I often tell my children that they would be wise to learn from other people's mistakes because they won't have time to make them all themselves! I don't always follow my own advice. You know that old adage 'If you get the same feedback from several sources, then its probably true'? We were told repeatedly that you need to book travel well in advance for Chinese New Year. Somehow I did little more than note that advice and toss it out to Jeff in that "Do you think there's anything to this?" kind of way.
CNY roughly corresponds to mid-winter break though its placement moves, like Hannukah or Passover. CNY is THE big holiday in China - like Christmas in the US. For six weeks preceding the stores are overflowing with red and gold everything. There are more shoppers, more traffic, more chaos (hard to imagine more chaos in China, but its true). When the actual holiday hits - everyone disperses. The expats leave the country. This is no time to travel within China as the Chinese people all travel home to rural areas to see their families: parents, wives, children. Many workers here only see their families once a year.
Though gifts are exchanged during CNY, it is really more about the cash. Cash is not just preferred, in some cases it is required. It is a criminal offense for a chinese '(adult) child' not to financially support his/her parents. I had to put that in bold because it is such an astounding statement. What does that mean? To financially support them? It means that you give your parents one-month's worth of salary - in cash - and that is what your parents live on over the coming year. This puts a whole new spin on that one-child policy. When hiring our ayi, I interviewed 5 women. Every one of them asked me if I agreed to pay the CNY bonus - which is......one month's salary! Fortunately, I had a guide who made it clear to me that this was standard. It went in the contract. I did not know at the time that my ayi would not actually get any of this money, but that it would be directly given to her parents. This is, of course, true of all Chinese and so there is a large increase in petty thefts at this time of year. Imagine getting on a train and knowing that just about every person on that train heading to the countryside has a huge wad of cash on their personhood.
So, back to the travel issues. By well in advance, I later learned, 'they' meant a year ahead of time. Apparently, most people book next year's CNY plans right now! That is a tough nut for this family who goes about vacation planning in a much more laissez-faire manner. This advice was also dished out for the October holiday and Christmas holiday breaks, albeit less definitively. In October, as you know, we went to Hong Kong. We booked the flights and hotels the day before we left. No problem. This served to further entrench our laid back planning approach. Christmas break: Cambodia. Not only did we book it very close to departure, we didn't even secure hotels for the whole stay before we left! Played it by ear, worked out. Strategy still good.
At least considering the advice of the masses, in the beginning of January we did some initial investigation into February options. I had zoned in on the perfect choice post-oppressive Cambodia: Laguna Beach Resort in Phuket, Thailand. When we tried to make reservations, no luck. Completely booked. Hmmm. So I began to look at other hotel options in the area only to find that they were all completely booked. So we set our sites elsewhere (by that I should say everywhere) - Vietnam? Singapore? Phillipines? Ceba? Malaysia? Indonesia? Ok, Bali it is. Found some really cool hotel options. But - no ability to get flights. Wow. Tougher than we thought.
Then 'people' began to tell us to not worry. Many people book multiple places a year ahead of time (there's the trick - no real decision needs to be made, just a few options) and then cancel out of all but one a few weeks before. So we set aside the planning and waited until last week when we kicked it into gear again. There were several days where both Jeff and I, at whatever available slots of time in our days/nights were dutifully searching hotels, flights, hotels, flights, hotels, flights. Argh. Ok - ask the travel agents. Not even they could come up with good options for us, and we asked five! We had a couple almosts with the flight - by that I mean we found the flight and by the time we hit 'book online' they either disappeared or tripled in cost. I was beginning to think this was the year we would experience Chinese New Year IN Shanghai as I am told we should do once before we leave. And just as we were about to give up, we peeked back at the Laguna Beach Resort in Phuket and sure enough, they had a few rooms available. Furthermore, Jeff found flights that were not full of strange detours or overly priced. So at long last, we booked the vacation we initially decided upon.
Hmmm. So what do you think? Does this mean our strategy is still effective? Did we err by not booking sooner? Or by bothering to look in early January at all? Perhaps I will ponder this while relaxing on the beach in beautiful Phuket!
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