Getting to Komodo National Park – Flight from Bali to Labuan Bajo – Firstly, there are no obvious counters for Nam Air so when you get to the Domestic Terminal, you’ll need to look at the departures to see what counter it is, rather than walk to every counter as we did hoping we’d find it. Turns out the Nam Air Check-in Counter was actually at one of the Garuda Indonesia counters (says they are actually a member of Garuda Indonesia) and what a total nightmare that was. Allow yourself an hour to check-in as that’s what it took us with about 15-20 people in line. Don’t show up too early as they’ll only have one person on.
Oh, we showed up and discovered that the flight had been changed to 10:10a.m from 9:35a.m. No notice given prior. Anyway, massive line when you get to the check in, with one staff on. Eventually other staff show up and the line just falls apart and becomes basically a free for all with people at the back, mostly crusty old Australian surfers, rushing forward to get to the counters when they opened. Basically there’s no line etiquette so when you get there, and don’t want to spend an hour lining up, don’t do what we do and that is be what most considerate, civilised and polite people do and wait in line, as that won’t get you anywhere.
Staff seemed to be extremely slow checking people in. And Nam Air have this absolutely ridiculous policy of not allowing selfie sticks to be taking on board. Inevitably this takes another few minutes for each person to find and get out. You can however take on liquids and aerosol cans. I guess this is the problem with going to somewhere a bit remote or not as popular as Bali; you need to deal with the issues that taking a small local airline entails and that’s long lines and not much common sense.
The Domestic Airport at Bali is actually alright, loads of restaurants, some good book/toy shops and not crowded (at least when we were there) and very clean. They told people gate 4 but then you get lead to gate 6 and walk out on the tarmac. It’s a 3-3 configuration, we sat on the right side of the plane and had some ok views of some Islands on the way. Not sure what side of the plane is best for view, probably doesn’t matter.
They serve you up a mint and some small bread thing and a tiny bottle of water. Not much but more than I expected so it’s fine. The flight time is only an hour so you really don’t need much and as mentioned above, there’s plenty of restaurants, bakeries and cafes at the airport so you can get yourself something before you get on should you think you might get hungry on the 1 hour flight.
Domestic flights into Lubuan Bajo are often delayed, cancelled or moved forward, without notice. We flew Nam Air which, according to one of the local travel agents, is the most reliable. Our flight from Denpasar to Lubuan Bajo was on time but our flight coming back was bought forward an hour only to be changed to later once we got to the airport. Basically it was originally schedeule at 12:10, got bought forward to 11:10, delayed until 11:35 when we got to the airport, then at 11:15 it was further delayed until 13:30. Apparently it’s a bit of a lottery whether your flight actually departs at all. The other flights on Wing Air left about 30 minutes late so based on that and our check-in debacle in Denpasar, I’d stay away from Nam Air and fly something different.
Komodo is not really a place you want to take babies or toddlers. Our Resort didn’t have any kids club or baby sitting available and I presume only something like the newly opened Ayana Resort would offer such things. Older kids, say 5yrs and up, presuming they can snorkel, will be fine. Grobbler was one of about 5 kids I saw the whole trip, partly because it wasn’t school holidays and partly because of the aforementioned. And he was by far the youngest. There’s lots of younger couples, a few older couples, but mostly 20-somethings diving.
Komodo National Park is beautiful and huge, and remote. Once you leave Lubuan Bajo, I saw very few rubbish at any of the beaches so keep it clean. Don’t step on corals and try to leave everything as you found it because Komodo National Park is one of the few relatively untouched places in Asia that you can really experience nature. Unfortunately with resorts such as Ayana opening up, it’s only a matter of time before things change so visit here while it’s still natural and not too touristy.
Speaking of touristy, the Komodo National Park tours to Rinca are a bit touristy. Don’t expect to see Komodo’s roaming around the beaches like something from National Geographic. The guides will try and cut you short, if they do, don’t bother tipping them. You can do short, medium and long tracks. Apparently the medium one is the one to do. It’s also quite far and must be at least 2 hours from Lubuan Bajo, longer if you take a slow boat.
The weather in Komodo National Park was beautiful, 3 days of barely a cloud in the sky but during rainy season, apparently it can rain all day long. Also during rainy season the seas can get rough so you need to ask your resort and do some research on when the best time to visit is. It got quite choppy on our way in a small speedboat to Padar Island, nothing dangerous, but if you’ve never been in boats or can’t swim, you might thing twice about coming here. When the seas get too rough, no boats go to any of the main Islands.
Three days for us was enough here. It’s around HKD$3,000 per night to stay at Komodo Resort, which I recommend, plus you’re paying for the tours on top of that. I wouldn’t normally pay that but we got flights using air miles so it helped lot. Private speed boats are faster but obviously more expensive. The slower two-storey boats are much slower but comfortable, at least the one we went on.
Nam Air will tell you to show up the airport two and half hours before your flight. This is ridiculous. About one and 15 minutes should be fine to allow for long lines checking in and give you time should you be faced with a long wait, which we did at Denpasar. The Airport at Lubuan Bajo is actually okay, has one of the best bookshops for kids at any airport I’ve been to anywhere around the world, including Singapore, Hong Kong and Haneda, which are usually voted somewhere in the top 5 airports in the world.
There’s a few small cafes and coffee shops, a tacky gift shop and the waiting area at the gates is new, clean, light and plenty of seats available. Oh, another thing about Nam Air, you’re not allowed to take selfie sticks in your carry on luggage. You can however take electric toothbrushes which have sharper points and could potentially do more damage, but who knows what the reasoning is. All it does is make things slower.
Mosquitoes weren’t too bad at Komodo National Park. Saw a few at our Resort but Grobbler, who the mosquitoes love, went the whole trip without a single bite And we were playing on the beach and mangroves at night when some of them come out. Maybe it was just the wrong season but still, pretty good. If you have questions about visiting Komodo National Park with kids or without, get in touch with us via our Twitter page.