There’s a reason I’m planning my Tokyo Hostel Strategies about four months out. It seems I will be in Tokyo during Golden Week. Prior to this trip I had never heard of Golden Week. Wikipedia states that many “Japanese nationals take paid time off during this holiday, and some companies are closed down completely and give their employees time off. Golden Week is the longest vacation period of the year for many Japanese workers.” They also say “Despite significantly higher rates, flights, trains, and hotels are often fully booked.” Uhh-Ohhh.

This led me to believe that it’s a good time to establish a booking for a Tokyo hostel. Hostelworld had listings for a total of 88 properties in Tokyo at the time I wrote this. Before I did any filtering I found that there were 63 properties available for the period of April 28th through May 2nd, a period immediately prior to my flight back to the U.S. on May 2nd. When I set the filter to show that I only wanted hostels and not guesthouses, hotels or campgrounds. it lowered the number to 55 hostels. The biggest concentration of the hostels seemed to be in Taito, which is the section of the city that is often referred to as Old Tokyo. When I said I only want to see hostels that were rated 8/10 or better the number dropped to 44 hostels. Ratings are important to me, but so are the number of ratings. The price of the 44 hostels ranged from $13.93 to $29.81. The cheapest hostels tended to be cheapest because they were farther away from the center of the city and they weren’t as nice as more expensive hostels.

In the end, my three main criteria for my hostel stay in Tokyo turned out to be location, price and privacy. The hostel that I booked have a relatively good, not great, rating with over 2,000 reviews. The location of the hostel I booked was what I considered to be optimal for my situation. It was very close to a major metro station. It was in a location I felt would not be one where street or proximity noise would be a problem. It was very close to some of the major attractions I wanted to see.  The price of the hostel I booked was a little under $20, a good price for a hostel in Tokyo. The hostel didn’t get a really high rating for cleanliness but the reviews tended to imply that much of that wasn’t due as much to the staff as to the guests. That tend to be what you get in less expensive hostels. The ratings also said the “atmosphere” wasn’t great. This is hostel-speak for a lack of a party atmosphere, a definite plus for me. The privacy issue comes in when there are curtains on the sleeping bunk for each bed. It help shut out some of the distractions of the room movement.

I bought a one-way airline ticket to Phuket, Thailand for $26.02 that left from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thailand has loose visa restrictions. I can get into the country and stay for 30 days by merely having my passport stamped. Phuket is described by Wikipedia as “a rainforested, mountainous island in the Andaman Sea, has some of Thailand’s most popular beaches, mostly situated along the clear waters of the western shore. The island is home to many high-end seaside resorts, spas and restaurants. Phuket City, the capital, has old shophouses and busy markets. Patong, the main resort town, has many nightclubs, bars and discos.” Lonely Planet describes it as “Thailand’s original flavour of tailor-made fun in the sun.” Fodor’s says “Phuket has consistently been voted as one of the world’s favorite tourist destinations, both for budget travelers and those seeking sumptuous luxury.” TripAdvisor advises “Thailand’s largest island is an international magnet for beach lovers and serious divers, who enthusiastically submerge themselves in the Andaman Sea. Blue lagoons and salmon sunsets make for a dream-like atmosphere, and indeed, a vacation here can feel a bit surreal.”

I go to Thailand for the cheap scooter rentals, the incredible fruit and vegetable markets and the  $5 massages.

When I checked the hostel prices for the day I would arrive I saw 25 hostels out of the 70 available hostels for Phuket that were priced under $10. Most of them are in Phuket Town but a few of them are located in Patong which Lonely Planet labels “Phuket’s sin city”, a phrase that’s hard to ignore though one that doesn’t nearly perk my attention they way it would have 40 years ago. Paton is more of a consideration for me because it’s supposed to have Phuket’s best beach. It’s something I don’t intend to miss but I’m more inclined to stay in Phuket Town due the the history. I’m not much of a beach guy, although I’ve seen more than a few from Miami to NIce to Bali.

