Winter break tickets ... booked! Well, not exactly, only half of it.
Air Asia had a smokin' deal online whereby if you booked your Spring Festival tickets during National Day (3.5 months in advance), you could get obscene discounts. And sure enough I did, with a flight from Macau to Bangkok only costing $50, even with the taxes!
However, there is a major catch to this plan, in that I still have to travel through China to Macau first. THAT is where it is impossible to book ahead this far in advance as the Chinese never do things that far ahead. Domestic fights to the usual places like Guangzhou and Shenzhen are not available right now and won't be until December.
Direct international flights from Shanghai to Bangkok and other destinations are very expensive, even now, if you book far in advance. Unfortunately it is getting very difficult to book international flights out of Shanghai to pretty much anywhere now for a good deal. The reason is simple, the rich Chinese going abroad in droves can pay more, so the airlines charge more.
On the other hand, domestic flights remain a very good bargain which is why the best way to transition frm China to SE Asia is in two hops. One domestic, the other a cheap Air Asia internatinal flight. This will be the modus operandi for the winter break where (yawn) I'm going to Thailand. Yes, again
Actually I'm going to revisit Burma and do it properly this time. If you recall from my bike adventures last August, I bungled up the Burma section with a few mistakes that gave me a lecture and a free lunch with the military. More on that story here:
This time I'm going to apply in advance for a Burmese visa and fly in from Bangkok to Yangon, also with Air Asia. Thanks to colleagues at our school who already did Burma last year I'll replicate their adventures for two weeks, learn from all their tips, and hit the highlights of Yangon, Mandalay, and Bagan.
But there are two little twists addd in. One is I'm doing it on a bicycle, that is non-negotiable. Actually it makes little difference in terms of speed and time, as the conventional transport situation is so slow there anyway. The second little twist is to fly domestically from Mandalay to Tachilek. While in Tachilek last August on my little two-day Burma stint, I researched domestic flights and found good connections on the above route. Recall that Tachilek is exactly where I crossed into last August from Thailand with a border pass.
The gameplan then is to essentally pick up where the last trip got aborted and bike the 200km stretch north into the border with China's Yunnan province. Of course, such a plan is not guaranteed, but at least I can ensure I will have the proper papers if approached by the military or passing through checkpoints. Wouldn't it be a hoot if they recognized me again and gave another lunch. In theory this is doable as the Lonely Planet says it is, provided I have both Burmese and Chinese visas arranged in advance, which I will.
However it depends on many variables and who knows. In the event the plan works, I'll book a domestic flight once in China a week in advance from Kunming to Shanghai, then explore Yunnan on the bike. If the plan goes belly up I'll cross into Thailand and explore the Isan region in the NE for a change, and then head back to Shangai directly from Bangkok.
Plan B would be a lot more expensive as the Air Asia options are not possible on the return stretch due to the late arrival times in places like Guanzhou, etc.
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