10 Day Trip to Malaysia under Rs. 1.50 Lacs: Part I

• 13 June 2016 | 1032 Views | By Mint2Save

Traveling foreign countries is one of the most anticipated life goals of a lot of people. Meeting new people, learning new cultures, visiting the wonders of the world and several other reasons make people leave the comfort of their house and backpack around the globe. This need of feeling like a roamer, this want of having experienced the ambience of different countries, is just priceless. Going to one place, is however, quite pricey.

Planning a holiday in foreign nations is usually not economic and takes up a big chunk from our savings. But, being internet savvy, we are well aware of the art of approaching things in a creative way, different from the mainstream and getting better results, a.k.a hacking. So, here we are hacking a foreign trip to Malaysia, which was long, luxurious, and under budget.

The following text that you are about to read, is from one of our followers who went on a 10 day trip to Malaysia.

“September, it was four months before my wedding that we decided to plan a trip to Malaysia. Being a usual middle class guy, I decided to make it economic, but luxurious, long enough to travel all we want but easy on the pockets.

I chalked out a simple plan: a 7 day trip, costing under 1.50 lacs or $2300 for everything (including visa, and local conveyance charges). My friends joked upon the idea and my fiancé sensed a failed trip even before it started.

With pocketful of money and hopes along with advises, I decided to search over the internet for various tours and travel agencies with the best prices and nothing came for less than $2500 for a 7 day trip and the 7 days included 2 days for arrival and departure, which left us only 5 days to travel around. NOT A GOOD PLAN!!

So, from the four month planning time, two months passed and I had nothing to look upto. I was not ready to increase my budget and even after a lot of bargaining, the travel agents were not ready to come under my budget, Even the hotels and resorts they recommended were rated quite bad on Agoda, MakeMyTrip etc. Then, I decided to plan trip on my own. It was quite a reasonable idea. I had around 2 months to research on hotels, decide on flights and plan around places to roam around and eat. It also came to me that I can plan best as we both were vegetarians.

For the ease of planning and tracking the expenses, I used an Excel Sheet and started with the planning.

Stage I: The Aim

I aimed to get a 7 day trip to Malaysia, which excluded the day of arrival and departure and transiting between any cities. We are travelling in the month of February and decided to mix the hip-hop urban life with the

For 7 days we didn’t wanted to stay only in Kuala Lumpur and over thorough discussion, we decided to visit the islands of Langkawi. It is tranquil place having a lot beaches and was filled with amazing natural experiences and duty free shops.

The budget was fixed at Rs. 1.50 Lacs.

Stage II: Planning the Air Tickets

Air Tickets

I planned to get the flights from New Delhi to Kuala Lumpur and most of the websites were showing return ticket from the same airlines, and I was unable to choose different airlines for departure and arrival. Also, getting the Visa was a concern and both of us being in jobs, were unable to go to New Delhi for Visa.

Then came skyscanner.com, I could search for the flights, and mix and match my combo of return flights. For departure, I chose Malindo Airlines for an afternoon flight and for departure, Air Asia was chosen. Air Asia gave us only the in cabin luggage (upto 7 Kgs) and we had to purchase luggage for anything ore than that.

The Departure for Kuala Lumpur was on 1st February and arriving back was on 10th. This 10 Day trip was split into 5 day Kuala Lumpur and 5 day to Kuala Lumpur.

After booking the air tickets, came the Visa. Over the internet, a lot of results popped up for getting us the Visa for Malaysia.

We chose Thomas Cook as it seemed most economic and was a well known brand to us.

Air Tickets along with extra luggage for Air Asia and Visa cost us around INR 50K ( around $800).