I’m a Sarawakian studying in KL and I’m currently looking at flight tickets to go back home for semester break. The prices are honestly insane… almost RM900 per person.
I’ll be travelling with my little brother too, so it’s gonna cost around RM1.8k just for both of us to go home. Mind you, these prices are from third party booking websites😭 If I check the actual AirAsia or MAS website, it’s even more expensive.
At this point, with RM1.8k, we could literally fly to Thailand. Even flying to Singapore is cheaper than flying back to our own home state.
I know peak season affects prices and all, but it genuinely feels unfair that East Malaysians have to pay this much just to balik kampung 
How do other Sabahans/Sarawakians studying or working in WM deal with this? Do you guys just book months earlier or is this just the reality now?
[UPDATE]
First of all, didn’t expect this post to get so many replies since this is literally my first time posting on this subreddit 
I was genuinely shocked when I saw the prices because when I went back during CNY, it honestly wasn’t this expensive. I think I was just frustrated and wanted to rant a bit while also hearing other people’s perspectives.
A lot of people mentioned booking earlier, and that’s fair. The thing is, while we do have an academic calendar, our actual exam schedules only come out later in the semester since every course has papers on different dates. My little brother and I are taking different courses too, so we had to sync our schedules to figure out when we could travel back together. For those who ask me to avoid holiday season, well, I’m a student. That means the holiday i get is only during the holiday season.
On top of that, I’m actively involved in events here and was waiting for some schedules to be confirmed before deciding when I needed to come back to KL. Somehow everything decided to fall perfectly on public holidays also.
But genuinely, thank you for all the kind responses, advice, and even the reality checks. We’re all just figuring life out for the first time and nobody gets everything right immediately. This will definitely be a lesson for me (a very expensive one huhu😭) and I’ll keep all the advice in mind and plan better next time.
Also, a lot of you mentioned FlySiswa and the Mhexplorer, so I’ll definitely check that out as well. Thank you again for all the help 
At the end of the day though, no matter how expensive the tickets are, my parents are expecting me to go home and I genuinely miss home a lot
Take care everyone and hope life treats you kindly 