Goodbye Fiji
Time flies and it is time to say good bye to Korosun and our new friends
Check-in at Savusavu Airport
Hmm ... wondering if they got internet check-in :P
Breakfast at Sydney Fish Market
We had to do another transit in Sydney, so decided to wake up early to go to the Sydney Fish Market at 0700hrs for "breakfast" before our flight home.
Breakfast is served ... Rock oysters, prawns, baked rock lobsters, passion fruit yogurt, beer batter barrumadi, calamari and ciabatta
The smaller rock oysters from Wallis Bay tasted a lot better then the large Sydney Rock Oysters.
Travel Tips
1. Australia Transit Visa
Transit in Sydney for more then 8 hours requires a Transit Visa prior to arrival. It entitles filling in a 10 page form to be submitted to the Australia embassy of your country with your passport. Takes about 10 days to process. We gave up and paid SGD$17 to apply for a visitor's visa (ETA).
We used this site for ETA application which was cheaper. http://www.etavisaservices.com/index.php
2. Sydney Airport Hotels
Makes sense only if you are able to make use of the airport shuttles which start at 0500hrs. The hotel are not exactly near (3km), too far to walk, too near for a cab. Not good for us as we had an early 0630 flight. Taxi is hard to get in the airport hotel as it is “too near” the airport. Even if you get one, you will be getting an angry cab driver.
In the end, we booked a hotel in Sydney CBD and arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 0330hrs. Traffic is non-existent at that hour, so it took only 15 -20mins to reach the airport.
3. Air Pacific
Overall, it is one of the least customer oriented or diver-friendly airline that I have encountered, considering their prices are not cheap.
I had issues with their online booking website and was not able to ticket one leg of my domestic flight together with my international flight. i.e. Air Pacific insisted that my domestic leg would have only 15kg of check-in luggage while my international flight has 23kg as it was not ticketed together. The reservation desk then promised that they will put in a waiver to their head office. Even after a month of follow-up emails, international calls and such, I did not get any constructive reply from them.
They insisted that I should have called their reservation desk before using their website to book. Does not seems to make sense that I would need to incur all these international calls to use an online website ? If tourism is a key GDP of Fiji, I would think that it make sense to make it more hassle free for divers to visit their country.
AFTER NOTE: While it was really difficult to deal with the reservation desk, I was surprised that the Air Pacific ground staff at the airport was extremely helpful and after explaining our situation, they agreed to waive the over-weight luggage charges for the domestic flight.
4. FJD foreign currency exchange
Local banks in Singapore do not carry FJD, so the way is to withdraw via ATM in Nadi Airport. There are several ANZ ATM in Nadi airport. ANZ charges a FJD$9 transaction fee for every FJD$900 withdrawn, your bank may charge additional for overseas withdrawal on top of the ANZ charges.
ATMs at airport dispense a max of FJD$900 per withdrawal. You can withdraw multiple time to the limit specified by your home bank.
Payment by credit cards will incur additional 15% VAT and 4% CC charges.