Traveling through S.E.A + South Pacific

[tuge]

My friend and I are planning a 6 month trip around South East Asia and Australia/New Zealand. We will be traveling with a very tight budget. We've been looking into RTW prices, and they all seem to be pretty pricey. There's another option that we're considering, which is to purchase a one way ticket to our first destination, then purchase another one way ticket back home and just buy tickets to different parts of the countries while we're there. Here is a rough idea of the places we're planning on going to. Just wondering what people think and if you can point me to some good sites with affordable flights.

Option 1:
Purchase a one way ticket to London and from there, purchase a ticket into Bangkok.

Option 2: Purchase a one way ticket into Bangkok and during our return home, purchase a one way ticket from Sydney back to Vancouver.

Places to we're planning on going to:
Thailand
Cambodia
Laos
Vietnam
Philippines
Hong Kong
Singapore
Malaysia
Nepal
Australia
New Zealand
Fiji

Also, if anyone has done a 6 month trip through these countries, what was your budget like? How much money would you recommend we bring?

[TheJake]

Very Industrious plan! I like it!

I've not spent any amount of time in any of em so I'm useless for info on this one. Hopefully some others will come around but in the meantime I encourage you to use the search! I guarantee you'll find all you want to know about the budgets in the countries listed!

Welcome to travelpunk and I hope you enjoy the fray!

[SGRHewitt]

Sometimes countries require you to have a return ticket already. Not sure in this case, but its something to look for, for your arrival city/country.

[mbo108]

Have you tried looking at AirTreks for your RTW ticket? I know some of the prices seem step at the time, but overall with the distance you'll be covering are usually a good deal. SGRHewitt also makes a good point of some countries needing to see an onward ticket to allow entrance. I've read of this policy in the past but have never been asked about it at Immigration. Then again I've never been to SE Asia.

One blog to take a look at is http://pagingmrmorrow.blogspot.com/. I know the brother of the guy on this trip. A lot of your early destinations overlap and they are doing this trip as we speak so you could find some up-to-date information on there. I'm sure if you left a comment or email they'd respond within a few days.

Good luck with all your planning!

[millmuff]

Hey tuge, nice to hear about your plans. 6 months is a good amount of time to get around there. I have a some what similar situation so I might be able to help.

I left last Oct from Calgary on a RTW ticket. The price was about $4000. My flight consisted of:

Calgary
Fiji
Auckland-Overland-Christchurch
Sydney
Bangkok
Osaka-overland-Tokyo
Shanghai
Frankfurt

I could have jammed a few more flights in with my deal expecially in SEA but it kind of defeats the purpose of travel when you just fly from city to city. Most of mine is over land. Currently I'm in Lao right now after about a month and a half in Thailand. I'm not doing any of the Phillipines, Malaysia, Indo, etc but I do have several travellers I'm in touch with that are there right now.

You've got kind of a tough situation with your flights because with separate flights or a RTW your going to be throwing down a lot of cash. You might be able to get away with songle flights here and there for cheaper but it's really hard to tell until your doing it. On the other hand RTW tickets make it tough sometime to go from point A to point B overland because they force you to use certain airlines that might not fly into specific cities. Put down a rough itinerary of where you migh fly in and out of and then see what airline go in and out of those cities.....I know it's tedious.Also keep in mind that once your into SEA most of it will be over land..if you want to actually see the countries.

I gotta go but let me know if you have a question and I'll try and get back.

[emilyhanna]

Thanks a lot for the blog link! What a great resource.