Which way??

Anyone know where to get cheap air tickets back to Malaysia? maybe to Penang via Singapore??

Been trying to find cheap air tickets to go back Malaysia for Chinese New Year next year.. and I need to decide if I want to stop at Singapore and then take a flight to Penang, instead of flying directly to Penang from Tokyo.. I wanna visit my friends in Singapore during CNY, but I need to find a place to stay too since I no longer have a place to go 'back' to in Singapore.. also I need to decide how many days I will be in Malaysia and how many days in Singapore, if I do drop by Singapore..

The average price for flying directly to KL is around 90,000yen, while flying directly to Singapore is about 65,000yen and the most expensive of them all is to fly directly to Penang, which will cost more than 100,000yen.. :( And if I want to visit friends in Singapore, then I would need to spend additional transportation fare to get from Taiping to Singapore and back again, if I flew straight from Tokyo to Penang.. The air ticket between Singapore and Penang is about SGD485, which will come up to about 37,000yen.. so in a way, it makes more sense flying directly to Singapore and then take a flight from Singapore to Penang for the 'to' trip. And then when I wanna go back Japan, I can fly to Singapore a few days earlier to visit my friends before flying back to Tokyo from Singapore...

The main 'negative' point for the above idea is that the possibility of losing my luggage in any of the flights and the hassle of repacking my luggage on my trip back to Japan while in Singapore..

Which is the best way?? Mmm.. so hard to decide..