acalish

Hi there!

I am thinking of flying into Bangkok and then spending about 3 weeks traveling around Thailand and neighboring countries. I was looking into different flights between some cities in southeast Asia, and then stumbled upon the AirAsia pass. Has anyone used it before? Is it too good to be true? I have not picked out cities I want to visit yet and am pretty flexible, so this looks like a great deal if I can manage to pack only 7kg of clothes.

Thanks!
Abby

Kathie

Is this the Discovery Pass or is it something else?

acalish

It just seems to be called the Asean Pass

http://www.airasia.com/my/en/book-wi.../overview.page

marmot

I'm a fan of AirAsia and choose them for travel within SE Asia whenever possible. The service is good, the website is easy to use and the prices vary from inexpensive to very cheap.

I spent some time on the Asean Pass website, but I must say I don't fully understand the restrictions. I think you need to work out a few "what if" itineraries and see if the Asean Pass will get you where you want to go. if you have a set itinerary and can book 2 weeks in advance, it looks like a good deal.

AirAsia operates on an ala-carte basis: Additional luggage allowance, meals, insurance and certain seat selections are "add-ons" or extra charges. They also have penalties for date and time changes, and severe penalties for route changes. They are very cheap if you know where you want to go and stick to your plans, but don't offer much flexibility.

crellston

Like marmot, I am a fan of Air Asia. We used them for maybe 25 flights during a year in Asia and Australia in 2015. I did look carefully into the ASEAN pass but decided against it as i didn't want any restrictions on which flights I could take and when ( aparently it can be difficult to find redemption flights on weekends etc. Instead, I signed up for their Air Asia Big loyalty programme and now get notified of sales which are very frequent and do offer bargain fare - I recently bought KL to Saigon tickets for $12.

It could be an excellent choice for you if you are clear on where and when you want the fly in you three weeks and can avoid weekends, public holidays etc. I would imagine there would usually be flights available on early morning/ late nigh flights and those at less popular times.

I would suggest working out your itinerary and flights now and then having a look to see what those flight may cost you and then compare with the pass. If yo are able to get the flights and even if you don't use all your credits it could still work out less expensive.

Re carry on bags, we travelled Carryon only with carry on sized bags weighing around 10 kg and were fine. We always checked in online and only visited the check in desk when it was necessary to prove we had a visa (about half the time) . Most of our fellow passengers were Asian and carrying way more and bigger bags than us. For some reason the only people challenged by staff were youn Asian girls??