Things to Do in Southeast Sulawesi: The Province Almost Nobody Routes Through

Southeast Sulawesi gets skipped. Not because there's nothing here, but because nothing passes through it: no international airport, no overland route anyone takes to somewhere else, and no single sight famous enough to bend an itinerary around.

The result is a province with karst islands, a marine national park and a provincial capital, written about mostly by people who came for one specific thing and left again.

Here's what's actually in it, and how long each part honestly needs.

The islands north of Kendari

This is the reason most visitors come, and it's what we run, so treat it as the section written from the inside.

North of Kendari, reached by road to Tanasa Port and then by boat, is a cluster of limestone islands: the Labengki group in Southeast Sulawesi and the Sombori group just across the provincial border in Central Sulawesi. They're sold together because one boat trip covers both.

What's there: karst towers straight out of the water, lagoons enclosed by rock, sea caves entered from a boat, viewpoints reached by short steep climbs, a Bajo stilt village, and giant clam conservation reefs off the smaller island.

“No roads, no grid electricity, no mains plumbing, and no mobile signal for most of the day.

That's the trade, and it's the whole character of the place.

Time needed: three days at the absolute minimum, four to six if you want the trip rather than the highlights. The Labengki islands north of Kendari covers the geography, and the full Labengki and Sombori attraction list describes every stop.

Kendari itself

The provincial capital, and honestly a place people pass through rather than visit.

It's a working city on a bay, with a food scene worth an evening and not much aimed at visitors. What it genuinely is, for almost everyone reading this, is the night before an early boat and the night after you get back, and that's a legitimate role rather than a disappointment.

Worth doing with a spare evening: eat well, buy anything you'll need on the islands, and sleep. There's no cash out there and nowhere to buy sunscreen.

Time needed: one night each end. What there is to do in Kendari itself is the honest version.

Wakatobi

Further out from the same arm of the island, Wakatobi is a national park and a regency named as an acronym of its four main islands: Wangi-Wangi, Kaledupa, Tomia and Binongko, historically the Tukangbesi group.

It's known for diving, it has infrastructure built around that, and it's a different trip from the karst islands rather than an extension of one. We don't operate there and we're not going to publish reef statistics or season windows for somewhere we don't run.

Time needed: its own week, and its own flight. Combining Wakatobi and the Labengki islands in one visit is a two-week itinerary, not a longer version of a one-week one.

The Bajo communities

Across this region and much of eastern Indonesia are Bajo communities, maritime people who historically lived on and from the sea to an unusual degree, and who today live mostly in pile-house settlements built above shallow coastal water.

On our route you see this at Mbokita, on the Sombori side. It's a working village rather than a cultural attraction, which changes how you should visit it.

This is genuinely one of the more interesting things about travelling in this part of Sulawesi, and it's covered properly on the Bajo communities of Southeast Sulawesi.

The inland side

Less written about than the coast, and worth knowing exists.

Southeast Sulawesi has substantial nickel mining, which shapes the economy of parts of the province and is visible on some stretches of coast. We mention it because it's real and because visitors occasionally see industrial activity and assume they've gone wrong. They haven't; it's simply part of what this province is.

Inland there's forest, agriculture and small towns, and very little of it is set up for visitors. If you are the kind of traveller who enjoys somewhere with no visitor economy at all, that's an opportunity. If you want somewhere with things arranged for you, it isn't.

What the province does not have

Worth stating plainly, because the absence is the reason it stays quiet.

No international airport. Everything routes through Makassar.

No big cultural draw on the scale of Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi.

Very little tourist infrastructure outside the two or three things people come for. If it rains for a day, there is not a list of indoor alternatives.

Almost no other foreign travellers, which for a lot of people is the entire point and for others is a warning sign. Both reactions are reasonable.

What it costs you to get here

Worth being straight about, because the answer shapes whether the province makes your shortlist.

One extra domestic flight compared with landing in Makassar or Manado and staying put. That's the entry fee.

A night in Kendari at each end, because the boats leave in the morning and you should not be racing a connection on the way home.

No competition on price, in the sense that there aren't twenty operators undercutting each other here the way there are in busier destinations. The flip side is that there aren't twenty boats at every stop either.

What you get for it is a part of Indonesia where you can spend a week on the water and pass very few other visitors. Whether that's worth an extra flight is genuinely a matter of what you're after.

Putting a trip together

The shape that works for most people:

Day 0. Fly Makassar to Kendari. Night in the city.

Days 1 to 3, 4, 5 or 6. North to Tanasa Port and out to the islands, on a chartered boat, sleeping on the Labengki side.

Final day. Back to Kendari, night in the city, fly out the following morning rather than the same afternoon.

That's a comfortable week including flights, and it's the version we'd suggest to someone with one week rather than two. When to schedule it depends less on the calendar than most destinations, for reasons set out in when to visit Labengki and why.

If you have a fortnight, the honest options are to add Wakatobi with its own flight, or to spend the extra days on the water rather than in transit. Most people who have done both end up recommending the second.