gee--sus asked: I haven't checked JAL prices in a while. They must've discounted them heavily. I flew Jet Star last year, the ticket doesn't even include the seat price! YOU HAVE TO PAY AN EXTRA $5 WHEN YOU PICK YOUR SEAT! ON. EVERY. FLIGHT. You have to swap flights at the Gold Coast so that's an extra $20 all up. Oh and did I mention baggage is extra too? That being said, they let us take food onto the GC-TOKYO & TOKYO-GC flight as well. So at least they don't expect you to starve.

Yeah, JAL was ridiculously expensive if you booked via their website but for some reason BestFlights brought up much cheaper tickets? And I know! I didn’t pick a seat, they were asking $7 for it! Such a rip. And I factored in the $60 extra for baggage beforehand. I get the logic of stripping down the extras so those who don’t want them don’t have to pay for them, but $25 for a meal?! And how do passengers choosing their seats cost the airline $7?

Oh well, for whatever reason they only charged me $600 for a flight from Honolulu to Melbourne, so it’s worth it. Going home with JAL would have cost me $5000, twice as long in the air and a pointless airport stopover in Japan.

I’m trying to put my flight itineraries into iCal.

Japan Airlines
(JL 00) 
07h 35m
Tokyo - Haneda [HND] 22:55 24-Jun-2012
Honolulu [HNL] 11:30 24-Jun-2012

Foiled by the International Date Line.

I think I decided to go to Tokyo… yesterday?

What do you do there? I have a week.

Guess where I just booked flights to.

Three weeks!

jnenifre:

For people who have travelled overseas on their own.

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I travelled overseas on my own. I was only scared when I first landed in Brussels, because the men were very forward and creepy and my meagre French hadn’t come back to me yet. But I went to four other cities on my own and made friends in all of them, through hostels and pub crawls. It’s so easy to do! And once you’ve made friends, you’re not really alone any more, are you?

My advice would be not to stress about being alone, treat it as if you were going for a walk in your own city. Be sensible but not to the point of not experiencing things you want to experience. I really enjoyed seeing the grittier parts of cities in contrast to the tourist spots, and I would have regretted it if I’d allowed too much common sense to get in the way of experiencing as much as I could. Get some phone credit (I did not but I should have) for emergencies. Other than that, since you’re going to the USA rather than somewhere truly unsafe like South Africa or Mexico, try not to stress any more than you would in an equivalent situation at home.

Travelling alone is very rewarding, I felt so brave and it is a fantastic way to get to know yourself and what you’re capable of. I will definitely do it again, probably many times

Everybody should do it at least once.

Good on you.