Archive for January 2012
2012: Upcoming Trips until June
2012 will be another exciting year with quite a few trips confirmed and several more in the making.
Sadly all good things come to an end with BMI being bought over by Avios. It means that there will be no more cheap redemption on Business Class with Star Alliance carriers soon and hardly any worthy replacement is in sight.
Oh well… It was as good as it lasted.
The schedule so far looks something like this:
January
Yet another CNY in Malaysia again.
February
To maximize the value of my BMI redemption from Tokyo in December, I added an additional SQ J segment to Dhaka in February. Coming back to SIN will be via BKK with TG and SQ J (and onward to MNL in April) on another BMI redemption.
March
I always want to try flying on an turboprop which is quite difficult from jets-dominated SIN. Firefly operates ATR72 to SZB (and few other cities) but the ticket prices aren’t that value-for-money. Until now that is. 102 MYR (S$42) is cheap enough to tempt me but I somehow managed to book the wrong date (4 March instead of 3 March). Which means I will only have a few hours in KL before returning on AirAsia (S$25).
April
On the back of the DAC-SIN redemption, I added on SIN-MNL on SQ J on 28 April. Took leave on 30 April to enjoy a long Labour Day weekend, most probably in Boracay.
May
Crazy month started with coming back from the Philippines on Labour Day. Going to Hong Kong two weeks later is to start yet another BMI redemption to Moscow (Refer to June). The month ends with a weekend trip to Kuching with AirAsia again (S$100 return a/i with food on-board).
June
Trans-Mongolian.
Four travelers.
Three countries.
Two weeks.
One LONG journey.
Rest of the Year
No firm plans yet but will try to use up all my BMI miles as well as my leave. Potential destinations include Sydney (Scoot’s inaugural destination), Bali (To get to Timor Leste?) and Taiwan (10 years since last vist).
2011 Travel in Review
2011 had been quite good travel-wise despite me starting to work and having not as much leave as I hope for.
Nine new countries was a record for me (beating 2009′s 8) and I sat in Business Class for the first time (IST-SIN on TK).
I just looked through my passport and it seemed that I took trips out of Singapore almost every month.
(Countries with * = visited for 1st time)
January
An unexpected trip for my grandma’s funeral (Malaysia)
February
CNY (Malaysia)
March
-NIL-
April
Diving in Pulau Dayang (Malaysia)
May
Auckland and Rotorua over Vesak Day weekend (New Zealand*)
June
-NIL-
July
Watched Liverpool in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
August
Abode of Peace (Brunei*, Malaysia)
September
-NIL- (Due to F1)
October
Weekend trip to (rainy) Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
October/November
Paris to Istanbul by train (Malaysia, France*, Germany*, Austria*, Slovakia*, Hungary*, Romania*, Bulgaria, Turkey)
December
Lads’ weekend in Batam (Indonesia),
Grandma’s anniversary (Malaysia) &
Christmas in Tokyo via Seoul (South Korea, Japan*)
I would like to write reports for all the trips but somehow I lack the discipline to complete them.
My new year resolution is to finish the one on Korea/Japan soon and get going on my Europe trip after that. Hopefully the Europe trip report will be done(or well in progress) before my next trip in February.
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,300 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
