My Thai girlfriend comes to visit me in April 2009 in Canada (Quebec) and I would like to know which travel agencies in Thailand could offer me the cheaper price for this trip without going to the USA. This would be the date of 1 April 2009. AND at the same time, I'd like to find a travelling companion during the flight to make the trip more interesting, because this is her first trip. The flight will be from Bangkok to Montreal, return.

<br />My Thai girlfriend comes to visit me in April 2009 in Canada (Quebec) and I would like to know which travel agencies in Thailand could offer me the cheaper price <img src="style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" /> for this trip without going to the USA. This would be the date of 1 April 2009. AND at the same time, I'd like to find a travelling companion during the flight to make the trip more interesting, because this is her first trip. The flight will be from Bangkok to Montreal, return.<br />

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The cheapest I can see right now is about $1,641 US (round-trip). If you don't want to transit through the US, it will make things a little more difficult.

British Airways shows a flight from Bangkok to Heathrow to Montreal for $2,251 US return.

Air France has a similar flight (Bangkok to Paris to Montreal) for $2,538 US return.

I would suggest you use something like kayak.com or expedia.ca to see which air lines are flying which routes on the dates you want. Pick what suits you best, then check one of the sponsor websites on TV (like ThaiVisa Travel or SaveFlights.com). Tell them which air line/flights you'd like and see what they can come up with price-wise.

My Thai girlfriend comes to visit me in April 2009 in Canada (Quebec) and I would like to know which travel agencies in Thailand could offer me the cheaper price for this trip without going to the USA. This would be the date of 1 April 2009. AND at the same time, I'd like to find a travelling companion during the flight to make the trip more interesting, because this is her first trip. The flight will be from Bangkok to Montreal, return.

Check with Cathay Pacific , my last quote to Canada this year was $ 1750.00 return from Cambodia,i have always found them good to fly with,lots of asians on board also .

China Airlines with Air Canada using the BKK-TPE-YVR-YUL route or ANA using BKK-NRT-YYZ-YUL will come in close to the above pricing with the advantage of bypassing the USA. If you use orbitz you may be surprised to see some competitive EVA AC codeshare routings using BKK-TPE-YVR- YUL. Expedia only puts up the cheapest flights if you specifically request a time.

Note that the cheapest flights from BKK usually are early morning and from YUL the 17:55 or 19:55 flight on AC. Westjet may prove a cheaper option if you want to just consider BKK-YVR.

Note that PAL is about $200-$300. lless than China Air routings but you have to transit MNL. Royal Jordanian also has some wird pricing if you don't mind doing BKK to Amman to YUL. That route has fewer stops, but its Royal Jordanian and the service is sort of like US Airways.

Isn't travel planning fun !

Even on a short hop (say Dubai - Bangkok return), I might spend 2-3 days going over all the available options (different air lines, routes, schedules, etc), until finally settling on what works best for me.

Then I fire it off to the travel agent to see if he can score some better prices.

I started planning my next trip when I still had just under 8 weeks to go. I just got the last of it done yesterday (had all the tickets a couple of days ago, but got Tom to reserve certain seats on each of my flights).

It's now exactly 6 weeks (make that 41 days and 23 hours) until I'm out of here !