La Dolce Vita.: January 2016

Monday, January 25, 2016

Selamat Datang Kota Kinabalu

Finalmente!

International Trip 2015 - Booked

I can't hide my excitement for my first ever out of the country trip!

AIRFARE:

My college buddies and now considered as my travel buddies, planned the trip for our first out of the country trip with the whole bunch of barkada. Some of my friends already traveled abroad while on my case, It's my FIRST! FIRST INTERNATIONAL TRIP and luckily it on my birthday! hahaha! We have booked the tickets like a year before the trip of course!

"SEAT SALE ATTACK"

Thanks to my zombie friends who patiently waited for seat sales every night. Luckily, we had a good deal with our flights:

First we booked: (AIR ASIA) MNL to MIRI, MY for only 500 pesos (all in) haha. Then, from Miri we will travel to Kuala Lumpur (center of Malaysia, where you can find the Petronas Tower and Batu Caves, Post card moments!) booked a flight from (AIR ASIA) MIRI to KUALA LUMPUR for only 700 (all in) and SG to MANILA (Cebu Pac) at cost of 3,300 (we can't find cheap tickets from SG especially we booked it a month before I think) total of 4,500 round tickets for two countries (not bad!) haha!

Then, we planned our itinerary for the whole trip, actually Ian did planned it, then we just thought of different places that we can visit in a limited span of time like three days in Malaysia and two days in Singapore.

Here are the following places that we prioritized to visit:

Malaysia:
Petronas Tower and Batu Caves

Singapore:
Merlion, Birds nest, Gardens By the Bay and of course Universal Studio at (Sentosa)

so there, we actually visited Manaoag (Pangasinan) to pray for our flight coz lately we heard news on missing planes, plane crush and terrorism. We dont like that to happen, God nooo! So we pay a visit to Manaoag to pray, also to plan the trip and unwind from the big city.

HOTEL BOOKINGS:

It's almost few weeks before the flight and still we don't have any hotel bookings, we are planning to walked in there, but the the back of our mind, it might be dangerous especially it would be our first group flight abroad.

So we visited: www.agoda.com , we searched for possible hotels that we can stay, it may bit costly but we need to consider things and of course our budget:

Things to consider on booking a hotel:

Location: We wanted a hotel, which is within the city, few minutes away from the airport, near the malls (of course shopping!) and street foods( we love to eat new delicacies!) and place that is near the landmarks of the city.

Fixtures: We are not looking for that instagram worthy hotel besides we are here for adventure and to meet the place and not just to stay at the hotel the whole time, but if we can look for a hotel that suits a budget and looks so classy! why not grab the opportunity right?! But, we are just looking a nice hotel with a clean bathroom and proper thats it.

Price: Of course budget friendly!

Good Internet Connection: We sort of considering this, especially we love to share our travel photos!

Electric Sockets: Seriously? Yes! Enough electricity socket for our our gadgets: like, our cameras, go pros, ipads, cellphones, power bank and etc. We cannot afford to loose battery on our trip. Thats a big NO NO NO!

We had a booking at a resort in Kota Kinabalu, aside from the fact the we are not after going around Kota, so we decided to stay at a resort, for only 5000 pesos we booked a whole duplex accommodation for the four of us, well it may sound expensive but after all there's a beach that we can enjoy! Photos will be posted below.

In Kuala Lumpur, we booked at Hotel Soliel, actually there are various hotel around the place coz it was in Bukit Bintang (main city of KL) where we can find Petronas Tower and near Selangorfor Batu Caves. Standard room with two single beds.

For Singapore trip, Hello Walk In! hahaha Seriously!

We planned to stay at Bugis street which is near to all shopping center.

We got good deals with our hotel bookings!

The day finally arrived! April 24, 2015!

My friend Barbz, let me stayed at her place coz we have a early flight the following day, so we meet the night before. We met Ian and Marc at the airport three hours before the flight.

here's some snaps from our trip.