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Asia travel
LifestyleTravel & Leisure

Budget air travel in 2023 vs 2018: trip to Cambodia cost me US$350 five years ago and took 12 hours. Now?

  • Tourism may have bounced back after the pandemic, but air travel is still suffering lingering effects, and travellers are paying the price
  • A travel writer compared a flight from Bali to Sihanoukville with a similar one taken from Sydney in 2018 to highlight the current reality

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Tourism may have bounced back after the pandemic, but the airline industry is still suffering lingering effects, and travellers are paying the price. A budget air travel trip in Asia, to Cambodia, highlights the current reality. Photo: Shutterstock
Dave Smith
A year ago, at the start of the post-pandemic travel boom, when sharp price rises in oil sent air fares through the roof, I saved US$1,500 on a trip from Asia to Europe by buying a patchwork of flights on budget airlines using online travel agent Kiwi.com.
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The savings were substantial but the journey took nearly two days, and most of it was without sleep. Afterwards I felt terrible for weeks and promised myself never to fly long-haul on budget airlines again.

This month, I had to break that promise after accepting an assignment in Sihanoukville, a Cambodian coastal city popular among Chinese tourists for its casinos, freewheeling attitude, and high-rise condos and hotels, nearly all of which are Chinese built.

The last time I travelled there, in 2018, it was with AirAsia. I started in Sydney, Australia, and had a two- to three-hour stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The journey took about half a day and cost nearly US$350.

Chinese-built hotels under construction in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Photo: Shutterstock
Chinese-built hotels under construction in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Photo: Shutterstock

This year, I began the trip in Southeast Asia and therefore assumed the journey would be both cheaper and faster. I was wrong.

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