AVOID MERPATI AIRLINES!

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 your cash, get your ticket and hop on the plane.

No. You don’t.

You turn up at the airport where they tell you that your booking is in status “XX” which means “cancelled”. It’s been cancelled because you didn’t pay for the ticket within three hours of making the booking. Or maybe it’s 4 days – the person I spoke to on the phone (after waiting 2 hours) seemed to change her mind partwat through the conversation.

I was told I would have to pay the short notice fare to get on the flight – twice the fee I booked at. I point blank refused and the guy at the counter kept saying “manager” and then failing to get said supervisor.

Eventually the little oik surfaced and proceeded to have a go at me for not following international air regulations (or some such utter crap) by not paying for the ticket within three hours. I pointed out that as I had booked the ticket in Dili and been told I had to pay in Kupang, this was physically impossible. This was Merpati’s fault, not mine, and I refused to pay for their mistake.

Only apparently it was my mistake – he kept repeating – for not following their rules. How, I enquired, could I follow their rules when the ones provided to me by their staff were incorrect? I asked for the rules, I was given some rules, and they were wrong. At what point was this my fault?

At this point he told me that he didn’t care about my problems and I think this is where I lost it and started yelling at him.

This seemed to work, especially as there were other customers around, and he hand wrote my ticket at the price I’d originally booked then tried to shake my hand. I just stared at him and walked off.

Thing is, I know at least one other person still in Dili who booked her ticket at the same time and who may have the same problem. I’m hoping my email to her gets there in time for her to check her booking.

Oh, and the plane was bloody awful as well. Broken seats, creaky overhead compartments, worn fittings, scratched paintwork… you name it. Most routes serviced by Merpati can also be reached by Garuda. If you have the choice, use the latter.

Just avoid Merpati.

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And back to Kupang

Ouchies

Ouchies

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 lot else to write about the drive to Kupang. Inside East Timor we passed a fuel truck that had gone off the road and rolled down a steep hill. Locals were siphoning out the petrol into plastic bottles – one or two with lit cigarettes in their mouths. Mad.

The journey took around 12 hours despite a burst tyre just past the Indonesian border. Nothing serious, just a very fast flat which the driver changed very quickly.

No smoking, please

No smoking, please

At the Lavalon bar I met Mariella, the Spanish girl who had been at the hostel in Dili. She had arrived the day before by motorcycle and was booked on a ferry to Flores the next morning. I had some nice fries and a decent steak sandwich (far too much onion for my taste) the price of which I justified by not having eaten all day.

There was some confusion at the hostel as none of the staff available spoke English and nobody seemed to be expecting me. Thankfully there was still a dorm bunk free which was all I needed.

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Kupang to Dili

Re"cycle"d chairs

Re"cycle"d chairs

I ended up getting out of bed at 1am to put earplugs in as the dogs over the road decided to have a conversation with everyone on the damn island. Other than that, I slept fine and was stood by the gate for my pickup. They took me to the Timor Tour and Travel office where I handed over my IDR185000 for a one-way, bottom-numbing, 13-hour ride.

The buses are fine – 12-seater minibuses with aircon, although the aircon is never switched on! The stereo is and I was regaled by everything from Indonesian classics to Bon Jovi at a vaguely tolerable level for most of the journey.

For those who get travel-sick it’s worth popping a couple of pills. The roads vary a lot on the journey from pretty decent to “why am I not in a Landrover?”. This is the case on both sides of the border.

We had a couple of rest stops, but I ate nothing at all as seems to be “normal” for me when I’m on long journeys. The final pause within Indonesia was in Atambua, the last town before the border. There, our immigration cards for East Timor were filled out for us by staff in the shop. I spotted a nice church down the road so went for a wander and took some photos.

Out of place, but rather quaint

Out of place, but rather quaint

The longest break is the journey was, not surprisingly, the border. Exiting Indonesia was fine and I even had two soldiers offering me a seat as they checked my passport. Huge smiles and handshakes – I guess they don’t see too many foreigners making the land crossing.

Checking into East Timor was pretty easy also. There are five classes of visa and I ended up with a “Class II” at $30. Given I may only be in the country for a week I could possibly have managed on a “Class I” as I think that may be the transit visa ($20). However, I wasn’t taking the risk. A quick luggage check by the security guys and we re-loaded and continued on our bumpy way.

I’d slept on and off for the ride, but my bottom was genuinely going numb by the time we arrived in Dili. I was also the last person to be dropped off so managed to experience some of the hairiest minibus driving ever. Some of the roads weren’t much better than the ones I went up in the Cameron Highlands and I was in a huge 4×4 on that trip.

Exit Indonesia...

Exit Indonesia...

The Dili Backpackers welcomed me in. After a quick luggage dump, the first thing I did was book some dives for the next day. Randomly I picked a guy called Andrew who was advertising on a new poster. $30 is the best rate I’d heard of here and being a 1-man operation, it was more likely to be a small group. As it happened, I was going to be diving with two Australian girls on their 3rd and 4th dives as they went through their Open Water with him.

