Ever dreamed of travelling far away but never had the money to travel outside Europe? Not needed anymore, in this post I will explain how anyone can fly to Asia for around 100 euro! I will highlight the tactics of flying low cost to Asia by connecting multiple low cost tickets. Last time I wrote about how I created a mini world trip to the Americas and in this blog I will show you how I built myself a great trip to the Philippines for EUR 87,99!

Key for this trick is to be flexible and to have a certain mindset that not only the destination, but also the journey is part of the experience! Why I say this? Because this trick definitely isn’t the fastest way of getting to Asia as it will involve multiple layovers. But I will show you how these layovers are actually the perfect opportunity to broaden your travels and WILL be part of the trip and not just the journey!

Long layover in Dubai, for sure not a waste of time!

How it all began
For me it all started with a nice deal from Dubai (similar to this one) popping up on SecretFlying in December 2017, with travel in October and November the next year. These kind of deals tend to pop up a few times per year, so keep an eye out on them! The ticket was 2AED (about €0,50) plus taxes and fee. Total: €33 for the 9 hour flight from Dubai to Manilla. I booked this blindly, taking into account that if I wouldn’t be able to “build” a trip around this ticket it would only be a small loss and worth the risk for me. One of the main reasons I took this risk was because it was SO far in the future (11 months) and thus I was pretty sure that nice deals which matched this ticket would emerge.

The next step
Now that I had a ticket to Asia (from Dubai) the next thing would be to find a deal that would get me to Dubai for a good price. But in order to do this, I had to stay put for a few months. Why, you may think. Isn’t it good to already start looking for tickets to Dubai as soon as you booked the first ticket? Well, the answer is no as I was only able to browse tickets for KLM, Emirates etc. so far in advance. The reason for this is that those “traditional” airlines sell their seats 300-350 days in advance. I wanted to get myself to Dubai as cheap as possible so I had to book a low-cost airline ticket (Transavia, Wizz-air, Norwegian). These low cost airlines sell their tickets per season. And November is part of the winter season 2019. So what did I do? I subscribed to newsletters of those three airlines and waited for their winter season 2019 to come for sale online. Around March and April the first e-mails got delivered with the announcements that their winter schedule was almost finished. This was the moment to act, I thought. Unfortunately the prices were still relatively high with the cheapest possibility Helsinki to Dubai for 89 euro (but I don’t live in Finland). I did however figured out possible routes: Transavia directly from Amsterdam, Norwegian from Scandinavia or Wizz Air from various eastern European cities. As described in the blog “finding the perfect flight” I tracked these flights with price alerts. Soon I started to see a trend: Wizz Air revealed their prices for their different routes and prices started high and dropped a few weeks after being online. Unfortunately I missed out on a cheap flight from Sofia to Dubai. Around that time the flights from Poland to Dubai came online, but being priced at around 100 euro I thought it would be a bit too much (taking into account I had to travel to Poland as well). A little bit later, halfway May, a great promo came up: 20% discount on all Wizz Air flights. This was my chance and I immediately booked three tickets (for me and my two friends) from Katowice, Poland to Dubai. This ticket was around 65 euro, but I only payed 45 each as I was able to use some accrued Wizzair credit (cashback on hotel bookings, story for another time). This completed step 2 and now I had two tickets.

Indeed, with these prices it is a great opportunity!

Why I love layovers!
The flight to Dubai will arrive Tuesday evening and the flight to Manilla leaves the next day very late. This might sound as a long and annoying layover, and I would have been able to choose for a shorter layover. But, I don’t see layovers as annoying and even entirely the other way around: for me it is a perfect opportunity to visit Dubai as I will have one evening and the full next day! Enough to do a lot 🙂 Plus, it gives me some margin in case my flight is delayed or something goes wrong, which would be my own responsibility as the tickets are separate low cost tickets with different companies.

