Hi there,
Im planning to do a working holiday in New Zealand and would like to do a stopover somewhere in asia on my way there. I want to go at the end of february with no flight back.
I was wondering if you could recommend places in asia I could Stop over on my way to New Zealand for a week or two. Im also very interested in tips and tricks for booking cheap flights because I think you guys are probably experienced in this area.
David from Germany 
The usual stopovers are Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur. You could also do Taipei or Seoul.
Stopovers in these cities are typically a few days. That's enough to see the city sights. If you want longer then I'd suggest you explore further outside the city, such as Thailand (Phuket or Chiang Mai) or Cambodia (Siem Reap / Angkor Wat).
The choice of which city may come down to which airline has the cheapest deal, as each airline uses a different city as their hub.
My top choice of these would be HK, but for a longer stay the only real choice to explore nearby visa-free is Macau (which can be a daytrip by hydrofoil ferry). HK is expensive; you could see the sights in around 3 days.
The most budget-friendly one is probably Bangkok, and it is an easy gateway to a wider area to explore.
Good choice with NZ. A year travelling there is the best trip I can imagine.
Hey, thanks for the reply. What about booking two separate flights instead of one with integrated stop over? I never took the plane in my life so I’m pretty unexperienced in that area, either price wise oder possibility wise.
And for the stopover I’m less interested in the tourist attracting sites than the food, the people and the environment but I can imagine that a week or two is a bit short for that.
any advice on where to look for cheap flights or how to find them?
Quoting DavidEr
Hey, thanks for the reply. What about booking two separate flights instead of one with integrated stop over? I never took the plane in my life so I’m pretty unexperienced in that area, either price wise oder possibility wise.
That tends to be way more expensive. If you book one ticket, the stopover is effectively free. The only benefit from separate tickets could be that it'll open up some more obscure stopover destinations - places where only one alliance has a direct flight from Germany, while not offering any good connection onward to Auckland.
Quoting DavidEr
any advice on where to look for cheap flights or how to find them?
Use something like skyscanner (or any other multi-airline flight search tool) to find the airlines and routes (that is, which cities make for interesting stopovers), and ideally the cheapest day of the week for each combination. Something with a matrix-view is ideal, but I don't know which sites have that these days (been successfully trying not to fly where avoidable for quite a few years now). The goal here is to get a complete overview - not just go for whichever result happens to come out at the top on your first try. Then for each likely route, go to the websites of those airlines, and select "multi-city" (or similar; "Gabelflug" in German) rather than a "return" or "one way" flight. So you'd enter 3 or 4 flights: e.g. Frankfurt - Hong Kong, Hong Kong - Auckland, Auckland - Hong Kong, Hong Kong - Frankfurt. You'll get prices which should be near-identical to direct tickets Frankfurt - Auckland.
It can pay to also try Düsseldorf e.a. as your departure airport, depending on where in Germany you're located.
[ Edit: Edited on 3 Aug 2023, 14:34 GMT by Sander ]
thanks for the great advise, ill try that out immediatly. That was really insightfull
Quoting DavidEr
less interested in the tourist attracting sites than the food, the people and the environment but I can imagine that a week or two is a bit short for that.
I can't improve on Sander's answer to the flights stuff..
Re food, people and environment
Bangkok may be top choice for these. A lush tropical city with lots of life. Lots of English spoken, so it's easy on the traveller.
HK and Singapore are a bit more business cities, with tourist stuff but maybe harder to connect with the people. Taipei could be downright hard work for a newbie traveller. KL less fun than Bangkok, it's a Muslim country for a start. Seoul very much a business city.
What are yiur NZ plans?