About 5 years ago, I decided that I wanted to travel to Southeast Asia. The reason? Just to explore and expose myself to something totally new. It was important for me to do this in order to grow intellectually and have a better understanding of other cultures as well as my own. So I started researching flight costs on the Internet. I checked out all the big websites like Orbitz.com and Expedia.com and also tried specific airlines (just to get an idea on costs). I was surprised at how inexpensive it was. I was expecting to see tickets range from $2000-$5000 since it can cost close to $1100 just to travel from coast to coast in the US. Instead, I saw prices ranging from $700-$1800. I was shocked. All this time I’ve been putting off traveling and it was only $700 away? I felt cheated. Since I didn’t have any specific date in mind I played around with different dates/times of year and durations. I finally decided to go in the off-season of summer (it was going to be REALLY hot there) and set a timeframe of 3 weeks. I had no further itinerary and I wanted to keep it that way. I like being able to take things as they come and modify my adventure according to what grabs me when I’m there.

I booked a flight about 3 months in advance for $716. Left San Francisco for a layover in Tokyo and then I had to transfer planes to Bangkok. The total trip took about 17 hours. I know it sounds bad, but it wasn’t at all! Japan airlines (JAL) had video screen in front of each seat with several movies to watch and games to play. I watched two movies, took a long nap and I was in Japan. My other plane wasn’t quite as plush. It was an Asia-based airline, which seemed to be on an old plane, but the food was good and not as many people so I could spread out onto three seats to sleep.

My time spent in Thailand was unforgettable and I hold these memories of the culture and people quite dear to me. I have an entirely new perspective of a world that I never really knew existed. It also helped me to become more appreciative of my own culture and of foreigners. It takes a lot of guts to travel outside your comfort zone, but the effort is well worth it and in my opinion necessary to grow as an individual.

The lessons I learned in this process of traveling as cheaply as possible (since I don’t make a lot of money) is to keep your schedule loose and try as many different dates and durations in order to find the best prices. Layovers are typically going to be cheap that direct flights, and in some cases direct flights just aren’t even possible. The trick is that there is no trick. There is also no magic process to find the best deals. You have to research and learn by doing. If I had to do it all again, I’d probably travel use more taxis or hire a personal driver to show me around as I didn’t realize till later how cheap these things are in a third world country.

You can find much more information on international travel and how to articles on finding discounted airfares by visiting my blog site at: http://www.findcheapairfares.org

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