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Tags: Tourism News / East Timor / Asia Travel / → All Tags

East Timor: Now Serving Tourist 19,001 (Will It Be You?)

Now that we've got our freedom, wanna come over? A Reuters article published this weekend described the follow-up fight of the new Southeast Asian country East Timor, which emerged from 24 years of occupation to join the UN in 2002, to capitalize on its troubled past in attracting visitors. Actually, it was more "speculated on" than "described," but we'll get to that in a minute.

East Timor declared itself independent in 1975 when Portuguese colonizers left, only to be invaded and occupied by Indonesia a week later. Some 180,000 civilian deaths and two attempted military uprisings later, East Timor is now a democracy backed up by its neighbor to the south Australia -- so it must be time for tourist dollars to flow in again.

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Tags: Airfare Sales / Air Asia / LCCs / Budget Travel / Asia Travel / Travel Deals / → All Tags

Air Asia's Big Sale Makes Us Want To Book Some $17 Flights

One of our favorite low cost carriers, Air Asia, is not just cool because it keeps adding more routes—like Kuala Lumpur to Paris on the cheap and the Indian destinations like Thiruvananthapuram just to name a couple of last week's highlights—but it's also giving us ideas for our 2010 travel plans by holding a big airfare sale at the moment.

For bookings made between now and Sunday, you can get bargain tickets for travel between January 11 and April 30, 2010 for a bunch of Asian routes. The cheapest flights get as low as 19 Ringgit ($5.50) but they're mostly internal Malaysian flights; to get from Kuala Lumpur to further afield, there are deals like KL to pretty much anywhere in Indonesia or Thailand for 59 Ringgit ($17) and KL to Australian destinations for 199 Ringgit ($58). Get booking fast or we might snap up all the seats first.

Related Stories:
· Air Asia [Official Site]
· Let's Go Thiruvananthapuram! [Jaunted]
· Sarkozy Approves Air Asia X's Low-Cost Flights to Paris [Jaunted]

[Photo: Auswandern Malaysia]

Tags: New Routes / Asia Travel / Air Asia / India Travel / → All Tags

Let's Go Thiruvananthapuram! Asian Airlines Loving India Right Now

While we're busy being happy for the winner of the CN Traveler Awards, plenty of other airlines around the world have news of their own, and mainly in the new routes area. For those of you chilling around Asia like our own Claire Duffett, here's the need-to-know new routes coming your way:

· Air Asia begins low-cost direct flights from their base in Kuala Lumpur to Calcutta, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) in India in November. One-way flights (including tax) begin as low as $32, and these new routes compliment Air Asia's current India destination of Trichy, effectively quadrupling their Indian routes.

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Tags: Southwest China Field Trip / China Travel / Asia Travel / Tibet Travel / → All Tags

Southwest China Field Trip: Life's Good In Shangri-La, But Not For Yaks

All this week, Jaunted special embed Claire Duffett will be relaying the joys and jumbles of her travels through Southwest China including Tibet. Finally, she reaches Shangri-La:

Oh, Shangri-La. In a cynical attempt to drum up tourism, the Chinese government renamed the town of Zhongdian, which is a pleasant city with a lovely old town, after the fictional Utopia in Lost Horizon. Copies of the book are sold in every shop, so we read it, and no, there’s really no similarity between the fictional land and the town in northwestern Yunnan. But it is TIbetan, and that's cool.

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Tags: Southwest China Field Trip / China Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Southwest China Field Trip: Tiger Leaping Gorge-ous

All this week, Jaunted special embed Claire Duffett will be relaying the joys and jumbles of her travels through Southwest China including Tibet. Today, a gorgeous gorge:

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a (novice) trekkers dream. For the masochistic hikers, it’s probably too easy. But we’re all for maximum payoff at minimum effort, and the gorge offers incredible vistas of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain from along well-trod dirt paths, with plenty of guesthouses eager to offer respite and lunch.

That’s not to say the two-day trail isn't without challenge. Old Naxi men trail the weakest-looking trekkers (this writer, for example) with donkeys, offering to sell them a ride when the trail gets to the “28 bends”—a steep, direct ascent from the middle of the mountain almost to the top. They pick off stragglers like lions on a herd of antelope and pocket their prize.

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Tags: Southwest China Field Trip / China Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Southwest China Field Trip: Scaling Jade Dragon Snow Mountain

All this week, Jaunted special embed Claire Duffett will be relaying the joys and jumbles of her travels through Southwest China including Tibet. Today, discovering Lijiang and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain :

Lijiang is indisputably remarkable as a town in Southwest China. Because of its charm and attractions, it’s also packed with tourists. The old town is a hodgepodge of ancient Chinese buildings, topped with low, ceramic roofs and connected by a series of narrow walkways all flanked by open waterways where crystal clear water flows from Jade Dragon Snow Mountain looming above.

It seems every other doorway leads to a guesthouse with small, wooden rooms surrounding a garden courtyard. Few cost more than $15 per night. This is the first place in Yunnan, heading up from the capital of Kunming, where elevation gains might make you drowsy. And for those heading farther north to Shangri-La and into Tibet, it’s nice to start adjusting to the thin air, slowly.

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Tags: Southwest China Field Trip / China Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Southwest China Field Trip: Dali's Darling Charm

All this week, Jaunted special embed Claire Duffett will be relaying the joys and jumbles of her travels through Southwest China including Tibet. Today, discovering the cute cultural town of Dali:

Sandwiched between a mountain and a 22-kilometer lake, Dali is a small, walled town next to a real Chinese city that doesn’t try to be charming and whose tallest building is a multi-story Wal-Mart. We found it helpful to split our time between the Disneyland of Dali and the real world of its neighboring city and the “real” people who ride the public buses throughout. Boat rides are expensive but lovely, as is the cable car ride to the top of the hill behind the town.

