We’ve normally always started putting together our plans for our year-end vacation in the second half of the year – i.e. in June–July. This year, we started super early! This has been in part because we’d just be doing a short holiday in June as both kids would be taking their national exams this year. So, we only have one major holiday to plan.
Since 2021, I’d also been preparing drawer itineraries that we can pull out and compare before deciding which one to do up detailed versions for. So, for December 2025, there have been several itineraries that I’d been working on. We also have a slightly longer period of up to 20 days to work with this time too. These itineraries include:
Returning to South Korea, and this time covering Jeju (6 days), then traveling back to Seoul and pivoting eastwards to the coastal cities of Gangneung (4 days) and Sokcho (4 days), then returning westwards back to Seoul for 5 days. We would have enjoyed a cold and subzero climate, and since we’re familiar with the country already from 2024, detailed planning would have been pretty easy. One tricky bit though was getting into Jeju at our preferred timings: the only direct flight from Singapore to Jeju is through Scoot, and they don’t fly there every day. But we figured out an option to fly into Gimhae International Airport in Busan, then take a separate short flight from Busan to Jeju.
Chongqing/Chengdu in China, including Chongqing (4 days), a Yangtze River cruise (3 days), Yichang (3 days), Jiuzhaigou (4 days), then finishing in Chengdu (5 days). This one was always a bit iffy: the sights in this trip would have been stunning and beautiful, and the expenditure would have been comparatively low. But I had to get past my hesitation about visiting a country where I’ve had some reservations about, people-wise. But this trip finally turned out to be a non-starter as the wife saw several videos about the fake food and cuisine that is apparently common in China, and she put a hard stop to any consideration of a China vacation.
Japan: and for that, I worked on three itineraries: one that covers Okayama (5 days), Hiroshima (4 days), Nagasaki (4 days), and finishing in Fukuoka (5 days). The thing is, I’ve already done Okayama and Hiroshima in 2019, so half of the trip would have been covering familiar ground. The second was the Tohoku area which none of us had visited before: Sendai (4 days), Akita (3 days), Fukushima (3 days), Yamagata (3 days) and finishing in Tokyo (6 days). The third and most developed one was Kyushu: Kagoshima (4 days), Yakushima Island (3 days), Miyazaki (5 days), Oita (3 days), and finishing in Fukuoka (4 days). All of these Japanese trips would have been from $16K and upwards in expenditure though; i.e. pretty costly.
Taiwan. This one was a very late inclusion that I only started working on a few days ago, and is turning into the most likely possibility now. We visited Taiwan in 2018 and covered the northern half of the country, incidentally also where the most popular places of interest are for visitors. Our return trip would have seen us cover the southern half of the island, and also various places in the Taipei area that we skipped in 2018. The itinerary includes Hualien (3 days), Taitung (5 days), Kaohsiung (4 days), Alishan (3 days), and finishing in Taipei (6 days). The trip would have also been reasonably affordable, though the weather would be just cool and not cold. No chance of snow either – nooooo LOL.
It’s probably going to be a toss-up between South Korea or Taiwan, and we’re going to have to decide in a week or so. Compared to Japan, flights to Taiwan and South Korea are reasonably easy to reserve and less painful to decide on account of their relatively lower cost. More to come, very soon!