Our family are all members of Krisflyer, SQ’s frequent flyer programme. Although SQ is not known to be generous with their miles, it still pays to get yourself enrolled in the programme and have your miles credited whenever you fly. While DH and I clock a decent number of points from our business travel and credit card spendings, it is less so for my kids. But they still have miles from our annual family vacation. In 2015, the kids have some miles that were going to expire. Each of them had enough points to redeem a one way ticket to either Malaysia or Indonesia. This was despite having used their miles the year before for our Borneo trip. So DH and I decided to use their miles this time round for a short getaway for just the 2 of us by topping up another one way ticket with DH’s miles. ??
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!