The general rule of thumb when visiting PNG is to get through Port Moresby as quickly as possible and on to your final destination. There is not much to see in the national capital and accommodation, which was always expensive, now borders on plain extortion…

So, unless you intend to go by boat, this means you have to fly and pass a few hours in the domestic terminal.

Internal air travel can be unreliable & the main carrier Air Nuigini  (www.airniugini.com.pg) seems to suffer a disproprtionate amount of flight delays & cancellations, although in fairness my last two trips have happened without a single issue.

But I have spent many an hour waiting for delayed flights in the domestic terminal and this is the reason I have developed somewhat of an aversion for the place…

So it is with great delight that I am able to bring you the exciting news that cafe society has arrived with a bang at the domestic terminal!

No longer do you have to choose between hunger or a dodgy meat pie and Nescafe at five in the morning as you wait for your early morning departure.

You can now select a capuccino or latte to accompany your half decent sandwich as you wait for your flight to be called.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of my favorite places – it has some fantastic diving and an amazingly diverse & incredibly rich interior. However the country is very much in the developing nation category and is likely to be so for a long time to come given it’s strong tribal nature, poor administration, endemic corruption and minimal infrastructure. But it really is one of the last frontiers and a fascinating place to visit, once you have got through Port Moresby that is!

Moresby has a pretty bad reputation, principally because of the random and occasionally very brutal nature of the rascal gang attacks. The basic problem is a general lack of employment opportunities in the country, so Port Moresby tends to attract people from far & wide as it’s the seat of the national government and it’s administration that soaks up a hugely disproportionate amount of the national revenue.

Unfortunately people don’t find the pot of gold they are looking for and with an unemployment rate of around 60%, they turn to petty crime.Tales of car jacking, rape and the occasional murder make the situation seem pretty grim, and the “dim-dims” & wealthy locals are relatively easy targets – so all the hotels, businesses & housing compounds have high walls with razor wire.

The biggest growth industry was security guards until “big oil” came to town chasing the large reserves of natural gas in the highlands area to the northwest of Port Moresby.

When you talk to expats who live in Moresby however, you get a slightly different perspective and although they can all relate stories of near misses or people they know who have been attacked, they all seem to get on with life regardless and so I wondered if it’s really as bad as it seems?

Apparently the violence is a lot more serious for the locals than it is for the expats, because the expats who are held up or robbed are rarely harmed – just hand over what you have and that’s it.

Whereas with the locals serious violence is usually associated with the robbery – the reality being that if you rob an expat and don’t harm them, no serious follow up occurs by the Port Moresby police. But if the raskol hurts an expat, then the police have to be seen to do something.

The locals however get no help from the police….

I arrived in Moresby on Sunday on my way to Tufi (www.tufidive.com) where I will be based for the next three weeks as I commence a book project with the resort there – check out my diving blog for more information if you are interested in diving

As the flight to Tufi was early on Monday morning I had to stay overnight in Moresby and had booked a room at the Ela Beach hotel, near the downtown area. I felt I should at least have a walk around and see the beach but had been warned about carrying anything of value, as it could be the catalyst from an encounter with a rascal….

So after leaving my watch, wallet and DSLR in my room I headed off with my point & shoot camera to see if I could survive a walk along the beach!

Rascals, or raskols as they are called locally(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raskol_gangs) , operate from the squatter settlement camps such as “six mile” near the international airport. But they don’t walk round with a sign on their backs indicating their profession, so to the untrained eye it seems that everybody is a potential rascal.

The thing that always strikes me about Port Moresby is the way that people seem to sit about everywhere. I noticed this on my first trips to PNG, which had been organized so that we would arrive soon after lunch and catch the onward domestic flight in the afternoon.

However this required a short walk from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, much of which appeared to be lined with potential rascals sat about watching the dim- dims and their expensive camera bags!

In actual fact I have never had a single problem either at the airport or when I have had to stay over in Moresby, but then again I had never left the safety of the hotel…. then when I was here three months ago, in transit to Milne Bay, I was taken out for a meal in the downtown area and was surprised at how normal everything seemed to be, apart from the security guards outside the restaurant.

Walking along Ela Beach did feel a bit scary, mainly I think because people look at you, rather than completely ignore you if you were doing the same at Sydney’s Bondi Beach!

The attention adds to the tension (paranoia?) and 45 minutes later I am back at the hotel feeling like I have survived a close encounter with the Taliban!

Conclusion:Well I have to say that Port Moresby is not my favorite place, particularly now that hotel rates have gone from ridiculously expensive to downright extortion. But was I actually threatened or really scared, no…. but that is not to say that something could not happen but leads to the general conclusion that a little caution goes a long way!