My sister and my best friend are experts in planning a trip and I always thought it is a more challenging job than what cooking was to me 5 yrs back ! It has been a while since we made an International trip and as the little one is now almost 4, we thought a trip to Singapore would entertain her. Hubby gave the responsibility to me to decide on everything regarding the trip right from hotels, flights and even places to visit. However he set an budget for the trip and I had to fit everything in the budget !
Having no previous experience of planning a trip myself, I was totally blank. I had approached a couple of travel agents to send me a quote and most of them failed. Few of them couldn't get a 4 star accomodation for my budget and the rest sent a standard format they already had [Singapore 4 Days 3 Nights Package or Singapore + Malaysia Package] with them without even going through my requirements. Those mails directly went to the trash.
I googled, googled and googled and had a list of places in mind and wanted the trip to be for 7 days when the rest of the travel agents just skipped most of the places and added places of their own interest like museum, temple, etc ! These mails went to trash too. It was shocking how lazy or reluctant these travel agents were. So I decided to go on my own and it was a bold decision according to me :D
So I looked for some deals for flights to and fro and since we were travelling with a child we skipped budget airlines like Tiger Airways. The next best deal was with Indigo and to and fro for 3 of us it came to 45k approximately, in spite of booking it almost 30 days before the trip !
Next comes the hotel booking, the most challenging one. Since Singapore is a very expensive city we either had to compromise and go for budget accomodation or else we should be ready to spend 1/3rd of our entire budget on accomodation !! I was too confused so after selecting 3 hotels - 2 budget and one 4 star, hubby gave green signal to go ahead with the 4 star one. This is the best decision we would have ever made and we realized it only during our stay. Will share details in the coming posts. We decided to go ahead with Albert Court by Far East Hospitality in Bugis which was an amazing location. Just few kms away from Little India and Bugis, a shopping hub ! Yay ! The cheapest deal available was on Ibibo and we booked a room that came with break fast and free wi-fi. For 6 nights and 7 days the cost was 75 K. Phew ! But I repeat again that was the best decision made EVER :D
Since I had already decided on the places to visit all that was left was to schedule which place to visit on which days. For Eg - Sentosa tickets were expensive on weekends so we had to schedule it for weekdays and we planned to do shopping and city tour during the weekends. This way we saved on our entry tickets to various places which was again very expensive !
All was well planned and we were ready 1 day before the actual date of departure. Trip Advisor played a major role in deciding the hotel and places to be seen.
Wait for the next post on our flight journey and Day 1 experience along with few pics too :)
♥ Aarthi ♥
