Elad’s blog

A thousand times more beautiful, interesting, challenging a rewarding than Australia’s east-coast. Papua-New-Guienea is certainly one of the highlights of my journey thus far. This post is just a few advices I can give to anybody who plans to go there. Call me directly for more.

PNG is neither an easy nor a cheap destination. Yesterday, after returning to Australia, I had my first decent warm shower in almost three weeks - happy happy, joy joy. But if you are prepared for early wakeups, strange places, and amazing people - PNG is certainly the place to go.

The most important advice I can give to an Israeli who goes there is this: opposed to many parts of the world, in PNG you should make it very clear that you come from Israel. Put a flag on the bag, a badge on the shirt, and tell everyone you’re from Israel - it really is the best insurance there is, and the people there are totally amazing, friendly, generous and helpful. If, on the other hand, you happen to be an Australian - don’t go there. They really hate and despise Australia, to an uncomprehendible extent. They blame Aussies on almost every weakness of their country.

Use student cards. They work everywhere, from public transportation to food bars to flight reservations. Regarding flights: book your international flight with Air Niugini; this will grant you a big discount in local flights (and the international flight itself is the same plane as Quantas - it is merely a codeshare flight; just order it directly from Niugini and you’ll gain a lot).

Visa - the best place to make a visa is in Brisbane. Otherwise, issue it in Cairns; allow 3-4 days for that.

Talk a lot. Be prepared to answer many questions about you (what is the meaning of your name? which tribe do you come from? what is your profession? what about your family?) and about religous habits of Israel (how do you worship god?). It is a very religous country - when someone in the street starts to preach, even the drunk persons try to look sober, and listen to the “words of god”.

Go to villages. This is the real culture, and the villages are very different from province to province.

Eat local fruits. Enough said.

Dive. They have there more fish than water, and the water is extremely clear and warm (29 degrees!).

Take a local guide everywhere. It is by far better than going alone.

Buy in the markets.

By all means, go to festivals and special events. But do be prepared for “PNG time” - which means you should throw away all schedules. This includes flight schedules (when I was there plans were unexpectedly grounded for three days); never plan a tight schedule at this part of the world. Check and recheck festival dates - they get changes and even cancelled arbitrarily (for example, in the morning they don’t feel like celebrating - so they move it to next week. I thought I will see three festivals there, but only one actually took place).

Allow mount Wilhelm at least two days. Don’t underestimate altitude sickness.

Be patient and adventurous. It really is worth it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 8:56 and is filed under Travels, Papua New Guinea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.