Where to go for Weekend Travel? [Weekend Traveller series: Part 2]

Welcome to part 2 of the Weekend Traveller series, a fortnightly segment where I share tips and strategies for travelling during the weekend so you can travel more without using your work leave.

how to choose weekend trip destination — How to choose your weekend trip destination.

Last week, I talked about the pros and cons of weekend travelling. Today, we’ll be looking at how to choose a destination for your weekend travel so you save on travel time and cost.

Back when I still had a job during which I took quite a lot of weekend travel, the destinations that I chose were based on the challenges that I gave myself and the availability of cheap air tickets from AirAsia (Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuching are a few examples).

Unless you have similar self-imposed travel challenges, you’ll most likely choose the destination based on places you actually want to visit. (I’ll admit that there are some Malaysian states which I’d rather not go at all.)

Main factor for choosing a weekend travel destination

To choose a weekend travel destination, you must keep in mind the how much time you will be able to spend there which really means the time of arrival and departure. To enjoy a place, I’d say you need a minimum of 24 hours of visiting time.

So when you are making travel plans, you have to see that the transportation timing is right. It’s better to travel 13 hours on a night bus on Friday and reach on a Saturday morning than it is to take a 1-hour plane ride that reaches the destination at 4pm on a Saturday.

What you can do now is list down a few locations that you want to go for a weekend trip. Next you should do your research on what transportation there are for you to get there. (Coincidentally, transportation choices is our next discussion topic.)

Good weekend travel destinations from Singapore

Since I was based in Singapore when I started my travelling craze, I’ll list down a few places you can consider visiting for your weekend travel:

Bangkok, Thailand
Every capital city on the peninsula of Malaysia (That’s 11 of them!)
Kuching, Malaysia
Jakarta, Indonesia

Sadly, my hometown Kota Kinabalu does not make a good weekend travel destination from Singapore because of the bad AirAsia flight timing. Boo hoo.

Check out the rest of the series here:

Part 1: Pros & cons of weekend travel
Part 2: Where to go for Weekend Travel?
Part 3: Choosing transportation for weekend travel
Part 4: Travel planning for weekend trips
Part 5: Make your own travel guide for a weekend trip
Part 6: How to pack for a weekend trip
Part 7: How to use Foursquare to plan a day’s travel
Part 8: Why a weekend trip is the best time to start solo travelling
Part 9: I’m going to Melaka for a weekend trip

Can you think of places you can go for weekend trips? Share them in the comments below.

Welcome to Weekend Traveller series: Pros & cons of weekend travel

Do you complain about the lack of annual leave at your work place?
Do you want something more from your weekend than sleeping in till noon?
Do you ask yourself, “What did I do during the weekend?” as the days were too unmemorable?

If you’ve answered “YES” to all three questions, perhaps it is time you try travelling during the weekend.

Travel more by travelling during the weekend.

[Photo credit: Duane Mendoza]

Before I quit my job for this round-the-world trip, I was travelling quite a lot despite only having 20 days of annual leave. I wanted to get away from the busy life in Singapore so I was plotting at least one trip each month.

Many of these trips did not require me to take days off my annual leave because I chose to travel during the weekend.

Welcome to the start of the “Weekend Traveller” series where I share my tips on why you should travel more during the weekends, how to choose a weekend destination, how to prepare for a weekend trip and other related information.

The Weekend Traveller will appear every 2nd and 4th Tuesday. Here are some of the topics I have in mind:

Should you be a weekend traveller? Pros and cons of weekend travel
How to choose a destination (time, cost)
How to pack for a weekend
Research to make every second count
Making your personal guidebook
What to do when travelling
What to do when you are back
Useful sites for booking and useful smartphone apps

If you think there are more that I can touch on, feel free to leave it in the comments.

Let’s start this week’s discussion with the pros and cons of weekend travel.

Pros of travelling during the weekend

Travel more: There are 52 weekends in a year so you get to travel beyond the days you have in your annual leave.
Use less annual leave: Annual leaves are best used in chunks so you can travel to further destinations and spend more time there.
Weekends will be more interesting: No more weekends filled with sleeping in until noon and Youtube watching. You get to go out and smell different air.
Less luggage: A backpack of clothes is sufficient for a weekend trip which cuts down on luggage cost on budget airlines.