I’m also going to the Phuket area to take in Krabi, another famous beach area in Thailand. Krabi doesn’t get the same amount of press as Phuket, but it is a well known area as far as travelers in Southeast Asia are concerned. I intend to visit Krabi Town from Phuket and to do it as a day trip via a bus so I can see a bit of the countryside.

Another reason to visit the Phuket/Krabi area is the hope that I’ll be able to visit the son of a friend of mine who I’ve known for almost 50 years. The son happens to be teaching English in the area. One thing I’ve always liked to do is to reconnect with people as I travel. I have friends whose primary reason to go to certain places as they travel is to visit people they’ve met before. While I can appreciate friendships, and I will go out of my way to visit people I know, I don’t tend to plan my itineraries around friendships as some people I know do. I tend to like to go to places I haven’t been before and I tend to build my itineraries around locations which have significant tourist attractions. But I do hope I get to see my friend’s son and I would certainly like to hear his experiences of teaching English in Thailand.

From Phuket/Krabi my intention is to take the train to Bangkok. Bangkok is a major transportation hub in Southeast Asia. Cheap flight to dozens of locations are common. Right now I’m looking at a $30 flight from Bangkok to Hanoi, Vietnam. My primary reasons to go to Vietnam would be to take the train from Ha Noi to Sai Gon. There, I can catch another cheap flight to Taipei, Taiwan. Taiwan is one of those interesting political paradoxes. It’s a part of China but it isn’t. I’ve been to China but I’ve never been to Taiwan. I haven’t purchased the tickets to Vietnam as I write this but it looks ever more likely that I will. The visa issue is nowhere near as complicated as it was the last time I was there. Nor is it anywhere near as expensive. Approximately two weeks ago they initiated an visa-on-arrival system that gets me into the country for $25, a far cry from what I paid previously. Plus, since I’ve been there before I know my way around somewhat. I found Vietnam to be a great experience. My biggest takeaway was a t-shirt that said Same Same on the front and But Different on the back typifying one of my favorite philosophical paradoxes – we’re all the same but different. Another takeaway was the realization of what happens when you smile at a Vietnamese person – they smile back. Try that in New York City, London or Paris. I like Vietnam. I’d love to ride that train from Ha Noi to Sai Gon.

Bangladesh was on my list. The keyword here is was. That’s  the past tense of is. It’s not that I don’t want to go to Bangladesh. I do. I just decided that this isn’t a good time to go to Bangladesh. The reason why is the $160 visa fee for Americans. While I’ve paid more than $160 for a visa, I’ve never paid $160 for a visa to a country where I only intended to stay somewhere between 24 and 48 hours. On this trip, my journey to Bangladesh was simply going to be a run across the border to get to see Dhaka and to get an entry and an exit stamp. I had no idea that one of the poorest countries in the world was going to want me to give them $160 to get into the country. I’m glad I found out before I went too far forward with my flight reservations. I discovered the issue when I was working on my plans to get a multi-entry visa for India. What I had planned to do was to fly to Madurai, India from Colombo, Sri Lanka. I’d take in the sights in Madurai and then make my way up to Kolkata where I would catch the train to Dhaka, Bangladesh. I’d spend a day or two in Dhaka and then head back to Kolkata where I would catch a plane to Bangkok.

Sounds simple. Normally, I would show up in India and get a visa-on-arrival at the airport. But, the visa-on-arrival for India has changed. It’s actually gotten a lot better and a lot cheaper. The problem is that there are only a select group of cities in India where the new, electronic, visa-on-arrival is acceptable and Madurai, the one place I wanted to go in India this trip, was not one of that group.  Madurai is not one of India’s major centers for entry into the country. To further complicate the issue, the visa-on-arrival is no longer a multi-entry visa. I was uncertain if I could have gotten a multi-entry visa that would have let me into the country multiple times on this trip when I arrived in Madurai. Further, the Indian government now has a visa that costs $120-$150 depending on how it is obtained. All the above factors made India and Bangladesh less attractive from a cost-per-day standpoint.

