After what seems like forever, I'm finally back here, about to give you the updates of my holiday! I would start this very first post about the planning of the trip!

An introduction to this trip, yearly, my boyfriend and I would go on a holiday to somewhere, for the past 3 trips that we've gone on, it has always been a beach holiday. Krabi, Bali and Bangkok (not beach but crazy shopping trip). For every trip that we've been to the past 2 years, I've skipped a week of school. Finally, this year I've graduated, just before I graduated, we planned for a holiday in July. The place was not confirmed in the beginning, because at first I had my mind set on Australia. Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, a 2 week holiday. In the midst of planning for Australia, my budget came up to about $3000 a person, which then made this trip impossible (I don't have a job and don't have money). Of course, it's still in my plan to visit Australia in the near future.

Our next holiday destination was then diverted to Taiwan, somewhere we've been planning to go ever since we got back from Bangkok last year. I searched on multiple websites for the cheapest fare to Taipei (TPE), and I found SCOOT! I've known of Scoot for the longest time, and been wanting to try this airline out. Booked this holiday WAYYY in advance as compared to our other flights, which is abnormal because normally it takes the boyfriend forever to confirm his leave. Oh wells, the country seems to need him more than I can demand for.

The number 1 question would obviously be, how much I paid for the tickets. We paid roughly $600 total for return trip (10 days trip) and baggage (which then increased because we bought extra baggage TWICE). Some background on why I decided to buy extra baggage, was because I decided to do shopping there, and I knew I was going to stock up on facial masks. Eventually a day before we left Taipei, we called in Scoot to request for more extra baggage because we bought more stuff than we thought we would have bought. Flight departed Singapore at 00:55am (Saturday), and landed in Taipei at 05:40am (Saturday).

By the time we reached Taipei, it was already bright, honestly, you won't feel tired, unless you really had a bad sleep on the plane, which we did. I wore shorts (A HUGE MISTAKE) which caused my legs to be really cold and numbed my buttocks which made me fidget a whole lot during the journey.

So that was it travelling to Taipei! Keep reading to see my updates on the Taipei trip!

That being that, we had something else install, holiday tripping, Part 2. Ko Samui. It has been somewhere I've been wanting to go because I've heard of the beautiful beaches and the lovely scenery. Anyway, I've heard how tough it takes to go there from Singapore. Having to transit to a boat from Phuket brings you to Ko Samui, however, that was not something boyfriend and I wanted. We wanted a direct flight bringing us to the Ko Samui airport, yes, lazy as such. Then again, we didn't have the luxury of time to waste.

Ko Samui holiday began with me searching on all budget airlines, checking if any flights flew direct, Singapore to Ko Samui, or even if I could transit. Turns out, NO (maybe I didn't check hard enough). My next alternative, ZUJI and Expedia. I compared prices on both these website, and chose the latter, they were having some sales flight, THAI Airways. Why not? Although I have to admit it was pretty pricey $600 per person, we went ahead. We did save quite a bit from the budget flight to Taipei already anyway, we could afford a better flight to our beach holiday!

That's all for the flights!

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Now comes lodging.

My boyfriend and I don't believe in really expensive lodging. Mainly, you're not going to be in the hotel room for 24 hours! Most of the time would be spent outside galavanting, exploring the country. So why waste your money staying at expensive hotels?!?! We've always booked small B&B and on this trip, an apartment.

Boyfriend's friends recently went to Taipei, so had a couple of recommendations for hotels, but when I checked them out, turns out they were expensive hotels! Considering people normally go there for 5-7days, staying in a hotel that costs $100 a night was probably okay. Not when we were staying there for 9 nights! We would have gone bankrupt! I exaggerate. Interested in knowing our budget for a B&B? It's actually $50 a night, SGD, normally for beach holidays that would be our budget.

After checking out hotels and knew that was not going to be it, I searched for 民宿 (home stays), which also didn't really work out because their locations were mostly outskirts like Hualien and Taichung, places we weren't visiting. Our 10 days trip was mainly in Taipei, taking day trips out to places. Then I chanced upon this website, Airbnb (linked), which has a list of holiday rental apartments and so on, a very good website to source for cheap lodging.

This was the particular apartment we stayed at in Taipei.




Link to the actual website for this apartment HERE. If you're really keen, check out the website to find more information! Read reviews and decide for yourself whether it would be a good apartment for you. Also, you can always email the owner because he's REALLY nice and responds quickly to his emails.

More updates coming up soon!