Author archive
27 October 2011
We made our way to Labjuanbajo Airport early for our Wings Air 0830 flight to Denpasar-Bali for our connection to Jakarta. We never expected a traffic jam in a little town like Labuanbajo. But today was the day that locals were departing for their Haj in Mecca. The main road was chocka as was the […]
26 October 2011
Dragon-spotting on Komodo Island As we’ve kept ourselves on New Zealand time in order to make early flights and dives, we woke up naturally at 5am … assisted by the sunrise. Breakfast was cheerfully served at 5:30am and we were at Loh Liang, the National Park base for Komodo Island at 6:00am. We had to […]
25 October 2011
Crew, stowaway, freeloader or extra passenger? We pushed off from Labuanbajo harbour around 7:30am on our lovely comfy boat with what I thought were 4 crew members. As it turned out, one of them was an Indonesian passenger … I think the crew had smuggled him on even though we had paid for the entire […]
24 October 2011
We walked around Labuanbajo, in the land of Komodo dragons, and enquired about dive trips. Day trips are common and overnight trips require the right numbers in the travelling party. Every shop had the same offerings at the same price … except Labuan Bajo Dive Club which was IDR50,000 cheaper. That little difference in price […]
24 October 2011
Above: Sunset as viewed from our accommodation. Today we did a full day’s outing from 0800 to 1700 with two dives. Like many people, we skipped the optional third dive but couldn’t return until everyone was done. First up was Manta Point (Karang Makassar) where we saw four manta rays and an eagle ray. It […]
23 October 2011
We hired a motorbike today with the intention of going out of town, including to a waterfall. We didn’t get very far … about 10 minutes out of town, the road disappeared into a bumpy dirt track. We pushed on for about a further 10 minutes and decided that the ride was far too uncomfortable […]
22 October 2011
We didn’t have much time this morning before our 1140 flight from Bali to Labuanbajo. We walked out of our hotel to grab some breakfast. Unfortunately at 8am, there was not much choice. Kuta is rather touristy and it was only pricey cafes or McDonalds and KFC … nothing cheap or local. Our Lion Wings […]
21 October 2011
Due to the 5 hour time difference we woke early and walked to the airport for some breakfast before our 3 hour flight to Bali. We essentially had had an afternoon and an overnight in Bali for all the things I had in mind. Lengthy immigration queues ate into this time. We headed out […]
20 October 2011
Departing Christchurch at 1610, the 11h15 hours on the super-quiet AirAsia X flight went reasonably quickly. That was even without in-seat personal entertainment. These were all removed when they realised people weren’t paying to use them. I managed to catch-up on some reading and planning for next year’s travel! Just before landing, the crew gave […]
20 October 2011
This is the cheap trip that we had been looking forward to for about 10 months. When AirAsia X first opened up their sales for the new route to/from Christchuch we snapped up some tickets to KL for NZD58 plus airport taxes, coming to NZD99 … add to that luggage at NZD1 per kg and […]