Itinerary/Hotel Help - Hong Kong etc.
 

I'm looking for advice for our honeymoon next Oct. (2005)around the 3-24th
We're going for three weeks to Asia to the following:

Hong Kong
Bangkok
Sri Lanka
Maldives

The help is how long at each spot and hotel recommendations. Our budget is fairly good -upto $400-$500 a night depending on the spot. Also, any sites to get better than rack rates on the hotels would be appreciated

You're certainly going to be covering a lot of miles! Are you going to book it as an around the world ticket?

Do you have three full weeks "on the ground" in Asia? How long to spend at each location depends on what you want to experience. I'd guess from your itinerary that you plan to save all of your beach time for the Maldives. So I'd suggest something like three nights in Hong Kong, five nights in Bangkok, seven nights in Sri Lanka and six nights in the Maldives.

My recommendations of where to stay in Hong Kong: I prefer to be looking at (rather than staying on) Hong Kong Island, so I'd suggest the Pen or if you prefer more modern hotels, the Shangri-La.

In Bangkok, I recommend staying on the river. The Grand Dame is the Oriental, or the modern tower is the Pen.

I find that www.asia-hotels.com has good prices. Sometimes the hotel itself may offer a better price.

You may want to read the favorite hotels thread here for more ideas.

Thanks for your info. Yes, Maldives is for the sun and sand. I've heard good things about the Pen in HK.
We're actually going points from Canada to Hong Kong, then points from Hong Kong to Bangkok. So we pay from Bangkok to Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka to Maldives then back to HK

I recently posted a number of hotel suggestions for Sri Lanka on this site - a search should bring them up. I also suggested to another poster you go to some Sri Lanka specialist travel sites like www.aitkenspence.com to get an idea of what you would like to do in Sri Lanka then go ahead and book it yourself. I think you are covering a lot of ground for 3 wks - need a better sense of what you would like tyo do. Eg Sri Lanka has wildlife (elephant orphanage and eco resorts), nature (tea plantations), city (Colombo), history (Kandy, Anuradhapuram). As u are spending time in Maldives think u can prob skip Sr Lanka beaches tho it has those too! I would say at least 2 nights Colombo, 2 nights Elephant Corridoor - www.elephantcorridoor.com. IN bangkok again where u stay depends partly on the agenda. The Oriental and the Peninsula often get rave recos on this site. I really like the Four Seasons as well. Then for an authentic Thai experience you could consider Chakrabongse Villas (pull up an earlier post recently).

i agree about staying in kowloon in HK...always something doing there...great restaurants...5 days is a nice amount of time, plus you may loose one because of the flight jet lague...
bkk also requires about 5 days or maybe 4....i prefer the peninsula there or the four seasons...many of us prefer being on the river so the penn or oriental are the main choices there...
can't speak to sri lanka but think someone suggested 3 days...maldive--the rest of your lives should be sufficient!!! four seasons gets good marks here...you will want to be as close to male for transportation...maybe 4 days?? are you over??