A hard-earned lesson

Sorry I was a little too busy with my work to update this small site. Here is what happened during the last one and a half month.

By the way, part of my idleness is because of an incident that discouraged us a lot.

To continue with where I has left... Charlene and me were so eager with the plan. We had read the book and did a lot of research on the internet to come up with what seems like a "perfect" plan... Charlene did a lot of work because I was busy working. Days and nights we were talking about the backpack tour. I had never seen her as eager as she was.

As most students / recent graduates, budget is our constraint. Although the plan was becoming very feasible, and we had planned out our budget, to quite a detailed level, I was still not 100% certain about this part. If all things went right, we would be doing like one of the cheapest backpack tour possible in Australia!... However if something went wrong and we shot over our budget, we would still have trouble carrying out "the plan".

Two days after I last updated this blog (31st of Mar) we decided that the plan was more or less completed so I started to book the air tickets, fearing that the airfare might increase. We had done research earlier and were quite sure of all the promotions going on. I checked the airfare every few days to make sure I was aware of any fare changes.

At around 11pm, I accessed www.tigerairways.com; and alas... I was stunned.. for a moment I thought I went to the wrong page. Because all the prices were different! Entirely different! They were like twice or thrice more expensive!! Charlene was obviously not happy too. She said I should have booked the air tickets earlier (Charlene always complain about my "procastination" btw)... I was so shocked but keep telling myself to calm down, and then went to www.jetstar.com.au only to find out that all the prices there went up too! (we needed to book a pair of return tickets from TigerAir and another 4 from JetstarAir). It was obvious now that from beginning of May all the promotions ended! And we haven't booked even a single tickets!

So I sit there and calculated... each of us exceeded budget around 700... which made the entire plan infeasible. Or at least feasible but we were obviously not as happy as we had been, knowing that our effort to save money didn't pay off very well.

It was plain that we needed to change our plan. Or don't go. In the next half hour we sit there and browse through all the air tickets, and all possible plans from May to August.

Finally... alas... finally.. I was so happy that we found another perfect period to travel. In August. Airfares are much the same with only a slight increment. The 3 weeks would fit perfectly between Charlene's convocation and the date she would start working. And August is still winter down under, which means we would still have a chance to see snow on Snowy Mountain. Moreover, I even got to include a public holiday into my leaves! How cool it was.

That night we proceeded with booking most of the important air tickets.

And I'll never forget that... Don't delay unless there is a good reason.

The plan: Backpacking to Australia

It's been almost a month since we set out to travel. The departure date is May 26th so we are about one and a half month away from the Australia expedition.

This whole thing is just so fun and exciting! I think the planning and preparing stage is no less fun than the actual expedition itself. For the past few days we've been up until like 4 in the morning to plan our itenerary. Charlene pursuaded me to buy this book "Frommer's Australia for $60 a day" and it really proved to be a great help! I think this kind of books is much more useful for first-time travellers like us, compared to the famous "Lonely Planet" series (which I initially intended to buy, btw). Frommer's is more opinionate, it gives a lot of useful advices and tips while Lonely Planet is like an encyclopedia that you must be really into backpack travelling for sometimes to be able to appreciate it. We found that after reading the Frommer's book, we were able to plan our itinerary very detailed. I can now image ourselves wandering on the street of an Australia country, while gusts of chilly wind blow heavily through our hair and on the hills, herds of cows and sheeps gaze peacefully beside the beautiful cottages. I let my imagination go wild. It's just gonna be so amazing!

Last weekend we went out to look for the backpacks. There were a promotion at SportsConnection where they were giving like 30 to 80 percent discount so Charlene and me thought there was no better chance to grab ourselves two backpacks. We end up buying a Vertikal Traihead III which is 65+10 littres in capacity and a Vertikal Bellwether II which is 55 littres in capacity. I'm a bit worried that the luggage will be overweight because we are going with budget airlines. My plan is that we are going to pack as much as the weight barrier allowed into the backpacks and check-in; the rest will be stuff into two small bags that me and Charlene will carry as handbags. I'll figure out a way to make the handbags *look* as small and light as possible :grin: (while infact they are gonna be heavy like hell). Hopefully everything will be ok.
To speak more of our travel plan, it look something like this: backpack + camping + budget airlines + coach. Yes that's right, save as much as possible. We can camp anywhere possible in a dome tent, to save the accomodation cost. We are also taking coach whenever possible. It is gonna be very challenging. But we love the fun and we are gonna make it.

• Our initial itinerary is like this (I'll post the detailed one once I have some time):
  26th May: fly from Singapore to Darwin on TigerAir.
• 27th-28th May: visit Darwin and Kakadu Park.
• 29th May: Darwin - Melbourne on Jetstar Air.
• 30th-31st May: visit Melbourne and the surrounding area. Touring the Great Ocean Road.
• 1st June: Melbourne - Cooma by coach, and then to Snowy Mountain.
• 2nd - 3th June: experience the chilly weather :D
• 4th June: Cooma - Canberra - Sydney by coach.
• 5th-7th June: visit Sydney and the surrounding area.
• 8th June: Sydney - Murrurundi by coach. Visit Hunter Valley.
• 10th June: Murrurundi - Brisbane by coach.
• 11th June: visit Brisbane. Cuddle the Koala :D Set out to Whitsunday on Jetstar Air.
• 12th-15th June: Various activities at Brisbane, including camping, hiking, snorkeling and whale watching :D
• 16th June: Whitsunday - Brisbance - Darwin on Jetstart Air.
• 17th June: Darwin - Singapore on Tiger Air. Home sweet home.

That's it for today. I must do some work now.