This was published 9 years ago
Traveller letters: Bali airport queue times can last three hours
Regrettably, the article on Kembali on the River, Bali misrepresents the real Bali airport experience.
LETTER OF THE WEEK
Regrettably, the article on Kembali on the River, Bali (Traveller, December 6) misrepresents the real Bali airport experience. The writer states that she arrived at her villa in 90 minutes "thanks to the new Bali airport and a bit of fast tracking." I travel through Bali airport 20 times a year, and the real experience is immigration queues of up to three hours. These queues encourage visitors to pay for the "express queue" or "fast tracking", the cost of which depends on the length of the queue, starting at $20 and going as high as $50. This fee, of course, does not go to improving the already over-crowded new Bali airport but instead, I believe, ends up in the pockets of airport staff. We must encourage our good neighbours to pick up their act so that we are not faced with the choice of a long queue or a corrupt payment on arrival to beautiful Bali.
Stephen James
CARS FOR CONCERN
Much has been written about hire-car scams overseas but I suspect I was the target of one at Melbourne Airport recently. I had bought the collision waiver (an extra $25 a day) but after dropping off the car and handing over the keys, I received a call after I cleared airport security to say the car had been involved in a major front-end collision, consistent with hitting a concrete parking barrier; the damage was fresh, with paint hanging off the damaged area. I was the only driver and certainly would have remembered hitting anything. I had just driven at 100km/h along a freeway for an hour and suspect any paint would have been blown off. I had the insurance so wasn't liable to pay anything, but wouldn't have lied even had I not had the extra insurance. I demanded photographic proof, including the rego plate in the photos, which the company representative promised to send later that day. Three weeks later I am still waiting for the proof and have heard nothing from the company apart from receiving an emailed invoice and receipt. Wrong car? Company employee hit something after I returned the car? Insurance scam? Who knows? But from now on I will photograph any car I return from every angle before handing back the keys.
Maggie Cooper
TURF WARS
Marcia Phillips, (Traveller letters, December 6), are you aware that it is possible to select your preferred seat as part of your booking? That way, you do not have to expect customer service officers to "help" by presumably turfing out another passenger from their preferred seat, just to make you happy.
Heather D'Cruz
ON A MOUNTAIN HIGH
We recently returned from a stunning three-day walking and camping trip between Falls Creek and Mount Hotham in Victoria. It was fully catered and we only carried day packs, with the meals outstanding and the country beautiful. The walk was organised by Evolve Adventures which run these walks to raise funds to add meaning to the lives of 14-17 year olds who are having problems and need some direction. The people who run these courses and looked after us are just incredible. Highly recommended.
Margaret Meares
ONCE BITTEN...
We spent six nights in a Paris Airbnb property. We woke up with what we thought were mosquito bites and closed the windows. My bites developed into large lesions and when I showed them to the chemist she told me to see a doctor. The doctor confirmed that these were bed-bug bites and called the owner of the apartment to suggest the place be fumigated and to change the sheets but the owner did nothing. I telephoned Airbnb and received a recorded message in French. I would hesitate to use Airbnb after that experience.
Helen Williams
I would like to reply to Nina Petrie in response to her reply of my Letter of the Week (Traveller letters, November 22). While I appreciate the advice given to check reviews on sites such as Airbnb I feel that I should offer a little background. I'm considered a "Senior Contributor" on TripAdvisor and consider myself quite proficient on their forums, totalling over 1000 posts. The villa that I was due to stay at had over 20 reviews listed for the property. Clearly all were fakes. It is not difficult to amass fake reviews for places, something I have seen multiple times on my five years as a regular on Tripadvisor. Not everything on the internet can be as it seems and sadly, sometimes, it is an indictment of the site that they appear on. I was fooled with all of this experience under my belt, which means it quite possibly happens every day to others who aren't as review-savvy as myself and sometimes not even reviews can be as fool-proof as one might think.
Amy Northey
OUT TO LUNCH
While I have fond memories of formal Sunday lunches with my parents at Lennons Hotel, Brisbane, your reviewer needs to revise her history when she states the place was built in the 18th century. The first convict settlement was only established in what became Queensland in 1824 – and I don't think a Lennons Hotel was waiting to greet them.
Jennifer Bacia
WE WELCOME YOUR TRAVEL-RELATED OPINIONS AND EXPERIENCES
The writer of the letter judged the best of the week will receive a LUXE travel guides box set, valued at $60, including savvy, pocket-sized guides for destinations including Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and New York. See luxecityguides.com for more details. Letters may be edited for space, legal or other reasons. Preference will be given to letters of 50-100 words or less. Email us at travellerletters@fairfaxmedia.com.au and, importantly, include your name, address and phone number.
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