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.

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

AirAsia cut its flights to Sihanoukville’s Chinese-built international airport when tourism nosedived in 2020, and has not reinitiated them. A small Cambodian airline connects Sihanoukville to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and China’s Ruili Airlines flies between Sihanoukville and Kunming, in southern China.

Once a ‘mini-Singapore’, abandoned Indian town is attracting tourists again

However, for passengers starting their journey far from these cities, the only way to get to Sihanoukville today is through the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, followed by a 200km (125-mile) drive on a new Chinese-built toll road.

For me, starting in Bali, the fastest option was flying to Phnom Penh through Singapore with Singapore Airlines. The trip would be shorter, only six to eight hours – but would cost at least US$630 and up to US$920 – in both cases above my budget of US$1,000 return.

Flights with AirAsia between Bali and Phnom Penh that transit through Bangkok start at only US$150, but those cheap seats are sold out well in advance.

The best price I could find on the airline’s app was US$285, plus another US$80 for luggage and meals. And with a nine-hour overnight layover in Bangkok, I would have to pay another US$77 for a room at Don Mueang’s Sleep Box Hotel.

The total price of flying with AirAsia: US$442. It was just within my budget but seemed too much for the inconvenience.

So I went back to my old nemesis, Kiwi.com, and asked it to find a better option that combined flights with different airlines.

Every time I found a good option, it redirected me to third-party websites such as Trip.com and Kayak.com, where the final prices were always higher than those advertised at Kiwi.com – or simply unavailable.

The World Health Organization has officially declared the pandemic over, but the global aviation industry still seems to be suffering from long Covid

I wasted hours before going to the website of Batik Air, a sub-brand of Indonesia’s Lion Air that appeared in my search results.

Batik Air sells flights from Bali to Bangkok on its website for only US$93 – the cheapest in the sector. Luggage up to 20kg is free and so is water, while Batik Air’s competitors charge up to US$3 per bottle.

Once a ‘mini-Singapore’, abandoned Indian town is attracting tourists again

The seat on the Boeing 737-800 was not uncomfortable, about 25 per cent bigger than the vinyl-covered sardine cans that pass for seats on other budget airlines.

After landing in Bangkok, I booked the second leg of my journey to Phnom Penh with VietJet. The flight cost only US$95 but wasn’t scheduled to leave until the morning. The only hotel at Suvarnabhumi International Airport, a Novotel, was US$170.

A night there would have swallowed most of my savings. Instead I found a simple, clean hotel room at the Suvarnabhumi Oriental Resort, in a suburb close to the airport for US$26, and it cost only 50 cents to get to it on the subway. In the morning, I took a taxi back to the airport for US$4.

At 10am, I landed in Phnom Penh. From the airport, I used the Grab app to hail a tuk-tuk to the Phnom Penh Bus Terminal, but that facility exists only online. There was nothing at the designated spot but dirt.

My tuk-tuk driver then took me to a real bus terminal, where I bought a seat on a minibus with a plush red and gold leaf interior modelled on Aladdin’s magic carpet for US$15 to Sihanoukville. There were no seat belts. The air conditioner barely worked.

In the end, having spent a total of about US$245, I saved US$400 or more compared with flying on Singapore Airlines and nearly US$200 compared to AirAsia. But the saga took 26 hours, more than twice as long as it took to fly to Sihanoukville from Sydney five years ago.

But that’s the reality of flying budget airlines in Asia in 2023. The World Health Organization has officially declared the pandemic over, but the global aviation industry still seems to be suffering from long Covid.