Flight plan

lately it seems that surfing for flights has been a regular activity. first it was for the four-day chinese new year weekend next year. marlon and i had decided to go to boracay during cny instead of during christmas. i've wanted to bring him ever since the philippine star sent me there on a raket last summer.

it took a while to finally narrow down a flight and somewhere to stay (the place sure fills up fast for cny!), but finally we booked ourselves via cebu pacific for four days at the true home hotel in station one. along the way, i discovered my boracay guide, which has a super-helpful, extremely detailed map of nearly all the resorts on the island.

then i found out that in 2009, singapore will have a grand total of 10 three-day weekends -- because by some stroke of luck, all the national holidays fall on either a friday, monday or sunday (which is then moved to the following monday). this drove me a little berserk as a year of seeing sold-out flights and overbooked hotels flashed through my head. see here, since everything is online, people plan their holidays months in advance, leaving tardy travellers like marlon and myself with no flights or accommodations at all. 

i decided: never again! so i sat marlon down at the dining table last weekend to plan all of our long weekend travels for 2009. which was a fun exercise, i must say -- especially when i started surfing for flights in april 2009 and found that they were half the price they would cost if we booked next year. and that was how we plunked down six hundred bucks for round-trip tickets to hanoi half a year in advance.

we had all these other trips to yogyakarta, redang and siem reap planned, too. until i went on facebook and found out that tor had gotten engaged to her boyfriend matt! aieeeee! which is why new york is now on the travel plan -- for august 2009. by then, marlon will have enough krisflyer miles to pay for one ticket. not bad ey?

who knows, maybe we will get to still take that trip to siem reap in november 2009, during hari raya. that is, if marlon doesn't travel somewhere like japan for business -- with me in tow. then of course, at the end of the year there will be christmas in manila. 

2009 is shaping up beautifully. i can't wait.