Personally, I’ve been using Kayak to search for tickets as they have some very handy features that make repeated searching easy, and in the search results offer a chart of pricing history which you can use to help pin point when the cheapest times to travel are.

The two most important things to keep in mind when looking for cheap flights are simply be flexible about when you travel, and when you see a cheap flight, book it right away as it won’t stick around for long.

Even using Kayak’s email alert system to get emails about cheap flights I find a lot of the tickets I get told about have raised to a higher price by the time I get to them, so if you are planning on traveling, just looking for tickets isn’t enough, you need to be ready to grab the bargain when you find it.

I can’t really it call it traveling or backpacking as we only ended up going two places: Bangkok, and Ko Chang (Koh Chang) we did originally have plans to head further north into Kanchanaburi for the second week of our stay but by that time we had met so many people we were getting along with and a few different trips and parties were coming up that it made sense just to stick to where we were comfortable, particularly since everyone of my group had decided we were going to come back for several months at the end of the year and travel seriously, so there wasn’t any feeling of missing out on anything.

12th March – Manchester To Doha To Bangkok
We flew out with Qatar airways from Manchester which at the time was hit by sever gale force storms, so there was a question as to weather the flight might be delayed, or if we would even make it to the airport as they were closing motorways all over the place as high sided vehicles were blown over in a number of locations. Then with a quick change over in Doha we flew into Bangkok we arrived about 7am on the 13th (local time)

13th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok
Thankfully it was fairly overcast and smoggy when we arrived so the heat wasn’t too intense, but all the same we were thankful to get onto the air conditioned bus that took us to Khaosan Road where after a bit of milling around we met up with our friend Kate who got us sorted out with rooms for the night at My House (On Soi Camasongkrum) so after settling in, having my first encounter with cold showers and a bit of a nap we set out into the day, had some food, mooched about and did a bit of shopping for the day before finally calling it a night late on ready to catch the early morning VIP bus to Ko Chang.

14th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok to Lonely Beach, Ko Chang
This was our first real taste of travel in Thailand, which consists of starting at one location with a slip of paper of some sort, which as you go from vehicle to vehicle gets changed for other slips of paper as you travel along. The bus journey took perhaps six hours to get down to the pier near Trat, and then with a short wait we were transfered to the ferry, and then hopped onto a Taxi on Ko Chang which took us along to Lonely Beach, where a short (But hard) climb up the hill got us to the Oasis resort, one of the highest sets of guest huts in the area lead us to meet up with the rest of our friends, and the group of travelers they had hooked up with. After catching up and sorting out rooms and what was to become the usual pattern of lingering getting ready, eating, and then out to party we hit our first taste of the islands full flavor when we went to the Half Moon party at Siam Huts on Lonely Beach. Which was amazing night and really set the pace for our two weeks on the island.