RTW - awkward itinerary. Help please!?

j.s. pill II

I'm trying to organise a round the world trip for myself for early next year. My travel plan is complicated by the fact that i have to be back in Ireland to be best man for a wedding at the end of May. I will be available to leave at the end of January. Now I don't want to try and condense everything into 4 months so what I'm thinking of doing is doing one leg first (South east asia), then return to ireland for a few weeks around May then do the other leg afterwards (south america). So I'd have about 6 months of traveling altogether (3 months for each continent)

I know this is going to be incredibly difficult to do in the context of a RTW ticket or anything like that as the direction isn't consistent and I'm doing a big backtrack to Ireland. Would I be better off going for 2 continent packages from an agency like trailfinders back to back or would I be better off booking individual flights?

As for countries I hope to see: For the SE Asia leg I'd want to do the usual Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam route and possible take in Burma too. on the way back to Ireland I'd like to fit in 2 weeks in India ideally. I've no interest in Australia or new Zealand.

And for South America the main countries I want to see are Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia. Not too keen on spending too much time Argentina or Brazil.

I don't have much flexibility over the timeframe and doing it the other way around (SA first then SE Asia) isn't really an option as the weather would be far from optimum in the respective continents for those times. Any suggestion on how I might accomplish this journey would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Civilian_Target

My bet is that the cheapest thing is just to buy two return flights - just look up return flights to the major airports near where you want to in south east asia from Dublin, with reasonably flexible dates, and do the same for major south american airports for your second set of dates. You should be able to find something that's reasonable value...

j.s. pill II

After a bit more research I reckon I'll be buying 2 open jaw tickets to both continents. I'll be using budget airlines to get around SE Asia but will try limit the number of flights in South America as flights are a lot more expensive there.

I'll post up details of my itinerary as a point of reference for anyone who's interested one I've ironed out the details.

Challo

Yeah I agree with the first post, you will probably get cheap-ish return flights to Bangkok and then book a return set to South America too. Three months in each is a great amount of time, and probably no harm to have a break in the middle. In South America, internal flights are expensive - I was there for over 5 months and over night buses all the time. So just book the big flights and for SE Asia, you can use Air Asia if you need to fly around smaller distances and their fares are cheap. Don't forget you need a visa for Vietnam in advance, probably the only one you'll need in either trip.

shane9689

i dont know what youre like for time, but if i were you, id hold off till after may, save some more money and just go for longer, 4 months isnt much for a rtw

j.s. pill II

shane9689 wrote: »

i dont know what youre like for time, but if i were you, id hold off till after may, save some more money and just go for longer, 4 months isnt much for a rtw

Like I said, I'm two 3 month legs! Seems plenty of time to me

shane9689

missread it soz

j.s. pill II

Just an update on my own situation. For the Asia leg of my trip, I booked an open jaw ticket with Turkish airlines flying from Dublin to Bangkok on feb 4th and flying back to Dublin from Mumbai on May 15th. I got it for what I think is a very reasonable €569. I'll be using budget airlines for my main Asian stops and trains for India.

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