Bawah Reserve, South China Sea private-island resort that is giving back to the local community
- Indonesian luxury resort 300km northeast of Singapore is helping islanders foster an eco-tourism industry
- The recently launched Bawah Anambas Foundation teaches sustainable practices like organic farming and marine conservation
As green shapes on an expansive blue horizon morph into blobs of land, I fancy I’m an explorer leading an expedition by seaplane. Looking down the aisle and out of the cockpit window, I see the remnants of an ancient volcano.
Some of the six islands we are approaching are flat and crescent-shaped, others towering out of the ocean like misplaced, jungle-clad pyramids – a lost world. I half expect to see a pterodactyl fly past the windscreen.
The aircraft banks to reveal three sheltered lagoons in startling turquoise, fringed with white beaches. A spray of seawater signals touchdown. As we taxi towards the Bawah Reserve jetty, corals, fish and outlandish giant clams are clearly visible through the window.
The luxury resort encompasses 35 over-water and beach suites on Bawah Island, the largest of the six, which are part of Indonesia’s Anambas Islands, about 300km northeast of Singapore.
The reserve has been open for just over a year, and is majority owned by Tim Hartnoll, 63, a Briton who was born and raised in Singapore, where he works as a shipping entrepreneur, and who long dreamed of having his own island.
“Owning an island is meaningless unless you build the infrastructure to get there and live there, and if you’re going to do all that, you may as well make it a business,” he tells Post Magazine.
