February 15, 2007
I done did it. I booked our tickets last night in a terribly convoluted process. BoyDucky and I had once vaguely discussed flying together, but the coldly practical side of me initially dismissed that as a silly notion since we’re coming from SoCal and NorCal. MaDucky weighed in and it later made more sense to me to fly up north, meet up with BoyDucky and fly out together. Well, hey, if I’m going to be needy, I may as well go all out! 🙂 Nah, it’ll be far easier on MaDucky to pick up and drop me off at the local airport than to go to LAX for a midnight flight.
That and his “flawless” Vietnamese is limited to … uh, “hello” and “pho.” I don’t want to lose him either in Hong Kong or in the Saigon airport. I haven’t been there in eleven years, and I only have a vague memory of the humidity slapping me upside the head stepping off the plane way back when. Trying to find him in that mess does NOT sound appealing.
But here’s why I thought using a travel agency would make my life easier:
I’d give them my trip parameters and they would get my visa in order, get my tickets, and I’d give them some money. Bing, bang, boom. They weren’t charging that much, either. The prices they were charging totaled less than the pricing I was finding for just the fares online.
They got the visa part down, an emergency visa at that, but they apparently couldn’t access the same online fares that I could find so they couldn’t get me back home any earlier than the 12th! I wanted to stay no longer than a week because I just can’t take THAT much time off. But no way was I going to wait much longer to go, G’ma’s waitin’ on me!!
So I booked myself an award ticket to go up north, thank goodness for the extra miles from my recent App-o-rama, then tried to book the two flights from SFO to SGN. Would you believe those dirty rats?! I had gotten the right flights going there and coming back, and then they snatched that fare out from under my nose!! I had selected the flights and entered all our information, only for them to say “Sorry, that fare you selected is no longer available.” Whaaaaah? I had taken an extra five minutes to read through their fare rules and that literally nearly cost me another 2 grand! I had to cut the trip short by two days, in order to keep the two tickets under $3000. They wanted $5300 for the two tickets that were only (“only” — psh!) $2800! I’m still outraged.
The upshot is I’ve got 6 days in Vietnam, and 3 days in SF because I can’t change the dates of my award ticket without penalty.
Costs thus far:
Visas (2), emergency: 170
Ticket to SF: 5
Tickets to Vietnam: 2732
——————
2907
My only planned expenses will be to have a traditional dress (ao dai) made. It’ll save me a lot of time and hassle to get it done while I’m back there. It’s far less expensive in general to have things tailor-made there because it’s kind of a normal thing for every girl to have one. I may let PaDucky pick the fabric and just have it done in time for me to get fitted when I get back.
The other major expense is the New Year season. I have to bring a wad of cash for gifting to my cousins which will run about 100k “dong” per cousin. And holy cow, do I have a lot of cousins. I think the exchange rate is around 15-16k dong to the dollar. Time to pay my dues for all those red envelopes I got when I was a kid.
Watch out, I’m getting submerged in culture here!
February 14, 2007
My emergency visa is being processed and should be ready for pick-up tomorrow from the travel agency. Normally it would cost $35, but since I need this to be pushed through NOW it’ll be $85. One benefit to using a travel agency this time is that not only do they usually cover the cost of the visa, they’ll $35 off the entire price when they find my ticket. Another is that they’ll find me the
I totally forgot that it was Wednesday and that it’s payday. Yay payday!
I like that my paychecks are easily split up but I always forget to include a check, cut from the office every two weeks instead of payroll, to reimburse me for my train pass into my calculations.
February 12, 2007
according to Travel+Leisure, Feb 2007:
Act at the right time. To increase your chance of getting a good price on your next flight, keep in mind that carriers must release new airfares to a central clearinghouse (called the Airline Tariff Publishing Company) at certain hours; on weekdays, the best times to look for new fares are just after 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and midnight. T+L tip: Tickets that were reserved but never paid for usually appear after midnight, so the selection is especially rich then. On weekends, fares are updated just once a day, around 5 p.m.
February 11, 2007
according to Travel+Leisure, Feb 2007:
Act at the right time. To increase your chance of getting a good price on your next flight, keep in mind that carriers must release new airfares to a central clearinghouse (called the Airline Tariff Publishing Company) at certain hours; on weekdays, the best times to look for new fares are just after 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and midnight. T+L tip: Tickets that were reserved but never paid for usually appear after midnight, so the selection is especially rich then. On weekends, fares are updated just once a day, around 5 p.m.
I won’t be keeping my Citi PremierPass card open beyond the first (fee-free) 12 months, but in the meantime I realized that I could maximize the rewards from it by using it to pay for my trip. It’ll net about 15k points from miles which makes up for the fact that since I’m not flying one of my usual airlines, it’s doubtful that I’ll ever use the logged flight miles through the airlines’ mileage program.
It won’t be terribly useful for domestic flights because I have a number of miles with a few airlines, United and Southwest still maintaining first place, but it’ll do in lieu of adding to my miles pot. Until I start travelling internationally on a regular basis, this won’t be worth the $75 annual fee that kicks in after the first year.
Veddy rewarding indeed!
Seriously. Thank GOD for emergency funds. If I had to sit here and try to find airfare and all that AND worry about where this money was coming from, I would be just about bald right now. And I’m pretty sure my spleen would have exploded too. Gross.
Grandma’s terribly ill now, and she’s at that age when we’re really not sure if we’re measuring her time left with us in minutes, hours, days or weeks. PaDucky’s got his plans, I think. He’ll be leaving next week because we just don’t know how long she can hold on for us.
As for me, well, it’s a little more complicated. Aside from dealing with the work schedule and making sure things keep moving while I’m gone, I’m still trying to coordinate with BoyDucky because this is the one and only chance he’ll have to meet my beloved grandmother. My only wedding-related wish as a little girl was that my husband would meet my grandmother, and vice versa. And since PadresDuckies actually feel that it’s a good idea, if he can make it, we’re trying to make arrangements for him to go as well.
I used Sidestep.com at first, (thanks to Debthater), but the most affordable options that it turned up were the most time-consuming. I only have about a week or 8 days to do this, and I’m asking BoyDucky to leave his work at a really awkward time as well, so I just can’t take two days to get there. Orbitz.com was a little more helpful in pinpointing some of the more common carriers that fly from here to there, and though there aren’t any direct flights there, I have narrowed down the possibilities to flights on Cathay Pacific. The price? About $1366. *faint* That’s without having my visa taken care of! I might have to sacrifice some time and go to my dad’s travel agent in Orange County who took care of the flight and his visa for about $1100ish.
Another point of contention is, assuming that he can still go with the timeline now it’s moved up, I want to pay for BoyDucky’s flight. My reasoning is that he just paid for an extravagant trip for us, and he’s still paying that off. *shudder*
He should NOT pick up more debt because of me. This is not going to be a trip for fun, this is not a trip for “us-time” and it’s going to be terribly stressful. I’m only asking him to go for purely selfish reasons: I want his moral support and I want him to meet my grandma. I should pay! It won’t bankrupt me. I have the e-fund, and I knew that this was coming.
Don’t I have a good point?