Seven open-jaw travel options for Asian adventures
There are a host of trips, long and short, you can make between Asian destinations now that flying to one place and returning from another has become so much easier and cheaper
When is a return ticket not a return ticket? When it’s an open jaw.
There was a time when one-way airfares cost as much as a round trip. Booking flights by the sector wasn’t worth considering, except by cruise passengers who finished up at ports far from where they had embarked. Times have changed, however, and open-jaw travel – airline industry speak for flying to one destination and returning from another – has become inexpensive and easy to arrange. You don’t even need to stick with the same carrier.
You could fly from Hong Kong to London and return from Paris, linking the two cities with a ride aboard the high-speed Eurostar railway. Or fly to Los Angeles, hire a car, drive up the California coastal highway and fly back from San Francisco. Closer to home, Taipei and Kaohsiung pair up nicely, or make a beeline for Bali and return from Surabaya, on the neighbouring Indonesian island of Java. Combining the South Korean capital, Seoul, with Pyongyang, in North Korea, might be harder to coordinate.
1. Phuket to Penang
From Phuket there are numerous island-hopping possibilities to Penang. Pause at Phi Phi Island or keep going until you reach the pristine bays and rainforest-cloaked interior of Koh Lanta. Sand between your toes and the stresses of Hong Kong already a memory, navigate south through the gorgeous Andaman Islands of Koh Muk and Koh Libong to the talcum-powder beaches of Koh Lipe. When you’re ready to move on, take one of the frequent high-season ferries that shuttle across to the Malaysian archipelago of Langkawi. That leaves one more short journey by sea to Penang, from where there are plenty of flights back to Hong Kong. Or phone in sick and do the whole trip in reverse.