When I started looking at the negative issues surrounding a trip to India and Bangladesh it seemed to me that they were really the result of my not having enough time to justify the cost. With this in mind I decided to delay my trip back to India and my first trip to Bangladesh until I had a bit more time. Plus, I felt that it would be more practical to do the trip when I could combine it with a trip to the “countries” of Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Tibet and Kashmir, countries I have never visited. It would be much simpler to try and do Norther India with side trips to the places I have never been before. The die was cast. I book airfare from Colombo back to Kuala Lumpur and then on the Phuket, a location that had not been on my original list of places to visit but one that had always tempted me. Bangladesh and India would have to wait until next year. Or the year after, Or the year after that. Or…

I’ve been flying on Air Asia for what seems like a long time. I can remember when I first started using them. Their website was terrible. The biggest problem was that it was difficult to get the payment processed. I’d pick my flight and in the end it could take me as many as six or seven tries to get the payment fully processed. The website kept crapping out on me and I was never sure whether the payment got processed or not. I’d wait to see if I got a confirmation email. Sometimes I’d wait for a day or more. Sometimes I’d call the credit card to see if the payment got processed. This wasn’t just an isolated issue or a one time problem. Sometimes the website worked and sometimes it didn’t. That was the norm for a couple of years.

Today, the website is much, much improved but there are still issues. I found that I needed to make one-way bookings as I was never able to decline the baggage fee or travel insurance for the return flight on round-trip bookings. I could decline them on one-way flights. I needed to decline them because the fees tended to between 25% to 50% of the price of the flight. While I’m willing to pay for seat selection, I always carry on my luggage and I have my own travel insurance for the trip. I don’t need to pay the fees.

The biggest problem I had with the Air Asia website was that it didn’t handle their cookies well. Cookies are little pieces of real-time software that keep track of what’s going on between the user and the website. I found that I was usually able to get through one booking session fairly well, but doing multiple bookings back-to-back meant having to leave the browser or clearing the cache and the cookies after each booking due to 403 Errors. These errors are, typically, communication errors caused by poor programming of the information found in the cookies. When I encountered a 403 Error in my browser it meant my ability to book with Air Asia was over until the cookies timed out or I cleared the cache and cookies. This could be a pain on days when I wanted to make as many as four bookings.  Maybe I need to enroll in their Big Member program. While it’s a much better experience than it was when I originally started using their website, the Air Asia website can still cause me to become frustrated. I love all the cool things technology allows me to do, like booking airline tickets all over the world from the comforts of my home, and I hate how it doesn’t always work like I think it should. The key term here being “like I think it should.”

The issues that I have with the Air Asia website are really too bad because my overall experience with flying on the airline has been positive. I’ve seen posts on many forums that accuse Air Asia of being late all the time but my experiences with them have been relatively timely in terms of departures and arrivals. One thing I don’t like about the flights on Air Asia is that the arrivals can be be at second-tier airports that are located a very long way from the arrival city. This, however, is something that is quite common to budget airlines all over the world. That being said, I’ve found that there is virtually always a reasonably-priced shuttle bus available to take the passengers into town. It can, however, take as much as two hours to get into the destination city in some locations. Budget airlines have downsides associated with their use. I only use them because, relative to first tier airlines, they can be an incredible bargain.

I’ve done it before. Slept in airports, that is. My first time was not voluntary. It was caused by bad weather on a return flight to OKC. These days it’s something I do to live the mantra of “You have to suffer for your art form.” This trip to Asia is a Godsend. I will have the opportunity to visit the following airports: Seoul Incheon, Taipei Taoyuan and Osaka Kansai. These are rated at numbers 2, 4 and 6 worldwide in terms of sleepability. Now if I can just figure out how the squeeze Singapore Changi, the most sleepable airport in the world into my schedule, I’ll feel like I have accomplished something.