The last (or actually first) leg
Anyway, now I will be able to travel from Poland to Manilla via Dubai but I still need to get to Poland. I know Wizz Air prices their intra european routes as low as €9,99 so I checked and tracked the flights from Eindhoven and Amsterdam to Katowice and Krakow (Transavia, KLM, Ryanair and Wizz Air) and waited until the fares dropped. As I fly on a Tuesday at 12:00 to Dubai I could opt for the Tuesday early morning flight, which only gives me a 1,5hr layover in Katowice. I thought this is too short and thus I wanted to fly on Monday. But if you are gonna fly on a Monday, why not make it a weekend trip and fly on Saturday already? That’s what we did, so we booked the 9,99 euro flight on Saturday morning and we will have a few days in Southern Poland!

Krakow by night in winter, should be a great layover! (note to myself: pack some warm clothes)

Why this might be even better than a more direct flight
The way I see this trip is not 3 flights with long layovers to get to Manilla but two small trips, one to Krakow and one to Dubai, before the longer trip to the Philippines starts! Actually it might even be a convenient way for people who don’t like flying: instead of one long and annoying journey with layovers in packed terminals you have short flights and can sleep in a real bed in hotels/hostels in the cities during your layover! It is all about mindset! If you approach it in a positive way it will be way more pleasant!

To summarize how much the flights are in total:
– EUR 9,99 Eindhoven to Katowice
– EUR 45 Katowice to Dubai
– EUR 33 Dubai to Manilla
Total cost for a ticket from the Netherlands to Asia: EUR 87,99!
I bet most people, including myself, spend more money on a night out, an uber ride or a roundtrip ticket to London! This once again proves that travelling does NOT HAVE to be expensive, as long as you are flexible and adjust yourself and use clever tricks.

But what about the return trip?
You might by now think, all good that you can get a one way flight to Asia for cheap but don’t you need to get back home from Asia and work? Well, unfortunately I can’t travel non-stop so even I have to get back eventually. There are a few ways how to get back which I will discuss here:

The first option would be to use the same trick as how you got to Asia, so get yourself back to Dubai and from their back to Europe and eventually back to your home country. I did not choose for this option as I couldn’t find a nice return trip to Manilla from Dubai that suited my dates. But you even could extend this trip and make it a WORLD TRIP, by flying to Hawaii or Australia, America and eventually back home! See this example. One of my friends is actually going to fly back home this way, via New York and make it a full round-the-world trip!

Or you can use a low cost long haul airline like Scoot, Norwegian or Eurowings. They all fly from Asian cities directly to Europe, some great examples:
– Bangkok to Dusseldorf with Eurowings, starting at 149/199 euro
– Singapore or Bangkok to London with Norwegian, starts at 110 euro!
Recently they had a sale going on for a wide range of dates at this price, check it out!
– Singapore to Athens or Berlin, with Scoot starting at just 79 euro!
And from any Asian city getting to these hubs is very easy and affordable with Asian low cost airlines like Air Asia!

My return trip
Myself, I did not go for those options. I went for a more original return trip. Since the moment I started with travelling I already collect frequent flyer miles with various airlines. With KLM I have a bunch of miles, but using these from Asia to get back is pretty expensive. So when I read about this promo by British Airways, where I had around 22k avios/miles, you can imagine I started looking for a nice way to get back! Eventually I decided I wanted to visit either Singapore or Hong Kong and fly back from there. It turned out Hong Kong was the cheapest option, so I booked a non-stop ticket from Hong Kong to London (13,5hr flight) for only EUR 35 plus 9.750 avios. Getting to HK from the Philippines shouldn’t be difficult, same goes for getting back to Amsterdam from London. So I think I got myself a great deal home!


Last tip
I hope this post gave you an insight in how to fly towards Asia for a bargain and some inspiration on how you could built a similar trip yourself! If you don’t want all the hassle of building a low-cost ticket and don’t have enough frequent flier miles why not wait for an errorfare to Asia? Last week I actually booked another trip to Asia in early 2019, with KLM, for only €182 roundtrip! Stay put for that blog somewhere next year!

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