RTW trip solo female

Hi there,

I am currently dreaming of doing a RTW trip on my own in 2010/2011.

My main RTW ticket would look the following:

FRA - DEL - BKK/SIN - MEL/BNE - CHC/AKL - SFO - FRA

My route within South East Asia is kind of all over the place and I am confusing myself by all the countries I wish to visit. I thought of traveling overland within Thailand to Cambodia and further to Vietnam. Then (as a side trip) taking a flight from SGN to TYO and return from OSA back to SIN to get back on track. From SIN I would like to travel overland to DPS. Unfortunately there are no flights from DPS directly down to MEL so I would need another flight (side trip) back to SIN to travel to OZ.

Has anyone of you suggestions how I could fix up my trip within Asia to simplify it and make it less expensive as the side trips/extra flights will sum up extra expenses? It seems like impossible having TYO and OZ in the same RTW itinerary due to back tracking and zig zag flying.

In MEL I would like to buy a car then and travel along the cost up to BNE and take a flight to CHC and travel up north to AKL then. From there I plan another side trip to Fiji - more and more expenses :S

Has anyone of you traveled from NZ to Fiji and knows how much such a flight would be? I heard its not that expensive.

Back in AKL I will simply take a flight to SFO and without stop over back to Europe.

What do you think? Is this kind of routing doable within one year? How much money should I budget for when I intent to work in Australia and hopefully also in NZ? Has anyone of you experience in getting jobs in South East Asia so I could fund my expenses there as well? I thought of working in hotels etc.?

OMG, I have so many open questions...

Any help, feedback, tip is more than welcome. Thanks a million!!!

[ Edit: Edited on 29-Oct-2009, at 09:29 by The_year ]

You could easily do it in a year at a pretty liesurely pace. You could possibly look at getting something like the One World RTW ticket which if you use the mileage based fare allows use of Air Pacific Fiji's national carrier) as well as airlines like British Airways, Iberian, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Lan Airline group (i.e. Lan Chile, Lan Argentina, Lan Peru etc for South America), American Airlines and quite a few other much smaller airlines. This would allow you to get almost all of the flights on one ticket. In South East Asia though you can get very cheap flights on Air Asia to many places (Japan not being one of them as yet). This would mean on your RTW ticket you would probably include a couple of flights within Asia but most would be done seperate using somewhere like Bangkok as a hub city. Air Pacific has a flight from Auckland to Nadi and also has a flight Nadi to Los Angeles. From there you could head up to San Francisco and if you haven't been before going to New York before heading back home would be a good thing.

A rough guide if travelling on a budget would be $20-25USD a day in South East Asia (excluding Japan as that is more like $50+USD a day), $50USD a day in Australia and New Zealand (more if you went to somewhere like Queenstown in New Zealand and did activities there), $50USD a day in the US.

Without using the Oneworld fare I do not think you could do all of what you want as I don't think United Airlines or any of the other US airlines fly to Fiji meaning you'd either need to buy it seperate. I just checked a rough cost and it's about $700AUD which at the moment is approximately $637USD for a return Auckland to Nadi flight. If you had a multiple entry visa for Australia, you can sometimes get cheap packages including reasonable accommodation to Fiji especially from Brisbane.

You could possibly look at some itinerary like FRA-DEL-BKK (do some overland travel and cheap SEAsia flights but return to BKK)-NRT-MEL/BNE-NAN-AKL/CHC-LAX-SFO-JFK-FRA. Incase you don't know all of those airport codes it's Frankfurt - Delhi - Bangkok - Tokyo - Melbourne overland to Brisbane - Nadi/Fiji - Auckland overland to Christchurch - Los Angeles - Sanfrancisco (possibly do that leg overland) - New York - Frankfurt. You may need to go Tokyo - Fiji - Australia - New Zealand to get a valid fare but I know a few years ago I got a flight from Sydney - Tokyo on Qantas so the opposite would be possible on the one world fare. If you worry about zigzagging in your itinerary, the continent based one world fare is great for that, but it might be tricky getting Fiji in on that fare as I'm pretty sure Air Pacific is not allowed on that Oneworld fare but is the mileage based one.

If you are going to be going to the expense of having the USA in your itinerary you should at least see a little bit of it instead of just transitting through the country which would just be a waste.

Another thing in your post you state that no direct flights from DPS (Denpasar) - MEL (Melbourne) exist but in fact they do on Garuda. They don't go every day at some times of the year, but do go. I'm not aware of any RTW ticket which would allow Garuda to be used. Those flights cost approx $500USD but would need to be booked months in advance to get it at that sort of price (that price was for late May 2010).

[ Edit: Edited on 30-Oct-2009, at 05:41 by aharrold45 ]

aharrold45, u r fantastic. tyvm for all the help and tipps i didnt even think about the one world RTW :S as i was working within the star alliance and only thought of them to do the trip with. ^^ ofc, i will go with one world when i get more seg in my itinerary confirmed. i simply will give them a call.

i left usa out of the deeper focus as i did california LA and SFO. Also NYC i saw already 3 times. but maybe i should do a stop in ORD or BOS. will c.

thx a million again.