Snorkeling in Raja Ampat on the Best Snorkeling Boat in Indonesia: Scubaspa Zen

Five manta rays feeding at three meters under a flat sea, and nobody in the water but me. That was Tank Rock in Misool, on a Raja Ampat snorkeling morning in October 2026, and I was not diving. I was snorkeling, from a liveaboard whose other guests were twenty-five meters below me with tanks on their backs, and it was the best hour of a ten-night trip that I had booked, as a diver of twenty years, mostly for the diving.

Raja Ampat snorkeling is, from the surface, as good as anything I have seen underwater, and the only practical way to reach the best of it, Misool above all, is on a boat that moves. The catch is that liveaboards are built for divers, and on most of them the snorkelers are an afterthought. Scubaspa Zen is the exception I have found, and this is the article I wish I had read before my first trip: a snorkeler on this boat gets a guide and a speedboat of their own, so the snorkel goes to the site that is right for snorkeling rather than tagging along behind the divers; a Spa-package guest pays nothing extra for any of it, and gets a full program of spa treatments, one a day, on top of all the snorkeling; and the boat spends most of its season in Raja Ampat and Komodo, where the reef comes right up to the surface. On my trip from Ambon across the Banda Sea to Misool I snorkeled ten sites and dived eight, and it was the snorkels I kept talking about at dinner.

This guide is the snorkeler’s side of the boat, site by site: how the snorkeling is organized, what you actually see from the surface in the Banda Sea and in Raja Ampat, the spa and the sunrise yoga that come with it, and which of the three packages to book. My full Scubaspa Zen review covers the boat itself, the cabins, the food and the diving, and the two are written to be read together. If you want the diver’s view of the same Banda Sea route, my Ambon to Sorong dive log covers it day by day.

Can Non-Divers Go on a Liveaboard? The Honest Answer

Read any dive forum and you will find the same advice: do not bring a non-diving partner on a liveaboard; they will be bored, and it is a waste of money. On most boats that is fair. Dive liveaboards are built around three or four dives a day. The non-diver gets a snorkel from the tender if the site is shallow enough, which in places like the Banda Sea it often is not, and then spends the rest of the day reading on deck while everyone else talks about what they saw.

The exception is a boat that is designed for both, and in Indonesia that means Scubaspa Zen. It is the only liveaboard here with a full spa and two therapists on board, and its packages are built so that a non-diver has a program of their own rather than a gap in someone else’s. On my 2026 trip we were 13 guests. The team ran five dive groups of mostly two people, and one snorkeling group with its own guide and its own boat. Nobody waited for anybody.

Scubaspa sells the same cruise three ways, and the choice shapes your whole trip. The Scuba package is for divers who want every dive, up to 26 on a 10-night trip, with spa treatments paid for separately. Scuba & Spa, the one I booked, trades some dives for treatments: 14 dives and 7 spa treatments on 10 nights, with unlimited guided snorkeling. The Spa package is the snorkeler’s package: no dives, unlimited guided snorkeling with your own guide and boat, 11 spa treatments, yoga every morning and every excursion, all included in the price. I compare the three in detail at the end of this article.

What a Non-Diver’s Day Looks Like on Scubaspa Zen

While the divers are underwater, non-divers do one of two things: they snorkel, or they have a treatment, and treatments can also be booked over lunchtime. If you aim to do the yoga, the three snorkels, the island visits and all your spa time, it makes for a busy program; over a 10-night trip it is a full schedule, not a waiting game.

Snorkeling From Scubaspa Zen: Raja Ampat and the Banda Sea, Site by Site

How the snorkeling is organized

Snorkeling on the Zen is guided, every time. There is a dedicated snorkel guide, Agung, who also runs the bar in the evenings, and snorkelers go out on their own speedboat while the divers use the 21-meter dive dhoni. The snorkel trips leave at the same time as the dives, and the speedboat is much faster than the dhoni, so we would often reach the site before the divers. Sometimes it is the same site the divers are on and you see the same reef from the top; sometimes the snorkel boat goes somewhere better for snorkeling instead. The one rule is that you keep the guide within sight and earshot; the Banda Sea has current and some sites are a long way from shore. The snorkel boat stays with you for the whole session.

