Won't struck you

Canceled my trip because of #COVID19

3/21/2020 02:20:00 AM

I think there's thousands others who faced the same thing as me. 'Thanks' to covid19, I have to cancel my trip to Japan that I had planned for about 7 months.

I've been researching about Japan's sakura season since the last sakura season which was April 2019. I've slowly, consistently, researching and gathering information about traveling in Japan during spring. Of course, I have been saving as well to fund this trip. I started to make proper itineraries for my 10 days trip in Japan since June 2019. I'll share that later.

The trip was scheduled to be on 31/3/2020 till 10/4/2020. It was my dream to solo traveling since I have traveled to some other countries with either my friends or my family. Bought my tickets with ANA Airline Japan on 16/12/2019. Despite not knowing the exact time for sakura blooming time (the forecast was out on January), I've made my mind to just bought the tickets based on previous years sakura blooming time. Turns out, it was quite okay, I'll still be there during full bloom until the petals started to fall (supposedly).

Accommodation was the hardest part. I took like forever to choose the right place for my trip as I planned to go to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka & Nara if possible in 10 days. Probably took around 4-5 months to choose the right place to stay. Once I've made up my mind, I was firm with my decision, though it was not really 'me' to book a 'Non-refundable' accommodation, but I was sure at that time & if it wasn't because of an outbreak, I would've never change my mind. Non-refundable options are usually a lot cheaper than other policies. That's why, you only choose them when you're done with a complete itineraries of your trip which I did, and, you're very sure that you won't change your mind (it will force you to not to anyway as it's a non-refundable booking). It wasn't really a good option to be honest, but if you had a tight budget, it has to be one of your options.

So, HOW DO I GET MY REFUND FOR ALL MY BOOKINGS?

Luckily, ANA Japan flight for cancellations on tickets is up to 24 hours before departure of the desired flight (but they have other conditions as well, depends on your ticket & buying location/method of payment. So please check with ANA for your eligibility to get a refund) Hence, I just cancelled them through the website. It takes forever to process the refund (like 6-7 months to be credited back into your credit card), but at least, I (will) get the refund - full amount.
Accommodations

Booked my stay totally with airbnb for 10 nights - 3 different accommodations. One of them (3 nights total) was a flexible policy, so I was able to get full refund. However, not in the case for the other 2 accommodations (total 7 nights). I was quite devastated at first, as these 2 were 'non-refundable' & 50% refund policies. I thought I was done for. Cried for 3 nights straight hahaha. BUT, due to the coronavirus outbreak, airbnb had updated their Extenuating Circumstances Policy I've read it through, as per 4/3/2020 they only had flexible options for bookings made/accepted to/from China & South Korea (airbnb had update it to China, South Korea & Italy at the moment). But mine was to Japan.
So I contacted airbnb customer support on 5/3/2020 for them to consider my request to get a full refund, as the hosts have no ability to change/override initial policy upon bookings.
They took sometime to response, but they replied to me after 6 days (11/3/2020). Considering I still had few weeks left before the policy ends, so I don't mind waiting for their reply.
So they finally replied to me. They called me as well, asking for any supporting document that could support my statement (I told them Malaysians had been restricted to travel overseas, as been advised by the Health Ministry). So, I gave them a copy of a press statement from Health Ministry Department (got it from their official twitter acc).
They go through it to check it's validity, around half an hour later I received series of email from airbnb regarding the 2 bookings I made, saying that it has been cancelled with full refund.
Couldn't be happier of course! I'm so glad they quickly resolve it once they could get through me (considering the huge amount of inquiries they need to handle at this particular moment). Thought I might have to wait more, but fortunately everything was done within less than 2 hours.

But as per today, 21/3/2020, the policy had been updated as "Reservations for stays and Airbnb Experiences made on or before March 14, 2020, with a check-in date between March 14, 2020 and April 14, 2020, are covered by the policy and may be canceled before check-in. Guests who cancel will receive a full refund, and hosts can cancel without charge or impact to their Superhost status. Airbnb will refund all service fees for covered cancellations."

So, that technically covers for most countries & guests/hosts who were badly affected. So, if your reservations are as in description above, there's no need to contact airbnb, you are eligible for full refund. You may refer to airbnb page for more precise info.

I sincerely hope that for each person, who had made this difficult decision to cancel their trip in order to protect those around you, will be given better things in return. You will. We are in this together. May God bless our intention to protect those who we love. God bless.

