Pulau Weh

Diving here stays small and local. A handful of shops on the north-west beaches launch wooden boats straight off the sand, and most sites are close enough that the boat runs home between dives rather than idling offshore. Guides plan around the tide rather than the clock, so the exposed points get dived when the water is doing the right thing and the sheltered coral fills the gaps in between. Nothing is packaged, and the same site can be a cruise or a genuine workout depending on the hour you drop in.

This is a volcanic island rather than a coral one, and it dives like it. The reef is a thin living skin over dark rock: boulder ridges, clefts and slopes that fall away into blue water with nothing gradual about them. The pinnacles sit off the island's exposed corners where deep water comes close in, which is why current arrives with force and why the fish pack onto the up-current side and hold there. The bays are the counterweight, sandy and shallow and diveable at any state of the tide.

The place rewards divers who are comfortable being moved. On a running tide you are choosing where to be pushed rather than swimming anywhere, and the payoff is big-fish traffic at close range in water that is usually clean. Bring a surface marker and expect to send it up, since boats here look for the marker rather than following your bubbles. The sheltered bays and the house reefs off the beach are what you dive on the days the points are not on.

Aceh applies Sharia law and Weh is not a party island. Alcohol is largely unavailable, modest dress ashore is expected of everyone and matters most away from the dive beaches, and the rhythm of the day shifts noticeably through Ramadan. Accommodation is beach bungalows rather than resorts, and power and connectivity can be patchy. Divers who turn up expecting Thai-style infrastructure tend to leave disappointed; divers who want hard current, very few other boats and a quiet island in between usually do not.