The part most boats get wrong is site selection, and it is where the speedboat matters. Dive sites are mapped and known to every guide in Indonesia; snorkel sites are not. On most liveaboards the snorkelers are simply dropped on top of the dive site, which may be a pinnacle starting at seven meters or a wall that drops away under you, with little to see from the surface. On the Zen, the cruise director, Dom, who has led liveaboards here for eleven years and has snorkeled the area extensively himself, picks the snorkel spot separately, and because the snorkelers have their own boat they can be driven to it. That is how we ended up drifting the shallow side of Gorgonian Passage while the divers did the wall, and circling ten karst islands off Barracuda Rock when the rock itself was too exposed.

Snorkeling gear is included in every package, as is the guide, so there is nothing to pay for and nothing to bring except your own mask if you prefer it.

The Banda Sea leg: Molana, Nusa Laut, Suanggi, Run, Nailaka and Hatta (days 1 to 5)

Pulau Molana (day 1). A small island near Ambon with a white-sand beach on its northern tip and a coral reef sloping gently away on either side of it. It is shallow and sheltered, with no current, which is why the divers use it as a check dive and why it makes an easy first snorkel: you can get your mask and fins sorted, find your breathing and drift along a reef of hard corals and small reef fish without anything demanding of you. On my first trip the crew set up chairs and umbrellas on this beach for a sunset party.

Nusa Laut (day 2). The last island before the Banda crossing, with a sloping reef off the jetty that turns into a wall. The divers go deep at the corner here looking for hammerheads; the snorkelers get the slope and the top of the wall, which is good hard coral. I snorkeled this one myself. Visibility was poor, but the reef was busy: clouds of fusiliers, a turtle, and a blacktip reef shark within a few minutes of getting in, which is a good return for a murky day. A caveat that applies to all the Banda hammerhead sites: the sharks are usually deep, so if they show up, the divers will see them and you may not. These are the sites where diving has a clear advantage.

Nusa Laut from the surface, October 2026

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Suanggi (day 3). A lone volcanic island north of Banda with a ring of pinnacles around it that drop into very deep water. The Banda Sea’s famous hammerhead pinnacles are a deep dive in the blue, and I chose to dive here; the sharks were at 25 to 36 meters, so this is a site where the snorkelers will miss the hammerheads. The snorkelers covered the shallow reef around the island with their guide and came back very happy. This surprised me. Having only ever dived the deep walls of the Banda Islands, I had assumed the area had little to offer snorkelers. In fact most of these sites have a shallow reef on top that is diverse and in good condition, and from the surface you see a side of the Banda Sea that divers, heads down in the blue looking for sharks, never do. I chose to dive this site looking for hammerheads so I have no snorkeling pictures of it. Everyone, divers and snorkelers alike, got the surface show: dolphins, a bait ball and diving birds beside the boat at lunch.

Run Island (day 4). The island the Dutch traded for Manhattan, with a reef that drops off a shallow shelf into the blue at Tanjung Rhun. The divers went in at 6 am looking for hammerheads and found none; the shallow shelf, on the other hand, is beautiful, dense hard coral in good light, and ideal for snorkeling. Same caveat as Nusa Laut: if the hammerheads come through, they come through deep.

Pulau Nailaka (day 4). The small, low island beside Run, with a white beach and a very large shallow reef flat that runs out from it. I snorkeled instead of diving here, and it is a snorkeler’s site rather than a diver’s: the reef is at two to six meters for a long way, with a stunning diversity of coral, schooling triggerfish, fusiliers and the small reef fish you only see when you slow down. One of the best snorkels of the Banda leg.

