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In between a barrage of rescheduled/canceled flights, insanely inflated prices, sleeping in thatched huts with a plague of insects thrumming to get inside my mosquito net, sweltering heat, and a frustrating lack of hustle in any capacity— I found Papua New Guinea to be an incredible country brimming with natural wonders, cultural experiences, and unique attractions to keep you entertained for a lifetime.
But due to the former things, your sanity will probably not let you stick around for that long.
Before you jet off to PNG, you should know what you’re in for. It’s not enough to say that facilities are “undeveloped” and basic. That travel is challenging and difficult to orchestrate independently. You’ve got to grasp some specifics so you can comprehend why so many people who visit PNG do so on a group tour or fully guided trip. Independent travel is rare for good reason.
How Adventurous Exactly is Travel in Papua New Guinea?
If I were to rank countries I have traveled to from “first-time traveler friendly” to “expert-only”, Papua New Guinea would sit near the expert end of the spectrum without hesitation. Unlike other challenging destinations like Iraq or Pakistan, where culture is the major consideration, in Papua New Guinea, the problem is infrastructure. Locals don’t move around. This means hotels and buses are not the norm. You can’t even connect your itinerary by road in PNG. You will have to fly between most destinations and always via Port Moresby.
It’s remote, you will have to eat local food, and you’ll often be uncomfortable. Adventure is par for the course when it comes to travel in Papua New Guinea. There simply is no insulation.
What to Expect in Port Moresby
Port Moresby is where country-counters pop into and then claim they have “done” Papua New Guinea. It’s a less-than-interesting capital city, with a bad reputation when it comes to safety. Unfortunately for you, there is zero chance of you skipping it entirely. Every single flight you take in Papua New Guinea will route through Port Moresby, and thanks to the poorly-timed schedules, you’ll spend a night or two here inevitably.
I wrote a quick guide on visiting Port Moresby so you can make the most of your time in the city.
Do not think that the semi-luxurious and varied amenities of Port Moresby translate to any other city in Papua New Guinea. Flooded by mining and other resource extraction money, Port Moresby sees a lot of foreign visitors, usually the kind with briefcases and pressed suits, hurrying to very important meetings. This city is unlike anywhere else you’ll go in the country. Thankfully.
Planning Your Papua New Guinea Itinerary
A quick note on itinerary planning before we get into what traveling in Papua New Guinea is actually like.
Travel in Papua is slow. Whether you intend it to be or not. This means it behooves you to choose one or two regions and make a trip of it, rather than do what I did and try to cram the whole country into one month-long extravaganza.
I wrote out some recommendations on reasonable Papua New Guinea itineraries before you get too ambitious.
Accommodation in Papua New Guinea
Your lodging is likely to come in two forms.
- Thatched huts with basic electricity and animal friends living in the rafters.
- Decent, but dated, hotel rooms priced wayyyyy beyond what you would pay in any other country.
Neither is likely to have working internet or hot water.
The hotel rooms will only be available in Port Moresby or the other major cities. Goroka, Mount Hagen, Wewak, Kavieng, etc. Overall, I found the hotels to be a more disappointing experience because of their “city-center” locations, which in PNG is not the place to be. The huts are a traditional style home built by locals in their villages, and while they too have downsides (ie the jungle rats found in the thatching), the nature that surrounds them is preferred.
No matter the condition, you can expect to pay $75-$150 per room per night.
Bed Bugs in Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, this gets its own little section. Keeping in mind that bed bugs don’t cause any disease, you will have to contend with the little buggers. We even saw them on some travelers’ bags at the airport. Nearly every bed we slept in had a few. There’s not much to be done about it. Sorry.
Eating in Papua New Guinea
In retrospect, I would bring so many snacks and packaged foods to Papua New Guinea to fuel my trip. There’s no 7/11 in the Highlands. Even grocery stores in major towns have severely limited options. And if you don’t purchase your own food to cook yourself, you’ll eat rice with veggies and/or chicken, if you’re lucky, for every single meal.
Most people in Papua New Guinea are subsistence farmers. This means they grow a variety of vegetables and eat nothing else. Rural villages aren’t really used to working with currency because they don’t buy food, they grow it and eat it. Food gets repetitive very fast. And if you have a dietary need that isn’t easily met by vegetables and rice, you’ll need to cater to it yourself.
Getting Around Papua New Guinea
Transportation in Papua New Guinea is one of the main reasons so few people choose to travel here independently. Getting between regions requires a domestic flight from one of the two operators. Getting from town to town, you’ll need to hire an extortionately expensive car/driver (or just a car) or hop on a PMV (a Papua New Guinean bus), which is usually a flatbed truck that piles people in and drops them off on the main roadway.
For really remote regions, like Sepik River, you’ll travel by canoe on the waterways. For this, you’ll hire a canoe, a driver, and buy the petrol for the engine. This is usually $100 per day for the canoe and driver + an ungodly amount for their expensive petrol.
