Here’s a potentially money saving tip for your next Southeast Asia trip: Get the cheapest airplane ticket you can to the region (ie Bangkok, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur) and then separately purchase an onwards ticket to your other regional destination(s) on a low cost carrier.
Southeast Asia is rife with budget airlines operating frequent schedules with decently-reliable service. One-way tickets within the region go for as little as $100, $50 or even less. We once flew from Luang Prabang (Laos) to Hanoi for $28 and have seen domestic flights within Indonesia for $5!
Here’s our rundown of some of Southeast Asia’s budget airlines, subjectively arranged from the most to least useful:
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Pets can make absolutely wonderful travel companions. The process of finding pet-friendly accommodations, however, can be a less-than-wonderful experience. Fortunately there are several websites that specialize in helping your little Rover or Fluffy enjoy your vacation along with you.
Reviews of our favorites:
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We are surprised how often we meet people heading off on a nice, reasonably expensive holiday with cheap sunglasses. Their logic goes something like this: I’m afraid of something happening to my sunglasses, and I might loose them, and since all sunglasses are basically the same I’ll just get cheap ones.
Well, besides the fact that most cheap sunglasses are usually also cheap looking, the problem with skimping on your sunglasses is that they will certainly cause more damage to your eyes than not wearing sunglasses at all.
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When we traveled as backpackers in our early 20’s Spot Cool Stuff was happy to slog through airports. Back then we took some perverse pride in coping with uncomfortable travel conditions. These days, wiser and more monied, we would not take an airplane trip without our Priority Pass card.
One magical membership in the Priority Pass program grants you entrance to exclusive airline lounges throughout the world regardless of what airline or class you are flying.
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Spot Cool Stuff’s single favorite piece of travel writing, the David Foster Wallace essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, is a humorous accounting of the absurd side of taking a cruise—that part of cruising in which overweight Hawaiian shirt-wearing passengers are herded between crowded shuffleboard tables, bad buffets and overpriced tourist-trap shore excursions.
Your next cruise needn’t be like that. Your cruise can (and should!) be a fun thing you’ll want to do again. And that fun, interesting cruise can also represent an excellent travel value. Our tips for finding cool, yet affordable, cruises:
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There are thousands of websites where you can research trip ideas (Spot Cool Stuff’s own travel blog not least among them) and hundreds of websites where you make your trip reservations—from general booking engines like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to niche sites like Cruise Direct, Mr & Mrs Smith and HostelBookers, to a site like Tripology that will hook you up with a travel specialist for free.
But what after your accommodations are booked, after your travel guidebook is bought, after your general itinerary is set and after you’ve left for your trip? What are some useful sites for while you are traveling?
Here is a selection of our favorites for doing the following from the road:
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