asia travel plans, how to start?

I plan to go on vacation /visit to Thailand, Hongkong, India, Nepal probably during winter month.

I will stay 3-4 days in Thailand & 3-4 days in Hongkong, a week in India and 2 weeks in Nepal. I am based in Chicago.

I don't exactly know where to start first and have never been to Hongkong and Thailand.
For airlines,We have 300k advantage miles. 60k united miles. For hotels, we have 40k priority club points. 120k hilton points. 32k windyam rewards points.
We also have 130k Chase UR points that is transferable to some airlines and hotel accounts. we are expecting to receive150k club carlson hotel points.

so which airlines and hotels in this case for hongkong, thailand and to india.
Thanks

I think you should look at a combination of CX and MH award ticket. You should be able to get a one world award ticket with stopovers in HKG and BKK on the way to DEL and KTM.

You'll probably get the best value using AA's distance based award chart, which can be found here.

Using milecalc.com, an itinerary of ORD-HKG-BKK-DEL-KTM-ORD is 18,799. This would put you in Zone 6 for the distance based award (under 20,000 miles flown) and would only cost 100,000 AA miles in economy or 130,000 in business.

This is a steal for all the flights you would be making. For complex itineraries with multiple stopovers, I highly suggest using the AA distance based reward.

Hi Emptiness -

I have been to Thailand/Lived in Thailand many times over the past 5 years. I am not sure if you are going for luxury travel or economy travel. If you are looking for economy travel a good idea may be...

United Airlines 1 way Award Travel from Any New York City Airport (JFK, EWR) to BKK - 32,500 miles...you can usually get stopovers in Brussels, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Munich, Beijing, or many other international destinations.....you can then call up United and extend your stopover I believe up to 2 weeks....

Once in ASIA (ie BKK) I would suggest using the local domestic airlines to fly wherever you'd like to go (making BKK your HUB)....they are relatively cheap and include Air Asia and Nok Air for economny airlines and Thai Airways and Bangkok Airways for nicer airlines

When your ready to fly back home, Aerosvit airlines has many flights available BKK to JFK for $325ish dollars.....its a no frills airlines (I've flown many times) but gets you to A to B....I'm not big on first class travel, but would rather spend my money enjoying my destination...but to each his own!

So if you did this...using 32,500 miles to get to Asia then $325ish dollars to book a flight back from SE Asia...you could essentially say your RT flight to asia cost you $325

I just find this a more cost effective way to get there and back to Asia isntead of spending 65,000 miles!! Unfortunately the $325 price is only available BKK to JFK and not the other way around...or at least I have never seen it lower than $605 for JFK to BKK...so this is why I usually use miles to get there and cash to get back.......hope this helps...sorry if it was confusing...good luck!

Correction to my last post - United MAY only offer free stopovers on Round Trip Tickets - not one way.you will have to check on this (I think it often just depends on what kind of agent you get when you call up!)...but there are often options for a LONG layover if you wish....for example...I booked a one way from JFK to BKK with a 19 hour layover in Brussels this coming december....plenty of time to leave the airport and see belgium before my connecting flight to BKK

This is what makes Flyertalk such an amazing resource! I've been flying to and from Asia for a while now as well, and consider myself a pretty seasoned veteran and yet I've never heard of Aerosvit Airlines or this amazing deal from BKK to JFK. You learn something new everyday...THANKS SZATRYAN! Can't wait to try this deal out!

Who cares about comfort if you can get one way from BKK to JFK for the price of a domestic flight!

The official rules state that you can only have a stopover if you are flying roundtrip. It is considered a stopover if you spend more than 24 hours in a place that is not your final destination when flying internationally. Anything less than 24 hours is considered a connection, which is allowed any time. Hence, the reason you were able to have a layover in Brussels for 19 hours.

Now...United isn't known for allowing you to bend the rules as much as USAirways (which basically allows you to do anything), but you could try to throw in a stopover on a one-way ticket. My gut tells me that 8 out of 10 agents will know its not allowed, but really, it doesn't hurt to try. I've scored some pretty sweet tickets just because I was willing to call up and try (and sometimes try again). All depends how much time you want to put in to it.

