I've used Best Travel store to book my travel to Burma and Thailand several months from now. (Their website has a link to the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau report on their business, which established their bona fides in my eyes.) I booked one heckuva good deal with them. I will fly to Bangkok on November 30 and return February 10, right in the middle of high season for Southeast Asia travel. I fly United, the awful American carrier, to Los Angeles. (Any readers ever spent any time in their lovely terminal at LAX?) Then it's off to Tokyo and then Bangkok on the fabulous Japanese carrier, All Nippon Airlines. If I'd cared to, I could have booked a free stopover in Tokyo.
The flight times are the best I've ever had, with short layovers, for Tucson-Bangkok. (It's very, very far. Once you reach Japan, you still have a long ways to go.) The total price, with midweek travel made possible by early retirement, is $834.00. And this is high season, on an upper-tier carrier, and includes my flight from a small city to the hub that is LAX. I'm extremely happy with this deal.
Incidentally, on arrival in Bangkok I fly AirAsia, a large discount carrier, to Rangoon, the capital of Burma. $83.00 one-way. Once their, the travel is dirt-cheap (like me) as well. On a recent trip to the area, not including airfare to the region, I spent $1,353.00 in 64 days of travel. This includes every penny I spent from the time I left my home until my return, and also includes maybe about $400.00 in assorted charitable donations that I made in this very poor region. I traveled on local transportation, stayed in clean, modest guesthouses, and ate like a king. Really cheap! Really great! I'm going back again soon!
