Robbing gits

Got my e-ticket. British Airways want £20 to reserve a seat now, or I can wait for online check in to open 24h before the flight. I am inclined to chance it; as already repeated endlessly I will survive if I don't get an aisle seat, and if I'm relatively prompt with the online check in I should have plenty of seat choice anyway.

Flights Delhi-London - the cheapskate option

Oh, the absolute cheapest I could have got from Delhi-London for was about £247 (according to ITA), but on a flight that distance I figured it was worth the extra <£100 for the convenience of a direct flight. (Plus, in reality, had I gone for a cheaper flight I might have had to leave Delhi a day earlier to get back to London at the same time, which would have been a bit of a waste.)

Delhi-London

In a fit of decisiveness I've gone and booked the direct BA flight from Delhi to London on 21st December; it leaves 12:30 and gets into Heathrow 16:15. £338.70 on ebookers; according to fly.com britishairways.com would do it for £334 but they insisted on charging in rupees, which would lead to unpredictable bank charges on the booking. Can't choose a seat online yet as my e-ticket hasn't been issued but I'm sure it will be OK.

Have perhaps stupidly signed up for the "executive club", assuming I wasn't already a member and just couldn't find the details; I suspect the chances of me getting anything except junk mail out of it are slim (I did at least untick the relevant boxes, despite them getting conveniently reset to the "spam" setting when it decided my proposed password was too secure because it contained a "+") but I could well end up flying with BA to Latin America after Christmas so I figured I'd chance it.

So apart from picking a seat on that flight, the last booking I need to make for the trip before Christmas is a hotel in Delhi for the first few nights.

Air Asia extras

Have signed up on their website, partly to see what it was like.

I can pick a normal seat, i.e. reserved seating, for 70 THB which is about £1.40. (I do wonder if they will hit me with an extra £1-2 card surcharge, as they did for the booking via expedia, even with a debit card.) It is vaguely tempting to do that for such a small amount, but on the other hand it is a shortish flight and I do perhaps need to relax about this damn aisle seat business.

20kg of checked baggage allowance is 500 THB which is about £10. I really don't want to check my bag if I can help it (ultra paranoia flying into Singapore anyway, I'd rather keep my eye on the thing continuously :-) ) and given it's THB 1110 or about £22 if I have to pay at the airline counter and I might well be able to get my weight down to 7kg anyway I am disinclined to pay this.

You can also add an in-flight meal for THB 120 or about £2.40. While airline food tends not to be great or massively substantial, that price perhaps doesn't compare too badly to what I'd pay for food in Singapore or even Bangkok and it is vaguely tempting to add that on. (You can see the available options and they all look edible.) I mean, I wouldn't pay £10 or perhaps even £5 for a typical in-flight meal on a short haul flight, but £2.40 actually seems fairly non-gouging and just like a genuinely OK add-on where you can save a little bit of money if you don't want it. In this respect, just how budget air travel should work.

I am wondering if the expedia-quoted price was deliberately inflated to allow for me to add on stuff like the checked baggage; the £20-odd it costs is suspiciously approximately the same as the difference between what I expected to pay and what I apparently have paid. (I just checked on my online statement and none of the recent stuff is showing up yet.) This seems a bit unlikely somehow. Maybe I will be stung for £20-odd of taxes at the airport, but that has never happened to me before, it's always been rolled into the ticket price and there is nothing saying you will need to pay at the airport.

I guess there's no rush for any of this; only the seats could "disappear" if I wait, and there are loads of unreserved seats yet, plus as I say I am inclined to chance it. I think I will mull over this and perhaps see how much my bag weighs when I've packed it before revisiting this. (If there is a chance of beig stuck for a card surcharge when booking any extras, I want to make sure I book them all together so I only pay it once more.)

Booking frenzy

14:30ish Had a Spanish lesson booked at 2pm, though the teacher has not shown up on Skype. Engaged in a frenzy of booking flights and hotels just beforehand, having been sort of looking into it while waiting around a bit aimlessly for the lesson.

Not in chronological order...

I have booked a ticket with Air Asia from Bangkok to Singapore, flight is 22 November from DMK (which I hope is not the arse end of nowhere) 13:15 arriving SIN 16:40. £62.90, although when Lloyds card services called me after I later tried to book the hotel in Singapore (see below) and read out my last three approved transactions, this has apparently come in at £48.90 or something, and that's what the e-mail they've sent me says. I don't understand this, I will check my credit card statement later.

