Discovery Airpass for Southeast Asia
May 30th, 2008 Posted in Cheap Asia Travel, Long-term travel, Travel bargains
One of the key benefits of backpacking through Southeast Asia is the ability to go overland through a half-dozen countries, by bus or train only. If you’ve got two months or more, it’s wonderful. If you are on a shorter trip, however, you can save a lot of time by taking some short flights.
Travelfish has a great detailed rundown on the Discovery Airpass, a savings coupon system that includes Bangkok Airways, Lao Airlines and Siem Reap Airways. In theory this will meet most of your needs for traveling through Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Plus at the end you can even head out to a few served cities in China or Japan.
You have to buy it outside Thailand, however, and you need to do a little advance planning to make sure you don’t run afoul of the rules and that you actually get the seats you want.
Is it worth it? Travelfish did a rundown on the prices through the air pass and just buying the tickets outright in advance. On domestic routes the savings were just fair: as much as 30 percent but more frequently 5 to 20 percent. Savings were significant on international routes though, as in $55 for Pakse to Phnom Penh and $100 (vs. the usual $170) for Luang Prabang to Hanoi.
With fuel prices continuing to rise, these rates are getting socked with a huge surcharge though that annoyingly isn’t included in the price—anywhere from $9 to $80 (the latter for Japan.) Plus the “bait” part of the price may have changed too by the time you read this. Still, the surcharges are going to be on every ticket, not just these air passes and probably not just these airlines, so if you’re heading that way and intend to take some flights, check into it. The Travelfish rundown also has lots of great info on check-in and baggage requirements (hint–keep your bag under 20 kg).
To get a feel for what a bargain this region is, check out The World’s Cheapest Destinations book.
[photo from Koh Samui Info]
