We ruled out Bali as we have been there several times and wanted something different.  We literally checked up on the Indonesian cities that Silkair (SQ’s sister airline that flies the region) flies to and finally decided to go to Yogyakarta.  We love to take photographs and the mystic of Borobodur attracted us.   We managed to redeem tickets to Yogyakarta for middle of August, a high season for Borobodur. Another plus point the exchange rate was really attractive then. SGD1 was about IDR10k when we went!

Then where to stay?  I am a Hyatt Platinum member due to my frequent business travel.  So I had accumulated some Hyatt points.  Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta is a category one hotel, i.e., require the least number of points for a night’s stay.  I decided to redeem 3 nights stay at the club room.  So we were ready to go!  No cost yet so far except for airline fuel surcharge!  Yippee!??

I surfed the net and decided that we must do a sunrise Borobodur and Sunset Prambanan and Boko tour.  Everything else will need to be worked around these two activities.  Many on tripadvisor recommended renting a car with a driver.  Much cheaper than joining a tour and very flexible.  But I didn’t want just a driver.  I wanted a proper guide to explain to us the meaning of the carvings on the temples, and stories behind the temples and the gods.  Just looking at the carvings would have been totally meaningless to us.  I contacted the Hyatt tour desk and we agreed on an afternoon Prambanan and Boko tour on the day of our arrival and a sunrise Borobodur tour the next day.  Cost for the two private tours for the two of us was IDR2.7M (~SGD270).  Hyatt was only charging IDR200k (~SGD20) for return airport transfer, so we took it too.

We were all set to go!

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Pre-Trip Planning

The Northern Lights is all the rave these days and DH and I have been thinking of going to Northern Europe to catch it.  But somehow there doesn’t seem to be much in Finland or Norway except the lights and I always worry that if I can’t catch it, I’d have realty wasted the trouble and money for making that trip.  Then over a business lunch, a client told me about his trip to Iceland and I was wowed by his photos.  Such dramatic landscape and the chance to see the Northern lights too.  I raved about it to my sister (DSis) and her husband (DBIL) and we just decided that maybe we should just go for it.

So I got the contact of the Iceland local travel agent from my client and got in touch with Heimir of Touring Iceland.   We communicated through emails and Heimir worked out an itinerary for 8 days for us with 2 free days in Reykjavik.  We decided to add on several optional activities to our tour too:

1. Vatnshellir cave
2. Snow mobile ride on Langjökull
3. Ice cave

Total cost of the tour came up to ISK1.600,000 which worked out to be about SGD22,000 for the 4 of us.

We decided to go in March (1-12 March 2017) to still get the winter landscape but yet have longer daylight.    Better for photography.

Next came the airfare.  We decided to take Finnair as it was the shortest in flying time and with 2 long stopovers in Helsinki allowed us to take the oppportinity to explore Helsinki too.  We managed to get very good price for our economy class tickets at just less than SGD1,300 pp.  DH and I decided to fork out an additional EUR50 pp per journey for extra legroom seats for a more comfortable journey.

On our free days in Reykjavik, DBIL did some research and suggested a day trip to Westman Islands.  The other day was for us to go to the Blue Lagoon to enjoy the hot springs.  We booked the Westman Island tour with Eagle Air.  The Blue Lagoon required prebooking as well and we just booked direct on their website.  But we regretted booking it only 2 weeks before the day that we wanted to go.  We had only 8am morning slot or evening slots to choose from.  We went for the morning slot.  The massages were also fully booked by then.  So advice is to book much earlier if you want to go.

Another thing to make sure you have on a trip to Iceland, and especially a winter trip is good hiking shoes.  I got mine from Amazon which had lots of choices.  I picked a pair of Merrill winter hiking boots.  It had good groves and reviews on the internet was good.  A previous reviewer had also wore it on a winter trip to Iceland and had given a good review.  The different colors were priced differently.  I bought the dark brown park at USD79.80.  I would normally have picked a black pair but was not prepared to pay more just for the colour since I don’t think I’ll be using it much.  DH has a pair of winter hiking boots already which is also from Merrill.

Our winter hiking boots

These boots are great. During the trip, they stayed completely dry in snow, slush, mud etc. They also kept my feet warm and were easy to wash as the lower parts are all rubber-like material. The groves of the base were great and managed well even in thick snow. But on icy roads and glaciers, they still need added crampons.

DBIL bought DH and I a hiking stick each for the trip for Christmas!  ????. They proved useful on our hike up the slippery slope to see Svartifoss on that wet day!  He bought them from the China online merchant, Alibaba’s AliExpress.

Then we were the ready to go!

Overall, we had a great, albeit tiring 10 days trip.  We had great weather for the whole trip, which Heimir said was really unusual.   The scenery was amazing.  Such untouch wilderness.  Heimir was great.  He was professional and took pride in his work, adjusting our itinerary along the way according to the weather forecast and we got to see all that we had planned to see in the best weather condition possible for us.  Heimir was simply great!  Highly recommended.

We enjoyed our trip.  I hope your will enjoy reading my sharing in my upcoming posts!

K

Update 14 Dec 2017 : We just found out for Heimir’s wife, Pora, that he passed away in July during an emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain after a fall. It was barely 4 mths after he took us around his beautiful country. This came as a shock as Heimir is such an active and jolly man. Deepest condolences to Pora. Heimir, R.I.P. We’ll always remember you and your beautiful country!

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