juls random thoughts

Just got back from Singapore, really tiring but fun vacation. We had a lot of bloopers, one of which was with the hotel we chose to book. You see, hubby was scheduled to leave last Thursday and we only looked for a hotel Wednesday night and to think we already had our flight booking since November! Talk about last minute and rush booking. Out of panic, we booked in a hotel in the red light district of Singapore. Yes, you heard it right, and those who know, you're right, we stayed in Geylang, Lorong 18 to be exact. Hubby's friends were actually laughing at us because according to them, the place we booked is actually a motel. You see, I am not really used to looking for a hotel on my own for out of the country trips, all my previous trips were work-related and it's our office who arrange my hotel reservations. I have no idea on where to book online, how I wish I know already about http://www.HotelReservations.com, they have last minute deals! And it's cheap I tell you, they actually have better deals than the one we booked. Hay, too late for us. They have a lot of good deals like rebates, where can you find a site that will provide you a rebate when you book through them? And what's even better is the "compare" functionality. Did you know that I did this manually?! Really poor me huh?
They also feature a city where they have a sale, this is useful when we don't know where to go but we know we want to go on a vacation. They have hotel offers worldwide so I finally learned my lesson, I will book through them on our next vacation, and it includes booking on our flight, car rentals and lodging. Did I mention that you can choose the type of lodging? Yep, they will not deceive you in a way that we were deceived; you can filter your search to show only hotel, suite, inn, vacation home or condo, resort or bed & breakfast. Not only that, they will let you also choose the amenities that you want to be present on your lodging search, like if you want one with business center, fitness center, internet access available (wahh.. again this one, I did manual search), kitchen, pets allowed, pool and restaurant on-site.
This is the first time that hubby and I traveled out of the country mainly for vacation as mostly we just extend our business trips, and now that we've tried and enjoyed it, I think, I'll be expecting more out of the country travels for pleasure. And I guess now, I really learned my lesson, I’m no longer a novice in online booking and having found http://www.HotelReservations.com I don’t think we’ll be fooled again.

Oh and regarding our hotel, even if it turned out to be in the red light district, we decided to stay and did not bother canceling our booking as we only used it to sleep :)