Our Round The World (RTW) -2 trip came about after surfing the net on Skyscanner. With my approved annual leave and work trip scheduled for San Francisco, I spent some quality time figuring out the best travel itinerary to explore the globe once more.
Initially we our intention was to visit Mexico and Cuba. However the flight tickets from Havana to London around New year was coming out to be very expensive. So, I checked for options on visiting Australia and New Zealand. I did not give too much thought in to this itinerary as this would have been the longest way home to London, but what do you know sometimes its fate, as the itinerary below gave us a chance to visit the places that we didn’t get a chance to go to on our RTW-1 so we booked it.
This was our itinerary – totaling to £993:
TIP – 1: Look for the multi-hop flights instead of direct
Crossing the pacific ocean is expensive and the journey can be tiresome. By Splitting a long journey into multiple short journeys and choosing a budget airlines can really add value and save you on the flight fees. If an opportunity comes to stop over in Hawaii, you take it, just like we did.
TIP – 2: Flights on 31 December are often cheap
Not many people want to spend New year flying but we don’t mind. We celebrated last 2 New year’s eve up in the air. We got one way ticket from Auckland, NZ to London, UK via Chongqing, China costs £370 pp (34 hours).
TIP – 3: Search on Skyscanner with option to ‘Everywhere’
When you don’t have a fixed itinerary, Skyscanner is a good tool to use as it can generate options to find flights to everywhere on the chosen dates. You are likely to find flights to places you have always wanted to go but was not an option until now. The above technique is how you can find it.
TIP – 4: Look for sweet spots
- London to San Francisco tickets can be really cheap – As much as £265 return. United Airlines, BA, Virgin and Norwegian all compete on this route.
- San Francisco to Honolulu – you can always almost find good deals.
- Make use of JetStar (cheap airline) in Australia-Pacific region. One of my best flights to date was the 11 hour flight from Honolulu to Sydney for just £124 direct.
- Tianjin Airlines based in Chongqing is great for budget travelers. Although as mentioned on some Chinese websites, the immigration people may or may not give you 72-hour transit visa. So in our case we spend 9 hours in the airport lounge. It was great though.