Settling the first stone!

Headed to STA first thing after biotech lab to check out the availability of flight dates; cos’ we checked out KLM’s site yesterday night and there were available seats, though slightly more expensive due to increase in taxes.

And there were seats! But it was $2104 per pax, about $200 more than KLM’s direct bookings. Slight problems with loading one of KLM’s booking pages though.

We’ll get the ISIC card on Monday, so all we have to do is:

• fill in the form
• bring our original IC? passport? and matriculation card
• photocopies of matriculation card and IC? passport?
• SGD15 each

Our original plan was to head down to J3 Travel after pharmacotherapy lecture and enquire about air tickets, Eurail passes etc and head back for biotech lecture, but we decided to ring up J3 Travel and P2P Travel (recommended by Miao Juan – Thanks muchly!) to check out via phone instead.

So we camped outside LT24 at the soccergame thing table; Jingwen tried calling J3 while I rung up P2P.

No response from J3 Travel even after several tries. No one answered the phone.

Enquiries at P2P Travel was much more smooth sailing; we could get the seats (refer to Flight Details, KLM) on our selected dates and the price quoted ($1754 per pax) was much more reasonable, though it was the exact same flight as STA recommendations.

Minor hiccups when we decided to purchase out tickets through P2PTravel:

• Couldn’t book online through P2PTravel’s website as the flight option wasn’t stated, and decided to call to reserve seats
• The lady on the line told me to call back later (and didn’t after 30 min)
• So called the agency again, this time we had this very helpful lady, Ms. Sindy Koh who advised us to send her an online enquiry. And so we did!
• Prompt reply from Ms. Sindy, but the price quoted turned out to be $1995 instead of the other price quoted by her colleague.

Ohwells, the prices would be comparable to direct booking online through KLM, but decided to go ahead and reserve tickets with P2PTravel, and we’d have to confirm our booking and payment by 1st April.

Decided to get the Eurail Select Pass (Youth): 15 days for 463 Euros from STA instead, as they had a promotion (1 day free when purchased before 31st March). But we’ll have to pay in full before 1pm on Monday. So it’s down to STA on Monday again!

. . .

To Do:

P2PTravel:

• Call before heading down (tentatively tomorrow) to make payment of air tickets 

STA on Monday, meeting at 11am to:

• Cancel seat reservations
• Purchase ISIC
• Purchase Eurail Select Pass (15 Days)

. . .

Still have much planning to do!