Had my first Krispy Kreme donut today. No biggy. Rather ordinary actually. Not sure what the fuss about these things was. It was more like a chinese pork bun, with the pork removed, apple syrupy stuff inserted and cinnamon sprinkled on top. I should have just got the pork bun. In fact as soon as I finished the donut I was hankering for one .. but I was not walking all the way to Chinatown. It would have been cheaper than the bloody donut though. $2.50, what gives? Whatever happened to the 40c normal cinnamon variety .. with an actual hole in the middle. Oh they still exist don't they. Just at somewhere outside the insidious creep of KK.The thing that really winds me up about Krispy Kreme is that they chose our little fair land as their first port of call outside of their North American stronghold. If it wasn't enough to create all those obese monsters in their homeland, they chose us as next destination for belt stretching. Forget Europe. Forget those wacky Japanese. They're all too skinny to be tricked by these fat laden wares. And it worked. A couple of years ago their first store in the country, their first store out of the US or Canada, opened. The location, Western Sydney, Penrith to be exact. It was the perfect target market. On opening night the cars were banked up out the drive through and out blocking the main road.
Anyway today I gave into temptation and tried the expensive Apple sprinkled Cinnamon puff explosion whatever. Mainly because the store was actually free of a queue when I walked past. (I absolutely loath queuing up for anything .. if it is not urgent and more than 5 people are in a line, I will just walk out of the store). Every other time a queue was always formed out the door. But I also needed to know in my own mind whether if I was just insane in being the only cynic about these guys. And to be able to say "yeah tried them and ... (fill in the blank)". Well now at least I can at least fill it with "there is no need to head back again".
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And speaking of expensive, I finally got around to purchasing my one way flight out of PNG in the first stage of my travel plans. Rang up Air Niugini to get a price. Was stupidly thinking perhaps the price would be under $400 for the hour long flight from Port Moresby to Cairns. Instead after I told them all my details and casually asked what the price would be at the end (lots of finger tapping on keyboard was heard), "oh that will be $758 including taxes". WTF?. If I was eating cornflakes I would have choked. So I said .. "um oh ok, hold that booking, I am going to check your new competition, Airlines PNG. I know at least that they had cheap fares at the end of last year" thinking maybe Air Niugini was still matching them, but no budging there. So I hung up and rang the new guys in town. Thank Christ they started a service between POM and CNS at the end of last year and at a good and realistic price. A while later I had confirmed a booking with them for over $400 cheaper.
While on the phone to Air Niugini I was bemused to hear their lovely "hold music" spiel about how you should enjoy their hospitality on flights to and from Singapore, Manilla or Japan. What the? Are they actually serious? How many people would fly Sydney to Singapore via farking Port Moresby??? And not just because of their bloated and ridiculously priced fares, you would have to actually contend with getting there on the day you wanted to as well. To put their prices in comparison I flew return to New Zealand for well over a hundred dollars cheaper for a flight twice as long as their stupid one way they quoted me.
Air Niugini I hope more competition comes along and blows you out of the water. For the sake of PNG tourism at least .. you ain't helping it that is for sure. With its international image and high cost to get there, no wonder the only reason PNG tourism's figures are being propped up to around the 30 or 40,000 a year is because of the Kokoda Track and dumb returning volunteers.
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