So our final decision was to fly to Bangkok, explore Thailand and eventually travel down through Malaysia and fly home from Singapore. We would leave in late June and return in August. Now we only needed to find a cheap way of getting there. This was not as easy as it sounds....

We decided to check out as many travel agencies as possible to see which ones would give the best price. First I checked with Kilroy Travels, a student travel agency with good prices. However, we thought the price they quoted was too high, and we expected that something better could be found.

When I went to Oslo in February 2000 to visit Jan Arild and some of my other friends, we decided to visit some of the travel agents run by immigrantes to see if they might have some good offers. There are quite a few of these travel agents in Oslo, but some of them look really shabby. The first place we found looked pretty alright from the outside, with updated prices in the window. However, inside there was just about enough room for two desks and the men sitting behind them. We explained what we were looking for, and one of the men pointed to two chairs, meaning: sit down.

The guy didn't say anything for the next five minutes, but at least he started doing something with his computer, so we assumed that he was finding the information now. Apparently, that turned out to not have been the case. When he finally directed his attention towards us, he wanted to know what we wanted. We repeated it, but there was a slight communication problem and it took some time before we understood each other. None of the men spoke Norwegian and just a little bit of English, but in the end I think we got it right.

While we were waiting for the prices I was looking around in their office. It was really small, and I kept wondering where their bathroom was because I could not see a door in there. Finally we were quoted some prices. They were with Aeroflot and seemed very competitive compared to the prices from Kilroy. Before leaving Jan Arild optimistically asked if it was safe to fly with Aeroflot. The two men looked at eachother and one of them said "they don`t fall down so much", and then they started to laugh.

We visited some other agencies too, but they all had roughly the same prices. Quite typical of these travel agencies was that none of the staff could speak Norwegian, and hardly even English. This created a pretty bad impression because we weren't really sure whether they had really understood our questions. In the end we were not quite sure what to do. Their prices were quite good, but was it really safe to buy anything from them?

We also paid a visit to Kilroy Travels to get some more information. However, despite asking the same question as a few days ago, we were now quoted a price was at least 600 NOK cheaper! (but still not as cheap as the immigrant agencies). This was strange, but good! Having had similar experiences with Kilroy on previous occasions, we thought that maybe if we give them a call some days later, we may get an even better price. I actually did this and was quoted a new price, although unfortunately it was more expensive. A few days later I was given another price again, which was better than the first price and third price, but not as good as the second price.

Why we kept getting new prices all the time I don`t know, especially since I gave them exactly the same information each time, emphasizing that I was only interested in the cheapest price. At least we learned not to trust the first price they gave us, but to keep asking them until the quoted prices (hopefully) converged. It's a shame they are so difficult to deal with because on most routes they have very competitive prices. I have a theory that their unreliability is due to a large turnover of staff at Kilroy and a computer booking system that is very difficult to work with. They seem to employ only young people, apparently for a limited period of time since there are hardly ever any familiar faces when one visits their office. Most of their staff probably leave before thay have managed to work out how to use their booking system, meaning that you are likely to talk with someone who is very inexperienced with finding the cheapest flights.

I also tried calling a travel agent called Aerotravel who (allegedly) was selling tickets for Aeroflot. They where more than happy to give me a price, but since they needed some time to get the right information, they would call me back later. This was okay by me, if they had only kept their promise. When they didn't return my call, I got in touch with them the following day. They remembered me and promised to call me back again soon. Well, of course they didn`t and so I had to call them a third time. Yet again they promised to call me back, and although I didn`t really believe it, I am a born optimist and gave them one last chance. This time they actually did call and were even able to give me a price that was about the same as the immigrant travel agencies.

Now our options were either Kilroy whose prices seemed to be generated at random, but generally not among the best, Aero Travel who was quite cheap but seemed unreliable, or one of the immigrant agencies, none of which had made a very favourable impression on us.

It was, however, becoming clear that Aeroflot was by far the cheapest company. Maybe it would be possible to buy the tickets directly from them? Jan Arild called their office in Oslo and spoke to a very nice lady. She was very helpful and he was quoted the best price so far. The only problem was that they did not yet have the time table for the summer, so it was unclear whether there would be a corresponding flight to Bangkok on the same day as the flight to Moscow.