Run and Nailaka, October 2026

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Pulau Hatta (day 5). The last of the Banda Islands before the long crossing east, and the day the boat’s other half earned its keep. I used a package dive on Tanjung Buton, a 20-meter corner on the point where a school of bumphead parrotfish came through the fusiliers over dense hard coral, and hurt my ear on the way up. That was the end of my day in the water: the divers went on to Karang Hatta and the Hatta Wall, the snorkelers had Hatta Hole with their guide and speedboat, and I spent the afternoon in the spa, which is exactly what a spa on a dive boat is for. At 16.30 the Zen pulled her anchor for the 18-hour relocation to Pulau Kurkap, the longest run of the trip and the one that took us out of the Banda Islands and into the smoke.

Pulau Kurkap and the forest-fire detour (day 6)

Pulau Kurkap (day 6). A small island on the open-sea run between the Banda Islands and Kaimana, reached after the overnight crossing from Hatta, and the day the trip changed course. The snorkel itself was a good one: a shallow fringing reef of hard coral in healthy condition, a Moorish idol working the staghorn, a map puffer sitting in the coral with a butterflyfish for company, and the clouds of small reef fish we had come to expect from Banda. What none of us had seen before was the sky. The forest fires that had been burning across Papua all month had thickened the haze day by day since Ambon, and at Kurkap the sun was a dim red disc at midday and the horizon had turned brown. That afternoon the cruise director made the call: the air in Kaimana, where we were due to disembark, had become hazardous and its airport had closed, so instead of carrying on east to Triton Bay the Zen turned back west towards Misool and Raja Ampat, to finish in Sorong. I wrote up what the fires meant for divers, region by region, in my guide to Indonesia’s forest fires and diving.

Pulau Pisang (Banana Island): silversides, terns and a water slide (day 7)

Banana Island, Pulau Pisang (day 7, the day after Kurkap, on the new course towards Raja Ampat). This was the day that settled the snorkeler-versus-diver argument for me. The divers had three dives; the snorkelers had three snorkels, and I stayed on the surface for all of them. The silversides were there in their thousands, and everything that eats silversides had come for them: tuna hunting through the shoals, a shark, a turtle, a Napoleon wrasse. Few boats stop at Banana Island and even fewer people dive it, so our guide turned the afternoon into an expedition snorkel.

The divers had their day too: frogfish, mobula rays and two manta rays. Not a bad day for someone who never put a tank on.

Pulau Pisang, October 2026

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We went in at several points around the island, looking for the silversides and for seabirds, and found a colony of terns, mostly black-naped terns, wheeling off the cliff of one of the deserted islets.

We came back from the last snorkel of the day to find the boat transformed. The crew had rigged a huge inflatable slide off the side of the Zen, running from the upper deck straight into the sea, and within minutes a boatful of grown adults, divers and snorkelers alike, had become children again, climbing up and hurling themselves down it over and over until the light started to go. The day ended on the rooftop sundeck with sunset cocktails, the whole boat together, salt-haired and laughing; it was the most festive evening of the trip, and the one I think of first when someone asks what a Scubaspa Zen day is like.

Salps and comb jellies: the small things that explain the big ones

The water itself was full of something I had never looked at properly before. Drifting past us, singly and in long transparent ribbons, were salps: chains of glassy barrels, each the size of a thumb joint, each with a single orange dot inside. They look like jellyfish and are nothing of the sort. A salp is a tunicate, a free-swimming relative of the sea squirts on the reef, and it is closer to us on the tree of life than to any jellyfish. Each barrel in the chain is a separate animal, a clone budded off a solitary parent, and the chain swims by pumping water through all its bodies in unison, straining phytoplankton out as it goes. The orange dot is the gut. Salps are harmless, they do not sting, and they are a sign of rich water: a bloom of plankton brings the salps, the plankton also brings the silversides, and the silversides bring the tuna, the shark and the terns. Everything we saw that day was one food chain, and the salps were the bottom of it, which is why a snorkeler who slows down to look at the small things ends up understanding the big ones. They are at their most visible in the last hour of light, when the chains rise towards the surface; from the snorkel boat, with the sun going down behind them, they looked like strings of pink lanterns.