Essentially, you’ll either need to be comfortable with hitch-hiking for a very very cheap price or have lots of money to spend to stick to a schedule. There are no booking buses, hiring taxis (outside Port Moresby), or budget-friendly backpacker shuttles. Papua New Guinea is a transport among extremes.
Domestic Flights in Papua New Guinea
Regarding the domestic flights, they run regularly, are not cheap, and are almost always delayed or canceled at least once. They are notoriously unreliable, but there is simply no other option. I wrote a full guide on how to book the best flights for your PNG trip.
Are The Tribal Experiences in Papua New Guinea “Authentic”
I’m sure by now you’ve seen them on IG. Grey mud-covered “spirit birds” perched on a waterfall seemingly in the middle of a jungle. Intimate, dramatic portraits of heavily-painted tribe members standing in a reflective pool or posing with spears in a forest. While yes, the tribes themselves are real, the moments captured are created.
It costs about $100 to visit a tribe (per group, not per person), and when you visit, they dress up in their ceremonial best and put on a performance for you. Occasionally, it’s a sing-sing (a traditional song/dance performance used to welcome important visitors), sometimes it’s a theatrical folklore performance, and sometimes it’s just a photo op. I’ve written a whole blog post about which tribal visits I most enjoyed and which I found the most “authentic”. But truthfully, you are paying for photos, even if it does contribute to preserving a fading culture.
Prices in Papua New Guinea
The pricing in Papua New Guinea is almost always the most confounding thing for travelers.
It’s both the most expensive place I’ve ever traveled to and the worst in terms of infrastructure. While I’m not totally comfortable with this answer, it has been explained and explained to me that this is because “no one knows what to charge for a service”.
For example, I stayed at a guesthouse boasting the cheap price of $20 per night for a double room. When I arrived, the whole village was there for a lovely sing-sing performance where they welcomed us with flowers and wrapped me in a purple woven skirt. Then they led us to the community kitchen area, where they had prepared a huge Papuan feast of veggies, roots, and seafood. In the morning, breakfast was served with eggs, coffee, beans, and a small spread of items. When the bill was given to us on our departure, my jaw dropped. The room was indeed $20. But the dinner was $50. Breakfast was $30. The sing-sing performance and skirt? Both listed on the bill and charged $120. Our one-night stay was now $220 instead of $20. When I spoke with the family, they seemed genuine and adjusted the price to something we both found fair. They said, with no tourism, no experience, and no real use for currency in rural areas (not a huge use anyway), they didn’t know what was fair to charge.
I wrote a guide on what things in Papua New Guinea actually cost, how much you can expect to pay, and how to avoid problems like this for yourself. (*coming soon*)
ATM Access in Papua New Guinea
I highly recommend pulling out as much cash as you trust yourself to carry around from the airport in Port Moresby. It’s the most reliable ATM service. You will also find ATMs in most major towns, but outside of those, nothing. And everything will need to be paid in cash.
Health Risks and Safety in Papua New Guinea
I experienced a number of issues in Papua New Guinea during our month-long stay.
- Our friends had a bag stolen from their locked hotel room
- Another friend contracted a very aggressive form of Malaria (he was not taking preventative tablets)
- Bed bug bites were a constant problem
- Scromboid Poisoning from tuna that was poorly transported
While I generally think that most safety concerns for PNG are overblown, I did write a whole post addressing the real risks. The problems are all exacerbated by the fact that there are really no decent hospitals, clinics, or healthcare, which means you should come fully prepared for whatever may befall you. Vaccines, preventative meds, and all.
Cultural Differences to Be Aware of When Traveling in Papua New Guinea
Here are a few things that I found while traveling in Papua New Guinea that shaped the way I moved through the country.
- Clothing is not that restrictive. You can pretty much wear what you want.
- Women and Men have very separate lives in Papua New Guinea. As a woman, there were things I wasn’t permitted to do/witness. It’s a real bummer.
- Gifts are commonly given when you come to a new place, and you should bring them for the chief of any village.
- People mean well. They aren’t really trying to rip you off. They are still figuring out the dynamics of their fledgling tourism industry.
- That being said, you won’t get as much help from others if you end up in a pickle. People have their own things to worry about.
- Drinking is almost always accompanied by loud fighting and violence. I would avoid it entirely.
- PMVs weren’t too bad in the highlands, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use them.
If I Take a Tour in PNG, How Will My Experience Change?
If you choose to take a tour in Papua New Guinea, you will have a slightly easier time, but there isn’t really any way to insulate yourself from the challenges. You’ll still have the same hotels/huts, same domestic flight troubles, and same safety and health risks. You’ll get to share private transport, which means a step up from the PMVs, but the same bumpy, uncomfortable roads. You won’t have to be reliant on your own food, but rather whatever the tour operator brings to cook for you.
Most crucially, you won’t have to do it alone. It’s nearly always more fun to suffer with others around you.
The overarching point of this blog post is to help you understand that Papua New Guinea is a challenging country to visit. You’ll need to bring an extra dose of patience, a flexible itinerary/attitude, and some additional cash helps a lot.
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