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Tips for your first Road-trip

10/29/2019 08:52:00 AM

Today I really really feel like sharing one of the best thing that I've done from my 'The things to be done at least once in my life' list heee :D That's a hell of a long list (hahaha) but I'll get to that later, on a different post.

So let's talk about my first 'student road-trip' in the UK! It was back at 2016 & I would love to share some tips for first timers out there, cuz I believe normally, overseas student would definitely have this activity in their mind. The structure here might a bit out of order, but I'll try my best to share all the good and bad stuff along this journey so you can get optimum input from these ok :)

TIP #1
Pick your best travel buddies

Traveling can be such a hassle and a painful experience if you travel with the wrong person! It's best if you can plan your first road-trip for 3-4 persons (including yourself) only. 'The more the merrier', yup, but not in this case. Less people, less attitude, less problems, less hassle, less difficult things to handle. Trust me. So you're gonna make sure that you want to travel with the right person especially, on your FIRST road-trip. As for me, it's just the 3 of us hehe :D

*But somehow, you will experience traveling with a shitty person at least once & that's the best way to learn haha :D

TIP #2
Pick a place to explore

I can't recall why and how we ended up picking up Cornwall. I think one of us, probably me, I just love to search for random places to explore and turn out that Cornwall is a perfect location since it's around 3-4 hours drive from Bristol. To those who love sceneries, nature & beaches, Cornwall is perfect for you. It was a long-worth driving from Bristol. Actually, I think it's best to travel here during summer, but we weren't in the position to choose the timing, so there you go, it was March back then, and it was freaking cold hahaha considering Cornwall is the westernmost part of the South West Peninsula of GB (means there's a lot of cliffs, higher grounds, beaches etc). You can sneak a peek on Cornwall details here. Cornwall is quite big, so you're not going to have enough time to cover everything. You're gonna need to pick places that catches your attention, base on their location from your hotel, from your starting point etc. That's why, drafting itinerary is soooo important before you start any journey okay :) Next stop : Itinerary

TIP #3
Planning - Do your research & draft a itinerary + budgeting

I'm a planner type of person, so I always plan my trip(s) beforehand. I'm aware that anything could happen, and not everything will necessarily happen as you plan, but at least you have some guidance within your grasp & something to refer to instead of wasting your time in the car to think about what you're going to do next. DOING RESEARCH IS EVERYTHING. Please. Don't expect everything will go as smooth as imagined, don't expect others will do it for you. Everybody should have done it, and later on you'll meet to gather all the information you've got. One of the most difficult thing to do is to decide on a place to stay. Whether it'll be a hostel, hotel, guest house, etc, price that's within everybody's budget, the distance & location etc etc. It will take some time, so make sure to do it earlier (2-3 months before).

1 - Pick a hotel (or whatever suits you) base on price, location, reviews.
*As for us, for this trip, we stayed at Travelodge St. Austell
Some tips on choosing for a place to stay;
#1 LOCATION - perfect location can make a lot of difference especially when is comes to
budgeting. So make sure you check their location based on the estimated
distance (of the hotel & the places you want to go) by google.
#2 REVIEWS - Read thoroughly all the reviews that you can find about the hotel. Have
something to expect. I'm not sure how to emphasise this, but reading reviews
is just so important & surely helpful.
#3 USE OTA - OTA stands for Online Travel Agency i.e Booking.com, Airbnb, Agoda etc.
Other than being an independent reliable source, they usually offer cheaper
prices, it's easy to navigate & got tons of choices. The reviews are very useful
as well.

2 - Start to choose on the places you wish to visit. Find the distance of these places from your hotel.

3 - Make sure whether these places are free/need tickets to enter & be aware with the opening &
closing time. Anything suits your budget.

4 - If you think some of the places won't work out, (too far, not free etc) just pick other places &
move on.

5 - The itinerary cannot be done in a blink, so be patient.

So here's my itinerary for Bristol - Cornwall road-trip. (Yup, I make draft itinerary up to this extent hahaha)

Budgeting

We are not exactly very good at this hahaha. But of course, we tried to look for best option as well. So here's a little info on what we spend for the trip;

Hotel = £132 for 3 nights (£44 pp)
Car rental = £80 for 5 days (exclude insurance) (£27 pp)
*we rented the car for 5 days because we want to stroll around to other places near
Bristol
Gas = £30 (I think, can't recall) We received a full tank car, so we need to return full tank
Food = £3-6 per day (average) (we're not picky when it comes to food, sometimes we ate a lot,
sometimes we starve till late at night, sometimes we eat like normal human haha)

So that's around £104+- for 5 days road-trip + extra places. I'm pretty sure you can create better budget friendly trip by finding a better/affordable hotel, cheaper car rental etc.

