As the title says this is Part 2 of a series of articles entitled Backpacking Malaysia & Singapore in 4 Days? If you haven’t read the first part you can click here to read it.

OK, now to find the perfect airline to use. Air Asia? Tiger Airways? We need something that will get the job done.

Since Tiger Airways does not offer flights to Malaysia, and Malaysia is our first stop we opted for Air Asia. Brilliant, eh?

Not only is Air Asia the cheaper of the two, they currently have a $25 (P999 @ $1 = P41) one-way fare promo to Kuala Lumpur. Needless to say that’s what we got going there. As we were booking online my wife, Jam, did not notice the same-priced option going back. But because of our infinite checks if everything is in order she finally noticed the same $25 one-way fare coming back!

After checking the details of our flight and itinerary we finally clicked on the Submit button to start the processing. This moment has been a tense one because our very reliable wireless internet connection has been giving us the best service we can get. With that said I can now stop with the sarcasm.

Finally, the page reloaded to the confirmation page without me having to throw our router against the wall on the opposite side of the house, but then it didn’t give us time to read the details (though, we noticed the more-than-average font size of the word Confirmed in red, bold letters). The page automatically refreshed to the main page of the site! Pakshet!

So we clicked on the Back button on the browser… same result. We did it again… same result, again.

“They should send us an email,” I said, “Have you checked?”

“No, wait,” as Jam checks her email… “None yet…”

Two more new mail checks, in a span of 1.5 seconds, and we received the confirmation email with the invoice. Round trip tickets to Malaysia cost us $250 (P10,246 @ $1 = P41). Not bad.

Now for the accommodations. Well, Jam knows now where to look. Where else can backpackers stay? Hostels. So, using Hostel World, we booked our accommodations. Total cost for the hostel is $86.56 (P3,549.13 @ $1 = P41) — that’s for 2 adults, 4 nights. 10% deposit & reservation via Hostel World (credit card) and the balance, in cash, upon arrival to the hostel.

Well, now that we’ve booked our flight and accommodations all we have to do now is to wait for the date to arrive.

Next update: what to bring on a budget backpacking trip.