The planned trip

1 March 2020

A great tropical adventure

I have to travel regularly from New Zealand to see Mum in Borneo.  She is 93 this year.  I often combine the visit with somewhere else in the world.  After all, New Zealand is far from everywhere else, so when I travel I make the most of it!

Back in August 2019, I managed to book some flights enabling me to get to Palau, a destination that had been on my radar for many years.  Eventually the itinerary, starting travel on 24 March 2020, grew to become:

  • Auckland – Kuala Lumpur – Manila:  I have three nights in Manila just to de-risk the trip with some parts on separate tickets.  It will also give me a chance to rest up before taking a late night flight to Palau, do some things in the city and do an excursion perhaps to Taal volcano.
  • Manila – Palau:  Three nights in Palau.  Diving, cruising around the Rock Islands.
  • Palau – Manila:  Back to Manila for an overnight.
  • Manila – Boracay:  Three nights in the once pristine beach island that went to ruins very quickly and that’s now tidying itself up.
  • Boracay – Manila:    Back to Manila for an overnight.
  • Manila – Kuching:  Eleven nights with family.
  • Kuching – Mukah:  Two nights in Mukah for Pesta Kaul, the Melanau festival where people play on gigantic swings.
  • Mukah – Kuching – Kuala Lumpur – Auckland:  Back to New Zealand.

 

The airfares

  • The bulk of the travel was on Malaysia Airlines.  It was the typical legacy airline pricing in which it was cheaper (NZD830) to fly from Auckland to Manila through Malaysia than to Malaysia only (NZD1100)!
  • The Palau side trip was an award ticket on Air New Zealand priced at NZD300 (USD200) plus taxes of around USD145 (largely Palau’s environment protection fee).  That is a bargain since being a monopoly route, the fares hover around USD650 plus taxes!
  • As for Boracay, domestic tickets aren’t ridiculously cheap as in other SE Asian countries.  My outbound was with AirAsia.  Waiting to buy the return ticket proved worthwhile as I bought it for one-tenth of fares on that and surrounding days, and a quarter of the cheapest typical fare.

 

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