In Reply to: Bali+Thailand-Advice how to organise pls posted by Kiwi Carol on Monday, 25. April 2005 at 13:26 Bali Time:
On my last trip I started in Singapore, then went to Malaysia, Thailand, back to malaysia (briefly) then to Indonesia (but not Bali).
The reason I did it that way was because airasia (airasia.com) have very cheap flights, but most of them go through Kuala Lumpur. I couldn't find any online sites that had cheap flights direct from Bangkok to Indonesia. In any event, KL is a nice place to hang out for a few days.
Apparently, Bangkok is a great place to shop for cheap flights, but I have no idea where to start looking.
I just had a quick look at the airasia website, and prices from Bali-KL are about AU$25 + tax (so maybe around $40 all up), and about AU$45 (including tax) from KL-Bangkok. That is in June and you'd have to work your bookings to make sure you got handy connecting flights, but AU$85 is pretty cheap. Both routes are popular, and have more than one flight per day, so any flight cancellation hassels should be minimal.
And, as I said, Malaysia is a pretty cool place to spend any amount of time. If you're a beachy person, flights to Penang are very cheap. I'm not much of a shopper, but KL is apparently very cheap for some things (when my Indo friends heard I was going there, they all put in orders for shoes).
And Thailand is great too. The seafood is spectacular, and I'll never understand why we don't have people here in Melbourne selling squid-on-a-stick in the streets. It doesn't make sense not to do this.
If you're really keen to save your pennies, don't forget that you'll have to pay VOA each time you arrive in Indonesia. Even though it's for 30 days, that only covers you for a single entry into the country. So you can save $US15 by having most of your holiday in Bali, then going to Thailand, then returning within 3 days of your return to NZ (coz 3 day visa is only $US10). (I think that's accurate... best to check all info.)
I hope some of this has been useful.