My latest afro girl trip was to the world of Southeast Asia by way of Tokyo, I visited Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. I flew All Nippon Airways (ANA), a Japanese based airline with direct flights to Tokyo from the United States.
How did I book this deal?
I follow Secret Flying via twitter to catch the best travel deals. My best deals from them have been to places out of the country and all under $400 for the round trip fare. I do recommend following them NOW, if you want to travel affordably.
In November, I saw a deal to Malaysia from JFK airport for about $290 and thought, let me check this out, knowing my sister was turning 25 in January and wanted to go somewhere warm for her birthday. Once I played around with the dates and stuff the prices shifted slightly. I recommend using a private/incognito browser when searching (because you know the internet tracks your every move).
I like to use Priceline, because you can cancel your reservation free of charge within 24 hours of booking. For this deal I used Hopper, they do charge an extra $10 per booking, but what’s ten dollars when you save hundreds. 🙂
How much did this deal cost?
The flight was from NYC (JFK) to Malaysia (KUL) for $684.52 (342.26 per person). As, I mentioned before under $400, definitely a steal. Next, we live four hours away from JFK – so factor in bus trip to NYC $88 round trip ($44 per person— note brought last-minute) and transit to the airport was about $70 ($35 per person). For a total cost of: $421 per person. In retrospect, had I booked the bus earlier, it would have been less $400 but with the holidays and getting the flights within Asia, it was not high on my priority list.
How much were the additional flights within Asia?
Originally I was only going to Kuala Lumpur (commonly called KL), Malaysia and Phuket, Thailand. However, per my research via social media and google, I notice there was an Artscience museum in Singapore, so we arranged the flight in Asia from Kuala Lumpur (KUL) to Phuket (HKT), from HKT to Singapore(SIN) and from SIN back to KUL. These flights within Asia cost $416 ($208 per person) including luggage. We flew Air Asia to Phuket, Silk Airlines (a budget friendly partner of Singapore Airlines) to Singapore, and Jetstar Asia back to KL.
I will keep it real with you all; the Singapore flight alone was $200 ($100 each) simply because I was afraid to fly Air Asia a lot due to issue a plane crash in 2014. However, Air Asia actually turned out to be a good airline. I accidentally left my old cell phone and some items in a pocket of my suitcase that could not close and they taped it up, nothing was missing, even the valuables items. You will have to buy luggage, so please read the fine print on that. Each airline differs slightly when it comes to carry on limits, checked baggage(s) limits, fees for checked bag(s), and check in process. I booked through a site called kiwi.com, a user-friendly site with cheap flights to many destination. The site was great and even provided a ten-dollar off code for first time customers to use on their next purchase, which I used to my advantage.
Overall cost and thoughts:
In total, the flight travel cost was $629 per person to visit three countries in Southeast Asia. That is roughly $210 per country!
Of course, you will need additional money for hotel, taxis/Uber/shuttles, food incidentals, and excursions, but Malaysia and Thailand were both cheap. Moreover, when I say cheap, an extravagant meal was less than $20 dollars at our hotel in Patong, Phuket, alcoholic beverages that came in a pineapple wad less than ten dollars , and a breakfast buffet was about twelve dollars per person at the hotel in KL.
Now for Singapore, although I truly recommend seeing this country, it is more expensive. So if it not in your budget, forego it. It will save you at least one hundred dollars on flight cost.
Thanks for reading!!!
Keep living, loving, and traveling.
#NewWorldAfroGirl
#ThreeforOnedeal
New World Afro Girl 