[naveenvenkatesh]

I am planning a trip to South east Asia this November. I have 15 days to spend, and would like suggestions from tbhpians on which places are most suitable for this trip.
It will be me and my wife.
I have spoken to Thomas Cook, Cox and Kings, Travel Guru etc. Most of these are escorted tours and i feel the schedule was very tight.Plus the hotels that they have mentioned don't seem to be too good. The theme is more or less common for all these. They take us to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Also, the food will be mostly in India hotels!
I was planning to Bali, Phuket and Singapore. I need a more relaxed schedule.

Please help. What is the best way to plan this? Can we book the hotels from here and visit the places ourselves?

MODS: Please move this to the appropriate thread if needed!

[rjstyles69]

naveen traveling in south east asia is pretty easy and simple. Needs to be explored and is a whole lot of fun while doing that. Going thru travel agencies will cost you a little extra and also that their schedules are quite cramped.
Best is to plan your trip as per your needs with the list of countries you intend to visit , airlines you wanna fly on and above all your total budget.

Let us know what all countries you wanna visit and your budget, based on which we can guide you.

[naveenvenkatesh]

@ rjstyles69, the current, tentative schedule is Singapore - Malaysia - Bali/Phuket. The budget is about 1.5 lacs. And plan is to cover these in 13-14 days. Does this sound reasonable?

Also, are there any return flights to Bangalore from Bali or does it make sense to go back to Singapore and fly back home?

Need some guidance here.

[harjeev]

Hey Naveen
As rjstyles has said, traveling in south east asia is not a pain. Though the number of destinations that you have chosen would slightly increase your cost in airfare. What advantage you have now is that airasia has started its flights operations from india and they are quite cheap compared to full service airlines. Try them out
My advise would be to spend atleast 4 days at any location that you would visit to get a complete feel of the place.


Booking should go on like this

• first finalise the dates and then try to get air tickets reserved for the mentioned dates.
• Once that is done sort out the visas. for thailand I am sure that you get visa on arrival but am not sure about Malaysia and Singapore.
• After the visa is done then go searching for hotel fares on the internet. For this dont limit yourself to indian sites, go to travel sites like trip advisor and virtualtourist and get a feel of the hotel, read the reviews that other travellers have posted and then see if the hotels have a direct reservation system (these days most of them have one). Once you have the rates from the hotels directly then compare the rates from hotel booking sites like agoda, which I find to be the best and have been using them for the past 7 years.
• After all this buy foreign currency and go and have fun.

Sometimes shooting an email to the hotel directly also gets you a good deal. There is no harm in that so why not try that too.

Cheers


EDIT:
I just did a simple search on travelocity for DEL-KUL-SIN-KUL-DEL for the month of November 2010 and the fare is working out to be 18839
Heres a printshot of the fare. Check it out

[sucka]

Hi Naveen,

travelling southeast asia should be pretty easy. and at times calling up a travel agency is better than searching online ,as your itenary would include multiple stops and most of the online searches would either give exorbitant prices for the same or will give some stupid itenaries .
If you could also lemme know the areas of interest (shopping, sight seeing , activites etc. ) and the kind of hotels(star ratings ) that you would prefer then i can recommed you some hotels or areas to stay in.
its always a good idea to check online about the places you want to visit and what all is there to do.

flying to bangkok/Phuket/singapore/kuala lumpur should cost you about 25000/person for flights etc. and the rest of the money you can use towards your stay and other expenses.

the hotels prices would be on a slightly higher side than in September as they tend to go up from 1st Nov Onwards.

lemme know if you need any help on anything else

Cheers !!!!!

[naveenvenkatesh]

@ Harjeev, Thanks for the info. The dates are almost finalised. It will be 30th Oct to 13th Nov. Also, the schedule will be BLR-SIN-BALI-MAL-PHUKET-SIN-BLR.
i have checked the fares for BLR-SIN. It will be about 35-36K for 2, including all taxes. I am now checking the fares for traveling within that region.
So point no 1 in your list is done. I will reconfirm with my wife and book the tickets.
I will then look at booking tickets for travel within the south east.

[naveenvenkatesh]

@Sucka, The travel would be mostly for sight seeing, relaxation and also some shopping ( this part completely depends on my wife! ).
I am looking at trip adviser now for hotel deals. I am mostly checking 3-4 star hotels. I want really clean, very well maintenance hotels even if they are a bit pricey.
The plan, as i mentioned in my previous post is to fly to Singapore on 30th. The almost finalised schedule is as follows:

30th Oct: Singapore: Arrive at Singapore. Check into the hotel and relax. Go out in the evening and explore.
Stay in Singapore till 3rd.
Depart on 3rd to Bali. Check in the stay till 6th.
Depart to Malaysia on 6-7th. Stay in Malaysia till 9th.
Leave for Phuket on 9th and arrive in Phuket on 9th
Stay in Phuket till 12th
Arrive in Singapore on 13th and catch the plane to Bangalore.

Does this look like a doable plan or is it too tight?

[naveenvenkatesh]

Guys, Can you give any more inputs on this?

[rjstyles69]

Originally Posted by naveenvenkatesh

30th Oct: Singapore: Arrive at Singapore. Check into the hotel and relax. Go out in the evening and explore.
Stay in Singapore till 3rd.
Depart on 3rd to Bali. Check in the stay till 6th.
Depart to Malaysia on 6-7th. Stay in Malaysia till 9th.
Leave for Phuket on 9th and arrive in Phuket on 9th
Stay in Phuket till 12th
Arrive in Singapore on 13th and catch the plane to Bangalore.

Does this look like a doable plan or is it too tight?

Looks perfect except for this leg.

Stay in Phuket till 12th
Arrive in Singapore on 13th and catch the plane to Bangalore.

I wonder why you wanna fly back to Singapore ? Take a flight from Phuket to Bangkok and then back to Bangalore.

Otherwise

1- Bangalore -- Singapore
2- Singapore -- Bali
3 - Bali -- KL
4 - KL -Phuket
5 - Phuket --Bangkok--Bangalore.

You haven't told us which airlines you are flying once you land in Singapore. For your reference I am adding the AirAsia routes, Check this link : http://www5.airasia.com/site/my/en/p...rence=routemap .
Click on a city and it shows the routes.
Once there most of these flights is less than 2 hours and you can fly budget airlines if you wished to and save some money.
Spend that money on shopping for your better half and come back and give us a wonderful travelogue .

[naveenvenkatesh]

rjstyles, I was just discussing the same points with my wife. We will go to Bangkok and catch a plane to Bangalore.

I am looking at air asia for all the travel within that region.

Anyway, looks like my parents and sister will be joining us. So, we may leave in January.

In that case, me and my wife will go to Bali/Mauritius/Maldives this November.

[saion666]

Can anyone please give some guidelines for Philippines. I couldn't find a single thread on Philippines in TeamBHP!!! This is the first time I will be going somewhere without a teambhp travelogue.

Please give me the link to any thread if am missing out somewhere.

Plans are to visit Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Bohol, Coron and around Manila.

[saion666]

Did the Philippines trip in end of January,2016. It's an amazing country.
I am too busy/lazy to put a travelogue,however my wife did put up a blog which am sharing here to help anyone planning to visit Philippines from India.

http://www.lifeflicker.com/a-lesser-...-knows-no-end/

All pics were taken by me .
A teaser photo: