Hi John!

Good to see you're taking this idea forward, as you said you might when I was doing mine

Re your initial thoughts, I really think you need to question your reasons for starting in Asia. You mentioned costs but, although I haven't checked for a while, my understanding is that CAI is still the cheapest, even after the price increase early this year.

But there's more to it than that. If you want to see HK, Singapore, KL and Tokyo, then you must start outside Asia. The rules concerning what you're allowed to do are completely different in your continent of origin. Instead of being allowed 4 sectors within each continent (6 in NA), in your continent of origin you are instead allowed 2 stopovers. The intention is that you use these to get to and from a suitable inter-continental gateway, but I'm not sure to what extent that intended usage is enforceable.

Anyway, you will not be able to visit these cities in any normal sense if you start in BKK (say). You may get away with contructing a little MR at the start and/or end of you itinerary that takes in these airports, but you can only have two stopovers. I doubt if this is what you intend.

A good reason for starting in Asia would be if you want to use your OWE to visit somewhere like DXB which, as I'm sure you'll have gathered from this board, counts as Europe for OWE purposes.

Hope this helps and trust the real experts will correct anything I've said that's not right!