Air Asia is apparently an ultra budget extra charge if you sneeze kind of carrier. No checked baggage allowance unless you pay. Not a problem generally as I travel hand-luggage only anyway. But their hand baggage allowance is 7kg. FFS. It is completely unclear if a laptop bag or a handbag is allowed in addition, they sort of say it is and then other source suggest it is a strict one bag allowance. Maybe I can carry my netbook through under my arm, but totally unclear if that would be allowed. It's also totally unclear if there is excess per-kg charge for hand baggage or if I'd then have to pay about £20-odd for checked baggage because I'm a kilo or two over the hand baggage allowance. I will simply have to try to shove as much stuff in my pockets as I can and hope, and if next week isn't too harried I will perhaps see if I can weigh stuff as I pack to check what are the heavier items. It's still cheaper than the best flight shown on expedia for that particular day even if I have to pay that £20-odd, I think. I don't think I can reserve a seat without paying for it and I am inclined not to, I need to get this aisle seat "requirement" sorted out and given I survived the flight back from Sao Paulo it should be OK on this sub-3h flight if I don't get an aisle seat.

Anyway, I had kind of picked out the flights Bangkok-Singapore, Singapore-Delhi and the Singapore hotel and was trying to book them all. When I tried to book the hotel (expedia, paying up front, free cancellation up to 19 Nov so I figured WTF, I chose one hotel over another nearly identical one with somewhat better traveller reviews because the one I picked had free cancellation) it "failed" without a clear error. As I tried again I got a call on my mobile from the automated service. Naturally this has to waffle and waffle and waffle at you instead of assuming you've got half a brain and can guess what's going on and just give you the facts. No need to waste my time telling me you take security vvery seriously, just read me out the transactions you're worried about. Still, it's not as if I had my Spanish lesson in 20 minutes time; obviously if I am using my credit card online I have all the time in the world to sit and listen to an automated message drone on and on and on. (This is also yet another reason why it's unreliable to use a credit card abroad. The call lasted nearly 11 minutes so would have cost me £16.50 to receive had I been abroad, and my blood pressure was skyrocketing anyway even listening to it in the UK, in part due to general annoyance and in part due to thinking I might miss my Spanish lesson due to having to deal with this, without racking up phone sex line-type charges to be told they take my security, if not my time and money, seriously.) Because of the mysteriously not-what-I-expected-price for the Air Asia booking (which also didn't have a name for the merchant, the voice said something like 'AA' and then read a string of digits) I had to go through to speak to a person. Anyway, I approved all the transactions and that is sorted now.

(I suppose had I been abroad I could possibly have ignored the call, "guessed" (I sort of did anyway, I think) there was a problem with the credit card and called them via Skype. Still, clearly it's desirable to avoid using the credit card too much abroad to minimise problems, although I have in the past used it to pay the 10% deposit on hostelworld.com without any problems and I will obviously continue to do so.)

The flight Singapore-Delhi is 25 Nov SIN 09:15-12:30 DEL direct for £187.70 (booked via lastminute.com, expedia astonishingly appear to show absolutely no flights at any price or level of crapness from Singapore to Delhi for that day or - I tried just as an extra check - the day after). I ended up on lastminute.com via fly.com which I found via a Google search for where to book it, Opodo were listing it at £193.70 and ITA had said about £187. I have gone onto the Air India web site and booked aisle seat 10C for that flight. This was about the only half-decent flight almost regardless of price, 09:15 is earlier in the morning than I'd like but as blogged yesterday at least Singapore is small and you can get to the airport by MRT and it starts running about 6am, so it shouldn't be too much of a stress. Flying at that time should also mean it's daylight as I am arriving at the hotel in Delhi.

I need to check my credit card statement later to see what I have been charged with the Air Asia booking and if it's OK, but I am now booked up (as far as I intend to do things before I am there) as far as landing in Delhi. That means I just need to book a hotel for my initial stay in Delhi and the flight back to London before Christmas and I'm done for the first phase of the trip.

Spoke to Mum, she couldn't see any problem with me coming back to the UK on 21st December.

