around Asia based in Taiwan?
 

Greetings,

We are an American family currently living in the San Francisco area. Our family will be moving to Taiwan next year. The duration of our stay in Taiwan will be around 10 month, during which time we would like to travel around Asia. Is there a product in the SkyTeam product suite that will suit our needs? Specifically, travel out of San Francisco to Taipei, then travel in and out of Taipei, multiple times to various destination in Asia. Then finally back to San Francisco, about 9-10 month after leaving SFO. The countries that we want to travel is not definite, but we would like to see Japan, various sites in China, Vietnam, Thailand.


Thank you very much in advance.

Ting

Skyteam offers a Air Pass for Asia(SkyTeam Asia Pass) and China(SkyTeam China Pass), but it gives only two Skyteam Airlines in the Asia area(Korean Air and China Southern). The Asia Pass is only interessting when you want travel to/from Korea/China, a skyteam intercontinental ticket is required to get the Asia Pass and the Maximum stay is 60 days(from the intercontinental ticket). So you can´t visit all the countrys you want and musst fly back to the USA after 60 days. ;) For the China Pass(China Southern) a international ticket with Sykteam to China is also required and also a Maximum stay of 60 day. The Price for the China Pass, is not rellay cheap in my opinion.

More Informationen:
-China Pass
-Asia Pass

Neither the Asia Pass nor the China Pass are a good idea at all for the OP (or generally for anyone ever). They just aren't good products.

From a SkyTeam program perspective there isn't a great amount of coverage in SE Asia. China Southern has some flights. NW has a small hub at NRT, but that is limited, too. And there are a couple one-off flights from KQ and AF, too, but really not many.

As for a program to join, I'd look at the EVA program. They are going to be your best bet for flights in the region since they are the main carrier out of TPE.

If you are talking about next year, theoretically China Airlines would have joined Skyteam by then and would be the obvious TPE choice if you were trying to stay with Skyteam.

Most cheap tickets out of Taiwan are booked through travel agents. For Skyteam, TPE-KIX by NW, and TPE-BKK by KL are usually pretty cheap and can be booked directly on NW's website.