Was so excited about this that I just did a dummy booking and actually found it the other way around.

Picked two random dates, October 9th and October 23rd and found:

BKK-NYC $563

NYC-BKK $249

Strange, huh?

Ok, don't want to totally hijack this thread, but found this very interesting tidbit when searching AeroSvit's site.

I put in two random dates.

April 2, 2013 from BKK-NYC

April 23, 2013 from NYC-BKK

When I have my location set as Ukraine but the language in English, the prices show are:

April 2- 3,756 UAH (converts to $465)
April 23- 3,495 UAH (converts to $433)

When I have my location set as North America and the language put in English, watch what happens to the prices for THE SAME FLIGHTS:

April 2- $280
April 23- $249

If my location is Ukraine, I'm paying $900, if I set it to North America, it drops to $529!

Anyone else had a similar thing happen with other booking sites? I know JetStar is sometimes a little different depending what region you choose to view their site in, but only ever by a pretty small amount, not by almost half the price!

so the best to start is fly from ord to thailand, staying there for 3 days to visit bangkok, and then to hongkong for 3 days, from there to new delhi for a week and to nepal for 2 weeks and back to ord. I am familier about india and nepal trip but not thai & hongkong. So i think i can just call AA and ask how many miles is needed for trip from ord to thai to hongkong to india. what abouy hotels?

I've always booked from North America, so always seen North American prices.....can't believe you found a cheap one NYC to BKK...I've never seen that before...$529?? Holy crap! What a deal.....book that right away! One word of advice is that the prices DO increase as the time gets closer....also if you look at Aerosvit ' s facebook page they post a 10% off coupon every friday good for a booking over the weekend...so you just have to book over the weekend but can fly anytime....just saved myself 60 bucks!

Here is what is even crazier about their website.

If I use the same dates and the same itinerary, I get 3 different prices depending on how I do it.

For example, if I do what I did before, and book BKK-NYC earlier (like April 9th) and then NYC-BKK on April 23rd, I can get a ticket for $250ish dollars.

If I search for that same ticket by booking NYC-BKK on April 23rd but put my flight from BKK-NYC for a date LATER than that (like April 30th), the flight for that same NYC-BKK on April 23rd jumps to $728.

If I search for the same NYC-BKK flight on April 23rd but only search as a one way, the price jumps to $850.

For whatever reason, if your the first part of your journey is BKK to NYC then the NYC to BKK leg is also really cheap, but if you try to do it in reverse, the price jumps up drastically. Really, really odd.

Yes, I have noticed this as well...that's why I have really only used them for OW's home BKK - JFK ($325ish)

A great deal if you call BKK home i guess, becauase youre right if you book a round trip originating in BKK (BKK to JFK then JFK to BKK) you could get it for about $250 each

But like I said, I've never seen a OW JFK to BKK for the normal OW BKK to JFK price of $325

I am going to Vietnam for vacation next month on Korean Air. As I live in Korea, I select the Korea English page. They quoted me roughly 650 USD for a nonstop RT.

If you search Kayak - $1,000 on koreanair.com. Why? It pulls from the North America page. I also searched directly on koreanair.com with my location as North America and got $1,000 RT for the exact same flights.

Craziness.

It's called point-of-sale pricing. I've run into differences like this (although not quite as big) with DL. DL.dumb offers me one price on an ex-LHR ticket, but if I call up to have an agent in the US do something (like book premium economy one direction and economy the other), I wind up with a different price. Had to cancel a refundable ticket that needed changing and book the changed itinerary online rather than have an agent do it because the US-based agent couldn't get the price that the website was giving me, even though the fare basis was the same.

Wow, this thread really got hijacked.

Personally I would probably try to route via either HKG or BKK in one direction and then route via the other (BKK or HKG) on the return unless there is a more direct routing from KTM on your return in which case I would go ahead and stop in HKG first, then BKK and then your South Asia destinations. I have not been to HKG yet, but I know that hotels there are very expensive. So I would probably try to use my points there. Hotels are cheap in Bangkok. Even 4 and 5 star hotels there are very reasonably priced, especially if you don't mind staying in a more independent place. The big chains sometimes charge a little more but they do have to compete so it's not too bad.