This thread makes me glad I got out there when I did, i.e. circa 1996-2007. At the time there were positive developments that I thought might make the region MORE affordable (like LCCs), but it looks like the negative trends - especially the award add-on costs - outweigh the positive. The old excuse of high fuel costs is gone, so we're just left with greed on the part of airlines. Once they start a fee it's hard to get it stopped, even if the original rationale for the fee no longer applies.

Was lucky to hop around Micronesia with CO awards at 20/25K out of MNL as a bread-and-butter with a stopover AND a main destination, as well as the southern tier on NZ awards booked on UA miles and similar stopover maximization. All just before the age of blogs as well, alas.

We tend to prize delayed gratification, and I'm sure if monies spent had gone into Amazon or Apple stock instead, the fees wouldn't seem so annoying now. But I knew even then not to talk too much with locals on the islands about the deal I got, because from their perspective it was a very different story. I came to see that many of the places were lovely but that ability to LEAVE was seen as a real privilege. In Guam there was all kinds of outrage about off-island travel by government officials, for example. Or people would enlist in the U.S. armed forces just to be able to go other places. Palau got all the McDonald's marketing on TV but had no locations...nor did other parts of Micronesia besides Guam. But the Marshalls DID have lots of U.S. junk food in stores and it really didn't help the locals much. Western Samoa was very beautiful but socially like a bad U.S. southern town on steroids on a Friday night, with tension between fun-seeking locals and police. The country also had an outsized concept of property rights that created a bifurcated society and hindered economic progress, leading to losses in population.

As for the budget part, usually there was SOMETHING in the $30-ish range, though I remember a mouse or two running across a room I got in Yap. It was over the Yap Day period, so I couldn't be too picky.