Hotel Shuffle

Friday, December 18 - Evidently Christmas and New Year is a busy travel time. Who knew? (d’uh). Okay, okay - lesson learned. Book the whole trip early and don’t leave hotel bookings until the last minute.

Actually, that’s not entirely a fair assessment. For our trip to Langkawi and our night in Georgetown, we basically just walked in off the street and found hotels with little trouble. And in fairness, we could probably do the same in Vietnam and Cambodia, but we like the peace of mind that comes with having things settled before we depart from KL.

So for the past couple of days we’ve been busy contacting hotels, scouring TripAdvisor for hotel ratings, and poring through our Lonely Planet guidebooks. It’s taken a lot of effort and several marathon sessions at an internet cafe, but we’ve managed bookings for all 5 stops on our journey.

The hardest part of booking in Asia seems to be that none of the hotels have booking software to confirm rooms right away. Instead, one needs to send an email to the hotel and wait to hear back from them about availability and rates. In one way it’s a pain because there’s a lot of waiting involved, but in another way, you’re actually dealing directly with the hotel rather than some piece of software. And the response time varies, but you generally hear back within 24 hours, if not within a few minutes.

The only real problem we had was with our booking in Siem Reap, Cambodia – where Angkor Wat is located. We need to move hotels after the first two nights because the first hotel is booked solid on the night of the 28th. Otherwise, all indication is that we’ve managed to find some well-rated hotels at pretty decent prices (mostly around $US50 / night).

Let the adventure begin!