First Malaysia Trip after Covid

The world has been turning upside down since Covid. Many countries only starting to open up this year. It has been a while since we fly back to Asia. By mid July of 2022, most countries have eliminated the quarantine and any tedious registration and tracking requirements. We decided to take a trip during the Christmas holidays.

From our other local trips, we have came to know that the air ticket prices have increased quite a bit. The flight to Singapore is no exception. A round trip flight ticket from Houston to Singapore in December costs about $1800, and that is when booking it in July! That would costs a family of 4 about $7000! To put it in perspective, that is about RM 32000!

We explored alternative way by using points. With the accumulated miles/points in multiple airline and credit card accounts, we used 176k United MileagePlus points + $223 for one way flight to Singapore. And used 176k Singapore KrisFlyer points (transferred from Amex/Capital One/Chase) + $418 to fly back to Houston. In hindsight, we should have researched a little more. One of the issue was the flight from Singapore to Houston only available as wait-list. We made incorrect assumption that it would be available soon, and turns out they cancelled our wait-list 2 weeks before the flight. Luckily we realized the mistake soon as we saw the required points have gone up just like the cash ticket. We separately booked a Singapore airline flight to LAX and a separate one way Southwest flight from LAX to HOU. Not ideal but there weren't many choices since we have transferred the points to Singapore KrisFlyer program.

Within Asia, we also booked separately a round trip AirAsia flight from Singapore to Penang with cash ($426 and $271). We could have booked everything with United program and take advantage of its excursions perks for our Singapore to Malaysia segment for free..

Our outgoing flight includes a transit at London. We purposely chose a long transit in London, so we can get out for a quick day trip. See more detail here.

After the short day trip, we boarded Singapore airline and slept a good 6 hours as we were all exhausted. In our opinion, the service of Singapore airline was fabulous and is day and night compared to our previous United airline flight.

As we would be flying out from Singapore to Penang, Malaysia the next day, we booked a night at Crown Plaza hotel at the airport with our IHG free night certificate. More details here on how we spent a night at Singapore Changi airport.

We took an uneventful AirAsia flight to Penang. This was our first time with this budget airline. Years ago we heard some horror story. To our surprise, the self check-in process is pretty smooth and the flight itself is decent enough. We did paid extra to have selected seats however.

We were initially planned to take a Grab (similar as Uber) from Penang airport to Taiping. The first driver wanted more money than what listed on Grab since it is an out of city (1 hour 30 min drive) trip. We refused and were asked to cancel. Right before we get another Grab driver, we asked a 'taxi' driver next to us and he quoted us RM 180 (compared to Grab ~RM 150) with toll included. Since he has a bigger car (MPV) which we prefer with two big luggage, we took the offer.

Check out this post on the things to do as family and where to eat in Taiping, Malaysia.

After couple of weeks in Taiping with family, we went back to Penang for 2 days visit. More detail here.

Woke up early and took Grab to the airport. Clearing the custom was smooth. Ate breakfast at the Plaza premium with our American Platinum lounge card. Soon after we took the flight out to Singapore for a few days trip. More detail here.

We fly out from Singapore with a short transit at Narita airport. Our flight continued to Los Angeles airport. Our Southwest flight to Houston is more than 5 hours later. Similar experience from what we learned in London, we can only check in our bags 4 hours from the departure. There isn't any earlier flight to Houston so we waited few hours at LAX airport before catching our southwest flight to Houston.

Anyone who has been reading news might be aware of the crazy Southwest meltdown during the holiday week. It was reported almost 80% of the Southwest flight continue to be cancelled or delayed even after the winter storm. We didn't read too much news (good thing) while we were in Asia and only realized when a news reporter approached and asked us at the LAX airport if our flight was delayed. Fortunately we came to find out most of Southwest flights have been restored and starting to come back to normal the day before. However, our flight was delayed due to some engine issue and we were required to deboard and reboard to another aircraft which came in after an hour later. After 2 hours of delay, our flight got further delayed and stuck at the tarmac due to some paperwork issue. Luckily that took only about extra 30 minutes. We safely arrived in Houston few hours later.

While we were in Los Angeles, we thought our flight would be very late when it arrive in Houston. We attempted to schedule Uber ride ahead but it appears that Uber only allow Uber Black for airport schedule pickup which is more than double the regular price. We figured that we had some free rental day that is expiring with National Car Rental, So instead, we booked a one way ride for ~$7 (it would have been ~$100 regular price). We later find out that we could actually just book an Uber with regular price when we arrive at the Hobby airport.

That concludes our long awaited trip to Asia! So many lesson learned!