Flight Research

 There are times when I feel I overanalyze things.  Perhaps this time, it will pay off.

I've been looking at flights into Cebu, Philippines Mactan Airport.  So far, the cheapest seems to be through Kayak at $1010 for round trip from 11/2 to 11/24, which means coming back after Thanksgiving.  I'm going to play with the dates a little to make sure I'm not going to be leaving or arriving to a madhouse at the airport.  So far, it looks like it's the same price for the 21st, 22nd, and 24th.  If I go back a week, it goes up by $80.

The bad parts are that I will be flying economy class, which means "packed like sardines."  I think if I fly back out in the future, I may look at business class. (Bwahahahaha!  That's a joke.  It's 5x as much!  From what the airlines tell me, Business Class is what pays the bills.  Economy is flown at break-even or a loss).

But 21 hours in the air.  Haven't done that since I FIRST flew out overseas in 1972!  I'd better get into practice of reading books again and bring two or three big ones with me!  Definitely bringing the laptop!  (Might have to get the Dell's keyboard repaired since it's the smallest of my three laptops) (Hey, don't judge me.  I paid less than $150 for each of them and they're all 6-10 years old!)  If I get the Dell fixed, I'll probably have them max out the RAM while I'm at it, just to be safe.

The next thing is whether or not to book a hotel in Cebu for the entire time.  Probably not.  May go through AirB&B for that and rent a couple nights, then move on to Duma, then Olongapo/Manila and just get hotel rooms at each of those for the number of nights I will spend there.  From Manila, I can then choose between Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, or (the one I forgot about in the last post) Taiwan.

I'm supposed to be going with a bunch of other Vietnam Vets, but each of them are bitching about what dates they have available, which airline to fly, which airport to come into and which hotel.  All of them are in different financial brackets and all want to fly in at different times.  They don't like my dates because it makes it more likely that it will be dry and hot.  And most want to go to Manila because they want to go to Olongapo (Navy & Marines) or Angeles City (Air Force).  While I want to see Olongapo, I don't want to spend three weeks there.  Nor do I want to spend it in a city of 11 million people (Manila).  Cebu is about the size of Chicago, and that's big enough for me.  On my list is also Cagayan de Oro (CDO) and Davao, both of which are to the south.  I want to hit north last.  May have to contact a travel agent at Kayak to see if I can fly out of Manila instead of going back to Cebu.  Will have to see on that one.

Right now, I've been having insomnia over planning this and keep developing headaches.  I think I'm gonna go veg out on some mindless YouTube videos.