Shasta_man
Contributor
<<Solomons heat>> With aircon going down in the cabins and baking heat up in the salon, it should have been raining on the stairs in between. For one night dive, I kept hearing childrens voices before coming up from my cabin. I came out to find about 20 kids sitting on dugout canoes watching the nutty Westerners getting ready to dive in the dark, on purpose.
Going all the way to Australia to come back to Asia must be murder. 14 hours to Hong Kong has been bad enough. For the Solomons, I did LA -> Fiji -> Vanuatu -> Solomons. For Palau, it's SFO -> Hawaii -> Guam -> Yap -> Palau. Airfare to Palau has become so expensive. I have little incentive to go back as the boat costs roughly the same all over the world so the travel cost is the differentiator. One of the reasons I haven't made it to PNG. RA is on the other end of the island with New Guinea but much less cost because just the flight to Port Moresby costs the same as the international flight to Australia, while the flight to Indo is cheaper and then to RA even cheaper.
I prefer liveaboards and would recommend them for Palau, RA and Komodo, as well as Fiji.
Going all the way to Australia to come back to Asia must be murder. 14 hours to Hong Kong has been bad enough. For the Solomons, I did LA -> Fiji -> Vanuatu -> Solomons. For Palau, it's SFO -> Hawaii -> Guam -> Yap -> Palau. Airfare to Palau has become so expensive. I have little incentive to go back as the boat costs roughly the same all over the world so the travel cost is the differentiator. One of the reasons I haven't made it to PNG. RA is on the other end of the island with New Guinea but much less cost because just the flight to Port Moresby costs the same as the international flight to Australia, while the flight to Indo is cheaper and then to RA even cheaper.
I prefer liveaboards and would recommend them for Palau, RA and Komodo, as well as Fiji.