Round the world tickets

[_sophie_]

UK - Bangkok - Singapore - Cairns(travel all around the East Coast for about 2 months down to Melbourne then catch flight from Melbourne-Aukland-Nadi-Panama City - L.A - San Francisco - New York - UK
is what i'd really like to do. Couple of questions:
1) Budget is preferably under £1500. Am i best leaving out USA to get nearer to this price?
2) How long in each place? I'm looking to travel for 5-6 months and want to spend 2-3 months of that travelling Oz.
3) Is there anywhere that you can buy a plane ticket that you can catch a flight anywhere to anywhere at any time? Or does it have to be a planned route? If i was in Bangkok, is there a ticket that i can just decide to leave Bangkok whenever and go to the airport and catch the next flight to Singpore or do you have to decide exact dates for when you leave and arrive?
4) Depending on question 3.. if I bought a round the world ticket which had dates and everything decided, but what I want to do is when I get to Cairns I want to travel myself down the East Coast (i.e not fly from each place) and then when i reach melbourne pick up a flight from there again to get to Aukland and so on. Is this possible? How do i do it?
5) How long would it take to travel the East coast of Oz? Is 2-3 months realistic?

Sorry for the questions!!! Thanks for any help!

[LDC134]

Hi Sophie

You are better off buying a round the world ticket, but on your LA / San Francisco part just do on a domestic flight. When you have a rotw ticket you have specific dates on which you fly however, you can pay to have these amended, I think about £50-70 per flight. Bear in mind if you change the first flight, it can have a knock on effect on all the other flights so could end costing more. As I mentioned before, STA Travel would be able to really help you with this information.
I would look at flying into Bangkok and allowing at about 1 month to travel down through Thailand before picking up a flight out of Singapore and into Australia.
2-3 months is plenty of time for the East Coast of Oz - we did Melbourne to Cairns in about 3-4 weeks and had plenty of chilling out time.

[coccinelle]

So you still want to go eastwards? This means wasted time with jetlag.

[LDC134]

i went East and didn't have any jet lag problems !

[237SJ]

I think you would suffer with a bit of jetlag/tiredness whichever way you go. I find going eastwards more tiring even though I don`t suffer with jetlag. It`s probably because most flights that leave the UK for the Far East are night flights so you feel awful for having a night out of bed. Most westwards long haul flights (at least to the States anyway) are daylight flights so you just have to stay up a few hours when you get there and then you can crash out.

[Buenchico]

BA & Qantas operate together (with partner airlines as well) to offer round the world tickets. See here:
http://www.qantas.com.../en?&pcrid=6024910852

Chris

[Hymie]

My understanding of these round-the-world tickets is that one very important condition is that you can only travel in one direction (east or west). Looking at your proposed itinerary, and you break this rule on a number of flights. Of course this could be corrected, but for example you would have to visit San Francisco, L.A. and Panama in that order (heading east).

I have known people who have travelled on such tickets – to get their monies worth, they included many more stops than your proposed itinerary. So I would guess that it might be cheaper to buy the tickets as required – but a good travel agent should be able to advise you of what’s best.

[Buenchico]

Hymie's statement about having to keep travelling in the same direction (east or west) applies to traditional RTW tickets (such as 'OneWorld Explorer' tickets from Qantas) but not to newer products (such as the Qantas World Walkabout ticket).

See my link above for an explanation of the different rules.

[Jet]

www.travel-nation.co.uk

These people are great - they employ people who are very well travelled and will have some great advice for you and be able to answer your questions. excellent rtw tickets. You don't have to buy one of their pre-planned routes, you can make your own route from scratch or add your own thing into/take out what you want from theirs. You can fly into somewhere, travel overland and pick up a flight from another part of the country.

Hope this helps, and hope you have a brilliant time!
Jet

[_sophie_]

Thanks, sounds great!!

[lumination]

hi Sophie, im currently travelling atm and doing almost the same route as what your planning. at the moment im in malaysia.

when you're flying into bangkok would you not want to go cambodia, vietnam and laos as well as thailand? i could have easily spent 1 and a half months doing thailand alone, ive had 3 months in asia now and just finishing up. but if you just want to do thailand then a month is good. maybe add on 8 days for malaysia. stop off at kuala lumpur then head down to singapore for about 4-5 days. (just come from there, its great fun!)

2-3 months just doing the east coast? im doing the east coast in 5 weeks. i think 1 and a half months would be a good time. depends on how many places you want to stop off at...

your budget is going to be more than that for your ticket. my RTW that i bought in May of 2010 was £1700 and that went from Heathrow to Bangkok. Hong Kong to Cairns. Melbourne to Fiji. Fiji to Hawaii. Hawaii to LA. La to Healthrow. if i would have added in NZ i think it would have bumped the price up quite a bit more. however STA travel are having a sale on atm, get yourself to their website!

the answer to question 3 depends on what type of ticket you get.a RTW ticket you need certain dates to travel on. if you change those flights you have to pay a fee.

answer to question 4 is easy. you dont have to fly everywhere. my ticket at the start was from heathrow to Bangkok. my next flight on my RTW ticket is from Hong Kong to Cairns. so since i landed in bangkok ive gone through cambodia, laso, vietnam, thailand, malaysia and singapore. im getting a small flight which IS NOT included in the RTW ticket from kuala lumpur to Hong Kong where i will stya for a week then get on my RTW ticket flight to Cairns. (i hope that made sense!)

any questions? hahaha