling through this incredibly peaceful turquoise landscape with nobody else around.
It ended up being one of the most beautiful experiences we’d had in the Banggai Islands.
And because the weather had cleared, Denz was able to get the drone up in the air. Seeing Kawalu Bay from above was even more spectacular. The turquoise water, mangroves and mist made the whole place look almost unreal.
📍 Kawalu Bay
How to visit Kawalu Bay
Kawalu Bay is best experienced as part of a local boat trip. You’ll need to arrange a boat and guide locally.
The exact conditions can also change depending on the weather and sea conditions, so having a local guide is particularly useful here.
If you’re visiting the Banggai Islands, we’d recommend speaking to your accommodation about arranging a boat for the day and explaining the places you’d like to visit. Or if you want to book a tour with a local guide, here is a great option.
2. Discovering Paisu Batango Spring
After our paddleboarding adventure, we headed back towards the mainland and made our way towards another hidden gem.
If you’ve read our guide to Paisu Pak Lake, you’ll know just how incredible the water can be around this part of the Banggai Islands.
But Paisu Pak isn’t the only place where you’ll find unbelievably clear turquoise water.
Just nearby is Paisu Batango Spring.
It’s much smaller than Paisu Pak Lake, but the water is similarly beautiful and incredibly clear. It’s also the sort of place that can easily be overlooked if you’re focused solely on visiting the famous lake.
And that’s exactly why we wanted to include it here.
You can also swim in Paisu Batango Spring, although we didn’t have much time to do so on this particular day.
Instead, we admired the water before continuing on with our adventure.
📍 Paisu Batango Spring
If you’re already visiting Paisu Pak Lake, we’d definitely recommend asking your guide whether you can add Paisu Batango Spring to your day. It’s a great example of how many lesser-known places there are scattered around the Banggai Islands.
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3. Lunch at a Local Warung
After a morning on the water, we were definitely ready for lunch.
We stopped at a small local warung and tried some more Indonesian food.
Denz tried Coto Makassar, one of the dishes that Sulawesi is particularly famous for. It’s a rich, savoury Indonesian beef soup traditionally made with beef and a mixture of spices, and it’s particularly associated with Makassar in South Sulawesi.
As a vegetarian, Beth went for gado-gado, a much-loved Indonesian dish consisting of vegetables, tofu and other ingredients served with a delicious peanut sauce.
The food was great, but once again, it was the people who made the experience.
We spent time chatting with the family who owned the warung, taking photos, and enjoying the incredibly welcoming atmosphere.
4. Swimming Above an Underwater Heart at Teduang Beach
Our next stop was one of the most unusual beaches we’d visited in the Banggai Islands.
Teduang Beach is famous for something you can’t really appreciate properly from the beach itself.
Underneath the water, the owner has arranged rocks into the shape of a giant heart.
From above, particularly from a drone, the shape becomes incredibly obvious and creates one of those completely Instagram-worthy scenes that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in such a remote part of Indonesia.
We flew the drone over the beach while Beth swam out into the middle of the heart.
And once again, we had this beautiful piece of paradise completely to ourselves.
📍 Teduang Beach
If you have a drone and are comfortable flying it, this is definitely somewhere you’ll want to have your camera ready. The heart is best appreciated from above.
Our Travel Insurance ❤️🩹
We use Safety Wing! The perfect travel insurance for adventure travellers! You pay a monthly subscription, which you can pause when you go back home, AND you can take out the insurance while you are already abroad!! Which is SUCH an awesome feature!
Our Travel Insurance ❤️🩹
We use Safety Wing! The perfect travel insurance for adventure travellers! You pay a monthly subscription, which you can pause when you go back home, AND you can take out the insurance while you are already abroad!! Which is SUCH an awesome feature!
5. Visiting a Local School
Our next stop of the day was something completely different.
We had the opportunity to visit a local school, and this ended up being one of our favourite experiences of the entire day.
We’d brought some treats for the children, and the school kindly gave us permission to visit and film.
We were able to see inside the classrooms, meet some of the teachers and spend time with the kids.
They were so excited to see us, and we were equally excited to meet them.
It didn’t feel like a traditional tourist attraction at all. We weren’t visiting a famous landmark or ticking another destination off our list. We were simply being welcomed into a small part of everyday life in the Banggai Islands.
If you’re travelling around the Banggai Islands with a local guide, it could be worth asking whether there’s an opportunity to visit a local school. Obviously, this needs to be done respectfully and with the school’s permission, but if an opportunity arises, we’d highly recommend taking it.
Planning Your Own Day in the Banggai Islands
Many of the places we visited are remote, and some aren’t particularly well signposted or easy to find online.
Here are some of our top tips:
Arrange a local boat trip
For places such as Kawalu Bay, you’ll need access to a local boat.
We’d recommend arranging this through your accommodation or a trusted local guide and discussing the places you’d like to visit before setting off.
It’s also worth being flexible.
Weather and sea conditions can change quickly around the Banggai Islands, and your guide may suggest changing the itinerary depending on the conditions on the day.
Don’t rely too heavily on the weather forecast
The weather around Central Sulawesi can be unpredictable.
Unlike destinations such as Bali, where the wet and dry seasons can feel relatively straightforward, the Banggai Islands don’t always follow such a neat pattern.
We experienced rain during our paddleboarding adventure, only for the clouds to suddenly clear and create some of the most beautiful conditions imaginable.
So don’t automatically cancel a day because you wake up to rain.
Sometimes the rain is actually what makes the scenery even more spectacular.
Save your Google Maps pins
We’ve included the locations we visited throughout this guide because navigating around the Banggai Islands isn’t always as straightforward as travelling around more established tourist destinations.
We’d recommend saving the locations to Google Maps before heading out, particularly if you’re planning your own itinerary.
A Great Banggai Island Tour
For the Banggai Islands, a local guide can make travel SO much easier. It is far more remote than other touristy areas in Indonesia. Here is a great tour option where you can see everything we have listed with the help of a local guide:
How Long Do You Need in the Banggai Islands?
We’d strongly recommend giving yourself more time than you think you’ll need.
The Banggai Islands are remote, and getting around can take considerably longer than you might expect.
Boats depend on sea conditions, roads can be slow, and weather can change your plans.
Rather than trying to squeeze everything into a tightly packed itinerary, we’d recommend allowing some flexibility.
That way, if one day gets rained off or your boat trip needs to change, you don’t end up missing something else you’ve travelled all this way to see.
This is one of those destinations where slow travel really pays off.
Where We Stayed
We stayed in the Salakan area while exploring the Banggai Islands. This was our specific accomodaation:
Staying in Salakan can be a useful base for exploring some of the surrounding attractions and arranging local transport and boat trips.
Final Thoughts
This was one of those travel days where almost everything felt like an adventure.
We started in the rain, paddleboarding through a turquoise mangrove bay. We discovered a hidden spring, ate lunch at a local warung, swam above an underwater heart and finished by meeting some of the children and teachers at a local school.
That’s the beauty of the Banggai Islands.
You can spend the morning exploring somewhere completely remote, have lunch with a local family and finish the afternoon swimming in water that looks like it’s been taken straight out of a travel magazine.
It’s not the easiest place in Indonesia to reach.
But honestly?
That’s part of what makes it so special.
Big Love
Beth and Denz
Related Experiences
Here are some of our other adventures from our time exploring the Banggai Islands and Central Sulawesi. There are so many amazing things to do, so feel free to check them out!