Cons of travelling during the weekend

Short time: Even if you travel during Friday night and reach your home early Monday morning, weekend trips are really short.
More expensive: When you consider that your air ticket is split into only 2 days of expenses, it can be more expensive than a week’s trip.
Tiring: Trying to pack loads of sights and things-to-do into 2 days can drain your energy.

Are you convinced that being a Weekend Traveller is for you? If so, join me in 2 weeks when I discuss how to choose a location for a weekend trip.

If you are not yet convinced, read on and see if you change your mind.

Are you a Weekend Traveller? Which places have you visited during the weekends? What related topics do you want me to cover?

Check out the rest of the series:

How to replace a travel guidebook with apps

For my 4-month trip, I did not bring any physical guidebook with me. My backpack was too small to stuff any guidebooks so I relied heavily on my phone for travel planning.

Although I have PDF copies of some Lonely Planet guidebooks in my computer, I find them awkward to read on my small netbook screen and even worse on a smartphone.

For travel planning while on the road, I rely heavily on my almost 3-year old iPhone 4 and internet connection. It’s a bit laggy but it works.

I have some apps which I adore for travel planning and I want to share them with you. I only know apps for iOS so if you are looking for Android versions, give the name a Google to see if Play Store has it.

I’m dividing the apps into different periods of travel planning and the relevant apps. For me, the stages of travel planning include:

Knowing more about the place
Booking accommodation
Deciding where to visit, see and have fun
(Bonus) Audioguides

Some of the apps are useful for multiple stages of travel planning so don’t rule them out if you’ve completed the different stages.

1. If you want to know more about a place

At the beginning of location-specific guidebooks, there are usually a few pages (but definitely more than the list of Places of Interest) on the history and culture of the destination. I enjoy reading those when I’m not travelling but while on the road, it’s a bit of a drag to read about what happened 100 years ago.

Instead, I have two apps that work like offline versions of Wikitravel. I forgot the name of one of them so I’ll tell you the other that I know of.

WikiSherpa

With the app, you can download Wikitravel-like entries for different destinations. That’s actually it’s weakness because it means that you will need to load the app with destinations instead of surfing randomly for different places.

Still, the app is useful for reading up on a destination and to know safety tips for where you are going.

2. Finding accommodation

One of the most painful parts of travel planning is finding the right place to stay. I get a bit OCD like Goldilocks, flipping through webpages and webpages of different accommodation before finding the right one.

The best thing about mobile booking apps is that they have user reviews. Granted some users leave crazy reviews but generally, you get a good idea of whether you want to stay at the place or not.

Booking.com

I think this apps is less user friendly than HostelWorld’s app because you cannot have a calendar view of the dates. My mind works in a monthly calendar view.

I used to think that people who booked hotels through mobile phones were crazy. But then I became one of them. It’s much easier for me to lie my bed, click around for a room and booking it immediately.

Hostelworld.com

I like the calendar view when choosing the dates but that’s not what makes this app good. They have a good selection of hostels when you don’t think it’s worth paying double the price for hotel rooms.

3. Deciding places near you to visit, eat and have fun

So you’ve done up a list of places to visit after reading the information from app in stage 1.

Now that you are in the city itself, you don’t really want to spend all that transportation money to somewhere far when you can cross places nearby off your list.

Foursquare

Before using Foursquare, I thought it was an app for hipsters to show off where they’ve been. This function is still there but I discovered that it can be very useful for travelling.

I use it to discover popular places to eat and what dishes to have. When you save a location on the app, the saved location appears when you are offline as well which is good to avoid getting lost.

The app works better if you check into places (like those darn hipsters) because then it will know if you like cemeteries more than shopping malls.

TripAdvisor Offline City Guides

I love offline apps and this is my favorite in places where I do not have 3G connection. However, only major cities are included so yu might need to use its less offline-friendly brother.