The salps were not the only animals out there that look like jellyfish and aren’t. At Pulau Pisang and in Misool we kept meeting comb jellies, and they were the most beautiful thing I filmed on the whole trip. A comb jelly, or ctenophore, belongs to a completely separate group of animals from jellyfish. Running down its body are eight rows of tiny beating hairs called cilia, the “combs” of its name, and it swims by rowing with them; comb jellies are the largest animals on Earth that move this way. As the hairs beat, they scatter the light, which is why ripples of rainbow color run down the rows: the shimmer is light bouncing off the combs, not the animal glowing. And no, they don’t sting. Instead of stinging cells, most comb jellies catch plankton with sticky cells called colloblasts, so if one drifts past you on a snorkel there is nothing to fear. Stay still, keep your fins away from it, and watch the colors run. Be aware, though, that there were a few true jellyfish in the same water that did sting.

Here is my video of the comb jelly:

Snorkeling in Raja Ampat: Misool, Boo, Tank Rock and Gorgonian Passage (days 8 to 10)

Raja Ampat is where this boat makes its case, and Misool, the southern group of islands where the Zen spent its last three days, is the reason snorkelers should book a Raja Ampat departure over any other. The reefs here grow right up to the surface, the water inside the karst lagoons is flat and clear, and the big animals, mantas included, feed and get cleaned in the top five meters, so a snorkeler sees what the divers see, in better light. They went like this.

Misool: Boo West, Boo East and Tank Rock (day 8). If Banana Island settled the argument, Misool ended it. This was, I think, the most beautiful snorkeling I have ever done, and I have snorkeled a lot of reefs.

Here is my video of the Misool snorkel sites:

Boo West first, and it was like a firework going off underwater. Silversides everywhere, so thick they closed over the reef like weather, with schools of fusiliers, jacks and giant trevallies hunting through them. Salps drifted past, and jellyfish I stopped to admire rather than avoid. A blacktip reef shark, a turtle, a great barracuda hanging in the current, a school of batfish. At one point a pair of small yellow fish with black bars took up station in front of my mask and stayed there, swimming a hand’s width ahead of me wherever I went. They were juvenile golden trevally, which behave like pilot fish: they adopt any large moving body as a host, ride the pressure wave in front of it for an almost free swim, and count on it to scare off anything that would eat them. For ten minutes I was their manta. Boo East, after lunch, was almost as strong: millions of fish over good coral, the kind of reef where you lift your head and realize an hour has gone.

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Then Tank Rock, and the highlight of the trip. Most of the reef is a submerged pinnacle, which means there is nowhere to hide from the current, and holding position was real sport. It was worth every stroke. Five manta rays were feeding and being cleaned at three to seven meters, right under the surface, and for over an hour I was alone with them. From a snorkel you see a manta the way a diver rarely does: from above, the whole animal laid out in the light, turning to pass under you again and again. It was almost better than diving. I have dived with mantas on dozens of trips; I had never had an hour with five mantas completely alone.

Here is the video I filmed with them:

It was a sporting day, and this is the honest caveat: Misool’s best snorkel sites are open-water pinnacles with current, and you need to be a confident swimmer with fins you trust. If that is not you, the guide will put you on the reef edge of the lagoon sites instead, which are still extraordinary.

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Late afternoon the team went ashore to climb the viewpoint over the Love Lagoon, the heart-shaped lagoon that has become Misool’s postcard. It is a short, steep climb of about twenty minutes on uneven steps; flip-flops are fine, but bring water and go late in the day when the light is soft and the heat has gone out of the rock. The viewpoint has a rail, the ground around the top does not. The heart only reads as a heart from above, so if someone on your trip has a drone, this is the moment for it. On a liveaboard the entrance fee is covered by the boat. A night dive was offered after that for the divers, and a night snorkel for the snorkelers, on what was already a very full day; I did neither.

