With airfares sky high in July (hey, I’m a poet!), I used an ungodly # of frequent flyer miles (140K) for a coach ticket on China Air. The price was normally 100K, but it was a “blackout period” all summer. Oh well, it only took me two years and a hefty mileage bonus bump up by China Air to build up that many miles… Anyway, saved me 1000 bucks this trip. Well, 900, as I still had to pay 100 USD for some taxes/fees.

The trip was planned for 3+ weeks in Angeles City and 10 days or so in Indonesia. I had big plans for a certain big titted girl in Batam that I’d only barely gotten to know back in April. Plus, MongerX was promising to be onhand for some personalized touring of Jakarta, a place he’d been going to for several months and RAVING about.

After REALLY sweating out the last few days of my May trip, due to the free air ticket, excellent exchange rates across the board for me (particularly the Mexican peso), and a tidy little (hmmm, well, maybe not so LITTLE) bank loan, I was actually pretty flush for this trip, figuring on a budget of about 1000 USD per week, which for me is a pretty big step up from my original SEA budget of 100 USD per day including hotel. I ended up spending almost exactly 5,000 bucks for 5 weeks, although some of that was for travel-related fees going from place to place.

This trip was over the top for me in many ways. It was by far the longest I’d been on, and at one point I wondered if maybe it was TOO long. It was long enough that it may make all future shorter trips seem too short, however, something that hit home last week after spending 13 nights in Indo/PI/SIN.

I also came dangerously close to getting too emotionally involved with a bar girl, something I thought I was IMMUNE to before that trip started. Luckily the girl didn’t do anything to lead me on, or I may have turned into one of the basket cases that many mongers seem to turn into at some point in their mongering careers.

I apologize for the delay in getting this report out, and also lament that it will not be as detailed as past efforts. For that many of you are rejoicing already.

There's a happy medium with trip lengths IMHO. Too long and I find trips get a little redundant (especially when spending more than a week in a locale)... not to mention I physically get worn down when on 4+ week trips.

I think 2 weeks and 2 or 3 locales is ideal. As for the budget-- I've never been under 1k/week till I spent a week in Cambo, which came in at around 950 if extrapolated to 7 days (I spent 6 days there).

140k is a mighty HEFTY price to pay for coach seats-- anytime of year. Hopefully you at least got a stopover as part of the itin!

I get worn down on 2 week trips At least on the longer ones, you get a chance at a second wind.

140K woulda got me a stopover in lovely Taipei! I passed.