How (not) to get your car registered in PNG...... a simple 20 step guide 

Please note- this could possibly be infuriating to read. 

1. Get your 12 year old car out of the shipping container with customs and quarantine. Allow at least an hour for the friends of the customs and quarantine guys to come and view the island's first 'sports car'.

2. Contemplate the process of getting your car registered. Ask around town about how to go about this. Get a multitude of different answers, some of which are downright nihilistic. Select the explanation that seems the most simple and positive. Three simple steps, it seems, consisting of getting plates, a safety check and insurance.

3. First step is to go to the 'waiting window' in town, where all things official and governmental can be achieved, to buy number plates. Drive into town, negotiating the pot-holed road that is particularly bad at the moment after lots of wet weather. Get to the waiting window at 12:10pm to find that opening hours are 9am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. Go home until tomorrow.

4. Come back to the waiting window the next day at 2:15pm. Unfortunately it's Friday, so the window closes at 2pm. Aim to try again next week.

5. Third time lucky. For the window to be open, that is. Meet Alice, the face of the waiting window, who proceeds to inform me that she is out of plates until next week, but she'll put my name down when some come in and give me a call.

6. Wait a week without hearing from Alice, so head back to the window to see if those plates have come in. Alice informs me that unfortunately she had a big lot of plates come in this morning, only to all be bought up by one of the contracting companies. She says to try again next week.

7. Week three of the process. We're in luck on Monday morning. Alice has rung to say she has some plates available. Quickly head down into town at 10am. The window is closed though. Alice has gone to the bank. Wait an hour in the heat for Alice to return from the bank. Worth the wait to acquire a set of PNG number plates. Feels like we're in business.

8. Next step is to get a 'safety sticker' at the local car dealers/mechanics. Make a booking for the next day to get this done.

9. Take the car back down for this safety check. Hand over the service history, and get given a safety sticker. Get home and realise my victorian plate numbers have been written on the sticker. 

10. Go back the next day to get the right numbers on the sticker. Bonus points though, because in their state of apologies, the mechanics give me a number plate box and install them while I wait. This is somewhat of a production though. I am made to go into a waiting room and read old editions of Air Nuigini's in flight magazine. Forty minutes later the newly installed (but yet unregistered) plates are ready.

11. Next step is to go and buy insurance at the local Tyre shop. Negotiate a price for the insurance, because the man at the tyre shop isn't sure what category the car fits into since he's never seen a subaru impreza before. He decides it's a station wagon. Go to pay in cash, only to be told the shop only accept cheque or direct bank deposit.

12. Go to the ANZ bank to make the insurance payment. Look at how much cash I have and realise I am one kina (fifity cents) short of the 520 kina insurance fee. Go home via the markets for Lihirian version of retail therapy. A 2 kina bag of lau lau fruit. Put some in a G&T as soon as I arrive home.

13. Go back to the bank the following Monday (week four). Whilst waiting in line for what seems like half an hour, witness a massive fight between two ladies in the supermarket car park across the road, which everyone within a two hundred metre radius sprints towards, so suddenly there is a gathering of hundreds of people to cheer on the opposing parties. Get to the front of the line at the bank to find their system is down, but it should be up next week.

14. Return to the bank the following week. Wait in line for a while watching a PNG reggae band 'album launch' in the car park in the adjacent block of land. Get to the front of the line to be told the system will still be 'down' this week, and someone should be in to fix it over the weekend.

15. Decide to try the other bank across the road, BSP (Bank South Pacific). I'm not sure why I didn't think of this two weeks ago. Presto! A cheque in hand.

16. Payment of insurance and insurance certificate given over. 

17. No back to the waiting window........ waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Decide that two steps in one day is too overwhelming anyway, and that I'll try again sometime soon.

18. Lose the will to continue the process for a while. Continue to drive around without anyone having the faintest I haven't achieved the elusive last step, given I've got the plates, stickers, insurance on the car.

19. Finally complete the process with a suprisingly painless and short wait at the window. 

20. Contemplate the previous four weeks' shennanigans and the efficiency of VicRoads for the first time ever. I won't be complaining again about getting my car registered after this experience.