Misool: Gorgonian Passage and the karst islands off Barracuda Rock (day 9). Gorgonian Passage is a narrow channel between two limestone islands, famous with divers for the giant sea fans on its deep wall. The snorkelers drift along the gentler side of the passage, and it was magnificent: every small reef fish in the book in dense clouds, a few jacks hunting through them, a school of bumphead parrotfish cruising past, and the most colorful coral we saw on the whole trip, soft and hard together. Below us on the wall, the divers found a wobbegong shark and a white-spotted wedgefish, a rare, critically endangered relative of the guitarfish that most divers never see.

Gorgonian Passage from the surface, October 2026

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The second site, Barracuda Rock (some boats call it Barracuda Point), was too exposed for snorkeling that day, so our guide took us along the limestone karsts of Wayil Lagoon instead. These small islands sit on a shared underwater plateau, so you can swim from one to the next without ever leaving the reef, and I covered about ten of them. Under the overhangs, where the light is low, were the most colorful soft corals I have ever seen: orange, red, pink and green, in a density that reminded me of Triton Bay. Misool could rename this stretch Little Kaimana. The divers, meanwhile, found no barracuda at Barracuda Rock, but some good macro.

The karst islands off Barracuda Rock, October 2026

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I used one of my package dives for the afternoon site, Four Kings, and I would do it again; it is in the review. The day ended with a barbecue on the beach, the Misool version of the deserted-island barbecue that every package includes.

On the last diving day the snorkelers had Puri Pinnacle and Magic Mountain (Karang Bayangan on the crew’s board) and I chose to dive them, as they are two of the best dive sites in Raja Ampat. The action was shallow, on pinnacles topping out at five meters, so I believe the snorkelers saw the same mobulas hunting and the same two oceanic mantas that we did. Both sites rise to within a few meters of the surface, which is why they work for snorkelers as well, but neither has any shelter, so there can be waves; make sure you are a confident snorkeler before you go in. The trip ended with a twelve-hour run to Sorong, the crew’s band on the sundeck at sunset, and a relaxed 11.30 checkout the next morning.

Raja Ampat, Komodo or the Banda Sea: which Scubaspa Zen route is best for snorkelers?

Not every route the Zen sails is equal from the surface, and this is the honest ranking after two trips and twenty years of diving these waters.

Raja Ampat is the best, and most of the Zen’s 2026–27 season is there. The shallow reefs are enormous, the hard and soft coral grows right up to the surface, and the color and the fish life in the top five meters are better than anywhere else I know; a snorkeler on a Raja Ampat liveaboard sees the same reef the divers see, minus the deep walls. My 2026 trip only ended there because of the forest-fire detour described above, and for the snorkelers on board it was an upgrade. The caveat is that Raja Ampat is for confident snorkelers: some of the best sites are exposed pinnacles with current and waves, and you need to be comfortable in open water with fins you trust. For the other boats that sail there, see my guide to the best luxury liveaboards in Indonesia.

Komodo is close behind, and for a beginner it is better. It has beautiful shallow reef too, and many protected areas inside the bays and between the islands where the water is calm, which makes it perfect for people who are new to snorkeling; the mantas at Komodo’s cleaning stations are also easier to see from the surface than almost anywhere. Halmahera and Alor are both very good for snorkelers as well. The Banda Sea is the one to think about: it is a hammerhead route, you will not see hammerheads from the surface, and what you will see, as this trip showed, is a healthy shallow reef on top of nearly every wall, which is better than most divers expect but not the reason to choose that route if you are only snorkeling. Pick Raja Ampat if you are a confident snorkeler and Komodo if you are not.

The Spa Package: One Treatment a Day

The “New Me” program

Non-divers on the Zen book the Spa (active wellness) package, which on a 10-night trip includes 11 hours of spa treatments and all the guided snorkeling you want. The treatments are not random: the spa has designed a nine-day sequence called the “New Me Program”, one treatment a day, that builds from loosening up to detox.

The sequence makes sense on a boat trip. The deep tissue massage on day one works out the flight; the after-sun wrap lands mid-trip when you need it; the lymphatic detox closes the week. Every treatment ends with a Tibetan singing bowl. The program is written for nine days; on longer or shorter trips the spa adapts it, so ask them how it will run for your dates.