Sometimes, things just fall into place. Today I’m working on booking airfare and what did I find? Somehow, I became convinced that I could get a direct flight from Kolkata, India to Yangon, Myanmar without having to go through Bangkok, Thailand. This was a mistake and after I figured out what my error was I realized that I could get a flight that basically stopped in Bangkok with a 6 hour layover. Yes, I do need to spend some more time at Soi Cowboy and Khao San Road but I’ve been there before. Bangkok is a major transportation hub in Asia. It’s hard not to get there, sooner or later. So now I’ve decided to only make one multi-day stop in Bangkok instead of two, I’m thinking that I would like to spend that extra time I now have taking the train from Kuala Lumpur to Hat Yai, Thailand to visit a friend who lives in Songkhla, Thailand.  Songkhla is about 18 miles away from the train station in Hat Yai. The train that I would take to get there is a section of the train that goes from Singapore to Bangkok. It’s a train ride that I’ve wanted to experience ever since I started going to Asia. The Kuala Lumpur to Hat Yai section is a 6 to 7 hour sample of the longer journey. I think I’m going to forego spending some time in Bangkok to do something I’ve had an itch to do for awhile and to see someone I’d like to spend some time with in the process. If he’s not a available I may have to opt for a couple of days in Singapore or Phuket. How sad would that be?

is one of those places that can be a problem for me. Why? Because it’s located in a very rural location on an island in a country where the household annual disposable income income is about 70 million rupiah. While 70 million of anything represents what seems like a lot, 70 million of the local currency translates into an annual income for the average household of about $7,000 U.S. dollars. This means there’s not a lot of infrastructure in place and what infrastructure there is is very, very local. I also have to bang my head against the wall for saying that I’m going to a very rural place as the island of Java, where Borobudur is located, has a population of about 140 million people. Java is one of the most densely-populated geographic locations on the planet. Imagine 140 million people living on an island the size of the state of Mississippi and you can get a better of what it’s like. Now imagine those same 140 million people living in Mississippi and having an annual household income that’s about 20% the current household annual disposable income of a household in Mississippi. Plus 87% of them are Muslim. If you think Mississippi is rural, think about the picture I just painted. It boggles my mind when I think about Java in that context.

So what’s my biggest issue with Borobudur? It’s getting there. If I want to get get from the Yogyakarta airport, where I plan to land, to Borobudur, a distance of about 24 miles, I can take a local bus, rent a car, or hire a taxi. The rental car is out. I’ve driven vehicles in some fairly interesting locales, but this is Java. A taxi seems the next obvious choice, but the cost of a taxi compared to local transportation is, relatively, astronomical. I’m missionary in my zeal to get as close as possible to having a “local experience”, at least as far as transportation is concerned. The problem with local buses, as far as I’m concerned is not that the aren’t manufactured by Prevost, it’s that the probability of the driver speaking English is slim and none. I know it’s only 24 miles. But…

I’ve been to Java before. I know what it’s like. I even know what it’s like in the monsoon season. But I’ve never been to the most rural parts of Java, if you can call any area of Java rural. But I have been to the urban areas of the country and I can tell you that English is not a language that’s widely spoken in the country. Today, I’m going to work on my plan to get to Borobudur. It’s going to require a little research.

References: Yogyakarta Hostels; Borobudur Transportation; Wikitravel Borobudur; Trip Report – Yogyakarta, Wonosobo, Borobudur; yogyes; Yogyakarta > Borobudur > Mt. Bromo > Surabaya; The Borobudur area and more.

It’s time I got busy on the Asia 2017 trip. I’m doing airfare checks. Taking a flight 3 days from today that returns on the same day costs $157 on Jetcost. Taking a flight 30 days from today that returns on the same day costs $85 on Jetcost. Taking a flight 60 days from today that returns on the same day costs $91 on Jetcost. I got a slightly better deal at Cheapflights, especially for the 30 day window. Melbourne to Cairns was $146 for 3 days out, $112 for 30 days out and $100 for 60 days out at Cheapflights. Jetstar had prices Melbourne to Cairnes @ $109 but with 7 Kg of luggage. Tigerair has it for $99 w/7Kg luggage. All prices were in Austrailian $$$. To get U.S. dollars multiply by 75%. All Melbourne flights were out of Tullamarine.

