This year I was contemplating between 3 places for a family vacation. Japan, Africa or Indonesia. Son and hubby were keen on Japan, I was on Africa, but then went with the majority and we locked on Japan. Now, it's the planning and booking stage since we plan to travel end of May. Normally, I like to design my own travel plan and do online bookings directly. I was in a thought that Japan would be a complicated place to plan by self, so I reached out to a tour operator. The costing she gave me for the 3 of us, exceeds far more then my planned budget. I was in 2 minds then whether to travel or not or make a change in destination.

But before making any change I thought of checking it myself. I used AI to get help planning with the itinerary, and I had a very good output on the search engine, giving me exact details of every place, where to visit, how to travel, the cost associated with travel, sightseeing, hotel options and perfectly designing the itinerary for me in a manner which will be time effective also. I was quiet surprised with the search results. I started with Tokyo and then the other places.

I realized it was not complicated at all. Japan has a good public transport system, and yes it is expensive but not the kind of what quote I received from the tour operator. I am sure they have their margins but then the cost was way too high then what I figured it out myself. Also the hotels she offered are super expensive and also the size of the rooms is small. I checked for some Airbnb rentals, and I could find some apartments at half the cost and double the room size, which makes so much sense to me.

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Planning by self is a headache but then you can save on a lot of money that's for sure. Now my tour cost is fitting into my budget exactly what I had decided, and saving me a little money as well. Right now I am gathering all the information and putting it together. Once all is done, then the first thing I need to do is book the flights. 10 days back I had checked the flight prices were little low then compared to what I am getting now, so I do not wish to delay it any more and book it in a day or two itself.

Though it feels too much of a work, I enjoy planning my travel itineraries, because it helps me decide exactly which places I want to see, and it also gives me freedom to move my daily plans a bit here and there. During my holiday to Turkey, we had taken a few SIC excursions, and some of them were disappointing, because they focused on taking us more to shops then actual sights to visit. The tour guide gets their commission if we do shopping in these places, so they purposely plan it. And trust me the shops they took us to were super expensive, where we found stuff that was being sold at 3 to 4 times the price of what you would get in a local market.

In 2 to 3 days time, I should be able to finalize my itinerary, book my flight tickets and block my stays. Then rest of the things like booking the attractions tickets I will do it in the next couple of weeks. Let's see how it goes.

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