I use it as a map and guidebook for food and places of interest.

Tripadvisor (requires internet connection)

To be honest, I hate this app because it takes forever to load. But it’s useful for locations not included in TripAdvisor City Guides since it shows the same content.

4. Audio guide

I found Rick Steves Audio Europe app majorly useful while I was in Europe. I adore the walking tours for the different cities and the museum audio tour which I listen alongside the official museum audioguides.

The copyright of the apps belong to their owners.

Relevant reads:

From Bootsnall: Are Guidebooks Necessary for the Current Travelers?

From Instagram The World: Around the World without a Guidebook

Do you have apps for travelling to recommend?

Machu Picchu train tix booked/ More baby alpacas! [YQrtw Day 102 Jul 20]

Location: Arequipa, Peru

This morning at about 6am, my neighbors were getting out of bed and the floorboards squeaked like crazy. I fell back to sleep much later and woke up for breakfast after 9am.

I tested out the 0% lactose evaporated milk I bought from the supermarket. I made lactose-less kopi C and it tasted well. I’ll write a full report for next Friday. Stay tuned!

After breakfast, I decided that I need to start planning my trip to Machu Picchu. I only have 2 weeks left in Peru and I don’t want to screw up my main reason here in South America.

I talked to the little travel table at the hostel. The guy quoted a US$270 package from Cusco to MP and back. He also said it’s quite easy to book the tickets myself.

So I started checking out the sites for trains to Machu Picchu’s nearby town–Aguas Calientes–and the tickets for the site.

I was a tiny bit disappointed to find out that the combination of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu were all sold out until September. (Don’t worry, there are still tickets to MP.)

Booking train tickets were a bit tough too. The original date that I plan to go did not have cheap return train tickets so I pushed everything to one day later.

For now, I have my return train tickets from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes but not the entrance tickets to Machu Picchu because I needed to pay the entrance fee at a bank. I plan to buy the entrance tickets when I get to Aguas Calientes.

Baby Alpacas again!

After the tiring ticket buying, I set off to take the bus to the supermarket near where I used to stay with my homestay family. I walked all the way down Santa Catalina and realized that I was only 500 meters away from the cute baby alpacas.

My feet decided to carry me to Mundo Alpaca.

I was not sure how Milk (the white baby alpaca) escaped from the pen but it was calmly grazing and eating the tips of the flowers when I spotted it. I never got to pet it because it kept running away.

I saw baby Coffee (the brown baby alpaca) resting its neck on a bigger alpaca which I hope is its mom. They were so cute.

The baby alpaca snuggled against its mother and it was so adorable~~

At Mundo Alpaca, there’s also loads of sheared alpaca wool. I snuck away one pinch of it. Shhh!

After Mundo Alpaca, I walked back to the main street for the bus. Luckily, I found one which had an empty front seat.

The traffic on the main avenue was quite bad and the bus crawled until I reached my stop.

View of Arequipa from the inside of a combi.

After having a ceviche at a restaurant recommended b one of the teachers, I headed to the supermarket where I couldn’t find cheap cotton pads. Can you imagine, one cotton pad here costs S$0.35. That’s quite expensive!

I was hungry for something else so I stopped by the supermarket cooked food area. I was horrified to find out that the lady reheated my chicken drumstick in the microwave on a Styrofoam plate.

After the meal, it was time to head back to the city center. It took a long time before I found a relatively empty bus (meaning it’s not crammed from the front to the back with human bodies) and I got on.

A quick summary of the rest of the day: quick walk to the market; watch Batman Return in Spanish; have dinner; head back and blog.

See you tomorrow!

I don’t think homestays are for me

I moved out of my homestay in Arequipa on Sunday. I realized that I was a lot more happy when I can make a huge mess of my hostel room without feeling embarrassed.

I’m not a very good homestay guest. I like to stay in my room when I get back. I like to shower twice in a day. I like to stay near the city center.

The other time I was in a homestay was in Japan.

