PNG travel report August 2018

In August this year we travelled for two weeks in PNG. We entered via the Jayapura -  Vanimo land crossing, followed until Wewak and Angoram for a visit of the Sepik River, then back to Wewak from which we flew to Rabaul via Moresby. We visited the Rabaul area and Bougainville, then back to Moresby from which we followed on to Honiara.

This travel has costed me a lot of time to organise (and quite a lot of money). I am sharing here all the hard-gained information.

Safety - PNG is safe, provided you gathered enough information about what you are doing / where you are going, and you use common sense.

1. Don't go around in the three big cities (Port Moresby, Lae, Mt Hagen), no matter if by day or night, by car or walking, UNLESS you are with a local who knows what he is doing. There are many safe areas in the three cities, but you need to know for sure which they are. Don't show precious looking items like cameras or jewels

2. In medium sized towns like Wewak, Buka or Madang, during the day be aware of pickpocketers, who often just rob you without using weapons and run away, but besides them those places are relatively safe. Don't show cameras or jewels. Better not to go out at all after dark. To make a comparison, I think Wewak overall is no more dangerous than some places frequented by tourists, like Nairobi or Manila.

3. Rural villages like Angoram are usually very safe, but ask always locals just in case. Usually you can go around using your camera without worries.

4. Just in case, always ask locals before any road travel in PMV. Usually it's safe to go though, even during the night, except the route Lae - Mt Hagen.

5. The most important rule is always to become friend of locals anywhere you go, as soon as you arrive in a new place. If you come by PMV, better to make friends during the trip, ask them to help you out. Usually people are super friendly and helpful, moreover almost everybody speaks English. You can usually trust people you don't know in PNG, because raskols are not subtle enough to show fake friendship in order to attire you in a trap, rob, scam, kidnap or whatever: if somebody wants to rob you he will simply come straightforward to you showing a big gun.

6. Be up to date if there is any crisis, like the one currently in Western Highlands. I strongly recommend the UK foreign travel advice, which is usually up to date and doesn't exaggerate risks.

Land travel - This is the biggest mess when visiting PNG. Almost all the roads need 4x4 vehicles. Fuel is super expensive, and 4x4 vehicles consume a lot, so the private transport companies do anything they can to maximise their profits.

Usually, there is only one PMV a day between two cities. Before departing, it stops everywhere to pick up passengers, this process might take easily 4-5 hours. Then it stops again on the road. The result is that it takes 8 hours to do 150km.

Then another very important rule: when going from a big city to a village, PMVs depart around noon, but in the opposite direction they ALWAYS depart after dark and do the run overnight. This is because most passengers need to go to town to sell their products in the market, so they need to be there early, sell things, and be back on the same vehicle when the market closes.

Similar things happen when travelling over water (river ferries): passengers are considered much lower priority than the cargo. I spoke with a traveller who went from Angoram to Madang by boat: he said that passengers could come on board only after the last gram of the precious betelnut cargo was stored. If betelnuts had taken too much space, the boat would have left without passengers.

So far in my description, the situation sounds very similar to some places in Africa, like Madagascar and probably Congo DR. But there is a big difference: in PNG fuel is really expensive. If you are in Madagascar, you can workaround all these logistical difficulties simply by hiring a private driver; if you do the same in PNG you'll end up paying too much: a honest price for hiring private transportation from Angoram to Wewak, for instance, is 800 kina (300 USD).

There are a few areas where there is a well organised network of minibus, like Rabaul - Kokopo, but they are exceptions where the road is not so bad.

Air travel - We had four internal flights booked during our visit, and they were all cancelled and moved of several days. Some were cancelled and moved more than once. In some cases the company didn't send an email to tell us the flight was cancelled.

To avoid problems, first don't book flights directly on PNG Air and Air Niugini websites. Book them instead with one of the many intermediaries you find on SkyScanner, because this way you are more likely to be notified if there is a reschedule. Second, if you have an important connection in Port Moresby, try allowing one full day (two nights) after landing in Port Moresby with an internal flight. Or have a plan B ready in case the internal flight is cancelled. The only cheapish hotel near Moresby's airport is the Hideaway Hotel (200 kina a night). Once you are there you are kind of locked inside, and the restaurant is a bit expensive, so I suggest to bring food from the excellent Kaibars that are in the airport, between the domestic and international terminal.

