A Jetstar promo got us packing for a short trip to Hong Kong 🙂
The 10am flight meant that we could have some proper rest before going to the airport for a hearty breakfast. Since it was yet another chillax trip, we actually re-visited some of our favourite places.
And thanks (but no thanks) to typhoon, we actually had to stay in the hotel on the 2nd last day and had afternoon tea in the hotel, and spam ancient Hong Kong movies in bed! First time we encountered typhoon no 8 in Hong Kong!
Despite being so near to Johor Bahru, hubby and I had never venture there together before, firstly because of the fear of weekend crowds, and secondly, we always thought that we would need a car to travel within JB. However, for some unknown reasons, people around us had been talking about JB recently, and encouraging us to go on a weekday. So when Ms. K suggested going to JB together via public transport and exploring the area within walking distance of City Square, we readily agreed!
Here was our day trip itinerary:
Notes:
We were all very interested in seeing cherry blossoms, and while hubby had seen the beautiful blooms many years ago in Japan, the rest of us have only seen them online and on TV shows. Initially, we intended to fly into Japan first before travelling to South Korea (the flowers started blooming earlier in certain parts of Japan, and the variety of flowers were different), but the exorbitant air fares made us decide to go for a less ambitious trip 😛
We read about the largest cherry blossom festival in 진해 Jinhae 镇海, and decided that we would focus on 부산 Busan 釜山, and 서울 Seoul 首爾, while keeping things flexible in Busan so that we could go for a day trip to Jinhae, when the cherry trees were in full bloom.
We had initially planned to visit Hong Kong in May for the Cheung Chau Bao Festival, but unfortunately, we had to cancel the trip at the last minute. 😦
Nonetheless, we found time (and excuse) to visit Hong Kong in December 😀
In order to eat more, we had to burn more calories, so this was a trip which we walked a lot in between destinations (Hong Kong Island is filled with steps and slopes, our poor knees!).
We also took tram and ferry rides quite often during this trip, which can be a cheaper alternative than the MTR sometimes.
Our 6 days itinerary were as followed:
This was our second trip to 台北 Taipei this year!
There was a SQ promotion going on and we got our tickets at S$518 per pax for this trip. As we were bringing my parents, and it was dad’s first trip to Taiwan, we figured that a slow-paced itinerary in Taipei would be quite ideal.
We decided to stay in 西門町 Ximending area this time, instead of 台北車站Taipei Main Station, because
We had only been to China when we went as a family with hubby’s parents, brothers, sister-in-laws and niece to visit their relatives in Xiamen. There wasn’t much touristy things that we did except to eat and eat and eat with his relatives.
So we wanted to go China as a tourist for the longest time and hubby said that the starting point of visiting China has to be Beijing.
We were glad that we were able to find a good slot this year to finally fulfil our wish of climbing The Great Wall, tour the Palace Museum and eating Peking Duck!
After my initial blurness thinking that our flight was 10.30am instead of 8.30am, we still made it in good time to collect our Changi Recommends WiFi router, grabbed breakfast at Heavenly Wang, and boarded the plane in time. We liked being on the upper deck of A380! It felt like lesser passengers, and we had great service from the air steward and stewardess 🙂
We finally made it to Australia!
This was our mostly unplanned itinerary for our recent trip to Melbourne and Sydney, as our main aim was to visit our friends in the 2 cities.
Each day, we would google for what looked interesting. Some days, a spur-of-the-moment thought or a sudden craving might make us decide to walk 30 minutes to go in search of it.
The weather in Sydney was way better than in Melbourne where daily temperatures could go up to 22 degrees. We didn’t have to wear our thick jackets at all in Sydney.
Our serviced apartment at Meriton Serviced Apartment Campbell was also way better than the Airbnb in Melbourne but of course, it cost a lot more too. 🙂 We do highly recommend it if your budget allows. 🙂
We finally made it to Australia!
This was our mostly unplanned itinerary for our recent trip to Melbourne and Sydney, as our main aim was to visit our friends in the 2 cities.
Each day, we would google for what looked interesting. Some days, a spur-of-the-moment thought or a sudden craving might make us decide to walk 30 minutes to go in search of it.
We were blessed with nice weather in Melbourne throughout our stay and there wasn’t any raining while we were there, save for the slight drizzle while we were on the Great Ocean Road.
