The tagline for Singapore Airlines marketing campaign for their last minute cheap flights is ringing true this month in the SC household although ironically, SIA wasn’t the carrier of choice! To celebrate good health and surviving a very rough week, we booked a trip 10 days out to go away with the young ‘uns for a good 7 days.
Both coconuts were down with Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease (HFMD) and I fell very sick as well. It was a rough, rough week and it was heartbreaking to see the children suffer. When the light at the end of the tunnel was getting brighter, Mr.C and I decided on one of those late nights to book a trip.
We wanted to go away so badly, even though we have a trip to Melbourne just a month out. Financially we know this was ‘unnecessary’. Emotionally, we were drained. We wanted to sit by a quiet city and be close to nature.
“There’s wanderlust, then there’s trips for the soul.” ~ Ms.K
So I present to you some preliminary details about a trip to somewhere we have not been before as a family that promises to fill our emotional coffers back up and on a budget! Kota Kinabalu (KK), Malaysia!
Flights
We used our favourite airline aggregator to help with the ticket purchase – Skyscanner. There are direct flights from Singapore to KK however the flight timings were less than ideal, we were not keen on taking a 8am flight out of KK and not with 2 kids under 5. There are certain luxuries we allow ourselves and not having to wake up at 5am is one of it.
We noticed that Malaysian Airlines had flights with great timings and it was cheaper than Air Asia. The catch was that it had a stop in Kuala Lumpur for approximately 1 hour and a bit each way. Fly a full service airline for cheaper than a budget airline with better departure and arrival timings? Rough, but we’ll take it!
A direct flight would have been 2 hours and 25 mins each way. We are having a travel of 4 hours and 40 mins to KK and 5 hours back to Singapore.
Total spend: $431.66 *AirAsia was $560.
Accommodation
I wanted to stay here but I couldn’t part with $2xx per night, although it shows $130 per night right now. Nay, way over budget for a holiday on a whim.
Instead, we’re going for a run of the mill hotel that looks clean and comfortable with a great location. At $33 a night, this is good enough for us!
The plan is to head to the foot of the mountain after 3 nights in town and we booked ourselves a nice place with a view of the mountain for the 3 nights thereafter. Places at Kundasang aren’t as cheap as town and the upkeep doesn’t seem great as well, based on Tripadvisor reviews. We were not keen on dirty sheets and peeling wall paint or anything that might remotely ruin our quality of stay. We have kids and our tolerance for cockroaches has gone down (Flashback: many years ago, I went to Koh Tao by myself to do my dive certification and stayed in a super budget place. Just me and a couple of cockroaches. Never again, never again!) After much research on the places available, we booked We finally managed to find a place that meets our needs at $68 a night with the view that is our feature picture for this post.
Total spend: $99 (KK Town) + $205 (Kundasang) = $304. Booked on Agoda, via Shopback so we have a cashback of $18.30 on the accommodation bookings. If you don’t already have a Shopback account, Here’s the link to Shopback that will give you a $5 welcome credit and an additional $5 once you make a purchase. We get a humble $5 as well, for which we thank you in advance!
Think we can keep this trip below $1,000? We’re at $736 now and we would need a car to drive out to Kundasang, which is a good 2 hour drive. We need to factor in the seafood we are going to be stuffing ourselves with as well, we never hold back when it comes to good food. Apart from that, we likely have park entrance fees as we would want to go to the marine park and the national park. The cost of snorkeling, island hopping, diving might add up to an additional $200 – $300.
We’ll have a post-trip update on our week long holiday and at this point, I think we’re likely to wrap this trip up nice and neat within $1,500. Stay tuned!
Author: Ms.K
Ms.K is everything that Mr.C is, without the natural interest in investing and company financials! The activity planner for the family, the driver of random ideas and soon to be ‘retiring’ in to full time motherhood – Ms.K has no idea what she’s in for but remains super excited!
Downside to flying Malaysia Airlines is the risk of facing delays at KUL. Would be good to have backup plans in case you reach KK 3 hours later than planned.
Thanks for that Lionel, turns out we were delayed by a good 45 minutes so it wasn’t so bad except I had to be more creative to entertain the infant on the flight!