Occasionally, when I have nothing better to do, I like to torture myself dream a little.
Usually that involves looking at house listings; occasionally it starts with me looking at rental listings, but that gets depressing real quick so it never lasts long.
Occasionally I indulge in a bit of travel lust. A lot of that comes to me without me even lifting a finger. I get so many travel emails – Grabaseat alerts, Travelcafe deals, and lots of travel agency offers.
But if I’m so inclined, I head over to Kayak Explore.
From this screen, I can see what it costs to fly basically anywhere in the world from my city.
So, where does my money get me from Auckland?
For $522, I can fly to Apia, Samoa. (Beaches! Turtles! Rainforests! Markets!)
For $1193, I can fly to Bangkok, Thailand. (Cheap drinks! Fantastic food! Temples!)
For $2,072, I can fly to Vienna, Austria. (The city where Before Sunrise is set!)
For $3,254, I can fly to Vladivostok, Russia. (I’m not sure why I would want to go there … but St Petersburg is still on my wishlist!)
And that is why people go on ‘the big OE’ – it’s just too darn expensive to travel regularly from little old New Zealand when it’s minimum $2k return to the likes of Europe or North American.
Where can you fly to for these dollar amounts?
(Not a sponsored post, but I’d be more than happy to accept compensation … just sayin’!)
From Toronto:
For $500, I can go to San Francisco, Seattle, The Bahamas.
For $1000, I can go to Turkey, Cairo, Beijing, Taiwan, Mumbai.
For me to get to Australia & NZ, it’ll cost me $1800 – $2400. *cringe* I guess I better save up… *pouts*
I should point out that Christchurch, NZ, it’ll cost me $2792 to get there. The most expensive location listed on Kayak for me. O_O!
I do the same thing. Pretending to spend money I don’t have and browsing my options. They say planning a holiday is almost as good for your soul as actually taking a holiday. That’s sounds good enough for me.
So Fun! I do this all the time too.
From LAX…
$500 – Caribbean, NYC during peak travel, Hawaii mid-peak
$800 – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
$1000 – London Heathrow
$1400 – Paris in the middle of July
For $300-600, I can fly to most places in North America.
For $800-1,000, I can go to London.
For $1,300, I can go to Athens.
To come see you, I’d need $2,100. Whew! Maybe one day. 🙂
Ok, now I’m wracking my brain to figure out what the Big OE is? HALP!
Google is your friend 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_experience
Based on where I am for $500 – $1000 I can buy a plane ticket for throughout the US, Canada and the Caribbean. In low season, I could land in several few European countries as well. I like the way you think 😉
Love this game, though it’s a dangerous one. I’ve definitely found myself impulsively booking a ticket when I was meant to just be “window shopping.” Haha
Flights are so frickin expensive these days. I miss the days when it would cost $300 to fly cross country. I think the last time I flew back East it cost close to $700. I miss cheap airfare!
Ouch, that’s really expensive. I’ve been finding some great flight deals recently. Going round trip to San Antonio, Texas from NYC at the end of the month for $250.
I had no idea that site existed. I’ll be sure to go punish myself by searching it momentarily… thanks for sharing 🙂
Oh, this is a fun game!
Flying from Tampa…
For $100-$500, I could fly to most places in the US
For $400-$1,000, I could fly to Canada, Hawaii, or Alaska
For $900, I could fly to London
For $1,100, I could fly to Rome
For $1,800, I could fly to Australia
And for about $2,400, I could visit you!
For $500, looks like I can get to the Caribbean side of South America
I’m not sure why I don’t do this more often…
Great post! I didn’t know you could do that with kayak so now I know what I’m going to do when it’s crappy weather like this and I’m dreaming of getting out of Auckland!
For $400 I could fly to Bogota, Colombia
For $959-I could fly to Copenhagen, Denmark
For $1400-I could fly to Johannesburg, South Africa
For $1500-I could fly to Phuket, Thailand
This Kayak explore is way too addictive!
A few months ago, I booked a return flight to New York for new years, and paid ONLY $1298. Usually I’d preface my use of the word “only”, but I’m sure you understand — it’s meant to be at LEAST a grand more than that! Then, on Monday, I booked at $1.5k (return) flight to London for mid-Feb until early March. My “justification” for that was, since I’d saved a grand on what I’d budgeted to spend on a flight to NYC + have people to stay with in both cities, I’m set! haha. All hail spontaneous, crazy stupid shit that broke students with a little bit of money needs to do to stay sane.
Can’t believe if that I can fly to Samoa for $522. That place is what I’ve been dreaming for. My friends have been there already and they say that it’s really nice and one of a kind. Thanks for sharing this.
How did I not know about this feature? I’ve been looking for such a tool and I’m a regular kayak user. Failure on my part.
For $404 I can get to Anchorage, AK
For $751 I can get to Honolulu, HI
For $951 I can get to Moscow.
For $1807 I can get to Auckland!
But bummer… I went to go book these flights or at least see more information and I could get any flight prices anywhere near these prices 🙁
Really? The thing to remember is that those prices are low because they are for pretty specific dates, so if you click through you should see those same low fares, (I can) but if you then change the dates then the prices may change as well.
500: I can get all of North America, Central America, and a teeny part of S. America
$1,000: Additionally, most of Europe, some of the middle east, China,Russia, a little of Africa
$1,5000: Additionally, Africa, Thailand,
New Zealand: (Auckland) $1,575