He called back two weeks later to hear whether the new time table was in place, which it wasn't. On asking if it would be possible to fly to Moscow, stay one night and then fly to Bangkok, he was told that this was certainly possible, and was not more expensive. The Aeroflot office made a reservation at a hotel in Moscow for us. The room was quite expensive at 600 NOK, though, but since it was only one night, we didn't have a problem with this. Also they told us that we needed to apply for Russian visas.

In total, all the flights (Oslo-Moscow-Bangkok and Singapore-Moscow-Oslo) cost us exactly 5400 NOK (including taxes and everything). If we had left after July 10, it would have been only 4900 NOK because apparently this was Aeroflot's low season (which strangely was exactly the opposite of all other airlines, who had this time as their high season), but this was not possible since we would like to stay for at least five or six weeks and still be back home before the middle of August. In our opinion, this was a very good price compared to what the other airlines were offering, saving us at least 1500 NOK each.

Medical preparations

Even though we had gotten vaccinations last year when we went to Africa, we needed som more for Asia. At that time I was working as a teacher in Rostock, Germany. Jan Arild made an appointment at the vaccination service at the University in Oslo, and reminded me (more than once) to do the same in Rostock. I don't like needles and vaccinations, but eventually I made the appointment and arranged for my teaching college Uta to come with me to the clinic, in case I didn't understand some of the German medical terms.

Jan Arild got his vaccinations done some days before me, so I knew exactly what he had gotten: Hepatitis A (second shot), Typhoid and Japanese Encephalitis and of course a receipt for a malaria prohylactic called Lariam. I was expecting to get the same vaccinations. After having vaited for 40 minutes in that awful hospital smell just wanting to escape (Uta wouldn`t let me), it was finally my turn. In that small room there was one nurse, two medical students and one doctor waiting for me.....had they heard about my vaccinations from last year (when I almost fainted) and called in backup? I felt very claustrophobic in there, but it actually went very well! Uta transtated the things I didn`t understand and after two injections I could finally leave.

Then I started thinking: Why did Jan Arild have three injections and I only two? It was the Japanese Encephalitis injection which was missing. I called him and he was a bit surprised about this as well. However, this injection had to be given twice so he would ask about it when he returned to get his second shot. He was then treated by a different nurse, who told him that the nurse he had been speaking with the first time had a reputation for being really over protective. You probably didn't need the Japanese Encephalitis injection unless you were planning on spending a lot of time under really primitive conditions. This was quite relieving to hear.

A quite strange thing was that there seemed to be almost no correlation between the prices in Germany and Norway. The Hepatitis A vaccine was cheaper in Germany, but the Japanese Encephalitis was almost five times as expensive in Germany. The Lariam tablets were almost twice as expensive in Germany, as well.

Applying for a Russian visa

Since we were staying for a short while in Russia, we needed to obtain a transit visa. According to the Moscow edition of "The Rough Guide" this process was a real hassle, so they adviced that people pay extra money to a company for taking care of the details. However, we decided to sort this out ourselves, and found that it was no hassle at all. If The Rough Guide thinks the Russian Embassy is so difficult to deal with, they should try dealing with Lufthansa, SAS or Gjensidige Forsikring. Now, that is what we call hassle!

Anyway, to obtain our visa, we just phoned the Russian Embassy in Oslo and asked them what we needed to do. A resonably friendly woman explained that we would need to fill in a visa application, send three photographs of ourselves together with copies of our passports and flight tickets out of Russia, as well as a stamped and addressed envelope for them to return the visas in. The whole process would take 11 days and would cost 350 NOK in total for both of us. One thing we thought sounded a bit strange was that she insisted on us just sending the money in cash together with the application. After all, it is illegal to send cash by Norwegian mail! Our worries, however, turned out to be completely unfounded. She immediately faxed over the visa application, which we eventually filled in and sent together with the other stuff she had wanted. The next day she phoned Jan Arild back to ask whether we needed visas for our return trip as well, which we didn't since we would only stay in the transit zone for the three hours we were at Moscow airport. After exactly 11 days both visas arrived in the mail. Hassle? We think not.