TIP #4
Renting your car

It's a roadtrip. Other than needing a valid license obviously, you need to allocate certain budget for renting a car. ESPECIALLY WHEN NON OF YOU CAN DRIVE MANUAL CARS ON THE LAND UNITED KINGDOM HAHAHAH >.<

If you are as mentioned above, then be prepared cause it's gonna be really expensive to rent auto cars. The price can be twice (or more) more expensive compared to renting manual cars. Huhuhuuuuu.. Plus the insurance per day. Because of an unwanted occurrence that happened to me before, I tend to be very very careful and read almost everything (well, thoroughly) about the policies (the ones you usually tick on the small box before you proceed to payment) of practically each policies I've encountered before I proceed to anything haha. And that's how I know all of the rules, which are actually important, but they (usually the seller - of anything) not exactly hide it, but they won't tell you clearly, but they just make you agree to them. So if any problem arise, & you didn't notice (which people normally don't) to the rules you agreed, they can cancel your bookings (base on the virtual agreement) & they benefited everything & leave us hanging like a stupid donkey. So make sure you understand everything & aware of what you have to agreed upon before you release your payment to anything okay?

Normally a manual sedan can be rented at the average price of £7-£12 per day (not including insurance charges), depends on the type of car, location & branding of the dealers (not sure what you call them). Insurance can be up to £16 per day (could be less or more). But, to rent an auto sedan can cost you about £20-35 per day. Can you see the difference! And that exclude insurance!

You do have the option of which not to pay for the insurance (cause it makes a lot of difference as you're paying for each day, but they never suggested this option) where the driver/booker (the one who made the booking must be the driver of the rented car) must have a valid credit card with the driver's name to be charged/hold the amount of £3000 (if I'm not mistaken) (some sort like a security deposit). So if anything happen, you can be charged up to that amount. In which, I don't think is gonna be the choice for most of the students.

But different companies have different policies, so make sure you're clear with everything. So I guess, just make sure you can drive the freaking manual cars unless you don't mind spending hee :D

TIP #5
Hope for the best!

Despite having all these plans & research, anything could happen! Some place might be closed due to bad weather, probably renovation, some place might not be as good as expected & there will be other unexpected things during your trip. Not everything goes well with what we have planned anyway. We need to improvised here & there, and it did consume/waste some of our time. But that's just how it goes. So, just hope for the best & enjoy the rest of your trip.

Good luck! Hope this helps :)

Just sharing some photos throughout the trip. These are taken with only iPhone 6s, iPhone 5s & a gopro hero 4. We don't own a good camera back then. But regardless, we did take some good photos!

DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

That's it! Thank you for reading :)

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Little things

10/26/2019 01:07:00 AM

I can see dust all over my blog. Hahaha. My (not so) latest post was on July, 2018. That was ages ago. I think the reason I thought about this blog was because recently, I've gone through hard times and wasn't able to speak it up to any living creature, and not that anyone will notice this post anyway but I think writing (well I mean typing) can make me feel better somehow. Well, not just recently I guess.

Starting from 2018, I've been going to rough times throughout the year up till today. So, it's really hard to lay my heart at peace and to believe that I achieved so much was a difficult thing to do. Maybe I was being too hard on myself, OCD is a bitch. It won't let me give credits to myself for my hardwork. Little things are achievement too. I notice, but maybe because I was after bigger things, I tend to let go of little things.

I missed how I always look forward to school, to what's going to happen everyday, to all the little things I enjoy while in school. It was complicated back then. I hate it when it comes to school holiday cause I have to go back home. Most of students can't wait to be back home, while me, were on the other side of the planet, can't wait to go back to school. I was in boarding school since high school & continue my studies further and further away from home. I think I spent more time at school/college (when my brain can start storing memories) rather than being at home and I enjoyed being away from home. Well, let's put the idea that way cause I'm not telling everything.

We'll go through different stages & phases in life. Not that I've lived long enough to talk about it, but I can tell you that growing up, was the most difficult phase of my life. Not as a person, but as a child. But I'm grateful, despite everything I've build my own character & personality, I am what I am today out of everything I have to carry on me, with me. For every tears I have to wipe for myself, I think I can't tell if someone is ever as protective as me towards myself. Sometimes selfish. I have to protect myself at all cost. Don't you?

to be continue..

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Canceled my trip because of #COVID19

So, HOW DO I GET MY REFUND FOR ALL MY BOOKINGS?