You say Myanmar; I still say Burma ...

Last night, after fighting with my Mastercard Securecode again, we booked a number of airline tickets ... months in advance. Getting a good deal on a discount carrier is a bit of a sport. For cash-flow sake, I'd imagine, they offer copious discounts for early booking. In this day and age, we're all used to sitting next to someone on a flight who probably paid a vastly different price than what our tickets cost. Yet on AirAsia.com buying a ticket seems even more a game of chance, but I like it.

I am fairly confident that the highest prices probably occur a few months before departure as that would be when normal people arrange their travel. No one has ever accused me of being 'too' normal. We preferred the assurance of cheap tickets early rather than hoping for last minute savings.

The initial and final segments of our winter away will involve taking China Eastern to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the eventual return to Vancouver. Those dates are near the end of October and mid-March respectively.

We also bought one-way, AirAsia tickets at the beginning of the month when a sale popped up from KL to Colombo, Sri Lanka. The majority of our winter will be there. After three months we will leave and spend a remaining six weeks in SE Asia. Until last night, those plans were sketchier.

Now we know that at the end of January 2013, we will fly from CMB to Thailand. Those tickets cost less than $50 each! We will just stay in the city for a single day as we did not want to risk cutting it too close on a connection. We first did One Night in Bangkok when it was a song played on the radio in the 1980's. (By the way you can listen to the link but this version has a 1:45 minute intro. I bet you didn't know that it was sung by Murray Head, Judas from Jesus Christ Superstar!)





Then, as you can see we're flying into Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar) for a half month. How exciting! It's time to trod there before everybody and their uncle make that journey. I think the fact the civilian government has started offering online visas will dramatically increase the number of visitors. After seeing a bit of the country, we're catching an afternoon connection to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. That one-way fare cost about $35, which rather amazes me. We've only visited Siem Reap but never the capital. From that point in time, our itinerary is still pretty open as we'll decide if we are to visit Laos or Vietnam. We will have about a month before we have to get back to Kuala Lumpur.

It's lovely weather around here now and, ever so slowly, more and more of my winter is shaping up. How lucky I am!