This is an illustrative itinerary — one example of the kind of journey The Annum could shape, rather than a fixed package: ten days through the Maluku spice islands, the original Spice Islands of legend, where the nutmeg and clove trade ran for three hundred years and where, in a real sense, the modern world started.

Day 1–2 · Ambon

Fly into Pattimura airport. Ambon city is a port that has seen everything: Portuguese, Dutch, British, Japanese, Indonesian. The old colonial centre still has Dutch fortifications you can walk through. The local market — Pasar Mardika — is the first taste of Maluku food: tuna everything, sago palm in every form, the distinctive sweet-sour-spicy seasoning of the islands. We would arrange a stay at the small heritage hotel and a dinner at a local family’s home on the second evening.

Day 3–5 · Banda Neira

The historical heart of the spice trade. A small island, walkable end-to-end in an hour. Sixteenth-century Dutch fortifications — Fort Belgica is in remarkable condition — and the original nutmeg and mace plantations still operating. The story of Banda is the story of how Europe arrived in Asia, and how the Banda Massacre of 1621 (in which the Dutch killed almost the entire local population to control the nutmeg trade) shaped the next three centuries.

Children old enough to take in the history will be quietly changed by it. Snorkelling in the warm strait between Banda Neira and Banda Besar — a reef among the healthiest left in Indonesia — is the day’s lighter half.

Day 6 · Run Island

A small island off Banda, where the British originally traded with the locals for the right to harvest nutmeg. In 1667, the British exchanged Run for the Dutch-held island of Manhattan. A small monument marks the trade. The family could take a boat over for the day, snorkel the eastern reef, eat lunch with the Run fishermen.

Day 7–8 · Ternate and Tidore

Two small island sultanates, side by side, north of Halmahera. For five hundred years, the clove trade ran from here, and the kraton (palaces) of both sultans are still standing. The family could climb Gamalama, the volcano that rises directly out of Ternate, and visit the spice plantations, where children can see the cloves drying on bamboo mats by the road. A boat trip across to Tidore to visit the second sultanate, where the courtyards are quieter and older.

Day 9 · Halmahera (north coast)

The largest of the Maluku islands and the least visited. White sand beaches, traditional Sahu and Tobaru villages, jungle that runs straight to the water. We would arrange a day with a local conservation group working on protecting the endemic megapode bird; children get involved in the survey work.

Day 10 · Ambon to Bali

Back through Ambon, late afternoon flight to Denpasar. Your driver at the airport when you land.

“They will remember, with surprising precision, the moment they realised their own history class — Dutch colonisation, Henry Hudson, the founding of New York — connects to a tiny island they walked across.”

What the trip costs you

The full trip cost — including flights, accommodation, guides, drivers, boats, meals and activities — would be quoted separately from The Annum fee and approved before anything is booked. Maluku barely registers on Indonesia’s own tourism map, and all the better for it. The travel infrastructure is basic in places; the experience is difficult to match elsewhere.

What it costs the children

They will remember the day they walked through a five-hundred-year-old fortress on an island that controlled the price of nutmeg in Amsterdam in 1640. They will remember snorkelling over a reef that has somehow stayed intact while most others have not. And they will remember the moment their own history lessons stopped being abstract — on a tiny island they walked across in an afternoon.

Other trips we recommend

Ten days through Java’s heritage triangle — Yogyakarta, Borobudur, Prambanan. Two weeks across the Lesser Sundas — Lombok, Sumbawa, Komodo, Flores. A long weekend in Singapore for shopping, museums and food. A week in Cambodia centred on Angkor. A two-week loop through northern Thailand. A short stay in Kuala Lumpur for old-quarter food and the surrounding tea estates.

We can plan journeys across the region to suit a family’s interests and the time they have. Where they are open to suggestion, we weave in the history that ties back.

Two companion notes: where families base themselves on the island, and the village year and its ceremonies.

Author: The Annum  ·  Published: May 2026  ·  Last updated: June 2026

— The Annum