Fewer Chinese tourists and more western hippies give the town of Dali an atmosphere distinct from Lijiang, its neighbor four hours northwest which often stands in the spotlight due to its bigger size and history. Both towns come with stone streets and open waterways that run alongside the sidewalks and over quaint, wooden wheels. The atmosphere is charming to some and hopelessly contrived to others. We were among the tourists who embraced it.

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Tags: Southwest China Field Trip / China Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Southwest China Field Trip: A 40-Hour Train Ride To Start

All this week, Jaunted special embed Claire Duffett will be relaying the joys and jumbles of her travels through Southwest China including Tibet. Today, a marathon of train travel:

From China’s massive northeastern cities, we traveled by 40-hour train to the Yunnan Province in the country’s southwest, where the landscape and the people all transform into a varied amalgam of Han Chinese, Tibetan, and minority influences.

The area is one of China’s most diverse and it converges with the Tibetan plateau, giving it snow-peaked mountains and a multitude of cultures. We then turned northward from the province’s forgettable capital, Kunming, through valleys, around mountains, stopping in the historic towns of Dali, Lijiang, and “Shangri-La,” the town China renamed after the fictional utopia from James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.

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Tags: Laos Field Trip / Laos Travel / Asia Travel / Jaunted Field Trips / → All Tags

Stopping By 'Pha That Luang,' Like the Eiffel Tower Of Laos

Even though the recession has hampered exotic travel, there are still those intrepid explorers going all out. All this week, our Cambodian embed Claire will share experiences from her trip to Laos.

Vientiane, the capital on the Thai border, resembles a small, riverside town with wide, empty sidewalks and open boulevards that starkly contrast with the crowded madness of the region’s other capitals in Hanoi, Phnom Penh, and Bangkok. Even the waterfront remains curiously green and serene, with a few food stalls set up serving drinks and food to customers sitting on floor rugs along the river.

The main attraction in Vientiane is Pha That Luang, which symbolizes Laos like Angkor Wat symbolizes Cambodia, the Eiffel Tour symbolizes France or McDonalds’ golden arches symbolize the United States. The curved, golden building shaped like a lotus bud was actually only built in 1931, because Thai and French imperialism destroyed both previous incarnations dating back to 1566.

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Tags: Laos Field Trip / Laos Travel / Luang Prabang Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Heading To Laos To Discover The Best Of Indochina

Even though the recession has hampered exotic travel, there are still those intrepid explorers going all out. All this week, our Cambodian embed Claire will share experiences from her trip to Laos.

Gentle, quiet Laos exceeds all expectations, from its limestone mountains to meandering rivers and ethnic minority villagers whose outfits are so intricate and lovely they could pass as a winter collection at Fashion Week in Bryant Park. And Laos’ appeal comes without the drawbacks of traveling through its neighbor countries—Vietnam has too many tourists, double goes for Thailand, and the charm of Cambodia’s underdevelopment and unpaved roads wears thin after a 12-hour minibus ride with 18 butts to 10 seats.

Recently I traveled the length of the country, flying to Luang Prabang, then lacing south by bus toward Cambodia, stopping in Vang Vieng, Vientiane, Champasak, and Si Phan Don. This week, I will share tips on how to best explore Indochina's least-visited and loveliest country.

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Tags: International Airports / Changi Airport / Seoul / South Korea Travel / Asia Travel / → All Tags

Survey Says: All The Best Airports Are In Asia

The results are in, and Incheon Airport near Seoul in South Korea has been crowned the best airport in the world. The Skytrax survey people say they've spent ten months surveying almost nine million passengers and Incheon wins.

No doubt it helps that Incheon Airport has a casino, golf course and indoor gardens; we've only flown in and out of there twice but have nothing but good memories—the airport advice counter actually found us a great place to stay even when we arrived without a booking in the middle of the World Cup a few years back.

And if you're after a good airport experience, this survey definitely says that you've got to stick with Asia. Hong Kong International Airport came in at a close number two, and Singapore's Changi Airport was put in third place by just a few votes. Three more Asian airports made it into the top ten, with Zurich, Munich, Amsterdam and Auckland getting the other big votes.

Related Stories:
· Seoul's Incheon Airport Voted Best [CNN]
· Big Korean Airport Makes Friends With Jin Air [Jaunted]
· Changi Airport Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: riNux]

Tags: Air Asia X / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Asia Travel / Australia Travel / Long Haul Flights / → All Tags

Air Asia X Defies Economic Dramas to Fly You 'Round the World

The corridors at Air Asia X are obviously ringing with the words "What economic crisis?" – just a month or so into their cheap London to Kuala Lumpur service, the greedily-expanding long-haul LCC says demand for the flights is so high that they're going to go daily starting in July.

We can't be surprised that everyone wants to jump on this route when there are ticket prices as low as £149 ($220) to get you from London to Malaysia, with plenty of possibilities to grab another even cheaper ticket to get to other parts of Asia or even Australia. If you add a V Australia flight up to Los Angeles you've practically got a budget airline round-the-world fare and that's exciting stuff.

Don't forget we've heard stories about Air Asia X itself getting in on the US market with budget long-hauls from Kuala Lumpur to NY and CA, too. Perhaps these ultra-cheap flights will really take off (pardon the pun) while we're all being Scrooges and Air Asia X's arrogance will turn out to be just the right attitude – they'll own the air.

Related Stories:
· Air Asia X To Launch Daily Stansted-Kuala Lumpur Services [Peanuts]
· Air Asia X Launches Low-Cost, Long-Haul Service [Jaunted]
· Air Asia X Wants to Long-Haul You From New York and California [Jaunted]

[Photo: mysticalangel]