ex-MRU were about 5-10 percent higher when i checked. I did not keep the fares as I could originate from either location and SEZ provided a better deal.

rich

Yikes! lax-sez $3800 or lax-mru $5800?!?!? No thanks... Maybe we can get BA to fly into LJU again...

yes but you can do LAX-LHR starting from $350
or so and LHR-SEZ starting at $700 (although I've seen fares exLON cheaper than this.
so ~$5300 for 5 cont or ~$5800 for 6 cont plus ~$1500 for LAX-LHR-SEZ and it's still fairly competitive with a lot of starting points including the US. If you are already in Europe it would probably make a lot of sense to start there.
jerry

[This message has been edited by jerry a. laska (edited 02-02-2001).]

Yeh, that was kind of my point. I didn't see flights from Europe to Seychelles for $700, but I didn't look carefully either. For an American, it would probably be impractical to start from SEZ, but that's just my opinion. I can see a European doing it, though. Probably would be cheaper for someone like me to go through BKK, even with the quirky rules for if you start in Asia. I think I am realizing just how good that Budapest price really was....

Darren,
yup, exBUD was an excellent price, I'm sorry I didn't take advantage of it. SEl used to be a fairly good starting place too, but I think that BUD was quite the missed opportunity.
But compared to starting in the US exSEZ still makes sense even considering this is the low season and fares US to Europe will be higher later in the year (hence my use of $1500 as opposed to current actual airfare of ~$1140 now for LAX-LON-SEZ - going through paris is similar - when breaking the fare in europe). Or you could just use miles to get to SEZ (BA - US-SEZ 75,000 miles) or for part of the trip(LON-SEZ on BA is 60,000 miles).
Otherwise, it seems like Taiwan or Thailand might still be fairly reasonable starting places what with fairly cheap options to get to those areas.
jerry