Day 23: Favorite Vacation

Chris and I have traveled quite a bit together, but our favorite place we've gone has been a two-week stint in Singapore/Bangkok.  For a whopping $100 we both flew over and got one week's worth of hotels paid for.  He used to travel to Singapore for business a few times a year.  We saved up all his air miles and cashed them in for a free ticket for me.  With less than a week before I flew out to meet him, I realized that my passport was still in my maiden name, so I paid the rush fee ($100) to get it changed and back in my possession.  Otherwise, it would have been free!  I stayed with Chris, obviously, while in Singapore and his company paid for his expenses there.  He got per diem for food, so we would eat lightly throughout the day and spend the rest at night, sharing a meal together.

It was so fun flying across the world on my own and really fun to explore Singapore on my own while Chris worked during the day.  I walked everywhere since it's such a small country and got to experience some pretty cool things.  I ate a lot of good food, too.  In the evening, I'd come back to the hotel, clean up, and get ready to explore the rest of the city with Chris.  We had a super nice hotel room and it was all in all a great trip.

After our week in Singapore, we flew to Thailand for another week.  Flights from Singapore to the near islands and countries are super cheap, so again, we got some great experiences not having spent a lot of money.  Once in Bangkok, we did spend money on food, touring ruins of temples, visiting the Grand Palace, taking a boat trip around the island of Atayata, and on a few souvenirs.  We have learned that when we travel together, we do our research on where we want to eat, then see the touristy things that are close-by instead of the opposite.  

Mostly it was such a fun trip, looking back, because we didn't shell out that much cash and because we had so much fun together living on our own agenda.  I hope to do it again soon.  From business and personal air miles that we've saved, we now have two flights to a European destination.  Our long-term plan has been to go to Italy for our 10th anniversary, but it is going to be hard not to go before then.  We want to save up a good amount of vacation time and some money to spend, so that is the perk of waiting, I guess.