When Chicago’s honeymoon Marissa (28) and Sean Kavena (31) decide to go on their honeymoon in Southeast Asia this summer, they pass through Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, with Airbnbs and a modest hotel. I was planning to stay in. But when they discovered amazing bargains to be made at some of the most luxurious properties in these destinations, they radically upgraded.
“When we saw, we went to Airbnb at a location in Singapore. Marina Bay Sands We offered a special 2 to 1 rate, so we stayed there instead. ” In front of Covid. “Then they upgraded us to a great suite on the 35th floor.” Their suite is connected to Sand’s famous rooftop pool, which straddles the resort’s three skyscrapers like a flying saucer.
On Koh Samui, Thailand, they stayed for 11 days in a seaside villa adjacent to the clear waters of Jin. Crystal Bay Yacht Club Beach Resort For a total of $ 280, it’s about half the daily rate of a hotel room. “It’s crazy,” Kavena said. “We pay less to the best luxury hotels in the world than the Red Roof Inn in the United States.”
Inflation has made travel prices in the United States exorbitant, but the dollar is the king in Southeast Asia. For example, the US dollar is currently worth about 35 Thai baht, 17% more than in January 2020 before the pandemic.
For tourism-dependent countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia, China, the largest market, is still semi-blocked, and other countries in the world welcome visitors to these countries. Despite simple electronic visas and quarantine removal and Covid test requirements, airports like Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi look empty because planes are parked on unused runways from nose to tail. To attract returning tourists, many of Southeast Asia’s best hotels, resorts and restaurants have significantly reduced their prices against the already high dollar.
This situation was a heavenly blessing for American tourists who are slowly starting to enter.
“We only stayed at the hostel,” said Julie Jones, 34, who quit her consulting job in Dallas and backpacked Asia with her two friends during the summer. “But if you look at how cheap some of these famous hotels are, you can experience a bit of history and luxury.”
Jones and her friends spent just two days Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, Charlie Chaplin’s honeymoon with Paulette Goddard in a sparkling, art-deco-style hotel that secures the French quarter of the Vietnamese city, with former President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. We held the second summit meeting. It is a fascinating spot full of jeweled Hanoi people and employees in sharp dark suits. Did they care that Jones and her friends appeared in sandals and beach shorts? “They upgraded us to a suite,” Jones said. Price: $ 185 per night, or about half the price the room would routinely go before the pandemic.
Unlike hotels, airfares have not dropped. It was easy to find a round-trip flight from Los Angeles and New York to Bangkok for less than $ 1,000 in May, but ANA, a Japanese airline that shares a code with United Airlines, has recently offered low-priced flights. Nevertheless, the price has exceeded $ 2,000. As $ 1,489 from Los Angeles and $ 1,734 from New York.
People who visit Southeast Asia now feel like tourists, as most of the people they may meet at hotels and restaurants are locals who travel their own country rather than going abroad like in the United States. May not be.During a recent visit BKK social club New Four seasons At a complex along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, I wasn’t a fellow tourist, but a clearly chic and sociable crowd of Thais and a cocktail glass clinking.Previously on the other side of the terrace along the river in the bakery Cafe Madeleine, Thai school children and their mothers enjoyed afternoon tea and brioche.No other Westerner was found to have won the adjacent Michelin star Yu Ting Yuan restaurant.
Gorgeously across the river The Peninsula BangkokThe room was going for $ 135 a night Mandarin OrientalThe original magnificent hotel in Thailand, where Joseph Conrad and future emperor Nicholas II once stayed, was $ 345 per night, about 30% lower than it was two years ago.
“It’s like Paris in the 1920s when people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald left middle-class life in the United States and hung out in Paris,” Jones said. She and her friends were heading to Bali.They were trying to choose from a $ 147 night yoga retreat with 5 stars inland Komaneka Surfing vacation in Ubud or $ 51 per night Montigo Resort In Seminyak, it could probably fit in both until it is pointed out that the seemingly permanent traffic jams that paralyze the entire island are currently in motion.
“It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Jones said. “I will make the most of it as much as possible.”
