All Set!

Originally posted on 22 October 2007.

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After much planning and lots of careful attention to details (translation: stressful stuff), I finally got to book tickets for home this December, and I'm proud to announce it's reasonably priced, given the peak rates of the holiday season, the rather late hour in which I booked them, and my flight dates.:-) I'm flying with PAL en route to the Philippines and Cebu Pacific when I return back here. Would you believe this deal is actually 50sgd cheaper than if I had flown Cebu Pacific both ways?! I know it's just 50sgd, but still, I feel as if I've done a bit of good strategizing here and won something.

I mean, you couldn't possibly imagine the sick, miserable feeling I had when I went to the Cebu Pacific website early last week and saw that there were no more available flights beginning 17 Dec. It turned out that it was a glitch--there were available flights actually--but at that time, I didn't know that, so I was all panicky. Tiger Airways had sold out all their flights for the period in question weeks and weeks ago. I had vowed never to fly Jetstar again unless my destination was not the Philippines and only for a really unbelievably cheap ticket price. (The reason for this, as they say, is another story, and in this case, a long one, which I really don't want to recall.)

So, at that time, it was a very real possibility that I would have to fly PAL both ways. That would have cost me 200sgd more than the deal I got, and it would have been simply heartbreaking to pay that much after having experienced traveling for so much less before. I know it's Christmas anyway, but still, all the more reason to try to get affordable tickets, right? I mean, gifts need to be bought and parties attended and people to be made happy, after all. And that doesn't come cheap. :-) But I also told myself that if PAL was the last resort, then so be it. I should just resign myself to not being able to buy some things I wanted for myself this Christmas.

Good thing though I checked at Kabayan, a Pinoy-run (not sure if it's also Pinoy-owned) travel agency at Lucky Plaza, the Pinoy hangout/mall/destination in Singapore, before purchasing any tickets. Thanks to Dayen for the tip-off on the PAL one-way fare, which cost less than Cebu Pacific's, the further 10sgd deduction, and the interesting conversation. :-) If I had gone the other way and taken a two-way ticket with Cebu Pacific, you know, after I had found out about the glitch, I would have paid 50sgd more and missed airplane food (hehe) and lost Miles, which could help, if only a little bit, the sorry state of my mileage account. Plus, the PAL flight departs at a better, more convenient time.

In the end, I really think it's a good deal all around, and the best one I could have gotten under the circumstances. Sometimes, I really think I'm kind of a winner. Hahaha.

Manila, here I come! Well, not quite yet, but you get my drift. :-)

P.S. Please forgive me if I sound too self-congratulatory. It's very seldom that things of this nature, you know, successful execution after careful deliberation of details and such like, work out for me. Hee.