..you're only lost if you know where you're going..
Preparation
Langkawi Honeymoon
Nov 6th
Well our week of relaxing is booked. Almost a week anyway – 5 nights. As I’ve mentioned in my flights post, we have a ten day layover in Singapore. At the time of booking the flights we had no idea where we were honeymooning yet, so we just booked for a decent layover to give us some time to rest and relax before the big trip really began.
When looking for accommodation, our prerequisites were:
- Clear, warm water to swim in
- Private villa with nice surrounds
- Reasonably priced food
- Near Kuala Lumpur or Singapore (for convenience)
- Semi affordable
We had no idea how much it was going to cost us, but it was what we wanted. We rarely blow cash on what we want so while we wanted to keep it reasonable, we were happy to spend what we had to get something nice. After all, you only have one honeymoon, right?
After spending literally months trawling through Tripadvisor pages, and searching the net for information on weather and other information, I decided that Langkawi was the place for us to go. The east coast of Malaysia can experience some pretty rough weather through January, so that limited our options a bit.
From there we had plenty of options, but all of them seemed to have a trade off here or there. The service got bad reviews. The rooms weren’t up to standard. The beach wasn’t any good. There was always one thing wrong with it, while everything else about the accomodation was great. I was about to settle for one place that seemed like “the best of the average”..
Tanjung Sanctuary
Then I luckily stumbled across some information about a place called Tanjung Sanctuary. It had bad reviews from the past – the quality of the rooms were average and the service was below par. It has however, recently been refurbished, and from the reviews I have read and the photos I have seen it looks as though it’s done the trick.
I’ve since booked us a “Hilltop Villa”, the least expensive of the three. I wanted to give Jess the best we could get but she reminded me that money saved would help us out later and she’s right. Not to mention there is no difference between all three of the villas, and the beachside villas don’t actually have direct access to the beach. We don’t want to spend the whole time in the villa anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where it is. The Hilltop Villa’s are MYR1200 a night, including breakfast and airport transfers, which works out to roughly AUD$400 with the current exchange rate. So for 5 nights it will be around the $2000 mark. Could be worse..
Tanjung Sanctuary
On 62 acres, with a private beach and only 32 villas to share that all with, I think we should be able to “get away from it all” there. I’m as confident as I’ll ever be that this resort will tick all of our boxes, but only time will tell. Can’t wait!
Tanjung Sanctuary
Booking some cheap flights
Nov 4th
We booked our flights a little while back. Being the “safe” people that we are, we decided to book early, rather than wait for a killer deal. Because of the uncertainty of the trip, we ended up just booking one way tickets – From Adelaide to Athens via Singapore, flying Singapore Airlines.
It ended up costing us AUD$1050 each. Considering they are one way flights, we were pretty happy for the price. We have a ten day stopover in Singapore.
We booked the flights through Jetabroad. I’ve found them to be the cheapest website for an Australian person to book international flights through, however other people rave about Best Flights too. I think the best idea is to find a few “cheap flights” websites, and just go from there. Search them all regularly until you find what you need, then book. Watch out for hidden fees though, as they can bump up the cost of your once cheap flight.
Since we are getting married in early January, a few weeks before leaving on this trip, we will be taking a week for ourselves before actually backpacking. After flying into Singapore, we will stay two nights, then fly out to Langkawi, in Malaysia for 5 nights, then fly back to Singapore before heading off to Athens.
To get to Langkawi we are flying with Air Asia. Return it is costing us SGD$166.80, which at the time was around AUD$135. Booking directly with Air Asia was the go – it was considerably cheaper booking through them rather than any of the “cheap flights” websites. I’ve heard mixed reviews about Air Asia, but the next cheapest option was Malaysian Airlines for around $440 EACH! We’re going to spend up big on the accommodation for the “honeymoon” part of the trip, so we both decided the cheaper flights were the go. They are only 40 minutes or so anyway, and our connecting flights are days apart, so they shouldn’t be able to screw us over that badly.
So that’s where the flights are at. Once we are in Europe and we know when we want to fly to Canada we’ll start looking for cheap flights to Toronto. I’ve heard that it’s a lot cheaper to fly to somewhere in the US, although I don’t really want to go there. That said, if it’s going to save us a wad of cash I’ll go..