Another very important thing is to be over paranoid about flight cancellations: every time you pass by an airline office, stop there and ask if all your next flights are confirmed.  This saved us in a couple of occasions.

Good things about flights:

1. International flights with Air Niugini are punctual and of excellent quality

2. Apart from all the cancellations, we didn't experience any delay. I read somewhere that passengers sometimes bring too much luggage and the flight cannot depart; we didn't experience that, and it didn't seem to be so likely

3. Connections between internal flights using the same company are granted. If the first flight is late, the second one waits for connecting passengers.

4. Staff at the airport are very helpful, in spite of the crazy travel changes they have to deal with. In the end they always found a kind of acceptable solution to the various cancellations

5. The small airplanes used by PNG Air are wonderful: super clean, beautifully decorated, and they have the best in-flight magazine I have ever found on a plane, full of beautiful pictures and interesting articles about remote tribes. They are at the same level of a National Geographic magazine

6. Flights are rarely booked out, so you usually find a seat even with a couple of days of advance

SEPIK RIVER

We visited the Sepik starting from Angoram, it's a day trip on a smaller branch of the river down to Kambot village. The whole visit can be easily organised as a 48 hours roundtrip from Wewak, at the cost of approximately 1500 kina per group. If you don't want to pay thousands of dollars, and simply have a good impression of the river and tribal art, I strongly recommend Kambot village, especially because its carvers are quite famous in the Sepik area (apparently one of the carvings from Kambot even appeared on the tail of old Air Niugini planes).

To do the trip, you have to reach the PMV station in Wewak around 10-11am, and ask for the track that goes to Angoram. The track will wait and wander around Wewak for 4 hours, depart after lunch, and arrive in Angoram some time before 6pm.

In Angoram stay at WAVI guesthouse, that as far as I know is the only guesthouse in the village, and ask the owner Francis Tobias to help you organise the trip. Francis Tobias is very reliable, he is not a tourist guide, he does not have any interest in trying to scam people; he simply owns the guesthouse, that is mostly used by government and religious staff, and he is the political representative of Angoram district or something like that, so he knows well the area, and he is glad to help the few foreigners who come to Angoram. His email is francistobias24@gmail.com.

Then, as I said, the day after you can do the trip along the Sepik first, and then the smaller branch. To reach Kambot it takes between 1 and 2 hours one way.

One important thing to remember is that the PMV back to Wewak is overnight, it leaves at 10pm and arrives around 5am. If you want to come back during the day, your only alternative is to pay 800 kina for the private car.

Another important thing, there is no PMV on Sundays, so if you want to do the trip in 48 hours you cannot leave on Saturday, because the first PMV to come back will depart on Monday night and arrive in Wewak on Tuesday morning.

In order to visit Kambot, estimate these costs:

• 20 kina each way per person for the PMV
• 150 kina per night in the guesthouse at Angoram
• 350 kina to hire a canoe with the driver for the day
• 450 kina for the fuel (in the worst case, if fuel is only available in the expensive retailers; if you are lucky and find that the cheaper retailers still have fuel to sell, you should pay around 380 kina. Francis Tobias will help you with this)
• between 100 and 150 kina to give to Kambot villagers for their community, unless you buy some of their artworks. When you are there somebody will show you the old carved houses, make you try local food, perform singsing for you, and in exchange for their hospitality you give them something to improve their village. Don't see this as purchasing a touristic service, they very seldomly get visitors, and the few who do visit are the only chance they have to improve a bit their life.
• 50 kina for the guide who will bring you to the village, present you to the people and help translating

Our guide was Francis Yanmari, a friend of Francis Tobias. He knows Angoram and the Sepik very well, he is a very good person, and he is reliable. Actually, we have been in contact mainly with him for organising our trip, we spoke on Facebook (I don't know if he uses email). He was really helpful for us. If you have any doubt about how to organise things, or you want to stay more days and go beyond Kambot, you can write him on Facebook, I can give you his Facebook account via private message.

