Uncharted Backpacker

Seoul hits you like a shot of soju on an empty stomach. Fast, delicious, and impossible to ignore.

This is a city that never really decided whether it wanted to be ancient or set in a futuristic dystopian movie set. so Seoul just became both. A thousand-year-old palace sits in the shadow of gold and blue glass towers decked out in neon which soaks the ancient cobble pathways in light. Grandmothers sell rice cakes in markets older than many countries while teenagers walk past carrying enough technology to launch a satellite into space. A city of contrast, bold and beautiful.

When I first boarded the Bilikiki the cruise director said what word best describes the Solomon Islands and what we will see is “diversity”.

Surface level, untouched islands dense with jungles which have never been logged or affected by humans for that matter, can be seen as far as the horizon lets you. Below coral fringed seas filled with schools of fish swim past you methodically as if you were never there to begin with. Kavachi, the world’s largest underwater volcano erupts, making your heart skip beat from the vibrations reminding you how small and insignificant you are in the grand scheme of it all.

Every now and then one of the islands is inhabited, the locals here speak languages that trace back thousands of years, typically undocumented. Their traditions are tied to the sea, fishing in methods only spoken about after long initiations are completed. Solomon Islanders as they refer to themselves are a tough bunch living on the extreme final frontiers of our world.

You will not find restaurants here, nor a grocery store. Life abides to the market, often floating ones. People trade from island to island and in our case, an old boat filled with character. This is how life used to be, but in the Solomon Islands it remains.

There is beauty here, not the kind you see, the kind that is embedded into your DNA, how life once was, where we all came from. Connecting with nature, coinciding with the sea and living day to day with only the weather to talk about. It’s raw, remote and untouched, but for how long?

Travel at its purest. These waters are deep.

Diving with

Why do we leave the comfort and safety of our homes in search of something else. Something, that we don’t understand, often with high risks, the unknown, the fortunate few who can choose discomfort over the mundane. As if coded in our DNA, curiosity to move, to be someplace new, to learn, to feel again.

Sitting in a cafe in Bali I now reflect on the past few weeks in the Solomon Islands. Every now and then a memory appears, the smell of the ocean as the boat slowly passed by remote, untouched jungles. The sounds of the people of The Solomon Islands singing in undocumented dialects. The sense of adventure, the unknown, all at my fingertips to discover.

That cliche saying “no photo can describe this” every feeling I had while being there couldn’t be more true. There are few places that can be described as “authentic” anymore. Globalization has worked its way to every corner of this planet, yet places like the Solomons seem to get forgotten, remaining lost in time.

This isn’t a place you come to tick off the box of “been there”, it’s a place that you come to get under your skin. It’s a destination for those trying to reconnect, searching for a time that doesn’t exist anymore and it doesn’t care to be a part of whatever the hell we call society these days.

Traveling the Solomon’s with

I’m time in the Solomon Islands is coming to an end. Now I will have ample amount of time to process everything that I’ve seen here. An adventure of a lifetime, here is a sneak peak into what is to come!

On board the Bilikiki exploring the Solomons with

Look, I’ve being scuba diving all over the world. I’ve been on some of the most world class sights, but I have never had a country completely to myself. We are alone. No other boats, diver groups or let alone tourists.

When the dive finishes, back on the boat, nobody talks much at first. They just stare out at the water, processing it. Maybe someone hands you fresh fruit. Maybe there’s grilled fish waiting back for us, eaten barefoot with salt still drying on your skin.

That’s the thing about diving in the Solomon Islands.
It strips away noise. The mental clutter built up from years of abuse we didn’t even know we were going through.

No luxury branding. No overcrowded reef traffic. Just you, the ocean, and the humbling realization that there are still places on Earth where nature remains firmly in charge.

And for a little while, that feels like enough.

Exploring the Solomons with

🇸🇧 🏝️ 🐠 🪸

The Solomon Islands remain one of the least visited destinations on earth.

Here the air is heavy, alive. The jungle doesn’t sit politely in the background it presses in close, loud with insects, thick with heat and humidity.

life is stripped down to essentials. Not romantic, not easy, it’s just real. Fishing at dawn. Gardens that matter more than just hobby. Meals that come from what’s in season: reef fish, cocoa, taro, cassava, coconut freshly cracked open with a machete. No menu. No substitutions. No pretense. Just food that makes sense in the moment.

There’s history here too above and below the surface. During World War II, the Solomon Islandsl saw some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific. Now the jungle has swallowed most of it. Rusting planes, wrecks offshore, stories that linger even when they’re not spoken.

Exploring the Solomons with

The Solomon Islands don’t roll out a red carpet for you. They don’t need to. You get here because you mean to, because you’re willing to sit through the long haul, the missed connections, the feeling that you’ve slipped off the edge of the map a little wondering “what have I got myself into?”

And that’s when it starts to make sense.
This isn’t the polished paradise like its island neighbours. It’s raw, humid, and alive in a way that doesn’t care about your comfort. The jungle crowds the coastline. The ocean isn’t just scenery, it’s the highway, the pantry, and a history book all in one. Out in the Coral Triangle waters, reefs pulse with life, mostly untouched, the kind of place where you drop below the surface and realize how loud the rest of the world has been, yet the Solomon’s have just kept going on as they always have.

Exploring the Solomon’s with

The name Raja Ampat has still largely been whispered by those who know it and those who have been there will treat it like a guarded secret.

You get there, after far too many flights, a questionable boat ride, and the creeping suspicion that anything this remote has to be worth it. Then it hits you. Not gently either. More like a punch of color, life, and scale that makes everything you thought you knew about “beautiful nature” feel amateur.

Out across the Raja Ampat sea, the islands rise like green knives cutting out of the sea, scattered without any sort of logic. The water shifts from turquoise to deep blue to something almost electric. Nothing here looks real. It looks exaggerated, like natures showing off.

But the real story of Raja Ampat is below the surface of the water.

You drop in and suddenly you’re not the main character of this story anymore. Coral stretches out in every direction, alive, complicated but incredibly delicate. Fish move in impossible numbers, a symphony of colours and life that don’t make sense, patterns that feel designed just to mess with you. This is one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet, and it doesn’t care if you understand it, it only asks that you protect it.

You’re a visitor here and just passing through.

Exploring Raja Ampat above and below with

🐟 🪸 🏝️ 🌋 🇮🇩

When I first started scuba diving around sixteen years ago it was all about the big stuff. Sharks, mantas, big fish. The more of the ocean you see, the more you begin to understand the closer you look, it’s the small things that make these eco systems function. The invisible working class, holding the glue of the entire ocean together.

“The big fish”, come here to get cleaned before heading out to the open sea. Turtles call these reefs home, living amongst the vibrant corals. Look deeper and you see the microscopic creatures who all are an integral part of these societies.

Keep looking and you will find another niche part of scuba diving that eventually sucks us all in. Macro they call it, the art of finding all the little guys on the reef. It’s endless, you spend hours barely even moving a few feet, yet like collecting pokemon cards it becomes an obsession you can’t shake. Like a ju**ie always looking for your next hit, but instead it’s a colourful slug or twiggy shrimp who hides from you for nearly the entire dive. It’s a strange art, but one I have found myself apart of.

Some of us bird with old age, I guess the little creatures of the reef are my vice.

Scuba diving trip with

The past few days we have been exploring the southern region of Misool in Raja Ampat. Underwater coral gardens lurk beneath the blue ringed islands that dot the entire horizon here. Unique species can be found here from other regions of Indonesia given its remoteness and until recently it being “undiscovered”. One of the world last great island destinations!

Shots diving with