7 Day Surprise
28 Feb
Starting today (28 Feb.) “Tiger Airways”:http://tigerairways.com/ is running different daily promotions — if the first one is anything to go by, they’re pretty good. For 28 Feb. the deal is: book today, fly to Hat Yai or Phuket for S$9.98 one way. Why should that matter? Phuket is a no-brainer; but in flying to Hat Yai.. you can then go west from there and go to Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta, or Koh Lipe, or go east, and land yourself in Koh Phangan or Koh Samui. All of them beautiful islands. Either way, it’s still a shorter journey than flying to Bangkok and coming down south.
In general, Tiger’s S$9.98 deals to Thailand end up being about S$58 with taxes included (one way), S$98 if you book the return trip at S$9.98 too. As someone who took the road up before the tickets got so cheap, I can tell you: pay the extra $20-something for the one way journey to Hat Yai, spare your butt the 16 hours (16 or more, I forget: I didn’t have the stomach to do that, so bussed Singapore-KL, and trained KL-Hat Yai instead; I need a bed and aircon), get to The Beach faster and spend more time in the sun.
Tiger is OK. A little cramped, but OK. I flew with them to Chiang Mai. Both flights were delayed by about 30-45 minutes, check in was more chaotic than I would have liked. For budget airlines I love “Jetstar Asia”:http://jetstarasia.com/ — they have _assigned seats_. No mad rush at boarding. And they fly to India. Tiger is starting flights to Chinese destinations (Haikou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou), which can only mean things are getting interesting for us in the region. One could, for example, reasonably hope to fly to Hanoi, and “take a train to China”:http://www.seat61.com/Vietnam.htm, and fly back home — all on the same airline! I like some full service airlines for when I stay put in one place. Which I rarely ever. Booking the return journey from another city (or country) is too prohibitively expensive. But I digress.
This post will be updated as the new promotions unfold.
I wrote this, of course, with certain university students planning their after-final-exam bash in mind. Too bad I’m going to be “somewhere”:http://www.kingdomofbhutan.com/ “else”:http://www.incredibleindia.org/ during the travel promotion period. :)
For more information on travel to Thailand, there’s no better place than “Travelfish”:http://www.travelfish.org/country/thailand, which is excellent on Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos too; sign up as a member to use the eFish feature to generate PDF guidebooks. For the islands their “section”:http://www.travelfish.org/islands.php is pretty informative — but you can’t really go wrong with a Thai island. Except maybe Samui and Phuket. In general, stay off the ‘main’ beaches (like White Sands in Koh Chang, and Haad Rin in Koh Phangan) unless you like 7-Elevens, litter in your beach, and overpriced accommodation.
Why am I telling you this? Because I don’t want to study for my midterms. Sigh.
