You can buy your ticket from a travel agent or any of the alliance airlines. American would be a good choice if you are going to use Oneworld (United if you are going to use Star Alliance).

Here is a link to the fares for Oneworld fewmiles.tripod.com/oneworld/owe.html . There is a link on that page to the rules for the fare. Note that the rules talk about originating in Australia but other than that they are pretty generic and apply to all originations. Be careful with the fares as some of them are out of date. Check out the prices for Canada as that may be your best bet for a lower cost origination.

With Oneworld you can buy your tickets in the US regardless of where you plan to originate. With Star you must purchase the tickets in the country of origination -- usually through a travel agent in that country.

In general, you cannot return to a continent where you have been. The exceptions, as explained in the rules, are only for in transit (i.e. no stopover) returns to get to another continent (e.g. when travelling from Australia to Europe you must go through Asia so the in transit is allowed but you cannot stay longer than 23 hours and 59 minutes).

You say you want to go to odd places. Both Oneworld and *A have many partners that fly to just about anywhere you can think of. You can download a flight planner from the Cathay Pacific WWW site that has all of the Oneworld flights in it to see if they fly where you want to go.

[This message has been edited by ExMo (edited 06-17-2001).]