All my homestays start off the same:

Super excited before the homestay
Awkward/shy introducing myself to host.
Try not to be an obstacle to their lives
Hosts are so hospitable I feel bad that I’m not as open and friendly
Feel miserable not being able to live as I want
Homestay ends

I do have a friend who did a homestay in France and loved her experience. She still contacts the host family and the little boys (now grown up). The difference between her and I is that she’s an extrovert who enjoys having active fun. My opinion of fun is the internet and books.

Have you been in a homestay? How was your experience?

Packing for a round-the-world trip

I’m in Singapore for a night before I head out into the world. My bags are packed and my mind is calm…as if before a storm.

The night before my flight to Singapore, my mom made me pack my bag. (I wanted to pack it the next morning.) Thank goodness I did because there were a lot of things.

As I packed, I felt depressed by the size of my luggage. It was a lot more than what I had envisioned. I had wanted a feather light backpack with everything I need. Even My travel idol Nellie Bly only had a small carry on.

For this 4-month trip, I have packed a lot more than I would for a 10-day trip in Southeast Asia. For Indonesia, I wore a dress and brought along another two for my trip to Yogyakarta and Solo.

I included more things this time because I anticipate a lot more activities: running on treadmills on a cruise, swimming, sleeping on grimy beds.

Clothes for a 4-moth RTW

Most of my clothes:

It includes: 3 tops, 1 pair of pants, 1 long skirt, 2 dresses, 3 camisoles, 1 t-shirt, 1 pajama pants, 1 cardigan and etc.

I also have a sleeping sack made out of two pieces of sarong sewn together. I have another sarong as my blanket, towel, curtain, skirt…

IT stuff for a RTW

Surprisingly, my chargers and friends turned out to be more heavy than my computer and phone combined.

In the end, my bag turned into a bursting-at-the-seams backpack with a heavy accompanying handbag and laptop. The total package is about 15kg. Tomorrow, I will need to convince Tiger Airways that my backpack is as light as a carry on.

Luckily, D helped me repack my bag when I got to Singapore. After folding–instead of rolling–my clothes, a miraculous amount of space appeared. Like magic!

Now I will be able to bring only one backpack and my messenger bag. Less things to carry means less chance of things getting lost.

Well, that backpack will be with me this whole trip. Let’s all hope that it will not give up and burst halfway around the world.

Until next time, safe travels.

YQrtw: Why Hong Kong

Hong Kong. Panorama of the harbour, Old timey Hong Kong

Today is the end of my stream of posts of countries I am visiting while on my round-the-world (RTW) trip.

The last stop of RTW is Hong Kong!

Credit: The National Archives UK

Confession: I’ve not been to Hong Kong. [Insert surprised gasp from the audience here.]

In Singapore, Hong Kong, along with Bangkok, seems to be taken for granted as a place everyone has been to. Not sure why these two locations are so popular among Singaporeans.

While I’ve not been to Hong Kong, I have been to Macao. Many people tell me that having been to Macao does not make up for not having been to Hong Kong.

My plan for Hong Kong is simple: Rest, shop and eat.

Since Hong Kong will be my first East Asian stop after many months, I will probably gorge myself with loads of Chinese food. YUMMY!

I was thinking of visiting Tim Ho Wan, dubbed the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, but after reading The Telegraph article about how horrendous the queue is, I think I’ll pass.

I’ll settle for a regular ole dim sum place and Hong Kong cafe where they serve cheese baked rice and milk tea.

Any Hong Kong eating tips for me?

YQrtw: Why South America, Central America

Out of all the places I am going to on my round-the-world (RTW) trip, South America and Central America are least familiar to me.

For me, South America’s allure is its mystery and affordability. (Sort of what western tourists think about South East Asia.)

I’ve wanted to visit the continent but never did because it’s expensive to get there for no reason. Since I’m doing a RTW, I might as well visit South America along the way. Besides that, South America is most likely cheaper than Europe or the United States.

I have only 2 months in South America. That’s very little time so I won’t be visiting some countries.

For example, I won’t go to Brazil because they speak Portuguese there. (A rather strange reason but I want to practice Spanish and not get muddled up.)

