If you don't have enough money to visit bali, so thousand islands are the best choice. It takes 1h to go to the port in the early morning. We took a tour to Pramuka island, included snorkeling, BBQ, cycling around the island, .. And I need to mention that 1000 islands are such a beautiful sight seeing with the blue sky & ocean

We used a travel organizer for this trip, and paid IDR 850k / pax, which included private speedboat, private fishing boat for island hopping and snorkeling activities, one night aircond accommodation in Harapan Island, 4x meals, plus snorkeling equipment. There were in total 12 persons participating, and I took my eldest son and my nephew along. We departed from Marina Ancol at 7.00am, took us about 1.5 hours to the rented house (in Harapan Island) that we use as home base for our activities.

Right after lunch, we started our snorkeling activities, hopping from one spot to another, island by island. I was so stunned with the beauty of coral reefs and under water scenes with many beautiful fishes in Thousand Island. I could not believe there were fascinating places only 1.5 hours away from Jakarta. Probably it is not as beautiful as Bunaken or Raja Ampat (i've never been there too...), but for the monies and time you spend, Thousand Island worth a lot. For me, the underwater scenes are even more beautiful than the Gilis in Lombok that I visited a month earlier (May 2013).

We came back to the rented house around 6.00pm, took a good rest, and continued the same activities the next morning to different spots/islands until 2.pm, had a quick lunch, and wend back to Marina Ancol Jakarta. I have uploaded some pics that we took during the trip.

There are many options of tour packages to Thousand Island that you can find in internet, starting from IDR 400k - IDR 2.5k per pax, depending on mode of transportation, type of accommodation.

Thousand Islands is a really "must-go" place you should put in your vacation list.....

we are 16 persons go to hoping islands on thousand islands rent a private yacht, we start from Pantai Mutiara (there are 3 pier Pantai Mutiara, Pantai Ancol, Muara Angke) took some food for lunch at Pramuka island and diving, saw under sea aquarium at Putri Island then snorkling around it, spent our night at Bintang Island (very quiet island we feel like our island, we just go snorkling 2 meters from beach and see many kind of fish)...You can go by travel agent or straight to the pier, for pier Muara Angke you must ready there at 5.30 am !
have a nice sailing....