I’ve noticed that with my two other “blogs” I was never really able to complete my travel posts. However, this time around I would really like to try and finish my posts thoroughly. The reason being for this new blog is because I feel that I am so much more knowledgeable due to my recent adventures. Therefore, I would like to take the time to share some travel tips and hopefully inspire people to get out there and enjoy life!
My family and I were planning on going to the Philippines after I graduate (2016) to surprise my grandpa for his 90th birthday. Just recently around December/January it was to our surprise to find out that our grandpa’s 90th birthday is actually this year (2015). This trip was a little unplanned, but every minute has been worth it.
Back in September 2014 I joined a travel group on Facebook where users would post flight deals or even flight errors. Through the group I found the most amazing deal which fit my student budget. The flight was: Toronto -> Beijing -> Hong Kong and then Tokyo -> Toronto. Yes, this flight meant that we had to find flights in between Hong Kong and Tokyo, but for the price of $677CAD how could we say no? My boyfriend and I immediately booked the flights directly through United airlines and later on Inviting our friend Chris to join us on our adventure.
The open jaw flight in between Hong Kong and Tokyo would allow for us to visit Korea after Hong Kong since Chris is from Korea and had connections our travel throughout the country would have been inexpensive. However, when the MERS disease became somewhat of a problem my boyfriend and I decided that perhaps we should cancel our flight from Hong Kong to Korea, just to avoid any future complications when entering other countries. We had originally booked our flight through HKexpress a low cost carrier, which meant that cancelling our flights was going to be a hassle. However, due to the outbreak HKexpress had given customers an option of changing their destination (paying the difference) or to change the date of their departure. There were also a few other flights that were allowed for a full refund. We called HKexpress and the person on the other line had said that our flight was eligible for a refund allowing us to book our flight from Hong Kong to Manila. Unfortunately my boyfriend did not get the person’s name because HKexpress called us a few weeks later informing us that they could no longer refund our tickets ($135), leaving us with only the government tax being refunded back on my card. Although I’m still very bitter I should be somewhat relieved that at least we got a bit of our money back. So instead of Korea we just decided to head straight to Manila with Philippine Airlines for $124 which included our luggage and breakfast during our 2 hour flight.
