It’s not uncommon to hear about “budget travel deals”, or how-to’s on how to travel cheap. Most travelers plan their trips around a budget. And that includes us.

As part of the strategy to travel cheap we asked my dad if I can use up some of his free frequent flyer miles, even for just a one-way trip to Malaysia. Before we filled up the necessary forms and have my dad sign the documents we went to a Philippine Airlines Mabuhay Miles Customer Support office.

When it was our turn my wife, Jam, went up to the counter and inquired about the requirements, what forms are needed to be filled up, how much (miles) it would cost for a one-way trip to Singapore, etc. To that last question the customer support staff told her they don’t allow one-way trips for redemption of the free miles. That’s weird. I mean, the account holder should have the choice as to how he would use his own accumulated frequent flyer miles. Telling us we couldn’t use the free miles for a one-way trip left a bad taste in my mouth.

So it wouldn’t look rude, or whatever, Jam decided to let her do her spiel (hehe, kidding) and asked her about the details of what our available options are. We needed 40,000 miles — 2 persons, roundtrip. The remaining frequent flyer miles my dad has is just 35,589 miles. What we can do, the support staff said, is to buy miles to be added to the 35k remaining.

“OK, how do we go about that?” asked Jam.

“You can purchase additional 4,000+ miles, to get a total of 40,000+ miles to be used for your trip,” Ms. Ground Staff said.

“Can you write all the details down?” Jam asked, offering Ms. Ground Staff her little Post-It note.

Ms. Ground Staff proceeded to write down details (numbers = cost) like 35,589 miles, $135 (cost of 4,000 miles), $17 (12% VAT), P4,536/pax X 2 = P9,072 (for the 2 of us), P5,583 ($135), P670 ($17) along with the explanations of the computations.

Total cash we need to lay out just to redeem the (start sarcasm here) “free” (end sarcasm here) miles would be P15,000 ($365.85 @ $1 = P41) more or less. This does not include the travel tax and airport fees.

Fine, off we go, politely saying thank you to Ms. Ground Staff (while silently cursing under our breath, bleh) and proceeded to continue running other errands for the day. Last stop was my parents’ house. First chance we got we checked the websites of Air Asia (Clark – Kuala Lumpur – Clark) and Tiger Airways (Clark – Singapore – Clark) for roundtrip fares.

• Tiger Airways: P13,552 ($330.53 @ $1 = P41)
• Air Asia: P12,006 ($292.82 @ $1 = P41)

Now that’s cheap.

Next step: flight booking and initial travel itinerary plans…