The hotel in Singapore is going to be nameless for now as part of my usual paranoia, but it's about £65 a night. It is a fairly good location I think and it has free wifi and airconditioning, but probably no window. Singapore is clearly expensive, I could have paid way more, short of staying in a hostel, which doesn't appeal in Singapore for some reason (or perhaps anywhere, at least for my initial arrival when I want stress free after flying in), I couldn't have got anything massively cheaper.

Further preparation

0013 Up to Georgian lesson 8 after today (off work for the funeral), though not rock solid on the later material.

Not yet booked any further flights or accommodation. I am booked up to and including the Bangkok hotel (I think, need to double check but pretty sure) so next order of business is to decide on Singapore so I can book the onward flight from Bangkok. May do that tonight, not absolutely sure.

0047 Looking on expedia and ITA, it appears that flying from Bangkok to Delhi via Singapore is (given my reluctance to fly out of Bangkok direct to Delhi at 8:50am or spend 24h on the journey) about the same price as flying Bangkok direct to Delhi at a half-sane time. So going to Singapore doesn't really cost anything in terms of flights. (This does have a 9:15am flight out of Singapore to Delhi, but at least the MRT probably makes that less stressful than it would be normally.)

I see from the guide book (and I have checked on the web) you can get a three day tourist MRT pass for Singapore but not a four day one. Given the hotel is probably weighing in at sixty odd quid a night, it is an expensive place to stay and if I feel the need I could probably get some proper luxury for sixty quid somewhere else. So I am heavily inclining to three nights in Singapore and sticking an extra day on in Thailand. (My budget isn't that tight, and it's not all about the money, but these small-but-double-digit savings or expenses do add up.)

It's all a bit niggly, but that way if I do decide to go into Malaysia from Thailand by air or land I have an extra day available. Or I could split my time differently, have less time in Thailand and allocate a week or so to Malaysia and fly Bangkok-Malaysia-Singapore-Delhi. Or I could cut India down and do Bangkok-Singapore-Malaysia-Delhi. But I don't think I will. I'm sure Malaysia is cool but I have no enormous specific desire to go there so all other things being equal I will stick with my initial plan, and if Thailand turns out to be too anything for me to stick three weeks there I always have the option to escape into Malaysia instead.

Three nights in Singapore is probably ample based on what I'm told, and if not I will at least know I want to go back and its hub status will make it relatively cheap and convenient to revisit on a subsequent holiday.

Sounds like a plan but I won't book anything just yet.

This is obviously obsessing over fine details when there is no clearly right or wrong answer, but sod it. Might as well apply a little forethought and planning now while I can do so at relative leisure, and these flights I am booking form the skeleton for the more ad-hoc day to day plans so I might as well make the skeleton as sound as I can.

0148 Had a bath, still seems a reasonable plan but I'm not rushing into booking it tonight. Besides, would be good to have quick chat with parents and see if there is any reason to come back earlier than my planned date in December (21st IIRC); probably not, but if there is I will need to rethink and may knock Singapore on the head to compensate for the lost time. So there's another reason not to commit myself to booking any flights right now. Feeling a bit tired so will move towards bed.

Singapore and Malaysia

Was speaking to Tony at my leaving drinks last night and he thought four nights in Singapore was way too long. Over lunch today asked the guys about it and Ming also thought it was a bit too much, although not excessive on such a long trip. I am wondering about cutting down to three nights; I think two would be too rushed, and in a way I am also regarding Singapore as a chance to relax a bit in a fairly comfortable environment. Does one day really matter? Probably not, but I might go with three instead of four. Need to mull over it, I will have a read of the guide book this weekend before I book any flights/hotels.

It is true that on some hypothetical future trip I might stop over in Singapore for a night or two, it being a major regional hub, so I will probably get a chance to visit (again) in the future.

Tony also recommended Malaysia. He said - and he's right, I just checked - that you don't need a visa. I also looked just now and as long as you avoid the forested inland areas malaria tablets are not recommended, so there is nothing preventing me going. (There is no way I'm faffing around trying to get malaria tablets at this late stage.) On the other hand, I am not sure I would want to cut Singapore out altogether, and even if I did four days in Malaysia isn't much, and anything more would eat into my time in Thailand or India. Need to mull over it. I suppose I could maybe spend four days in Kuala Lumpur instead of Singapore, I dunno. On the other hand, I think I would like to see Singapore. Meh. As I say, need to mull it over.