Aiming to take the headache out of selecting hotels, tours and destination stops, Qantas Holidays (qantas.co.uk/holidays) has handpicked the best that Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia has to offer, making it easy for travellers to enjoy a luxury holiday experience with the minimum of fuss. Continue reading »

The green island with its lakes, paddies and temples is a sight to behold, writes Tamanna Mahtani. The serenity that Bali has can best be enjoyed minus the trappings of Kuta. The latter, a busy district, is where the principle that commercialisation corrupts, has taken root and thus destroyed, predictably. So my mother and I stayed at the Bali Padma Hotel at Legian Beach, far away from it. Continue reading »

Indonesian airline Garuda orders 4 Boeing 777 – Indonesian airline Garuda ordered four Boeing 777-300ER airplanes valued at more than US$1 billion at list prices, both companies said Tuesday at the Singapore Airshow. Garuda said in a statement that it hopes to us the jets to replace some of its existing Boeing 747s. Continue reading »

Bali appears to have remained a main destination for Australians as the number of Australian tourists visiting Bali is only second to that of Japanese tourists, a local statistical official said. Some 204,473 Australian tourists were among a total of 1,666,079 foreign tourists who visited Bali in 2007, the head of the local statistical bureau, Ida Komang Wisnu, said on Tuesday. He said it was a significant increase compared with 2006 when the figure was only 137,000. Continue reading »