So my friend, Som (@somiijin) and I will be travelling to South East Asia this summer from the 18th of August to the 21st of September, and we wanted to share with you our tips on how to be cost-efficient with your travel planning. 

First of all, I need to point out that if it wasn't for Som's excitement for organising, we probably wouldn't have got us such an amazing deal for our upcoming trip. This is why I've asked her especially to share with us her tips on how you can save money with your travel.

To give you a summary of the logistics of our trip, we paid approximately £1400 for a total of 6 countries across South East Asia. These countries include Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. The whole trip will take approximately a month, but the cost accumulated is £1400 for flights and accommodation. I've revealed the cost to some of my friends beforehand, and many have stated, "Wow! That's so cheap!" especially as we will still be going during the summer. 

The way we started planning it is that we bought a return flight to one of our locations and then continued our travels around South East Asia before returning to our first location. In our case, we started by choosing to book a return flight from LHR (London Heathrow) to BKK (Bangkok Suvarnabhumi). For flights, we tend to use Skyscanner as our flight searches.

If you don't mind having layovers with this can also help with reducing the price of your flights. Som has suggested that sometimes it's better to go with a slightly more expensive option if the airline offers a loyalty scheme. This is useful as the points you accumulate can offer incentives to flights, hotels and more. 

We decided on a flight with Lufthansa which was £380 from the 18th Aug-21st Sept. This was something which benefitted me as I previously got a flight with Lufthansa when I went to China for my summer school programme. Lufthansa also offers an award system called the miles & more scheme. You can also receive an additional 500 points by logging on for the first time on their app. It's quite useful as you can store your booking details as well as find your boarding passes for your flight. A number of other airlines also offer a loyalty scheme so definitely check them out!

In some cases, it's cheaper to buy directly from an airline but you need to be careful as each airline has their own fees for admin and processing. With our experience of trying to purchase flights from the airline directly, we were also faced payment issues. This occurred when we tried to purchase flights off Cambodian Airlines which only accepted payments through Alipay. Alipay is a third-party mobile and online payment platform. However, to have an Alipay account you are required to have a passport, Chinese phone number and Chinese bank account.

To avoid this you can book through third parties, such as Trip.com (recognised as CTrip in some countries). In our experience, Som accessed Trip.com through Skyscanner to book flights. Trip.com also offers a loyalty scheme, which then worked out as we were able to find the cheapest flights. Thus, sometimes it's not always the best to aim for the cheapest flight, but to seek a reliable and familiar source for your flights such as Trip.com through price comparison sites such as Skyscanner.

• Top tip from Som: If you have the luxury to have a long-term residence at your destination then you can ditch your checked-in luggage at your residence and continue to travel lightly throughout your trip. This is a great way to save money as most airlines usually charge extra for extra baggage.

To continue to part two of the blog, please proceed here.