My experience with booking complicated airfare combinations for moving around Indonesia taught one great lesson – different booking websites can mean a huge difference in terms of whether booking is easy or hard. I wondered if I might have the same experience booking other flights. My current issue is booking airfare in booking airfare in Australia. I decided to experiment a little to see if some sights were clearly superior to others. My findings:

Jetcost: Found a lower price than Skyscanner or any other website by about 4%. It searched a variety of websites and showed them. It transferred me to eDreams for the booking. No service charge or fees. BETTER.

Cheapflights: Did a good job searching other websites. Returned best price with eDreams as the website that I needed to go to to book. BETTER.

Skyscanner: Found best options and price. Took me to airline’s website. GOOD.

BookingBuddy: Just opens up windows for other booking sites. It does, however, make it really easy to check a lot of sites relatively quickly. Unfortunately, most of them just return bad prices. Useful, but not for really booking.

Justfly. Found even worse prices than OneTravel. EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY BAD.

OneTravel: Did not find anything that was anywhere near the lowest price. EXTREMELY BAD.

Kayak: Easy to use. Found the same prices as Webjet. Had a Travelfusion Service Fee of $13.33 AUD. BAD.

Webjet: Does multi-city. Good presentation. Easy to understand. Has a Webjet Booking Price Guarantee $12.95 AUD and a Webjet Servicing Fee $ 21.95 AUD. VERY, VERY BAD.

Flight Centre: The presentation and the information were quite good. Some prices were higher and there was a $9.95 AUD booking fee as well. BAD.

Wotif: Incredibly bad prices.

CheapOair: Incredibly bad prices.

MakeMyTrip: Could not find any flights.

Zuji: Sporadic service. Long wait times. Found OK prices when it worked but had a $20 AUD Service fee. Good for finding flights when it worked but not good when it did not. BAD, BAD, BAD.

InsanelyCheapFlights: Just another site with not good, not terrible prices. BAD.

Vayama: Ridiculously bad prices.

Strategy: Sorong will just be a transit location. Note that 13,000.00 IDR = 0.996752 USD.

Airfare: Route maps for Garuda, Lion Air and Sriwijaya Air show routes into and out of Sorong. on Sunday, Oct 1, 2016 I’m looking at booking a flight at Traveloka to see what the current fare for tomorrow’s flight would be. What I’m trying to find out is whether the flights that will take me from Bali to Makassar to Ambon to Sorong to Yogyakarta are hard to book at the last minute. Inititally, I check the next day’s flight from Sorong to Yogyakarta. There were 21 flights available on five airlines - Garuda, Lion Air, Sriwijaya Air, Batik Air and Wings Air. Many of the flights involved more than one airline. Prices ranged from about $150 to $350. There were no direct flights. The number of stops ranged from one to three. Next I looked at booking one week away from the current date and found that there were 52 total flights. That’s because may of them were of code shares or they used a variety of airlines to form different combinations of changes for transit times from layover stops. Transit times ranged from 5:30 hours to 32 hours. Prices ranged from $144 up. Going over 30 days out got about the same results as going one week out. The prices were actually a bit higher. The best route was using Sriwijaya and changing to Garuda at Makassar. This route took 13 hours and cost $144. The 5.5 hour flight cost $203 and went through Makassar using Garuda only. This caused me to wonder of I could get  a flight from Bali to Ambon, picking up Makassar on the return this completing my trifecata of the “countries” of  Sulawesi, Moluka and Papua (Irian Jaya) . I could and it would cost $70 and I would not have to stay overnight. I could also go from I could also go from Bali to Makassar to Ambon to Sorong in 15.5 hours for $150 on Lion Air, Wings and Garuda. Note there are lots of options and it appears that they get cheaper to closer they get to the actual travel date. Cheapest time appeared to be about a week out. It appears that the booking website Traveloka may be my Indonesian airfare salvation.