In Reply to: Arriving Benoa on a Cruise ship any idea posted by Tinggading on Tuesday, 1. June 2010 at 16:49 Bali Time:
In Feb!
The ship docks quite a way out at Benoa and the tender possess to port can take a bit of time plus, they have to be back portside at least an hour and a half before the ship sails out.
Usually people doing paid for shore tours leave the ship first.everybody else has to que up for tender tickets.
It can take well over 2 hours to get people off the ship.
this can cut down the "On land" time quite a lot and limit what they can do!
If they have been to Bali before or are meeting somebody there it will be fine,if not they are better to do the ships tours!
These tours are quite expensive and much cheaper to do once in Bali if you are familiar with the surroundings and people.
The reason I tell you this is because in Feb our ship left without 4 people who didnt make it back in time!
Both them and the driver they hired got confused and they ended up in pedang Bai instead of Benoa.
The captain waited 1.5 hours for them (which is very unusual) but they couldnt make it back to Benoa because of the traffic.
This would have cost plenty as their luggage/passports etc had to be taken by charter boat then charter plane from komodo,the next port we stopped at.
If you miss the ship you have to pay for accommodation return travel home plus courier costs for luggage etc.
When you cruise to Bali you pay VOA but your passports are held onboard by Indonesian immigration.
This is because if 2000 odd cruisers and staff had to que for VOA they would not have time to get off the ship!
The Athena is small enough to dock at Benoa but almost all other ships are too big! so a 9 hour tender port in Benoa is really about 5 hours.