Up, Up and Away...

I feel like I'm turning into Tom, with all my travels! My gay brother Mark, who lives in London, turns 40 in April (6 days after I turn 37) and so, as most of his friends live here in Sydney, has decided that the best way to celebrate would be to meet in the middle somewhere.

So, he's organized to have a week long celebration in Thailand - Phuket to be exact - and being the GBP earning exec that he is, has booked 4 beach front deluxe villas at this rather ritzy resort. Of course, he's not paying for them, only for his own. But thankfully, they're not that expensive relatively, and they do look gorgeous! And so, last week, we were trying to book our flights over. Went onto Jetstar's website and, once all the taxes, food, etc were added onto the bill, it came to a grand total of $1271. I was expecting somewhat less than that and so was quite suprised at how much this so-called budget airline was charging! I had a flash of inspiration and decided to check out how much Singapore Airlines would charge, just to compare. Well, turns out, their cost was $1321...yes, that's right, for $50 more, I get the legendary Singapore service, all the extras, AND (and this is the BEST part) I get to fly on the new A380 between Sydney and Singapore both ways!!!!!!!!! Travel time is a bit more; you have to deplane at Singapore and fly with their budget subsidary, SilkAir, to Phuket; but still, who cares?! And having joined Virgin Atlantic's Frequent Flyer program last year to fly to London (thanks again to Tom's brilliant suggestion), I also will acrue miles flying with Singapore. So I'm totally chuffed with my little win! Told the other boys about it as well, and Carter has booked on the same flight and another of Mark's friends, Davo, is also going to book with them too! So it should be a great flight!!!

And here, I was promising myself that I was going to reduce my travel this year and save more $$ and three weeks into 2008, I've already committed (or spent) about $2500 on overseas travel. Oh well, it's all for a good cause...after all, how often does your big brother turn 40?!