Of course must save for the bigger picture (I duno, buy car, buy house, get married yada yada blah blah). But one of my goals I set before I start work is to be able to travel at least once a year. So ever since last year when I did my own leave planning I already set aside a couple of dates for traveling. Ho Chi Minh was somewhat unplanned but this upcoming one I already had my eyes set upon for quite some time.

Australia!

In my mind (before I actually start booking tickets etc) I wanted to do a city hop, road trip etc across the bigger cities (Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, oh who knows I may even hop over to New Zealand too). But that will probably take up to 3 weeks or more and I obviously don't have that sort of luxury. I only set aside the Hari Raya Haji period (and that is only a one day public holiday mind you). So in the end settled for 9 nights, plus traveling time so that makes it about 10days. Minus off weekends and public holiday I only need to take 5 days of leave which sounded pretty reasonable to me (though TO still went into her panic mode).

Work wasn't one of my concerns to be honest until two of my teammates tendered resignation last month and by October my boss will be left with two engineers. One, relatively inexperienced one in fact, when I am on leave oops. A bit guilty but we (me and my boss) both acknowledged that it can't be helped lah. Coz didn't see that coming so soon mah.

Anyway back to the topic...up until July I still wasn't very sure if I would be going for the trip..no thanks to my indecisive personality so I kept checking air tickets, then procrastinate ("oh nvm la still quite cheap"). It took a bit of a push (and competition wth) before I finally found one fine day to buy tickets lol. Narrowed down the cities to Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney in that order. No time to do road trips so settled for internal flights only. Melbourne is on my list because I felt that I didn't finish exploring it the last time round, but I did leave the least amount of time for it for the same reason. Focus is on Gold Coast and Sydney. 

Scoot has the cheapest tickets of all so it didn't take much to decide to try it out. Planned to come back from Melbourne at first but tickets weren't cheap at all so ended up rearranging the itinerary and made Sydney my last stop instead. Internal flights were both by Tiger.

Oh and did I mention? It's a solo trip. :)

Yep part of my vision for the trip is a solo trip. I obviously haven't done it before and I have always wanted to try. Told my parents about it and met very little resistance (Mum: har, you want to ask your sister to come along or not...? And I convinced her against it haha). I always thought it is pretty common even among us Asians but to my surprise it actually wasn't...so getting the permission was kind of lucky I guess hahaha. Though I recognize it has it's disadvantages. Like accommodation. And probably meals. But oh well. It comes with a lot of freedom. And I won't have anybody to blame if things didn't work out according to plan. Which is why there isn't really a plan heeeheee. Pretty much just read some travel blogs, know what sort of places I want to visit and that's it. Full tourist mode (those that hold maps and go around asking for directions) yo!

Ok lah did made some advanced bookings la like my hot air balloon ride :D

Accommodation got kind of pricey..was looking at backpackers at the beginning, then realized I won't be comfortable sharing dorms with other people (it probably isn't very safe either) and single dorms at these places are of similar price ranges as other budget hotels or in Gold Coast's case, apartments. Yeah so I ended up spending around 80sgd per night on accommodation (with the exception of Melbourne where I shamelessly asked to bunk at XL and Alice's heh heh). Gold Coast's one is even a one bedroom holiday apartment hahahahaha.

Very excited. I can't wait for it already. 1 and a half week left!