The above costs are if you want to do the one day trip. If you want to stay more days (either staying in Kambot overnight, or to visit further villages on the branch), you'll have to add

• 350 kina for each further day of hiring the canoe
• 50 kina for each further day of the guide
• Probably something more for accommodation of canoe driver and guide, for each night
• Something around 100 kina per night to stay in the guesthouses of the villages (all large villages have one, they are managed by the local mission)
• If you go beyond Kambot, you'll have to buy more fuel, I don't know exactly how much

If you want to see the upper Sepik River from Pagwi, or have a longer tour with several villages, and you don't want to turn crazy organising things via email, upon my personal experience I would suggest to do something like that:

• allocate 10-14 days in Wewak so you have plenty of time in case of delays
• go to a good guest house in Wewak, and tell the owner, "I want to reach Pagwi, and visit this and this village. What do I need?"

I am sure that, even if it won't be cheap, you'll still pay much less that with the tour agencies. And it's also good that you'll be able to see yourself where your money goes, and how expenses are organised.

RABAUL AREA

Well, first I want to describe what you should expect from Rabaul. Even though I had done a lot of research, I didn't clearly understand how much of the town was still destroyed, how far the destroyed part was from the rebuilt one, where exactly are hotels, etc.

Rabaul was completely destroyed by 1994 double eruption. PNG government didn't have much funds for reconstruction, so they somehow accommodated only the western part where the harbour is (that now looks like a smallish village), and moved the capital of East New Britain to Kokopo. The whole town center, that lays between 1 and 2 km east of the reconstructed village, is still destroyed and looks like a modern Pompei. Some privates did an effort to rebuild their properties, that now lay like shiny oasis of modernity in the middle of the ruins: the Rabaul Hotel, exactly at the border between reconstructed part and ruins, and the Travelodge and the nearby Yacht Club. Finally, the Japanese government very zealously rebuilt and polished the WWII memorial on top of the hill.

Rabaul Hotel has a very good restaurant, and you should visit its interior at least once even if you don't stay there, they have a big collection of tribal art and the biggest wheel of shell money in the world. Personally, I would rather suggest staying in the Travelodge for its charming location, in the very middle of the ruins, on the seaside. Rabaul Hotel and Travelodge are the only two accommodations in Rabaul, all the other guesthouses are in Kokopo (there are 4-5 hotels in town, plus a resort reservable on booking.com).

The whole zone around Rabaul and Kokopo is safer than the average of PNG. Just to be sure, in any case, always ask locals before going out in the dark, there are some parts of both towns where thieves are sometimes active at night.

There is a very efficient minibus network throughout the Kokopo - Rabaul area. Buses are frequent, cheap, and even numbered. To reach Rabaul from the airport you should definitely go by bus, because otherwise you'll be charged a very high price for the hotel transfer. You first catch a bus from the airport to Kokopo town, then another bus to Rabaul. It takes a bit less than an hour. Normally, from Rabaul bus station you need to catch a third bus to go to the ruins area, where the hotels are, but if you offer a couple more kinas to the driver he will drop you directly at your hotel, it's just a 2km drive. You can safely take the bus even if your flight arrives in the late afternoon, when it's already dark: either in the bus, or in the station waiting for the bus, you'll be surrounded by people, it's safe.

If you want to eat cheaply, there are a lot of Kaibars in Rabaul where you can have fish, chicken, yams, vegetables. They are usually inside a big supermarket. Besides kaibars, people in the market sell food ready to eat, like tuna cooked with plaintain and vegetables in coconut milk.

From Kokopo beach, plenty of banana boats are ready to take passengers to the nearby islands like Duke of York Island, and to New Ireland. Actually, we found out that going to Kavieng from Kokopo is quite easy: there are at least 4-5 boats leaving from Kokopo every day, they follow the west coast of New Ireland until a point approximately one third between the southernmost point and Kavieng. From there there are daily PMVs to Kavieng. The only thing I don't know is if this PMV is one of the 4x4 ones that takes hours to gather passengers and leaves once a day, or just a simple, frequent minivan. It depends on the conditions of the road, which I don't know.

Locals claim that there is also another PMV from Kokopo to Kimbe bay, it takes some 12 hours overnight. This way one might organise a very nice trip, with a one way flight Port Moresby - Hoskins, then overland up until Kavieng, and flight back Kavieng - Port Moresby.

BORDERS

The border Jayapura - Vanimo is super modern and organised. At the current status, it doesn't seem likely that it will ever be closed in the near future.