A meal was called for as I hadn’t eaten in almost a day. I picked an Indian over the road and enjoyed a very decent chicken madras. With a naan and a drink, it came to an even $5. Very nice and just the right sized portion for my shrunken stomach.

...enter East Timor

...enter East Timor

Dili – in fact East Timor on the whole – is fairly pricey. Bars charge around $5 upwards for a beer (though you can get an ice cold tinnie from the street vendors for $1.50) and for $10 in Bali I’d be living in a flat of my own. It’s affordable, but more than you’d expect for a fledgling country. MInd, they’re trying to make all they can off the “visiting” UN staff who are on seemingly endless budgets so who can blame them.

A stroll east took me to a park which was lit up and from where I could hear live music. I had to pop in and look, and watched a few local performers playing covers and their own tracks. A young guy called Nevis struck up a conversation with me and we whiled away half an hour or so talking about Timor-Leste, politics, the UN, music and football. Nice guy.

Flying the flag

Flying the flag

On the way back to the hostel I did a quick email check at the “slow” place ($2 per hour and plenty fast enough for everything I needed to do). I then got back “home” to find it all locked up… Nobody told me about that! I managed to get one of the chaps from the attached restaurant to open a door for me, had a chinwag with my two roomies (Jean from Portugal and Christine from the States) and then nodded off around midnight.

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Bali to Kupang

Welcome to Kupang

Welcome to Kupang

The flight was pleasant enough with a small meal provided and we landed more or less on time in Kupang on the island of Timor. I got talking to a Fin and a couple of Aussies and ended up sharing a cab with them into town which saved a bit of cash.

The Lavalon hostel is about as basic as basic gets, but it fits in with my minor provisos. They do have dorms at IDR30,000 per night, but you can’t book these through Hostelbookers, so I ended up with a room to myself for IDR40,000. I’d have had the dorm to myself anyway as there was nobody else around.

I took a very short walk over the road to the bar, which is about as open air as you can get and still have a roof. The view west is over the beach where kids were playing football and behind me was the sea. I sat and enjoyed a couple of beers with an Aussie from the “other” Newcastle who went by the name of Bugger. I kid you not.

He’s been coming to Kupang for months at a time to catch the surf on one of the islands offshore. After a while, we were joined by more Aussies including the ones I’d been talking to earlier.

View from the Lavalon

View from the Lavalon

Lavalon serves very cold Bintang in big bottles for IDR25000 a pop. They also have free wi-fi which works at a decent speed. I ended up eating elsewhere, though, as another chap walked me onto the next main road up to a small shop specialising in satay. For IDR15000 (about a pound) I had 8 sticks of chicken satay, a portion of rice, a bowl of rather nice soup and an iced tea. Can’t complain!

One more beer at the bar and I headed back to read for a bit and crash out. My bus to Dili was booked for the next morning and I had a 5am pickup. Also, the owner of Lavalon is on good terms with the Dili Backpackers so he text messaged them for me. After all the hassle trying to sort out a booking, that was all it took!

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I hate airlines

I’m trying to fill the gaps in for my schedule in July. Thanks to Matt, I have some info regarding flights from Bali to East Timor and this is causing me some bellyache.

I just booked Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar at a time that won’t suit Leah. Thing is, while I was waiting for her to get back to me I was watching the Air Asia flight prices rise before my eyes. So I just went for it. This means I’m leaving KL about 5-6 hours before her, but it’s still half the price of flying the next day. Then take into account accommodation and the loss of an entire day until the next flight and I didn’t have a choice.

The problem is that I land in Denpasar at 22:00. I don’t expect the Merpati or Garuda ticket offices to be open at the airport at that time. From what I gather, Merpati have a flight out at breakfast time to Dili, which I’d be interested in… but does their ticket office open early enough to book a seat on that flight in the morning? I can’t book online as their web site is still under construction.

Garuda’s page is more functional and tells me I can get a flight to Kupang from where I know I can get a bus to Dili. The downsides: the flight’s in the afternoon so I’d likely have to stay in Kupang for a night and get the bus the next day (it’s a 12-hour journey)… and you can only book online with Garuda if your credit card was issued in Indonesia. Therefore by the time I get to Indonesia where I can book over the counter with them, all of the cheaper seats (and they are cheap) will almost certainly have gone.

Earlier in the trip I have a flight landing at Ko Samui airport at 10:45 in the morning. Ideally I want to get a ferry from Samui to Ko Tao. There are two companies (Lomprayah and Seatran Discovery) with boats at suitable times and both around 550 Baht each way for a 1½ hour journey. Lomprayah offer a free bus transfer from the airport, but this bus leaves at 11:00. Do I have time to get off the flight, grab my luggage and be on that bus? I don’t know, so I emailed them a day ago to ask… and haven’t had a reply yet.

Alternatively, Seatran’s boat leaves a couple of hours later but I’d have to make my own way down to the port… and I can’t find out which one of the several ports I’d need to get to!

You know, I much prefered traveling when I just turned up in places and winged it. I hate being on a schedule.

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