Hello my faithful and supportive brethren. I humbly approach to pick at all thy wisdom. (OK overly elaborate beginning, but basically I need a hand here...)

In just over a week, it will be my parents' 25th wedding anniversary. My sister and I have been debating over buying them something that could contribute to a holiday in Vietnam (my parents are from Malaysia and Philippines but they always wanted to travel to Vietnam and China). Given that my sister and I "don't have much money" (we are probably able to chip in about $1000 each or so - maybe a bit more if it can be afforded), we thought we'd just restrict to buying their air tickets in Economy (yes, we are cheap, but Mum will probably kill us if she found out we bought J or F tickets - trust me, you have to know Asian).

The biggest problem we have is (a) we are not sure where they want to go (because they just keep making vague allusions to the topic) and (b) when they want to go. I know that because of Dad's circumstances they can't go any earlier than October this year. Because of this, we were thinking of getting them "open" tickets (or similar, like QF Fully Flexible) so that they can make a choice without much fuss, but it's turning out to be much more complicated than we anticipated (viz. even with Fully Flexible, you have to pay $75 + difference - unlike Fully Flex in QF Domestic where it's only the difference payable).

We are also looking at all our options as far as airlines are concerned, so I have looked at QF, JQ, MH (since Mum is an Enrich) and SQ for starters. Booking on their sites is not as easy as QF, though, because they have a mess of classes and their rules are not as clear cut as QF. (Unlike QF, you are very restricted in actually choosing the "class", viz. QF you can choose "Red e-Deal" or "Fully Flexible", etc.)

So far JQ seems most "in our budget", although we will have to make Mum & Dad some lunch before they get on the plane, so to speak.

Does anyone have any good ideas of what we can do?

Just for the record: I have 13k QFF points, Bronze status, no QP membership, MH Enrich with < 5k points. Sister has no QFF or Enrich points. Mum & Dad are Bronze QFF and standard level MH Enrich. We are from BNE, thinking that parents might like to go to SGN as port of arrival and departure from Vietnam.

Could you not get them a gift certificate from QF or JQ or a travel agent? That way they can book themselves?

http://www.jetstar.com/voucher/?a=b

How about getting them a gift voucher from one of the bigger travel agent chains? That way, they can choose their own place, route and airline. That would have the added benefit that if there's a good offer on, they could use it for a package, rather than just the plane seats.

-Puchun

Make up 2 fake boarding passes with a flight, e.g. KUL-SGN (Ho Chi Minh) and on the back say what they are getting, a timeframe, etc. Then organise the actual once it's settled.