Choosing our Travel Backpacks
Nov 2nd
Deuter Hiking / Trekking Pack
We bought our packs a little while ago. When first looking into “what bag to go backpacking with” we received a range of different opinions. Your standard travel backpack is the obvious choice, however many people prefer to take a suitcase. It seems that those who use a suitcase to live out of while travelling feel very strongly about this. We toyed with the idea for a while, but to be honest we are both the “on the move” type of people, and both felt that backpacks would suit us better.
Once we had decided on backpacks, we had to figure out what sort we wanted. We quickly learned that we had two options – a hiking/trekking backpack, or a travel backpack. While they both essentially do the same job, they are both different in their own way. The hiking packs have a single opening at the top of the pack. Everything that you remove from the pack must come out of this hole. This means if you want the pair of shoes from the bottom, you have to pull everything out of the pack. The benefit to these packs is that they are more waterproof, and generally tougher than the travel packs as they are designed to see a lot more of the outdoors.
Then we have the travel backpacks. These are designed specifically for people to live out of while backpacking. I personally see them as a half way point between a suitcase and a hiking pack. They are a backpack with a harness system, however the full front section zips open like a suitcase (obviously designs differ between brands). This allows you much better access to what is in your pack, so you don’t have to pull out all of your gear when you need something from the bottom. We decided on the travel backpack.
Now that we had made this choice, it was time to hunt one down. Of everyone we had spoken to, and everything I had read about them on the Internet, the most important part of buying a backpack is the fit. Don’t worry about the features, don’t worry about the colour. Just make sure the damn thing fits. The last thing you want to be doing on the other side of the world is abusing your backpack for the pain it is causing you.
Osprey Waypoint Travel Backpack
We spent three days in the city trying to figure out what we wanted. Those of you that know Jess and I know that we are pretty organised people. We tried about every travel pack on in Adelaide, with weight, and shortlisted them. Why weight? The packs sit differently on your back when you actually have weight in them, and it also helps you to realise how heavy they will be once you stuff them full of clothes and other things. By the end of the first day we had 8 packs on the so called “shortlist”. The shortlist was pretty much the 8 packs that we found comfortable, and they were different between myself and Jess.
Once we had that shortlist and went home to talk and think about it all, we were able to cross off one pack, because it was blatantly too expensive ($1000AUD for two of them), and then cross off two because they had bad reviews on the Internet, and their quality clearly wasn’t that great. We wanted to buy something that would last not only this trip, but for our future trips too (whatever they may be).
Long story short, after another day of shortlisting (down to three), and then making our decision at home, we ended up purchasing the Osprey Waypoint Travel backpacks. Jess has a 60L, and I have an 80L. I could have got away with the 60L, but I figured a little extra space on the way home for presents might help. Three of the packs I could wear with the same level of comfort. One had more features but a greater price tag, the other was made of a less durable material. Jess really found the Osprey comfortable, so I figured we would buy them at the same place to hopefully get a better deal.
We shopped around on price for the packs during the whole process – money saved on a pack is an extra night in Zurich. To be honest all of the local travel stores in Adelaide are very competitive with the same prices on the Internet. I have seen a few places online that sell for a bit cheaper, but we ended up buying our packs from Paddy Palin’s on Rundle St, Adelaide and they gave us some discount – myself for being a Defence employee, and for Jess being a teacher, so it all worked out for us in the end.
It’s happening!
Nov 2nd
We’ve already done some preparation, but I’ve only just organised the website. I’ll try and cover what we have already bought/organised/planned in the next few days. There’s still so much to do!
To set the scene, our current “plans” (we don’t really have any plans, just happy to see where it takes us and happy to change our mind mid-trip) are to fly out to Singapore, then to Langkawi (Malaysia) to honeymoon for a week or so. After that we will fly to Athens in Greece, do some sightseeing, maybe some snowboarding in Greece, and then catch a ferry across to Brindisi in Italy. From there we will make our way up to Udine to meet Jess’ family in Italy and see how they live, eat their food and so forth. After that we will just try and see what we want to see, and go where we want to go.
Europe has some pretty popular tourist destinations but we aren’t real “touristy” people. We will see some of the sights just because we are there at the time but I doubt we will really be going from landmark to landmark. I’m happy to be proven wrong though, so long as we enjoy it.
After we are done spending our money in Europe, we will then head across to Canada to work for the rest of the year. I’d love to live and work in Whistler, so I can ride bikes day in day out but we’ll see. It’s not my trip, it’s our trip. With that said though, Jess seems pretty keen to live the “village life” for a while so it could work.
Who knows though, we might be home a month after we leave!
