We spent about a week for this year end trip to Shanghai which we spent on en route leading to Christmas day.

It was a nice spot between not overly long distance trip and also where the budget allows so we have chosen Shanghai as our ideal destination for this year.

We had so much fun exploring the city in a pretty unfashionable way that it feels a lot like an adventure. The goal here is to explore like the local so we went to places which a lot of locals went to.

We walked a lot using our Google maps through the vpn channel which I thought was pretty reliable.

Since this is a personal finance blog, I'd do a recap of how much we spent on each category in general so we know how much to cater and budget the next time we travel.

This is a trip for 5 pax, which includes two young children and we also brought our maid to tag along with us for the trip.

Flight Ticket = SGD 340 (with 200,000 miles) 

Flight tickets are usually the main costs of the bulk here so we wanted to make sure we spent as least as possible on this category so we could have a bigger budget for the other categories.

We've been a milers for a number of years now and we wanted to take opportunity to redeem the miles since it was a peak season during Christmas which means price tickets are rocket sky high during these periods.

We managed to use our krisflyer miles for a return SQ economy saver ticket which we have accumulated and it costs us a total of 200,000 miles (40,000 miles x 5 pax).

The tax and other clearance took up another SGD 340 (SGD 76 x 3 adults + SGD 52 x 2 children).

Accommodation = SGD 62.33

Accommodation is another category we wanted to spend as little as possible as we'd be out exploring for much of the day.

Still, we wanted to find a place which is comfortable to sleep, near the public transport and plenty of amenities around.

After searching for a while, I was also able to secure a value stay deal for 7 nights stay which came up to $62.33 in total for all of us, after including the discount deals.

If we were to book a hotel, we would have to book for 2 rooms which can add up quite a bit.


The Airbnb we booked had an excellent reviews and a very nice host which we constantly kept in contact via we chat.

The place was located within the vicinity of mrt Station (Xiuyuan Road), which is very near the airport and Disneyland. This is almost similar to the Tampines equivalent of Singapore.

If this is your first time, do try out my link Here and you'll get instant credits immediately for your booking. You can also PM me in case you are interested to book a similar listing for your future trips.


Transportation = SGD 160

We took the mrt and walk a lot for the most part of our trip here.

The mrt fare was pretty cheap here at about 5Yuan/pax.

We took the taxi on several occasions during our trip when the kids were done walking and KO-ed but it didn't add up massively over at the end.

Overall, we spent at approximately less than SGD 160 for all our modes of transportation.

Food & Beverages = SGD 750

This is one segment which we had a low tolerance on and decide to go for all out spending on this category.

For breakfast, we mostly had bread and some fruits like strawberry and tomato which we bought at a shop near our home.

For lunch, we mostly settle for some random noodle stalls when we go out. The only time lunch was over the budget was when we had to go to places like Disneyland which they charge crazy premium on their food and beverages.

For dinner, we mostly had dinner at restaurants near our home which charged in general at about less than 200Yuan.

We also had to stop for numerous counts of coffee and hot chocolate everyday without fail.








Activities & Entertainment = SGD 470

We had these main itineraries scheduled during our trip:

Disneyland Shanghai

We had a lot of expectations for this latest Disney Park and it didn't disappoint.

There were a lot of new themes which we didn't previously encountered during our trip to HK Disneyland, some of them like Marvels, Tron and Star Wars which we saw and like.

We also went strategically during a weekday so the crowd was still within expectation (most rides were within 20 minutes). We even had the chance to meet Captain America, Thor, Dr Strange and Mickey and had the chance to chat up with them!

We bought the tickets at Klook for SGD 171 during the 12.12 sale which we were further entitled to the 12% discounts. Kids below the requirement heights are free so my younger son goes in for free.




Shanghai Wild Animal Park

Ticket costs us at Y110 for each pax and again the youngest one gets in for free.

The park was extremely huge and it was a very nice stroll at the park with one exhibition rather a distance from one another.

Plenty of the enclosures were also in close distance where we were able to feed food to the animals like the lion, tiger and elephants.

This is probably the best wild Park I've ever been out of all the zoo and wild parks visited in the past.





Peppa Pig World Play

This is a theme park for the younger children out of a franchise from the popular UK Peppa Pig theme.

This indoor playground was located at LCM mall which is rather on the North side so we went up to explore and it was a good adventure.

The playground and mall itself was huge and they have some entertaining shops to roam around.

Tickets for all of us add up to about Yuan 530, which is about SGD 100.



Mini Mars

This was another popular indoor playground for the kids which is one of the largest in the city.

It is also located at Jing An Sports Center, which is a 10 min walk from the West Nanjing Road and is 2 storey high with multi-facet themes.

We incurred about Y530 or SGD100 for tickets for all of us.



Gifts & Others = SGD 170

On the other categories, we bought a pokemon theme bed sheet for our new home and also a few toys for the kids for their Xmas presents.

Overall

Our total spending in terms of cash outflow was around SGD 1,952.33 for this trip, which is just below the $2k mark we expected.

This was pretty much due to the relatively cheap accommodation deal we've got as well as using the miles for our trip which we didn't have to incur a high spending on this category.

It was a good trip for everyone at the end and one which we really enjoyed for a year end wind down before the new year starts.