I’ve put Central America into the blog title, but I’m only visiting El Salvador. My flight from Lima to Los Angeles had a stopover at San Salvador so I requested an extra 7 days there.

Argentina

National Capital at Buenos Aires, — old timey buenos aires

Credit: OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons

I stop at Buenos Aires after a transit at Dubai airport from Istanbul (yes, the connection is terrible). I don’t plan to spend too much time in the capital because I’ve heard that things can be as expensive as the US or Europe.

I want to be able to speak Spanish so I might take a week or so of lessons here. I’ve read that Argentinian Spanish is very different from the rest of the Latin American countries but it would be quite cool to speak differently from others.

From Buenos Aires, I plan to head to Iguazu Falls to see the magnificent waterfalls. I’m thinking if I should take the chance to step into Brazil and Paraguay since they are near the falls.

Bolivia

Mountain gorge near La Paz, Bolivia
Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives

I didn’t know of Bolivia until I started reading up on South America. I fell in love with the name Bolivia and want to visit the place very much.

Another reason I want to visit here is because I’ve heard that living expenses here is really really cheap. If I can handle the high altitude, I might even take Spanish classes (if I haven’t done so in Argentina).

[Side note, while in search of La Paz, I found a photo of this posed skeleton.]

Peru

Credit: Epsilon31

Can you go to South America without heading to Peru? (Well, technically yes but my plane leaves from Peru so I must be there.)

Top on my list for Peru is MACHU PICCHU!!!!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!! I haven’t made any bookings for the site. I wonder if I will be able to get into the place when I am there.

El Salvador

I have a week in El Salvador to recover from my 2-months in South America. Since my flight from Lima has to make a stop in San Salvador, I requested Airtreks to let me extend a week here for an extra US$60.

I have no plans for San Salvador but I will probably stay in the country for the whole week despite it being the smallest country in Central America. (It might even feel like Singapore without the tall buildings, great public transport and airconditioned malls.)

What tips do you have for South and Central Americas?

YQrtw: Why turkey

Interior of St. Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, 1914 Hagia sophia

We’re almost at the end of YQrtw Europe edition. My last stop in the continent is Turkey and I will head to South America afterwards.

Credit: Brooklyn Museum

I’m glad that Airtreks suggested I add Istanbul as a stop because I didn’t realize how wonderful the country is. Just the photo of Hagia Sophia (picture above) has convinced me to see Istanbul.

Mom will be joining me in Istanbul so that makes it even more exciting. My mom’s never been out of Asia before and it’ll be quite a culture shock to send her straight from Malaysia to Turkey.

While mom’s quite open to adventure, she has told me that the hamam (Turkish bath) is a big NO. I replied, “But mom, you’ve went to the onsen in Japan before.” Turns out, for mom, not wearing anything in a public bath is still ok but getting scrubbed by another person is not.

Aside from Istanbul, we will head to Cappadocia for the cave hotels. I want to bring mom to take a hot air balloon ride. The recent hot air balloon crash has made my father nervous about the rides but he doesn’t have to know if we don’t tell. ;)

Have you been to Turkey? Any travel tips?

YQrtw: Why Greece

[We’re back on schedule with my round-the-world warm up posts thanks to my mom’s mobile broadband.]

Today, we’re going to visit Greece and say “Hi!” to all my patron gods and goddesses.

Image credit: Brooklyn Museum Archives

Greece was no. 1 on my list of countries to visit ever since I watched Disney’s Hercules: The Animated Series. That’s why I listed Greece as a must-visit when I planned my RTW.

I will land in Athens after an EasyJet flight from Rome. I plan to spend most of my time in the capital before making my way over land to Istanbul.

I want to visit Acropolis Museum and the other Greek ruins. I will also make a pilgrimage to the Parthenon to visit Athena’s temple.

Apart from the museum and the temple, I’m pretty much plan-less so I will read more on Athens when I travel.

I’m glad I’m going to Athens after the Olympic Games because this means that the public transportation has been upgraded.

I love train rides so I am excited to take the Athens to Thessaloniki route. But I’m kind of disappointed that the overnight train to Turkey has been cancelled.

Category: Travel planning