Yes you read it correctly: in this blog I will share how a Dutch girl ended up living on a remote island in Raja Ampat, West-Papua.
It’s been more than 10 months since living in paradise, so I thought it was time to share my story on how I ended up living in the Last Paradise.
How it all started:
First things first: no I did not straight away move from the Netherlands to Raja Ampat. I guess this “culture shock” would have been too big!
Since November 2020 I was living in Bali. My plan was to only go for 4 months, to escape winter, however life happened and I fell in love. As a result, in April 2023 I was still there. Me and Rio, my boyfriend who originally comes from Ambon, always said we really wanted to visit Raja Ampat! However it’s a bit more complicated to travel there and to be honest: life is relatively expensive in the Eastern part of Indonesia..
Rio always jokingly said: we need to find someone who wants to sponsor us! And if it was meant to be, Rio got a call from a friend about a position in a homestay in Kri Island. Soul scuba diving located on Kri island hired our friend to work for them as an onsite manager and she asked Rio if he would be interested to work in Raja Ampat as well.
After a few calls it became clear that this might be the opportunity of a lifetime to spend time in Raja Ampat, while he even would get paid! However, it would also mean giving up our comfortable life in Bali. We would have to leave behind a lot of luxury, our friends, Rio’s work etc in order to start living a very remote lifestyle. We had no idea what to expect but we decided to go for it..
Everything went really fast: after having the first chat with our friend; to saying goodbye to Bali took us only 3 weeks. And let me be brutally honest with you: the last week was filled with anxiety and tears.. Anxiety for the unknown in my case. And I know I have left my comfort zone many times before, but this felt like a HUGE leap of faith!
After a short preparation time we traveled to Sorong first to spend some time with the family of one of Rio’s best friends. And after 1.5 days in Sorong it was time to continue our journey to Raja Ampat!
First impressions of Raja Ampat
The surroundings and nature blew us away once we arrived but it was also a bit of shock to see our new home. We live literally in one of those wooden houses/rooms you always see in the pictures. The showers & toilets are semi-outdoors and shared with the guests, there is no wifi and we only have electricity for around 6 hours a day.
Anyways to make a long story short: I moved here because my boyfriend got an opportunity to live and work in Raja Ampat, and we decided to take this huge leap of faith to spend some time at the last paradise on earth. Thankfully my online work allows me to move wherever I want.
Curious how I experience life in Raja Ampat as a foreigner?
Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you writing this write-up and the rest of the website is also very good.
Thanks so much for your kind comment! I will continue uploading useful information combined with personal experiences on this blog, so stay tuned! x