Dear Boys,

We decided to go to Perth, because your 弟弟 looked at us one day and say, ‘can we go to the place where kor kor saw the dolphins?

Every now and then when we look through the photographs of our Perth trip with Ian back in March 2007. Ian will regale those memories (honestly, he was 18 months then, I don;t really think he remembered anything in Perth!) he had, and Wayne will always have to see Perth through his big brother’s memories.

So this time we decided to make it to Perth, again, because our youngest son wants to have the same experience as his elder brother.

I think this year is a particularly good year to go, well, we have 2 excuses to splurge on this:

1. The Exchange Rate
2. The Perth Winter

The Exchange Rate

The Singapore dollar has been doing great against the Aussie. Typically the Aussie dollar is the stronger of the 2 currencies and we will always have to pay a bit more to spend in Australia, but this time around the currency rate has been in our favour!

So effectively, we can spend a lot more over there, as there are things cheaper in Australia compared to Singapore. Well, there are also a lot of things, a heck a lot more expensive too! More about that later.

The Perth Winter

Well, this one, pure excuse. Winter in Perth is usually a respectable 20°C. So it is akin to our air-con room temperature, and your mum loved and remembered fondly the Perth weather when we were there back in March 2007. Ironically, in March, it is usually a warm Perth, but during our stay there in 2007, it was a freakish 20°C too! We learned over the radio back then, it was a cold spell that lasted our entire stay there. Cool! (Pun intended!)

So we wanted to go back there for the winter, cool air, frosty weather, we can only get in Singapore if we go to a shopping centre. But this time, we get Air-con, even when we are out in the open, how awesome is that?

The secret’s out!

We did our bookings through Expedia, as we have done so for many of our trips, even to Bali last year. The cost savings is unbeatable, when they combined flight with hotel. Perhaps they are so huge on the Online Travel Agency sphere, they can get massive economies of scale. Whatever. We usually get a good deal out of it. This time is was no difference, we went in checked and happily realised that we can get flight and room for about S$1,400 for a 5 night trip. So we casually plotted and planned, in a non-committal manner, unbeknownst to us, the price went up the next day!

Your mum Whatsapped me the piece of shocking news. S$2,877.80. S-H-I-T.

We missed the boat!

So we sat up and paid attention to Expedia like how we are supposed to play the stock market. Everyday we will check for the best deal, and hoped that we can get back the S$1,400++ we saw days ago. Thankfully, we did.

So we book and confirmed it pronto. Final damage?

S$1,354.40 for a trip Saturday May 28 to Wednesday 1 June for 4 happy travelers.

 

So with our trip confirmed, we look forward to it excitedly!