| ▲ | itake 6 hours ago |
| PNG is on my list to visit.
It’s relatively complex to get to. Most flights either leave from Australia or Jakarta, they don’t run frequently enough to where you will probably spend the night in Jakarta or Australia in order to catch the flight the next day. I visited Timor Leste earlier this year and what an interesting country |
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| ▲ | Sharlin 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It seems astonishing to me that a "relatively complex" intercontinental trip these days means "have to spend a whole night waiting for the next flight". |
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| ▲ | itake 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | the additional complexity is visas and immigration for that country. I’m American, so I have to pay $35 every time I enter Indonesia and I’m limited to the number times per year I can enter the country. Australia is easier. Just need to fill out ETA for a $20AUD fee. The extra night also eats into your limited vacation time. 18 hours in addition to the 20 hours flying means you’re losing almost 4 days of your trip just transiting. Also, my flights aren’t intercontinental. I did this monkey dance going from tp hcmc to Timor Leste. | | |
| ▲ | ozgrakkurt 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is funny. I am Turkish and my government charges me about 30 usd every time I leave the country |
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| ▲ | netsharc 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I read about a Japanese flying to Indonesia in 1959 (the president of the country was courting her). She flew from Tokyo to Hong Kong, then to Bangkok, then to Singapore before making the last hop to Jakarta. | | |
| ▲ | mr_toad 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | That would have been right around the time that airlines were transitioning to jet aircraft. Back before jet travel it could take a whole week to reach the far east. |
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| ▲ | yreg 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I tend to fly cheaply with multiple transfers/layovers. What I figured out recently is that it is nice to combine the flights in such a way that one of the layovers is _longer_. When the airport has a good connection to a major city then 12 hours during the day are enough, but I'm happy to bump it to 2-3 days. I have managed to visit some Chinese and Canadian cities this way and it was both more interesting and much cheaper than taking a direct flight. |
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| ▲ | itake 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Some travel tools allow you to search for 18+ hour connections. I visited Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Hawaii, and Turkey at almost no extra dollar cost. If I like the city I go back. |
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| ▲ | damidekronik 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Any cool facts to share about Timor Leste? My usual go to - wikipedia - does paint a rather mundane picture of it. |
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| ▲ | itake 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I wish I could share photos. Food is insanely cheap. I had street fried chicken, rice, and I think two sides for literally one US dollar. Their primary currency usd. They have all the child labor problems that other countries in the region have. Everybody seems to know each other. Unlike French colonialized countries, Vietnam, Timor Leste is proudly and vibrantly Portuguese. Similar to Macau but not as wealthy. The public transit system is basically a tiny van that just drives around in loops around the city. You wave the driver down, jump in, and then tap your money against the metal framing when you’re ready to get off (there are no bus stops). I don’t know if you’ve been to Kenya, but it was like very similar to the vans in Kenya, except even smaller. | |
| ▲ | FabHK 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Crypto scammers have long operated in Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar after being kicked out of China, and were looking to go to Sri Lanka and Timor Leste next - but Timor Leste's politicians and population got together and fought back successfully, it seems: https://theconversation.com/asias-scamming-gangs-target-timo... (More on those scam factories:
https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-job-at-fir... And from The Economist - lamentably paywalled: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc) | | |
| ▲ | itake 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I actually visited abandoned scam centers a couple weeks ago in Bavet, Cambodia. It’s really eery now. All the units had air conditioning units, which I thought was sweet, considering many Cambodians don’t have that. But the prison bars on the windows and barbed wire surrounding the complex was a bit uncomfortable to see. | | |
| ▲ | fittingopposite 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wtf. How come you ended up in such a compound? | | |
| ▲ | itake 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I live in Vietnam. Bavet is a popular border for visa runs for expats. Normally, you don’t actually leave the Cambodia border building or you just take a bus all the way to Phnom Penh to wait for a visa was approved. I was curious about the town, because it’s famous for casinos, scam centers, and Chinese manufacturers. |
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| ▲ | sampullman 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What's your criteria for mundane? Basically every decent sized island in that part of the world is going to have beautiful beaches, coral reefs, mountains, and jungles. |
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| ▲ | mc32 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s not a place for most visitors to go off-piste, unless you’re like MacAffee or that British lad Mike who does a hitch-hikers YT travel channel. They both were/are quite a-tuned to where they are think on their feet and are adept at escaping tough situations. Most people ate not like them. |
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| ▲ | nephihaha 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It sounds like it is easy to get to Port Moresby (which is apparently a bit of a dump and very dangerous), but difficult to get anywhere else. PNG has changed very rapidly. Parts of the country were in the Stone Age within living memory and are moving over. |
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| ▲ | itake 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | ChatGPT advised me to not even leave the Port Moresby airport and to fly immediately to one of the small domestic fishing towns for safety reasons. | | |
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