Located a 2 – 3 hours ferry journey (or 30 minute flight) from Dar es Salam(Tanzania), Zanzibar is an Island bathed in sunshine that is becoming a bigger tourist attraction each passing year.
Stonetown is the capital city on the island – and from here you can get transport to anywhere. It is worth staying in Stonetown for a couple of nights to walk around the town – and see some of the history. It was a huge slave trading port and there are still some of the original trading buildings standing.  The architecture, language and culture of the east coast of Africa, but especially Zanzibar is largely influenced by the Arabs that colonized there – and Stonetown is a stark example of this.
If you are there in the evening it is worth heading down to the seafront and trying some food at the night markets. You can buy all sorts of seafood – but my personal favourite is the lobster that cost $1 for a tail.

If you want a bit of peaceful relaxation then my recommendation is the east coast of Zanaibar – when I stayed there I paid $10 a night (including breakfast and dinner), the beaches were calm and relaxing – the sun rises are breath taking.

If you want something a little more lively,  then head to the north west of Zanzibar where the resorts are aimed more at the younger crowd with restaurants on the beach and bars that are open until well after the sun goes down. During the day you play sports on the beach, go snorkelling or diving or rent a motorbike and see more of the area.

Zanzibar is a great place for young people and families with older children – it is not quite a child friendly resort island – but I am sure that it will get there one day!!  For some pictures of Zanzibar (a bit dated but still great) click here…

You put in the usual things – where you are flying from and to and then your dates then kayak.com seaches through all the flights it can find. This is really not take different from any other website – but there is more…

You can search by alliance – so if you want to flu Star Alliance you can take off One World and Sky Team and it will just display flights from airlines in that alliance. You can also uncheck any airlines you would prefer not to fly.

The beauty of this website is how flexable the search allows you to be in terms of stops, airlines and prices. Next time you fly have a look at it – it is a really useful tool!

Search around – This is the most important one. Unless you are going after air miles from a particular airline I highly recommend shopping around for the cheapest ticket. Travel agents can do this – or you can go to websites like ebookers or cheapflights and they will search through the airlines for the cheapest ticket.

you could also search on the web for low cost airlines that may fly between the 2 countries (especially in Europe), whose flights will not nessecarily come up in some of the travel websites. Low cost airlines are popping up all over the place – so be sure to have a look and you could potentially save a lot!

Be flexible with dates – This is really important for a cheap ticket, as if you fly close to or on a weekend the cost of the flights will increase, where as if you can be flexible and fly on a tuesday or wednesday you could save some cash.

Dont travel in peak season – If you can help it try to avoid travelling in the peak seasons (Summer when school is out, Christmas and Easter), If possible leave just before or after the peak time. One tip at Christmas is to fly on Christmas day and the price (in my experience) will be significantly lower then a couple of days before.

At one point I was visiting Australia (Townsville) a couple of times a year, as I looked for flights I was shocked at how much the whole package cost to fly from London. The reason for this is that you have to fly from London (via singapore) to either Sydney or Brisbane and then catch an internal flight.  Because it was such a specialised route the only way you could do it was booking with Qantas which meant the price was quite high (cause they hit you up on the internal route). So what I did was book the flight to Brisbane with the cheapest airline and then book the internal flight with virgin blue who were incredably cheap (not to mention enjoyable) and so saved me about £150 ($300) on my ticket.

This trick does not just apply to Australia – it also applies to the US and in a greater sense to Europe. If you are wanted to travel around Europe (particularly back-packers) you can get great low cost flights from a number to airports to loads of destinations.
My wife and I have travelled from London to Sweden for a grand totoal of £28 ($50) including tax, with Ryanair, and we have also flown to Switzerland for about the same price with Easyjet.
So I thought I would compile a little list of low cost airlines – and their hubs so that you can get an idea of a how big these airlines are becoming, and in which places you can take advantage of great deals

• Easyjet                       www.easyjet.com         Based out of London Luton and fly to loads of places around Europe.
• Ryanair                       www.ryanair.com          Based out of London Stansted – flies around europe, very cheap but you pay extra for baggage.
• British Airways             www.ba.com                 Based out of London Heathrow – sometimes they have great deals online.
• virginblue                    www.virginblue.com.au  Based out of Brisbane Australia – great prices for flights around Australia and now have started flying to different Pacific Islands, the additional competition in the region has lowered prices.
• Frontier Airlines            www.frontierairlines.com  Based out of Denver, USA they offer cheap flights to 50 destinations in 3 countries (and they have live TV on their planes…for about $5)
• Tiger Airways              www.tigerairways.com   Based out of Singapore – great prices on flights round Asia and Australia – Singapore to Darwin can be as low as $25!
• Oasis Hong Kong        www.oasishongkong.com  Based out of Hong Kong – this is a great airline for flights to London! See my review of them here

Here are some of the many low cost ways to see the world – please leave a comment to add any others and let me know of your experience on them.

Then I found www.oasishongkong.com, a new low cost airline that started in November 2006 with flights between London Gatwick and Hong Kong. I could not believe the prices they were offering – it cost us £75 ($150) one way per person. So for 2 adults and an infant we paid about £550 ($1100) in total for our tickets.

Some people are put off when the phrase ‘low cost airline’ is mentioned, but with Oasis the service was great – much better than some non-low cost airlines – especially ones that originate in the USA. We had to pay £15 each way to guarentee that we got bulk head seats so that we could have a basinette for our daughter – but that was not big deal. Food, and basic drinks (tea, coffee, water and juice) are free, but if you want harder beverages you have to pay. But given that both flights are red-eye flights a couple of drinks of water are really all you need.

Oasis Hong Kong also offer in flight entertainment with personal TV screens with several movie channels – and while they may not be the latest movies like on some airlines – there were a few recent ones that I had not seen.

The one negative point to Oasis Hong Kong is their booking system on their website.  When you book the flight you have the option of booking seats and meals – but the problem is the website makes it feel like you must book the seats and meals,  when in reality it is just a optional thing. You do have to pay extra if you book meals – because they are specialty meals where as if you don’t book a meal you get a standard one.

Oasis have launched another route in June this year- Vancouver to Hong Kong and they have several planned other routes in Europe and North America.  the latest news is at www.oasishongkong.com.