Planning for a Weekend Trip-Penang?

We love living in Singapore. One of the clear winners on our front is the rise in budget airlines flying in and out of Singapore. Coupled with my frequent travel around the region for work, Jeff's flexibility using a work from home model and the wealth of travel options around Singapore (don't believe me, check out Wild Junket's post on 10 New Ideas for a Weekend Getaway).

The last trip we took, to Yogjakarta using hotel points and budget airlines was a super bargin at around $800 US for 4 nights five days at a 5 Star Hotel. We want to travel but we want to do it on the cheap. Our plans for our next trip usually start within days of our return from the last trip. We end up spending time dreaming and surfing the net looking for fun spots to visit, we look at my work schedule and where I need to travel over the next few months and then finally we look at the kid's school schedule to see when they have time off. The next logical determination is can we combine the two?

I am needing to do a trip to Penang in order to train some of the employees we have in our North Malaysia office. This training needs to be done sometime in the next few months so I confirmed that the first week of May works for the staff in Penang and the last day of April is a holiday in Singapore so the kids get the day off. So putting two and two together. Looks like we have a weekend we can get away. Our last trip to Penang with the family was in 2005. Lots has changed since then, we know much more about Penang and were to go and what to do. I was back in Penang last year for work and had a blast visiting tons of great foodie spots. As our little creatures are beyond just the beach at this age- we can't wait.


Now, we are looking into flights (Air Asia is looking to be a winner again) our current booking looks like it can be done for around $350 Singapore Dollars (about $250 US). Next step is to find some hotels. We often look at hoteltravel.com to check prices and then we compare them against either rates I get from my corporate accounts or from membership deals. If all goes as planned and the deals can be done we should be hanging on the beach at Batu Ferrenghi and having some most awesome Chicken Rice soon!

Pictures of the kids from 2005.