Muppie's whirlwind tour of various areas of PNG

[aussie]

Muppie missed his connection in Lae on the way back and was forced to miss his computer for a night and ended up in the Melanesian Hotel in Lae.

[aussie]

Mupp's touched down back here in Port Moresby this morning having had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to head out to Nadzab.

Thank goodness coz my emails apparently were being returned coz my mail box was full !

[muppie]

Hi this is muppie... thanks aussie for posting all my photos..

This was my first experience on the Bandeirante aeroplane. It's quite small... on the left side there's only one seat on each row and on the right side - two seats. There's about 5-6 rows I think. It's a pretty scary ride at first, since the aircraft was so small and noisy, plus the landing is quite scary.... it felt like it almost slided sideways.... but in the end all landings were perfect and safe. I guess I wasn't used to small planes.

One lesson I learned about travelling around is that when having a connecting flight of two different airlines, make sure you let them know about it. I was late to catch my connecting flight on Air Niugini in Lae due to the delay experienced by Airlink in Madang. If I told the crew in Madang I would've been able to catch the Air Niugini flight but since I assumed they knew about me, I didn't say anything while I was waiting in Madang!

So, stuck in Lae, I had to go into town to stay the night, and I booked into the Melanesian hotel. The room was nice, the service was good.

I had dinner at the restaurant at about 6:30 pm, tired and very hungry (hadn't eaten all day). So I looked through the menu and saw "Rendang" - and I thought ahh I haven't had rendang for ages! I used to have them while I was living in Indonesia... so I thought I'd ordered it.

After about 15 minutes it came out.... and it didn't look like Rendang to me .... oh well... the chef probably didn't know what Rendang should look / taste like! What I got was beef cube cooked in curry gravy... with some mashed potato.. and as typical beef cubes are.... they taste horrible

Rendang normally isn't made of beef cubes and it's cut in a bigger chunk.... and the color is definitely not yellowish (curry). The real rendang should look brownish, cooked in coconut milk until it gets very thick / almost dry, certainly not runny.

So I just ate as much as I needed to and went back to my room to watch the TV about Animals and Vets, and then went to bed early to catch my early flight the next day back to Port Moresby....

[muppie]

Not long after I left the restaurant.... at about 7:30pm I heard a knock on the door.... then I though to myself... oh I hope this isn't a girl chasing after my body ... luckily I hadn't "stripped off" to have a shower yet.... so I went to the door and opened it.... sure enough there was a girl there........ asking me to sign the receipts that I should've signed before I left the restaurant....

[Jaybee]

he he heee....how very exciting...make sure you keep us posted on your other adventures away from your computer....