Cheap flight tickets take TN youth to South-East Asian countries for quick getaways

These budget-friendly tourist hotspots even attract college-goers after saving up for a semester. Prachi Goel, an engineering student in the city recently backpacked across Cambodia and Vietnam with her classmates. “When we post pictures, people think we could afford it with our parents’ help. But the reality is that we planned it early on and used the money from our internships – it came up to less than Rs 40,000 for a week-long trip, all-inclusive. While a trip to Goa would have been slightly cheaper, now we proudly say we visited a foreign country. It’s easily possible in the current economy,” said the 22-year-old.

Fashion stylist Prajanya Anand planned a girls’ trip with her friends earlier this month to Thailand, where they visited Bangkok, Krabi, Phi Phi islands. “It is so inexpensive, we ended up staying up at luxury resorts and it cost us barely Rs 1000 a night, due to the favourable currency exchange.”

Apart from SE Asia, Sri Lanka and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are also popular picks. Srihari Ram, a travel agent in the city who caters to clients across TN said, “We are noticing that passengers travelling to foreign destinations from Chennai and Coimbatore are getting increasingly younger.”