After the drama of Kuala Lumpur airport — where Vitus had a sudden, terrifying bout of stomach pain that had us halfway to the medical clinic before it vanished as quickly as it arrived — simply getting on the plane to Flores felt like a win. Missing this flight would have been a disaster: flights to Labuan Bajo are not exactly frequent, and the whole Komodo plan hung off it. So when we actually took off, we exhaled properly for the first time in about two days.
Arrival day — getting into Labuan Bajo
Arriving is rarely the glamorous part, and Flores kept that tradition alive. Even though we'd sorted our visa on arrival in advance, there was still a queue at immigration — and then, right at the final exit, we were stopped because we didn't have the required QR code ready. Cue standing in a corner of the airport re-typing everyone's details, all four of us, before we were finally allowed to walk out into the Flores heat.
The hotel shuttle scooped us up along with a few other guests and drove us out to the Jayakarta Suites Komodo Flores, our base for the next five days. The driver was lovely, Vitus scored the front seat, Noah took the back, and we rolled out of town. The boys had their own room, Line and Jesper another — a small luxury that, after the last few nights, felt enormous. Sunscreen and mosquito spray on, and we let the afternoon go deliberately slow.
Vitus, Line and Jesper headed for the pool; Noah, as ever, went looking for somewhere to throw discs and found a grassy strip with 65–70 metres of space and plenty of trees to shape lines around, heat be damned. Line and Jesper wandered down to the beach too, because from the hotel it looked genuinely inviting.
The beach was a trap. The sea was extremely shallow and the seabed was soft, muddy and basically quicksand — even in water shoes we sank in somewhere between ankle and knee, accompanied by a smell that put a swift end to any dreams of a clear-ocean dip. We retreated to the pool with our dignity mostly intact, had a swim (Vitus in his element), and flopped onto the sunbeds. Around sunset Noah packed the discs away as the mosquitoes clocked on for their shift and the evening call to prayer drifted across from town.
The first-night dinner (the low point)
The hotel sits about 10–15 minutes outside Labuan Bajo, so heading into town on the first night felt like too much effort. We ate at the hotel restaurant instead. Big mistake. The menu was short, and on the waiter's recommendation we all ordered the same fish dish with rice and veg. It was… not good. Small portions, pricey by local standards, bland fish, and so many bones that actually extracting the fish became a forensic exercise. Vitus handed the bony leftovers to a shy cat, which grabbed the lot and bolted. We played a few rounds of Uno, left still a bit hungry, and quietly agreed this was both the first and last dinner we'd be having at the hotel.
The night, at least, delivered. After several nights of almost no sleep, we all slept like the dead — Line's watch even awarded her a record sleep score of 99, which she has brought up several times since.
First full day — into town
The plan was for Noah to get up early and throw discs before the heat became unbearable. His alarm had other ideas and didn't go off, so instead we all rolled down to breakfast together. The buffet was fine — the star being a chef making fresh omelets to order. Jesper, Line and Noah went omelet; Vitus went pancakes and soup. The waffles and pancakes were oddly off even with butter, jam and Nutella deployed, but the omelets carried the meal. Noah still squeezed in an hour of throwing in the heat afterwards, then cooled off in the pool while the rest of us pottered around, before we caught the 11am shuttle into Labuan Bajo.
In town we did our usual slow first lap — wandering the main street to get the feel of the place, finding the harbour, briefly straying into a more local neighbourhood, and scoping out tour options. Noah stocked up on snacks; Vitus bought a bag of Whiskas so he could feed the town's cats, which promptly became his personal mission for the rest of the trip. Labuan Bajo, it turns out, has no shortage of cats, and word of a small boy handing out free food travels fast.
We found a friendly tour agent with good prices who helped us book several tours for the coming days — including one for that very afternoon. Before it, we grabbed lunch in town: fried rice for Noah and Jesper, noodles for Line, and soup for Vitus, who was underwhelmed because it mostly tasted of corn. Three of us ate well; Vitus, who'd already gone light at breakfast, didn't get much down — a fact that would matter by dinner.
The “city tour” that wasn’t in the city
The afternoon tour was billed as a “city tour,” which was creative marketing, because it happened almost entirely outside Labuan Bajo. First stop, about 20 minutes away, was a cave. They handed us helmets at the entrance and our first thought was that this was one of those tourist-theatre touches where the safety gear is purely decorative. We were wrong. The cave burrowed a good 100–200 metres into the mountain, and several passages were low and tight enough that we had to crouch or crawl — and plenty of people cracked their helmets on the rock, ourselves included.
It was genuinely impressive inside — big stalactites and stalagmites, and, our guide explained, fossilised coral and fossils embedded in the rock, including what looked like a fish and a turtle, because Flores was once underwater. Not one for the claustrophobic, mind you: Line had a small wobble at the start when the passages first closed in, but she pushed through and did the whole thing with us. On the walk back out we passed a wonderfully improbable mushroom-shaped balancing rock — obligatory family photo.
From there our very patient driver took us another half hour to a small village, where we climbed aboard an old wooden boat — one of the boys took a turn poling us out through the shallows.
The boat carried us across to a second cave reachable only from the water — a short walk through the trees from where we landed. This one was more like a cenote, much like the ones we swam in years ago in Mexico, and you could swim inside. It was packed when we arrived… and then, almost the instant we got into the water, everyone else left. For a magical 15–20 minutes we had the whole cave to ourselves, the water pleasantly cool without being cold. Just as we climbed out, a new group piled in and it was crowded again. Perfect timing.
The tour's final stop was meant to be a sunset viewpoint, but the cave, the boat and the general timing had eaten the afternoon, and it became clear we'd never make it before the sun dropped. We toyed with watching sunset from the beach, then decided to just head back — the swimming cave had already made the trip worth it, and we're about to be handed a week of Komodo sunsets on the boat. We tipped the driver, who'd been friendly and, crucially, drove calmly and safely (not a given in this part of the world).
The night market (the redemption)
Dinner was where Labuan Bajo made up for the night before. We went to the night market down by the harbour, and it was a completely different world from the hotel restaurant — stall after stall of fresh fish and seafood laid out on ice, ready to be picked and grilled.
We picked out a huge fresh snapper — somewhere around 2–2.4 kilos — which was weighed, marinated and grilled for us. While we waited we sat by the water, played Uno and soaked up the atmosphere (and, to be honest, a fair amount of grill smoke). It arrived on a big platter, butterflied and perfectly grilled, with rice, chilli sauce and grilled eggplant — and it was extraordinary. Juicy, smoky, probably some of the best fish we've ever eaten. Everyone demolished it, Vitus very much included, which was a relief after a day where he'd barely eaten. And sitting right on the harbour, any bones could simply be flicked into the sea for the crabs. Dinner with a built-in waste-disposal system.
Afterwards we wandered town a little more, found some ice cream, and Vitus — inevitably — continued his life's work of feeding every cat in Labuan Bajo a portion of Whiskas. At around 9pm the hotel shuttle collected us and drove us back, full and happy after a second evening in Flores that was worlds better than the first. Next up: five days on a boat through Komodo National Park.
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