Gangga Island Resort & Spa

Arriving by boat from Manado to a large, fixed pier, guests are greeted by uniformed staff and cheerfully guided to your room through the Gangga Resort set on a flat sandy island. A walk past the dive center and camera room, leads to the main complex open-air reception, lounge, bar (open from 6.30 am) and restaurant overlooking a beautiful infinity pool. Plan to spend any afternoon free time keeping cool in the pool or in your AC bungalow as it can get quite hot.Spread out along a meandering path, which looked a bit dry with not much green landscaping as other tropical resorts, accommodation is in air-conditioned duplex beachfront bungalows, each with an outdoor day bed and own beach cabana. The rooms are large with every amenity (except WIFI) TV’s, satellite channels, mini-bar, tea and coffee station, water dispensers, bathrobes, and toiletries.The dining was a highlight, with full service, white tablecloths, and excellent quality meals. On arrival for lunch and dinner, you are greeted and place your order from a menu board of the day with an appetiser, first course, and a choice of 3 main courses and 2 desserts (or ice cream). It really was too much! Breakfast was an extensive buffet with eggs cooked to order. Lunch had mostly western food options and dinner had both local and western choices. Afternoon tea and coffee was served by the pool with a selection of local snacks.The resort had more snorkellers than divers during my visit and the dive sites were chosen with the snorkellers in mind, so I passed on the 2-tank morning dive and was pleasantly surprised by an afternoon boat dive on the house reef as the only diver. The morning dives from Gangga tend to go to the better Bangka sites.The boats are comfortable, with a snack and hot beverages between dives, plenty of water and towels provided. On the next days' morning dive were 2 guides for 6 divers and no snorkelers. The normal ratio is 1:4 and my guide was excellent at spotting macro on one of my favourite sites of the trip. The entry was a backward roll and a good ladder was provided to get back on board.Following my dives I was efficiently transferred to another Bangka resort, so I never even had to repack my dive gear.

Half the fun of this place is getting there. The road that turns north towards the shore starts out as a normal Indonesian rode and gets progressively more remote as you go. Farmers would use the road to lay out blankets and dry their crops in the sun. We had to go around mules pulling logs and even had to work our way through a wedding celebration march that used the road we were on. You definitely get a "We're not in Kansas anymore" feeling by the time you get to the dock where it is then a 45 minute boat ride to the island.The Gangga Island Resort is a small island with 15 bungalows, each with two rooms. The resort itself is quite spacious with a good size pool and a nice set of core buildings for the patrons. Some of the rooms are a pretty good walk to the central resort, so look at a resort map and choose carefully if you don't want a five minute or more hike each way. The paths were dark and not real well lit.The food was buffet style for all meals (it's not like you had anywhere else to go!) and it was very good. As a matter of fact the food was great--the best that I have had at a dedicated dive resort. The owners are Italian so that tilts the food in that direction. As a matter of fact, the entire resort is heavily tilted towards European travelers and families. We were there in August which is the height of the vacation season so there were a lot of European families with children. We only saw one other American couple the time we were there. That didn't bother us, but some folks might like more Americans.The diving facility and dive photography facility was spacious and first class. The entire dive operation was extremely well run. They had 4 or 5 boats that would go to different sites each morning.The diving was quite a bit more controlled due to the nature of the clientele which were generally less experienced than at most dive resorts. (I think Lembeh tends to attract the serious divers compared to here) Strict one hour limits were enforced and we were required to stay in a small group. Since I was there with my 13 year old son, this was OK with me.The diving nearby was very good, although some of the sites were not reachable because of windy weather when we were there. Several of the sites near the resort had typical pretty coral reefs with small reef fish and an occasional eagle ray and turtle. We also went back to the mainland of Sulawesi for some dives that were a bit more Lembeh like. We did find a nice mandarin fish dive and they had a boat that went there every evening at sunset. We went twice because I forgot to have my strobe plugged in inside my housing the first time! We looked for pygmy seahorses but did not find them. We did see lots of angel fish and a couple of interesting octopuses.We went to Bangka Island twice during the week were there and it was very good coral reef diving. Not quite as good as Raja Ampat, but still very good. For extra charge, we did a day trip to Bunaken which was actually a bit disappointing. Very pretty topography, but not a lot of fish. The resort did an all day trip to Lembeh a couple of times a week. We had just been to the Lembeh Resort, so we skipped that.While a dive resort, this place had a multi-purpose feel to it as opposed to Lembeh which was kind of a liveaboard on land. Most people went diving, but not every day like we did. We did get paired with a specific divemaster who appreciated that we were more serious than most divers there. He helped me with my photography and kept a good eye on my young son. He was probably the best divemaster that I have ever had on a trip.This is a great family destination where some dive and some don't. The only other place like it was the Cousteau Resort on Fiji. Kids will be happy in the pool. Teens will be happy in local diving. Divers will have lots of options as well. This is a place that more Americans should visit. There are plenty of local sites for five days or so. It makes a great extension onto a Lembeh Resort visit and gives a very nice extension to the muck diving of Lembeh.