Travel from PNG to Indonesia is easier because in Vanimo it's very easy to find public transportation to the border, then from the border to Jayapura there are cheap shared cars.

In the opposite direction, I don't think you'll ever find the shared car to the border in the chaotic traffic of Jayapura / Abepura, so you are forced to hire a taxi. From our experience, a fair up-to-date price for the ride would be of 500.000 rupiah. The price of 200.000 - 300.000 suggested in Wikitravel is unrealistic.

The best place to change money is on the Indonesian side of the border. When going to Vanimo, bring some spare IDR cash, because the rate of USD is terrible.

You'll need a pre-arranged visa to enter PNG from Jayapura. We did ours in London, so we don't know about the process in the PNG embassy in Jayapura.

Needless to say, on the Indonesian side of the border you'll be a superstar, all the guards will take a picture with you, posing like Rambo or James Bond with their guns.

Now about Bougainville - Solomon: as you probably know, this has never been an official point of entry / exit of none of the two countries. However, until the recent past, travellers could get a stamp in the nearest quarantine office, and cross the border like if they were travelling on their own boat. Quarantine offices are in Gizo in the Solomons, and in Buka / Arawa in Bougainville. Recently they had even opened a new office to get the stamp in Buin. Even if technically this crossing was kind of illegal, almost nobody cared on both sides.

Now, in the past year the situation has changed. The situation is getting tense because of the upcoming referendum in June 2019. The governments of PNG and Solomon Islands, backed by the United Nations, are strongly trying to keep foreigners away from that border, because they are afraid of foreigners bringing guns to sell in Bougainville. I exchanged emails with border officers of both countries, and both answered quickly, the response being a tense and strong no. I then met personally Sylvester Vakore, the PNG officer I had spoken via email, in Buka, he said that things will change after the referendum, in one way or another it's likely that there will be an official crossing from Buin into Shortlands.

Some additional information: you can freely (and safely) go around on both sides of the border, and in the whole Bougainville, except for the area of Panguna mine, for which you'll need to be accompanied. The UK foreign travel advice states that you need to inform some authorities of your intention to visit Bougainville, this is not correct, probably that part of the site is not updated.

If you still want to risk and cross the border, thing that at the moment I don't suggest, better doing Buin - Shortlands than Arawa - Choiseul. In Choiseul there are plenty of Australian military personnel, they'll catch you for sure.

Ah, there is also another reason why PNG wants to keep away foreigners from the border, apparently they want to prevent Noah Musingku from selling his gold to foreigners and get funds.

BOUGAINVILLE

Our original plan was to land in Kieta, spend 6 days to explore southern Bougainville and Shortlands, before flying to Gizo. When we found out about the problems at the PNG - Solomon border, we booked flights Buka - Port Moresby - Honiara - Gizo, so that we had 4 full days to reach Buka from Arawa and explore the east coast of Bougainville. So far so good.

Then, the day before our flight Rabaul - Kieta, we found out that PNG Air had cancelled and rescheduled our flight, without notifying us via email: it had been postponed of four days, so that we had only one night (not more than 6 hours) to reach Buka from Kieta. With a bit of arguing, we managed swapping Rabaul - Kieta with a flight Rabaul - Buka, that allowed us only three days in Buka.

Unfortunately, with only three days in Buka there is no much space for exploring Bougainville mainland, because the only PMV that goes to Arawa is one of those 4x4 ones that takes a full day to go to Arawa, and comes back to Buka overnight. So we had to give up and we simply stayed in Buka Island to rest.

There is nothing interesting in Buka town, except for a hand written sign that counts down the days left to the June referendum (somebody replaces the number manually every morning). Buka island is well connected internally with minibuses and tracks. The beach on the northern tip of the island is beautiful.

There are two small banana boat harbours in Buka town, to go to Bougainville mainland. The boat costs 2 kina and does the crossing in less than 2 minutes. On the other side you'll find the PMV waiting to fill up before departing to Arawa. There are a lot of small islands with beautiful reef, all around Buka town. For 70-80 kina you can hire for one hout one of the banana boats that do the crossing, the guy will take you to an island and sleep under a palm while you snorkel. Just be sure he understands that you want to see reef, because otherwise he will take you to the island called "White Beach", that is a popular place for locals to party and get drunk, but there is nothing to see underwater.

