i commented on my air asia trip in the chat section. i thought i'd put something on the main board for future reference.

as i noted before, i paid 10,000thb ($300) for a bkk/hkg r/t and i booked a week in advance. i just checked the fare for a mon-thurs in march and it was 8,500. i know they have lower fares but i'm thinking those are "super specials" that come up from time to time.

i had a slight delay on the first leg but on time the second leg. check in was easy, no long lines like i've seen before for air asia in phuket and saigon. they did use a bus each leg in bkk but gates in hkg.

air asia is in terminal 2 at hkg and that terminal has its own immigration area now. i hadn't seen that before, maybe i missed it. thai airways is in this terminal also and i flew thai on this route in november.

one issue is i could not use a credit card to book online. in bkk, i went to their ticket booth located on floor 2 of tesco/lotus at the "on nut" BTS station (the tesco/lotus exit from BTS takes you right onto floor 2). you can also use a credit card by phone but that might get costly depending on where you are and what phone service you have.

their "premium seating/priority boarding" is for rows 1-5 and the exit rows. i believe the fee was 250thb each way. these areas were pretty empty so a larger guy might want to book this to make sure the middle seat is empty or you can move to another spot that does have one. i noticed they didn't allow people from other rows to move there after take off. even if the row was 100% empty. other than the exit rows, the leg room is the same in all rows (airbus A320) and it is tight.

i paid 100 or 150thb to select my seat and i also paid 100thb for my checked bag (15kg limit).

two of my friends changed their flight and flew back a couple days early. they paid a 900thb change fee and that was all. you do have to pay a fare difference if you want to change but the fares were the same in this case.

i wanted to try air asia as they now have some nice intl flights from phuket. nonstop to saigon, jakarta, hong kong, and i think a couple others. a recent fare to SGN was 2,800thb r/t. that is not bad if someone needs to make a visa run from phuket.