Bunaken-view house at Molas

Molas sits on the northern edge of Manado, where the city thins into coconut groves and hillside kampungs facing the Bunaken marine park. From the ridge here the view runs across the strait to Bunaken, Manado Tua's volcanic cone and Siladen, with the drop-offs that made North Sulawesi one of the founding destinations of Indonesian diving directly ahead.

The house is a hundred and thirty square metre single-storey build on a terraced plot, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big open living-dining room and a covered terrace running the width of the sea-facing side. Solid block construction, tiled throughout, ceiling fans plus air conditioning in the bedrooms, a proper kitchen, a carport and a mature garden of mango, rambutan and frangipani. Two hundred metres of lane leads down to the shore and the boat landing.

Manado is a comfortable city to live near. It is predominantly Christian and famously easygoing, with an outstanding and fiery local cuisine — cakalang fufu, tinutuan porridge, dabu-dabu sambal — plus malls, private hospitals, international-standard clinics, universities and a large expat diving community. Sam Ratulangi airport is thirty minutes away with direct flights to Singapore, Jakarta and Surabaya.

Beyond the reef, North Sulawesi offers Tangkoko reserve with tarsiers and black macaques, the Minahasa highlands around Tomohon with their volcanoes and lakes, and world-famous muck diving in the Lembeh Strait an hour and a half east. Few places in Indonesia pack this much variety into an hour's drive.

Property here is priced for locals rather than tourists, which is why a solid three-bedroom house with that view costs what a studio would in south Bali. Foreign buyers use a long lease or Hak Pakai arranged through a Manado notary, and the market is stable and transparent by Indonesian standards.