We stayed at Dob's Inn, 6 km after the airport on the main road of the east coast of Buka Island. It has a very beautiful sea view from a cliff. 150 kina per night for 1 person, 50 kina for every additional person. It has a bar that is frequented by local businessmen, who will be friendly and curious to talk with you since there are no tourists in Bougainville. There is also a western style restaurant, probably the only one of the whole Bougainville, that is frequented by the many UN bureaucrats who live in Buka (Bougainville has a large UN business, as you might have expected).

MONEY

As you have heard, PNG is expensive. I wouldn't say it's crazy unreasonably expensive though, I suspect that people that are shocked by prices in PNG didn't try travelling in other remote parts of the South Pacific. Reaching places in PNG that don't have an airport is not so different from reaching an outer island in a Pacific archipelago: either you cope with the lack of comfort and random delays or you pay your own transport that costs a lot.

Average accommodation usually ranges around 400 kina per night. You can find cheaper, but for two persons it's very difficult to find something cheaper than 200 kina. I found prices on Wikitravel quite outdated, all the places listed are more expensive now, and all the cheap ones charge per person, not per room, so the price is doubled.

The good thing is that you often get a shared kitchen to cook, and if you buy things in the market food will be very cheap.

A very important note on ATMs: keep well away from BSP (Bank of South Pacific), they charge unbelievably high commissions, have a tiny cash limit, and often run out of cash (but they still charge you card, leaving you with the trouble of contacting your bank and dispute the transaction).

Always use ANZ ATMs instead. If you have one of the cheap conversion cards like FairFax, choose the conversion to your currency proposed by ANZ, instead of letting your card do the conversion. I found out that the ANZ rates are really good in PNG and Solomon Islands, you save approximately 20 USD over a withdrawal of 1200 kina.

Thanks for the comprehensive report,very interesting!

Hi @adrdilauro, I've moved your topic to the Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea: Papua New Guinea branch.

sounds a great trip and thanks for the detailed report

Very interesting and helpful. thank you for taking the time to write this up.

This post has been removed by its author.

Great report!
Thanks for taking your time and sharing valueable information!
:-)

Locals claim that there is also another PMV from Kokopo to Kimbe bay, it takes some 12 hours overnight. This way one might organise a very nice trip, with a one way flight Port Moresby - Hoskins, then overland up until Kavieng, and flight back Kavieng - Port Moresby.

Not just a claim - I took that very PMV in August last year, rendering all the guide book comments stating "there is no road connection between Rabaul/Kokopo and Kimbe" irrelevant. It was one of the most expensive PMV rides in the whole country at K200 (although you can apparently find rides for K150 and possibly lower - I suppose it depends on the driver) and also one of the most uncomfortable. It's just a dirt road through jungle with a few river crossings, one of them being a significant one. One local told me the Land Cruiser once got stuck in the river and the car was slowly filling with water due to a leak... Thank goodness it was only up 3/4 of the tyres when I did it. It takes 12 - 13 hours and you arrive at day break in Kimbe, but you have to be at the Kokopo market around 8 am anyway to secure a seat.

Paheka, your report is really cool. If I had known in advance about such a PMV I would definitely had taken it. I regretted not to visit Kimbe, because of lack of money to buy so many flights.

Even though, in the end, I did end up in Kimbe for an unexpected 1-hour stopover by plane, when our PNG Air flight from Buka to Port Moresby was cancelled, and PNG Air staff re-accomodated us on a different plane that went around all the islands on unscheduled flights to pick up passengers: we did Buka - Kavieng - Rabaul - Kimbe - Lae - Port Moresby all in the same day. I could even take good pictures of Kimbe peninsula!

Hah, I met an American guy who also did five (or four) flights in one day just like you did. Well, it's still a lot more comfortable than land transport, eh...

Kimbe is a lot uglier and more dodgy than Kokopo, and the surroundings are not as pretty (mostly oil palm plantations), but I still had a good time thanks to my host family near the centre of town. The peninsula which Talasea is located on looks extremely interesting, but I didn't make it out there, partly because my hosts warned me of the people there (different tribes...?). The only other foreigners I saw were hanging out in the dive resort, not surprisingly. I really have to get my trip report sorted for all you folks to read!

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