Getting to Raja Ampat from Malaysia

Half a year ago I took up a package to go on a liveaboard in Raja Ampat. It was for a week of diving with my wife, her friends, and their spouses. Six of us all up, 3 pairs. I will not talk about the cost of getting ourselves there other than in vague numbers. That is down to the fact that it can vary wildly based on whether you’re staying at a resort or the type of liveaboard, and how you intend to get there. I am going to explain how we went about getting to Raja Ampat from Malaysia for our recent trip in January 2020.

If anyone has heard of Raja Ampat, they will inevitably hear about just how fucking hard it is to get there. To give context, I live in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. I am in South East Asia, the same region as Raja Ampat. I spent close to 20 hours in airports and planes before arriving the next day in Sorong’s Domine Eduard Osok Airport (SOQ).

The roundabout way

Generally speaking there are three routes into SOQ. You either make your way to Jakarta’s Soekarno–Hatta International Airport (CGK), Makassar’s Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport (UPG), or Manado’s Sam Ratulangi International Airport (MDC), and fly in from either of those three airports. Truth be told, UPG and MDC are too much of a hassle as you will invariably spend several hours more of layover waiting for the next flight compared to CGK.

The astute among you may know that Raja Ampat has its own airport, Marinda Airport (RJM). At time of writing, it only has flights to and from Sorong. Don’t waste your time looking for flights to RJM.

For most of us, our starting point is going to be Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL). In my case however, since I’m a donkey that lives in Borneo, my journey begins in Kota Kinabalu. Thus my journey of nearly 6900 miles return to get from Malaysia to Raja Ampat starts by sorting out flights.

Flight Selection

The first order of business was to see what were the available flights to us for the dates that we booked for the liveaboard. In this case, we were booked in from the 5th of January 2020 until the 11th of January 2020.

As you can see, we finalised the flights as early as May 2019. There were three flights from CGK to SOQ to consider. All were around midnight, thus you have flexibility in what flights to take to get into CGK. To note- I listed only Batik Air and Garuda as our options at the time, but there are other airlines that fly to SOQ too. Price is an obvious factor, but we also had to consider the reliability and safety of the airlines available. In the end we opted for Garuda Indonesia as it was the national carrier, cheap (relatively speaking), and had luggage allowance included as standard.

The next leg was Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta. Our options at the time were Malindo, Garuda Indonesia and AirAsia. One airline is conspicuously missing in Malaysia Airlines. We didn’t include them mainly due to price. From memory it was several times more expensive than flying Garuda, and Garuda were the most expensive we would consider at the time. In the end we opted for AirAsia with add on luggage allowance as it was the cheapest, and was the closest in terms of time between flights to minimise the layover.

Multi-city Booking?

Something to consider is if you can do a multi-city booking. At the time of our booking, AirAsia did not have direct flights from Malaysia to Raja Ampat. They still don’t. They did however, open their CGK to SOQ sector in July of 2019, nearly 2 months after we booked our flights. Now, you are able to book flights from KUL to SOQ, via CGK, all through AirAsia. Choosing correctly, you can have as minimal layover as possible. This option is likely the most beneficial, as you will stay within CGK’s Terminal 2 at all times, whereas switching from AirAsia to Garuda Indonesia means going between Terminal 2 to Terminal 3. Conversely, you can book Garuda Indonesia directly as well, doing the same KUL – CGK – SOQ sectors. However you would be looking at a 10 hour layover in Jakarta International.

Baggage – Normal or Sports Equipment?

This may or may not apply to you, but we were going to Raja Ampat to do some SCUBA.

One of the questions when planning this trip was whether to rely on rentals, or bring our gear. We opted to bring our gear, as you can trust your own gear and know how it works. Rentals can be quite hit or miss. The issue with bringing our own gear is the actual bringing it on a plane. I have not heard definitively whether checking in dive gear as normal baggage prevents you from claiming with your travel insurance should something happen to the bag. But we opted to just check-in as normal baggage rather than paying extra for Sports Equipment allowance. Some airlines may provide free Sports Equipment allowance, but AirAsia is not that airline.

We (meaning me and my wife) opted to pack our BCDs, fins, masks, camera tray in baggage. I hand carried our regulators and dive computers (this would change on the return leg, I tossed them into baggage for the flights back).

Once all that has been sorted, it is just a matter of getting on the plane and arriving in Sorong.

I’m in Sorong, what now?

The first order of business is getting out of Sorong as quickly as possible. This is because Sorong is an absolute hole of a town. Whether by ferry or by arranging with a liveaboard to be picked up directly from the airport, try to minimise your time in Sorong and get out to the sea or to Waisai.

Some may argue there is a certain charm to Sorong. I would say if you’re stuck in Sorong for a night as we were, try to make the best out of a bad situation. Find a nice hotel, and a nice restaurant, and leave it at that. Don’t bother going to the only attraction in town, Sorong’s Berlin Wall. What was once a breakwater that people hang out on is now fenced up as land reclamation work goes on. Sorong’s Berlin Wall now resembles the actual Berlin Wall by being an oppressive eyesore more than anything else.

In our case, we were fortunate enough that our liveaboard collected us directly from the airport.

TL;DR

1. Sort your flight from Kuala Lumpur or whatever small town in Malaysia you’re from to Jakarta, or if you’re lucky, all the way to Sorong
2. Decide on baggage allowance (we had 20kg per person, just enough to kit everyone out in full dive gear and clothes for a few days)
3. Get on your plane(s) to Sorong
4. From Sorong, get on a boat to Waisai
5. You are now in the Raja Ampat Islands.

And that is how I got from Malaysia all the way to Raja Ampat. This post is part of a series on my trip to Raja Ampat.