Best Way to Find Cheap(er) Tickets to Thailand

Hope this fits in the general climbing category, but I'm hoping to get to Thailand this winter and wanted some advice on the best strategy for getting cheap(er) tickets. When flying within the US, I generally check prices through a site such as kayak.com, and keep an eye on the prices for a month or so, until I find a good price.

Are there better airports to fly in or out of? I'm in West Virginia, so the easiest major airport to fly out of is probably Dulles, outside of DC. What about on the Thailand side? A brief survey of prices this past week put them around $1200.

Thanks!

Yeah, they aren't great right now. I am flying from the west coast and still had a hard time finding anything under $900. Going directly thru airlines like Eva Air, China Air (if you dare!), and others has been pretty successful for me in the past, often beating the discount sites like kayak for some reason...

Anyway, good luck and maybe I'll see you down there at the Viking Bar!

MAS (Malaysian Airline) has been a pretty cheap airline and will fly you through KL- less of a diversion and shorter total flight than through HK, Singapore or ____, China. Worth considering. Silk Air(a Thai airline) also has pretty good deals sometimes.
Cheapest of all is Air Asia, or was that Asia Air... but you have to get there first, and I'm not 100% sure that they are landing in Phuket (a boat ride from Raylee) at any given day. YOu might have to pick & choose dates.

Some one recently mentioned to me an article in "Climbing" mag... Something about the Thai communities near some climbing areas being almost completely abandoned. I guess it mentioned a lack of infrastructure like sewage systems and trash removal services. Anyone else know anything about this?

There is apparently some change going on in Tonsai regarding Ao Nang landowners and squatters owning many of the beach front bars being pushed out, and cutting down of large chunks of land. I guess a lot of the guys that got pushed out have just moved on, and are out developing new walls on the surrounding islands. This is not first hand, but coming from Elke at Wee's Climbing School. I guess I will be finding out soon enough.
Perhaps Sam Lightener knows what is going on?

"Read the article. It's not about abandonment, it's about development of Tonsai, right on the beach. The sewage and trash situation has always been bad. "

Ah ha.....thanks for the correction. I thought it was relevant info even though i hadn't read the article myself.

Jon St John wrote:Hope this fits in the general climbing category, but I'm hoping to get to Thailand this winter and wanted some advice on the best strategy for getting cheap(er) tickets. When flying within the US, I generally check prices through a site such as kayak.com, and keep an eye on the prices for a month or so, until I find a good price. Are there better airports to fly in or out of? I'm in West Virginia, so the easiest major airport to fly out of is probably Dulles, outside of DC. What about on the Thailand side? A brief survey of prices this past week put them around $1200. Thanks!

just bought some tickets a day ago for more like 1700 and the prices are going up quick. make sure you hit the +or-3 days to find better prices. a week ago they were 1300 damnit.
also in areas like DC, you have 3 airports to chose from (reagan,dulles,BWI) and one of them always has a better price, dulles usually sucks the worst.

Thanks for all the info. I think we are going to fly out in March, so best strategy might be to wait until after the holidays, then book tickets. Prices are hovering around $1200 right now for that time of the year.

I've always had good luck on Thaifly.com. They are out of Thailand so there isn't the normal US or travel agency markup. Last time I booked through them it was a few hundred less than anywhere else.