A little over  a year ago, I had a pretty poor experience with the staff of Merpati Airlines in Indonesia. This morning I received a comment on the related blog post, claiming to be from a pilot with Merpati. It read: you are a whinging f*ck…. get over it and pay the normal rate you [...]

read more from this topic.....

As I said in the last post, Leah had been ill overnight so I left her to get some kip while I looked for a new room. Big Bubbles had people arriving who’d filled the place with reservations and we had to shift elsewhere. I tried a few places up the road until I got [...]

read more from this topic.....

I was up at 8:30 to get my breakfast before my dive on Shark Point. A good job as it took half an hour before it was delivered (it was only a banana pancake) and I had to check my equipment before we hopped on the boat at 9:30. Ours was a small group – [...]

read more from this topic.....

We’d booked fast ferry tickets to the Gilis due to the shortness of our stay. The much cheaper slow ferry takes 12 hours which essentially loses you a whole day, and means you arrive late on – a death knell on your hopes of finding accommodation during the current high season. Again we’d organised things [...]

read more from this topic.....

Courtesy of the nice folk at MBA Travel (what seems to be the largest tour company based in Kuta), we booked a 3/4-day trip around the island. The trip we opted for was their Bedugul “Green” Tour at $30 per person. They offer two timeslots – pickup at 8am or 11:00 with the latter offering [...]

read more from this topic.....

I did finally get to go diving today, but not as much as I’d hoped and later than planned. Two of our divers decided to have a lie in so we left Kuta at 9:30 instead of 7am which pushed the rest of the day back and meant it was my turn to be late [...]

read more from this topic.....

Unfortunately, the custome I was supposed to be diving with this morning cancelled at the last minute and rescheduled for tomorrow. Hopefully they don’t do it again… Instead I’m loafing in the 24-hour Minimart deli on the beachfront with it’s free wi-fi. Of course, I do this on a day when I have next to [...]

read more from this topic.....

I’d had a long and tiring day on the 18th with the bus ride. I needed a good night’s sleep, but courtesy of three of the most selfish dorm-”mates” I’ve ever had the displeasure of encountering I didn’t get it. A Dutch couple were in the opposite bunk and woke at 6:30am, chattering away as [...]

read more from this topic.....

Sorry for the screaming caps, but I wanted to make this one stand out. Regular readers may recall I mentioned that you can visit the Merpati office in Dili where they’ll book your flight for a $2 booking fee. No money changes hands, you simply take their printout to the airport in Kupang, hand over [...]

read more from this topic.....

There had been a bad crash outside our hostel overnight. At a guess it looks like one 4×4 had been overtaking and gone head-on into another at speed. I’d suspect someone had been at the palm wine. Both cars were being lifted onto a car transporter by a crane when I got up. Not a [...]

read more from this topic.....