Neko's Wanderland ☆〜（ゝ。∂）: 2013

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Hokkaido Summer 2013

Finally finish planning for my hokkaido trip in July.

Flight:

This time round i will be taking ANA as they are having a promo on its domestic connection fare at 10,500 round trip, good news since i need to transit via tokyo to sapporo.

total cost is SGD 1140.60 nett

the timing is great too, depart on a friday night and back on sunday.

Hotel & Minsuku I be staying at:

Hotel Route Inn Sapporo Ekimae @ 5500yen/pax w 1 meal

APA Hotel Sapporo @ 5000 - 7000/pax wo meal

Booked via Jalan.net ~

Very good japanese booking system as some stay allow you to pay only when you check-in.

Pension Snowflake @ 4600 - 4900/pax wo meal

Lake Toya Ko Han Tei @ 11,275/pax w 2 meals

Booked directly ~

JR Hokkaidp Rail Pass 5 Days - 19,000yen

and some misc. train fares etc etc

Total estimated damages: SGD 2.1K

(9 FULL DAYS IN JAPAN!, exclude the departing on fri nite and arriving on mon early morning)

Still way cheaper than travel agent!

So proud of myself =X

Budget Japan

If you have run thru my blog, you could probably guess that i like Japan very much....

and whenever I recommend my friends and relatives to go Japan... coz the scenery/food etc etc is superb compared to alot of countries...

and 9 out of 10 answers will be :

'JAPAN! very ex leh!!!'

I would say yes, if I am looking at tour agency quotations..

the package to central japan is easily 3K++ without tax/guide tips with no 100% meal provided.

I did my 1 week tokyo & surrounding trip F&E including my own expenses within S$3k.

How did I do that?

That's the purpose of this post.

1. Airfare

Do you know you can fly to tokyo via Singapore Airline at very budget rate if you booked around 4mths in adv?

I've been to tokyo twice, once via Delta Airline and once via SQ at only SGD 600+ nett!

2. Accomodation

Tokyo might seems to be a expensive city, but there are minsuku that you can stay in below 4000yen!

Some budget accomodation:
House Ikebukuro (cheapest!)
Sakura Hotel Ikebukuro
Super Hotel Ikebukuro
Toyoko Inn (hotel chain all ard japan)

3. Transportation
For this part, you got to have almost 90% of your itinerary up. It's a easy task if everything can be covered by JR train pass. But if you have plenty of time left for planning, you might wanna work out the amount between the stations, add up and see if they exceed the pass price.

Say if you are gg to tokyo >> osaka/kyoto : needless to say, just get the JR Pass

but if you are going to covered just a small area like my 2nd trip, tokyo and hakone (furthest) : looking at JR Kanto Pass

You can check train time/fare using http://www.hyperdia.com
very accurate!

4. Food
You still can keep your stomach full with meal less than SGD10.

Yoshinoya/Matsuya
Set meal cost ard SGD6-7, portion is bigger than sg and its cheaper!!

7-11 Bento Set (avail at majority conv. store)
Cost ard SGD5, you might think its yucky to eat that conv. store kinda cold instant food.
but it's diff in japan! they have katsu-don etc and they will heat it up for u!
You can also get Onigiri with many many flavours from 100+yen onwards!!! (good takeaway food if you can going places like disneyland etc)
And needless to say, the cup noodles. They have size from mini to jumbo~ & unique flavours that is only avail in japan~

Hope this post can help you a little and you will sure enjoy Japan! =DDDDD
I think Japan tourism board shld gv me some ambassador status LOL

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Manila Part Two

Finally the rain level went back to normal and the water level went down ...

headed out for a dept lunch ...

Bubble tea craze hit manila too..

the most popular brand is serenitea ~

not bad but of coz i think our koi is alot better...

TGIF~!

Our dear colleagues brought us to Bonifacio High street for dinner ~

great place with alot restaurants and chill out pub...

finally settled down at Mary Grace ~

we left our note here too!

Love the western food in philppines...! Tasted wayy nicer than sg!!

after dinner, they brought us to a small wkend food night market ...

just like our 'pasar malam'

cute cupcakes! cost ard SGD $3..... philippines stuff is not as cheap as we tht!

Woke up early on sat morning, our only wkend here....

took a 3hr ride to Tagaytay ... the only sightseeing place nearest to manila ...

our driver brought us to Taal Vista Hotel... where you can overlook the Taal Volcano...

so in order to get to the volcano crater... we got to cross the lake .... and then ride the horse up!

the boat that we took....

we paid abt 70 SGD... yes, i know its very ex... but they say coz the boat etc is divided by per group of people .... they do not allow us to join other group of tourists... we can only divide the cost between me and my colleague... (yes, 2 person).

So if you are gg there, i would strongly advised you to go in a group~