Asia - Advice needed on EWR-HKG-HAN-SIN-HKT-HKG-EWR Itinerary

My wife and I are looking to take a 15 day Asia trip this February. Planning this itinerary has taken a lot of time, simply because of the vastness of the region and our desire to see everything. We have been to HKG, BKK, SGN in the past so we are trying to see some different cities. We are elite CO flyers so we are trying to maximize our miles there to get a good head start on 2008 elite status:

My proposed itinerary goes:
Day 1 & 2 EWR--> HKG (Continental)
Day 3 HKG--> HAN (Air Vietnam)
Day 7 HAN --> SIN (Singapore Airlines)
Day 10 SIN --> HKT (Silk Air)
Day 13 HKT --> HKG (Dragon Air)
Day 15 HKG --> EWR (Continental)

I can book the EWR-HKG for about $900 on Continental and the remaining segments for $1086 on Asia.com. Unfortunately for us this will be all in coach but at least all the segments will be non stop.

Questions:
Any city modifications? Recommendations? Something else I am not considering? I have tried booking everything together in one itinerary but need a booking site that permits 6 segments.

This is my biggest/ most complicated trip to date so I am a little nervous, but excited about pulling the trigger so I really need a little reassurance.

Thanks!

Keba

Once in Hong Kong, it would probably be a fraction of your $1086 to use low cost airlines such as Cebu, Air Asia, JetStar, Tiger Airways, Pacific Airlines or Hong Kong Airlines to name a few.

Day 3 HKG--> HAN (Air Vietnam)

I just had the experience with Vietnam Airlines (Frankfurt - Saigon - Hanoi - Hue ( Bus ) Dan Nang - Saigon) and will fly Saigon - Frankfurt soon.
Acceptable service in Y, just that the planes are full.

Enjoy your hollidays.

if you go to hanoi be sure to go to halong bay and stay overnight on a boat there. If you want to do so, you may be cutting your trip short.

but it would appear that a number of your flights are expensive.

the way it works last i checked was while there aren't cheap flights from hong kong, there are cheap flights from macau which is of course a short jetferry ride away from hong kong. There are also cheap flights from vietnam to singapore.

Anyway, you'll have to check out the details, but $900 sounds, very, very high.

I suspect tigerairways would be much cheaper than SA on the han-sin leg, and also much cheaper on the sin-phuket leg. I believe airasia also flies from sin to phuket.

I'm not sure if the phuket to hkg is non stop, but going from phuket thru bangkok to macau on air asia and taking the ferry to hongkong is probably going to be cheaper.

Note that some of the cheaper carriers have some luggage limits if that matters to you.

Falls on 7th February in 2008. This is not a reason for avoiding the region (quite the contrary in my opinion). But flights can be busy in the run up... so I wouldn't gamble on getting flights at the last minute, and if you do they might not be cheap.

Looks like a great trip! Agree with seeing Ha Long bay, but I suppose its less essential given that you're pottering around Phuket. It does take time by the time you've got out there, had the night on the boat etc., and got back. Luang Prabang in Laos strikes me as worthy of consideration as a cultural contrast to your other destinations. (I've never been there, just going on heresay.)

But you are short of time and can't do everything!

I would change you planned itinerary as follows.

Rather than HKG-HAN on VN, I would do HKG-SIN on Jetstar Asia http://www.jetstar.com/3k/index.html.

I would then do SIN-SGN on Jetstar and SGN-HAN on VN. There may also be an alternative to HAN on Tiger Air, but I did not verify that.

An alternative would be SIN-BKK also on Jetstar or Tiger or Air Asia
and then AirAsia to HAN

From HAN, I would retrace to BKK on AIR Asia and fly NOK or Air Asia to HKT.

The remainder of your itinerary works depending on the Dragonair price.

A couple of things to be aware about. Jetstar and Nok allow 20kgs, The others limit baggage to 15kgs. The low cost carriers do not interline baggage so extra time must be taken between flights to retrieve and recheck bags. Also some low cost carriers run late or, sometimes, not at all.

Air Asia is probably the biggest risk for delays and cancellations. But, they allow you to buy a cheap earliest boarding pass that essentially gives you you r choice of seats.

If you go with Silk Air as originally proposed, be sure that they fly daily. Often they offer only limited flights and not everyday to some destinations.

Nok air has a business class that is a very cheap adder, it is worth it on the DMK-HKT segment. Be aware that they fly from Don Muang and not from BKK where the other carriers land. Perhaps the connection to HKT is better done on Air Asia.

PM me if you have further questions. BTW Macau is a pretty good alternative in terms of low cost availability.

Normally the low cost guys should cost no more than $400-$500, YMMV, if you substitute the HAN for SIN.

I have flown Air Asia extensively, Jetstar once (have another segment booked in January BKK-SIN), Silk Air (perfectly fine since it is owned by Singapore Air and Vietnam Air (domestically, you can save money by asking the hotel conceirge to book for you).