This month i’ve spent a lot of time on travel websites creating my own pricing matrix for the three trips planned for the rest of the year. As much as i would like to throw Hawaii into the mix Las Vegas, San Francisco and a Thailand/Japan trip are taking precedents over the Aloha State.
The first trip coming up to Las Vegas for the LV Basketball Invitational is happening in September and after a deliberation about driving up Joy and I thought it would be best just to fly. Two days of basketball, and i’m sure drinking would not make a pleasant Sunday morning drive home. That plan would have been great if i would’ve just bought the tickets when i found them for $59 each way, but of course i waited two extra days to end up having to do some ninja style booking by flying out on a Friday in the afternoon on Southwest, and having to book a separate flight home on United on Sunday so that we could save as much money as possible (well not as much money because leaving vegas at 7am is idiotic). Of course on top of that we had to book a hotel, and staying at the California at least makes that part of the trip cheaper. I’m actually not too sure what night activities we’ll be doing since we are so far away and we’re not really going with any friends of our own.
In October we hoped aboard the Party Bus and decided to join my sister and her friends to see Journey in Mountain View. There was another debate about driving up, but once again laziness prevailed and taking an extra day off on the Thursday before the concert made getting flights on Jetblue much cheaper. This will be the first time that I’ll have to take the BART from the airport, but now since Joy had to do it last year for a bachelorette party she thinks she a pro at it now. It also appears that Nina has requested that Friday off as well so i suspect much Muni riding, and ice cream eating for that day, and maybe i can go get another “I had friends on that Deathstar” shirt that i think i left at the hotel on my last trip to Vegas.
For the grand finale of the year is the long awaited trip back to the motherland. During the research of flights we’ve found that the direct flight is going to cost a hell of a lot of money and so we checked out some other airlines and stumbled upon Singapore who has to make stops in either Singapore or Tokyo, so we thought why not make the most of our trip and do a stop over in Tokyo for a couple days to indulge in some food and beer. Of course the most important part is going to Thailand to my new extended family and to show Joy a little more of Thailand than just Bangkok. Amazingly she’s never been outside the immediate vicinity of Bangkok even while living there, while i’ve travelled all the way to the north to the Golden Triangle and down south to Phi Phi Islands. I’m not sure what i’m looking forward to most (besides the food) but i want to maybe get a little immersed into the culture, art and history of the country. Too bad flights at the moment are about $1600 per person, because the last times i’ve flown it only costed $1100 in 2006, and $730 in 2002 and that seems like a bit of an inflation cost even factoring the rise in gas costs. I guess we just wont be splurging on any extra satays, pathongko or roti.
