Friday 18 January 2013

Itinerary & RTW Tickets


I have read plenty of blogs and travel guides and even RTW guides when I was planning this trip around the world and there was only one thing I remembered in the end.

There is no best way to do it.

Planning the trip depends solely on a person’s personality, style, habits, interest and all the other ME ME ME stuff ….

I think that’s why they say a RTW is also a self discovery trip and I agree to it for the most part. You can discover other people too if you travel with them.

I planned my itinerary based on one thing only which was FLIGHTS

Getting tickets for a RTW and planning the itinerary was intertwined with each other for me for I needed the flights to go where I wanted and I wanted to go where the flights was easily available.

I used the RTW ticket bought from STAR ALLIANCE which was the most convenient if you start the journey from Malaysia. Everything boils down to tinkering with the online flight planner that the websites has and keep tinkering with it to find out how bad your choices are when routes force you to make crazy U-Turn connecting flight. There was also the question of trying to avoid certain airport which has expensive taxes but then again most major hubs are almost unavoidable such as LAX

In the end my flight itinerary looked like this

Kuala Lumpur            --> Athens
London                      --> New York
Los Angeles               --> Honolulu
Honolulu                    --> Seoul
Seoul                         --> Bangkok
Bangkok                    --> Kuala Lumpur 

Here is one thing that should be glaring for most of the non – asian RTW Travelers …. I skipped out almost the whole of ASIA. Well that’s because I am Asian hence I could do it later.

I have not come across any blogs of travelers starting from this corner of the world (maybe my search skills aren’t good enough) but as most guides will advice, I too would encourage people to not rule out ASIA as it’s the most logical, cheap and enriching experience one can get.

That’s was my core plan of my travel right there. Visiting mainly Europe, America, touching Korea and easing back into SEA through a familiar country Thailand.

Below was the actual route i took after six months including flight and overland routes.

 
Kuala-Lumpur-->Athens-->Patras-->Corfu-->Igounamenista-->Bari-->Naples-->Pompei-->
Rome-->Florance-->Pisa-->Siena-->Milan-->Bern-->Interlaken-->Lucerne-->Zurich-->Salzburg-->
Vienna-->Bratislava-->Prague-->Berlin-->Leipzig-->Cologne-->Eindhoven-->Amsterdam-->Rottadam
Tillburg-->Antwerp-->Brugges-->Gent-->Luxemburg-->Brussels-->York-->Dublin-->Derry-->Belfast-->
Galway-->Cork-->Dublin-->Bristol-->Bath-->Salisbury-->Staines-->Winsor-->Cambridge-->London--> USA


 
From London -->New York City-->Washington D.C-->New York City-->Buffalo-->Niagra Falls -->
Buffalo-->Chicago-->Memphis-->Houston-->New Orleans-->Albuquerque-->Denver-->Boulder-->
Las Vegas-->San Francisco-->Los Angeles-->Honolulu--> Seoul-->Jeju Island-->Bangkok-->
Home Sweet Home 

 

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