The regular spa menu

If you are on the Scuba & Spa package, as I was, you choose from the regular menu instead. On my 10-night trip that meant 7 treatments, which the spa counts as seven massages or seven hours of anything on the menu, so you can mix a 90-minute Zen Signature massage with shorter facials and scrubs. One thing to know: guests on the Spa package have priority over divers when booking treatment times, another example that shows that snorkelers are kings on Scubaspa.

The one treatment on the menu written specifically for divers is the Dive Delight, 60 minutes, listed under “Best for divers”. It works the two areas that take the strain on a dive trip: the hips, which carry the weight of a tank and a belt up and down a ladder three or four times a day, and the lower back, which does the finning and the awkward twisting on a moving dhoni. After a few days of diving those are exactly the places that start to complain, and a massage built around them, rather than a general back rub, is a sensible thing to book around the middle of the trip, when the aches have arrived and there are still dives to come.

Guests on the pure Scuba package can book any of these for the prices below.

The spa itself

The spa is on the top deck, with two treatment beds divided by a curtain and a view straight out to sea. If you want the room to yourself, book your treatment with your partner. Booking is low-tech and works: the spa slots, seven a day from 10.00 to 18.30, are written on the glass daily-schedule board by the bar, and you put your name against the one you want; the popular late-afternoon slots go first. There is something about having a massage while the boat is moving: the slight roll adds to the relaxation rather than taking from it. I had the Balinese massage on my second day with Ani, one of the boat’s two spa therapists: firm where it needed to be, and the Tibetan singing bowl at the end is a lovely way to come back to the room.

Later in the trip I booked a facial, expecting the usual cleanse, mask and massage, and got something closer to a clinic treatment. The spa has two electric tools that I did not expect to find on a boat. The first is an ultrasonic skin spatula, a flat steel blade that vibrates at high frequency and is drawn across wet skin to lift dead cells and clear the pores, with ion settings for pushing product into the skin or drawing impurities out, and a gentle EMS pulse. The second is an electric gua sha, a smooth heart-shaped head that warms and vibrates as it is worked along the jaw and cheekbones, the modern version of the stone tool used in Chinese facial massage. Between the two, the facial was far more sophisticated than I expected at sea. It was the Nusantara Blossom Hydrating Facial, 60 minutes on the regular menu, and my skin felt great afterwards: plumped and clean, the way it feels after a good city facial, which is not what you expect ten days into a boat trip of sun and salt.

One thing I wish the menu had: a hair creambath. Ten days of seawater is brutal on hair, and the Balinese creambath, a deep-conditioning scalp massage, would be the perfect boat treatment. Until they add it, do what I do and bring a hair mask and hair oil, and use them after the last snorkel of the day.

Yoga at Sunrise

Yoga is included in every package and runs every morning at 6 am on the top deck, taught by one of the spa therapists. The deck is very large for a boat, and at sunrise, with the sea flat and the first light on the water, it is a beautiful place to practice. The length of the session depends on the time of the first dive; on our first morning it was 30 minutes, gentle, focused on stretching and opening the body, which is exactly what you want when you are about to snorkel or dive three times a day.

I have to be honest about the rest of my trip: the yoga teacher fell ill a few days in, and with one therapist left to run the spa there were no more classes. The spa program itself held up with a single therapist for the rest of the trip. That is the risk of a small wellness team on a boat ten days from anywhere, and it is worth asking, when you book, whether a new teacher is on board. On a normal trip, by every account from previous guests and from my own first morning, the class runs daily.

Life on Board for a Non-Diver

A non-diver spends more hours on the boat than a diver, so the boat matters; for the full description of the decks, cabins and food, read the main Scubaspa Zen review. In short: The Zen’s sundeck is enormous, with a large shaded area, several comfortable sofas added since my first trip, and enough open deck that sun-seekers always find a spot. Call buttons between the loungers bring the bar to you. The slide from the Pulau Pisang afternoon comes out on most calm days at anchor. The bow platform is a big flat space for yoga or just for watching the sea on a crossing, and on both my trips we saw dolphins from the deck; in 2022 we saw blue whales too, though not in 2026.

