You know I’m out of topics to blog about when I start posting my travel budget. This one is from my one-week trip to Thailand and Malaysia at the beginning of the month. The main purpose of the trip was for the tennis, but we ended up dollie shopping in Bangkok instead. I extended my trip to include a week in Penang, just because.

This trip is expensive, compared to my month-long trip back in June spanning five countries. However, it still came out cheaper than the budget I drew up when I was still planning for the trip. And this is the moment when I admit that I really cannot be a hardcore backpacker (that sounds sooo wrong). Haggling will never be my forte, and I will splurge whenever I can. And I will never stop buying doll clothes and books.

Shopping aside, the biggest expense in this trip was my 4-day stay at the Sunway Hotel in Georgetown. I needed to work during those four days, so I splurged on a hotel to ensure that I have a stable Internet connection. Ironically, the Internet at the guesthouse where I transfered to was much better. Hmp.
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I’ve been back in Manila since Monday morning, and I’m now waiting for another flight out. I’ll just be gone for the weekend, to attend the Visayas leg of the Philippine Blog Awards, since I missed the main event in Manila. But this post is not about this trip, it’s about my last weekend in Penang.

Sayuri at Penang Hill

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My work week has ended at 6am this morning, so I checked out of Sunway to move to a more budget friendly accommodation. I’m now in my room at the Hutton Lodge, a beautifully restored colonial-style house. Ironically, despite the huge price difference, my Internet connection here at Hutton (wireless, very low reception) is heaps better than my Internet connection at Sunway (wired).

Still, rather than regret the amount I spent, I just tell myself that here at Hutton, I don’t have this view outside my window.

Sunrise in Georgetown

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Penang was shrouded in gray when I looked out the window. I went back to my book, resigned to the fact that there’s nothing I can do to change the weather. The plane’s descent seemed to take forever, the landing bumpy and for lack of better term, swerve-y. Soon enough, I was stamped back into Malaysia and driving through highways and streets made familiar by my previous trip.

KOMTAR from my window

The rain poured in earnest as we were driving towards Georgetown, where I’ll be staying for the next couple of days. I decided to go back to Penang because I felt I missed a lot when I hurriedly left the island last June. This time, I’m taking my time to get to know the city.
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Continuing on with my post-trip series, here’s my travel expenses for Bangkok, Thailand. Like the previous post-trip accounting posts, this only include the land transfer coming into the country. Also, I did not include the costs for the doll things I hoarded in BKK.

For five days and four nights in a major city, this is a pretty cheap trip.
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I slept late, yet again, but this time it wasn’t because of Voice. Ferdz told me that I’m using up a lot of CPU resources for the site so I upgraded Justwandering to WordPress 2.8. I also upgraded the plugins, but in the middle of it all, one of the plugins borked my site. I was in the middle of trying to figure out what happened, when the internet suddenly went off. No choice but to sleep then. I woke up before my alarm did, and though I can go back to sleep, I ended up online again, trying to fix my site. I managed to fix it in time before I had to go down to meet Wei.

The Blue Mansion

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Shortly after writing day 18′s entry, I shut down my laptop and settled down to read. I bought L’femme Adventure by Jessica Maxwell, a travel book that has been in my book case for nearly a year, but never gotten around to reading it. I figured now’s a great time to read about the adventures of a female traveller. It’s amazing how I hardly read on this trip. The last time I traveled through Thailand, I finished my two books within days, and had to buy another one along the road. I guess with my laptop around, there’s hardly a need to read since I can easily just watch dramas on my computer.

Going through immigration in Padang Besar

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