What sits beside the fare, and how we quote it

Vhale takes 28 guests on standard beds, and the car that suits six does not suit twenty-four with their bags. The pickup is free and runs between the airport, the hotels and the harbour; by default it is a car or a minibus shared by the party. For a big one we quote a larger vehicle instead: a Toyota HiAce carries as many as twelve, and a coach can be arranged on request. Two arrivals at two hours are the usual trouble, so tell us both flight times in your first message.

The larger vehicle is a Labuan Bajo service, hotel to quay and back, and not a tour of Flores. We confirm the exact pickup time in writing, and the driver's contact reaches you the day before. The start is 11:00, so nobody is dragged out of bed at dawn on boarding day. A minibus too few is the sort of mistake that costs an hour and a mood.

Three dinners differ only by where the table stands. A dinner on an island is laid near the anchorage, with the tender running guests ashore after the last swim. A private island dinner is the same evening on a quiet shore for your party alone. A seafood dinner is the long table again, ordered ahead against the head count so that the quantities are right. Which island, which tide and which park rules allow it on your date is settled with the captain, and we say so before we quote, not after.

A special dinner covers a dietary request, a birthday or a proposal. We ask what you need and write back with what the kitchen can do. Dressing a cabin or the deck for the evening, and a photographer for the party, are quoted in the same manner. Drone filming needs a park permit, and that permit is not in any fare.

Nothing here goes onto a fare until a written quote names the service, the date and the sum. If we say a dinner is possible and the weather says otherwise, the quote falls with it. If you ask for something we have not listed, a meeting that wants a screen, say, we answer plainly that Vhale has neither a meeting room nor a projector, and offer what the deck can do instead.

The same ledger holds as everywhere else on the site. The fare carries the transfers, the meals, the snacks, the free-flow water, tea, coffee, milk and juice, and the snorkel gear. A service from this page is a line beside it. A charterer who wants a guide or photographs asks for them as a separate line with a separate price, so a photographer from this page can stand in for that line or sit beside it.

Write to us with the head count, the dates and the one thing you would like. Pickup, a larger vehicle, a dinner, a cake and a speech: any of them is a fair first message, and a vague one is welcome. We reply with questions before prices, because the price of a dinner depends on facts you have not yet told us.

Once the sailing is booked, the extras ride on the same invoice from PT Komodo Explorer Indonesia, with the same single bank account and the same payment channels. Card payment adds 3 percent, as it does on the fare. A bank transfer adds nothing, and finance departments prefer it. Whatever you add, the confirmation lists it line by line next to the fare, so that on the last morning the sum on the page and the sum in your pocket are the same sum.