Kayaks are also on board, and free to use. Whenever the Zen is at anchor you can ask the crew to put one in the water and paddle off on your own: around the boat, along the nearest shoreline, or, in Misool, between karst islands that sit close enough together to explore in an hour. For a non-diver it is one more way to fill the gap between the second snorkel and the afternoon treatment, and the view of the islands from a kayak, at water level and in silence, is one the divers never get.

All the shared spaces are open-air; only the cabins are air-conditioned. There is nearly always a breeze at sea and you adjust within a day, but if you need an air-conditioned lounge, this is the wrong boat.

Food is served five times a day, with a buffet lunch and an à la carte dinner on most nights, and it has become even better since 2022. Drinks other than water and breakfast coffee are extra, at closer to US prices than Indonesian ones, but the cocktails are inventive and after every dive the bartender sends up a mocktail of his own creation.

The Wi-Fi is Starlink, with two dishes for reliability. Each guest gets 1 GB free and can buy more; I measured 57.68 Mbps in the open Banda Sea. If you want cheap data, an eSIM works near Ambon, the Banda Islands and Nusa Laut, which was about half of the days on this route. I go into the internet on board in more detail in the review.

Shore Excursions

Both the divers and the non-diver program includes excursions, and on the Banda route the one that matters is Banda Neira. These islands were once the only place on earth where nutmeg grew. The Dutch built Fort Nassau here in 1609 and Fort Belgica above it in 1611, and in 1621 the Dutch East India Company took the islands by force, killing or driving out most of the Bandanese and replacing them with slave-worked nutmeg plantations. The English held on to the neighboring island of Run until 1667, when the Treaty of Breda left Run to the Dutch and New Amsterdam, now Manhattan, to the English.

Scubaspa organized a tour of the town on the afternoon of day four. It began like any liveaboard visit: the museum, the old church and a walk through the nutmeg plantations. Then we reached Fort Belgica and saw the Scubaspa touch. At the foot of the fort the crew had set up a cocktail party with food and drinks, and a band of ten musicians and dancers from Banda performed traditional dances before playing Western songs for us, ABBA included. With the sun setting over the fort, the volcano and the sea, the guests began singing and dancing with the band, and it turned into a big party before we went back on board for dinner. For a non-diver, this is the evening you will remember.

The package also includes a barbecue on a deserted island: on my first trip the crew set up a beach party on Molana Island, and in 2026 the barbecue was on a beach in Misool, on the evening after Four Kings.

A Small Spa Liveaboard or a Big-Ship Wellness Cruise?

If you are searching for a “spa cruise” or a “wellness cruise”, most of what you find will be large ships with a spa deck and a few hundred fellow passengers. The Zen is a different animal: 20 guests, two therapists, one treatment a day built into your package, and the reefs of Indonesia under the boat. You will not get a thermal suite or a choice of restaurants. You will get a massage with the Banda Sea outside the window and a snorkel over a reef nobody else is on. For a non-diver who wants wellness and nature rather than entertainment, the small boat wins.

Which Scubaspa Zen Package Should a Non-Diver Choose?

If you dive but you also want to snorkel the shallow reefs and use the spa, choose Scuba & Spa. The Scuba & Spa package includes 14 dives over 10 nights and I used only eight of mine, because I kept my dives for the deep sites, like the hammerhead pinnacles at Suanggi, and snorkeled the shallow ones, like Nusa Laut and Nailaka. If you are a couple where one dives and one does not, book Scuba for one and Spa for the other: you will be in the water at the same sites at the same time, and back on the boat together for lunch.

Check Scubaspa Zen dates and availability

Conclusion

Most dive liveaboards tolerate non-divers. Scubaspa Zen is built for them, and after ten snorkels on this trip I will call it what it is: the best snorkeling liveaboard in Indonesia that I know of. A dedicated snorkel guide and speedboat, a treatment a day, sunrise yoga, excursions ashore and a boat that is comfortable to spend the day on make it the best liveaboard for non-divers I have found in Indonesia, and the best way for a mixed couple to take the same holiday. If you are booking for the snorkeling, book a Raja Ampat or Komodo departure, where the reefs come up to the surface.
How to book Scubaspa Zen. You can book through Scubaspa’s own website, or compare the Zen’s dates and prices

For more on Raja Ampat, start with my guide to the best Raja Ampat liveaboards, then my reviews of the other boats I have dived there from: Dewi Nusantara, Emperor Harmoni and Seahorse, which sails on from Raja Ampat to Triton Bay. If you would rather stay on land, I have reviewed the two resorts that are worth the journey, Misool Resort and Papua Explorers, and compared them head to head in Misool Resort vs Papua Explorers.
The last picture I have of the trip is not underwater. It is the sundeck on the final evening, somewhere on the twelve-hour run to Sorong, the crew’s band playing as the sun went down, the divers and the snorkelers in the same chairs with the same drinks and nobody able to say who had seen more. That is the whole argument, really. I had come for the hammerheads and I will remember the mantas, and I saw them with nothing on my back but a rash guard.

FAQ

What is the best snorkeling liveaboard in Indonesia?

In my experience, Scubaspa Zen. It is the only Indonesian liveaboard I know that gives snorkelers a dedicated guide and speedboat on every outing, runs the snorkels at the same time as the dives but sends them to the sites that suit snorkelers, includes a spa treatment a day on its Spa and Scuba & Spa packages, and sails Raja Ampat, where the reefs reach the surface. On my 2026 trip the best hour in the water, five mantas at three meters at Tank Rock in Misool, happened on a snorkel, not a dive.

Can non-divers go on a liveaboard?

Yes, but choose the boat carefully. On most dive liveaboards non-divers only snorkel when a site happens to be shallow. On Scubaspa Zen in Indonesia they have a dedicated snorkel guide and speedboat, a spa treatment every day, morning yoga and shore excursions.

Is Scubaspa Zen good for snorkelers?

Yes. Snorkeling is guided, leaves at the same time as the dives on a separate speedboat, and goes either to the divers’ site or to a better snorkeling site nearby, at the guide’s choice. Gear and guide are included in every package. The Raja Ampat itineraries have the best snorkeling; the Banda Sea route has some deep sites better suited to divers.

What is included in the Scubaspa Zen spa package?

On a 10-night trip, 11 spa treatments (a nine-day “New Me” program of one treatment a day), guided snorkeling, daily yoga, excursions, a beach barbecue, airport transfers and 1 GB of Wi-Fi. Seven- and twelve-night versions include 8 and 13 treatments.

Is there yoga on Scubaspa Zen?

Yes, every morning at 6 am on the top deck, led by one of the spa therapists and included in every package. Sessions are gentle, focused on stretching, and last 30 to 60 minutes depending on the dive schedule. On my 2026 trip the teacher fell ill mid-trip and classes stopped, so ask whether a new teacher is on board.

How much do spa treatments cost on Scubaspa Zen?

Treatments on the regular menu are $90 for 60 minutes, $105 for the 75-minute lymphatic drainage and $120 for the 90-minute Zen Signature massage, plus 11 per cent tax (October 2026). They are included in the Spa and Scuba & Spa packages, and guests on the wellness program have priority over divers when booking treatment slots.

Is a liveaboard a good holiday for a couple where only one person dives?

On Scubaspa Zen, yes. Book the Scuba package for the diver and the Spa package for the non-diver: both leave the boat at the same time, see the same sites and are back together for every meal.

Which is better for a non-diver: a Banda Sea or a Raja Ampat trip on Scubaspa Zen?

Raja Ampat, for the sheer scale and color of its shallow reefs. But the Banda Sea is better for snorkelers than most divers assume: nearly every site, including the hammerhead island of Suanggi, has a diverse, healthy shallow reef on top, and the route adds Nusa Laut, Run, Nailaka and the Banda Neira shore visit. You will not see the hammerheads from the surface, though; they stay deep.

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