Have a look here for some suggestions.Surprised the hotels have not got back to you. For internal flights try Bangkok Airways

'Wherschris', in response to your query,
I have booked through Asiarooms.com for hotels in BKK and Hua Hin. Now the problem with booking through asiarooms or any other similar agency is they take 24 hours or so to contact the hotel and wait for a reply. Then if the hotel is full they offer you an alternative. You then have to take their choice or ask for another. Now this is unlikely to happen if you are booking well in advance, but we were booking 5 weeks away and discovered that our first choices were full.
I have now received our confirmations and have rooms booked at hotels for the end of feb, and beginnig of march. Short of being a totally fraudulent company I cant see a problem. I checked a few places and couldnt find anything detrimental against asiarooms.com. They appear to be a very large concern. As praise for them, when i had a query and sent an e mail they responded within minutes, whatever time of day. However i expect like any agency (including British holiday companies) things can go wrong.
I paid by credit card so there is an element of security. Also your insurance will I assume provide cover.

i used asiarooms,to book accomodation,in bali & had no problems at all.
i would gladly use them again.
got a great price,with them as well!
no complaints,at all
tracy

Tracy.
Glad to see someone else on this forum has used asiarooms. I had visions of turning up at the hotels and no rooms!!!. I also got good prices.


Peter

I have also used Asiarooms and had no problem's so decided to make all my booking's with them for April and as Tracy say's great price's.

I believe the problems with Asiarooms happen if you need to cancel. Take a look at travelforum.org where there are a number of warnings against using them. Some good ones are precisionreservations.com and sawadee.com.

another website i have used when travelling thailand and i only booked the day before, though not the best idea over xmas and new year is sawadee.com... had some amazing places from there, also they have reviews on the website too

For Thailand we always use http://www.sawadee.com - seem to have a good selection and good prices, we have used them several times and never had any issues. When our hotel in Kao Lak got destroyed they even tried to refund us our deposit within days - but we told them to keep it.

Have been to Thailand twice ands always used http://www.Sawadee.com. If you ar staying in BKK try Sofitel Silom which is a lovely hotel in a very good position. Shopping is great especially at the Emporium and Robinsons Stores. You can get suits made at any of the good tailors in Sukhomvit road area. You should try eating out at 'Cabbages and Condoms' - strange name but great food. Sktytain is best way to get around - station 10 mins walk from hotel. About £1.50 for a full day's pass.

Went to Krabi province three years ago. Did not like Krabi town so would not advise staying there. I stayed at Klong Muang at the Andamn Holiday resort (can be found on sawadee site). Stunning hotel on a secluded beach. 15 mins away from Ao Nang which is a nice sea sdie tow with good selection of restaurants. You can hire a longtail boat for the day from Hotel and ask to see the monkeys. They will take to a river in the mangroves and you can feed the moneys on your boat!.

If you go you will love it I am sure.

I was speaking to the owner of the hotel we stayed at in Krabi and he was not happy at all with asiarooms.com as they were advertising his hotel and he did not have a contract with them. They were also advertising it a rate well below anyone else.

He said that sawasdee.com were one of the best to deal with both from a hoteliers point of view and the customers.

I recently read a huge thread with a lot of people bagging Asiarooms.com The trouble was they had debited credit cards straightway and when the hotel was unavailable everybody had a terrible time getting their money back. Their websites states they don't debit the c/card until confirmation but this wasn't the case for a few.
I was a bit worried after reading this so I talked to a friend who always uses them and she has never had any problems.
So I took a deep breathe and booked through them and everything went through just fine.
We got a great deal too.
Cheers Geri

Another thing the hotelier in Krabi told me was that often people using Asiarooms are told there is no availibility (when there is) at there chosen hotel are offered alternatives which Asiarooms have better deals with. If the choice of hotel is important to you it might be worth checking with other agencies to see if there is any availibility, rather than just accept the alternative. Certainly in the case of Thailand its hard to imagine hotels being full except during the peak xmas/new year/chinese new year and Thai public holiday periods.

I always try to book with the hotels themselves as from recent experience booking hotels in Malaysia the hotels were always offering the best rate.
If an email does not work I usually find a phone call does the trick.

I found booking with the hotel direct in Thailand does not always give the best rate, as some of the agencies seem to have better rates which the for some reason the hotels don't seem to want to beat or even match.

Sunbear gives some very good advice here. It is almost always cheaper to book a hotel through an agency rather than directly with the hotel.

If you are UK based and book through an agency in Thailand, you will not get the same legal protection that yiou will get if you book in UK.

I had an experience this year when I wanted EVA Air flights, the Landmark in Bangkok and the Anantara in Hua Hin. Booking directly with these establishments (and EVA air) was the most expensive option.

I could not find EVA Elite class at a good discount from any of the usual cheap sources and had the best hotel quotes via DTC travel off Sukhumvit in Bangkok (a company that I have used in the past and which I trust). The hotel prices were slightly cheaper than through a tour operator in UK.

I telephoned Premier Holidays, who put together a tailor made package which saved us almost £700 each on the best quotes on flights (on the required dates) and which was within £50 each on the hotels. They also threw in a complimentary upgrade to a suite at the Landmark and provided transfers to / from the airport and to/ from Hua Hin which made up for the slight extra cost of hotels.

This, with the security of a UK based 'package' made the decision a 'no brainer'.

Yes, I could have done it all cheaper had I been willing to fly via the middle East in economy - but for my actual requirements I saved a good deal of cash.

Don't write off UK travel companies for reasonable rates.

Peter

I have used premier holidays alot (except this year when I found them more expensive than the competition) and I have always found they provided a good quality service and seem to be able to put together almost any package asked.

I can also vouch for Premier having used them myself quite a few times...they often seem to be able to throw in upgrades...although the deals are not as good as they used to be. Prefer them to the other UK ops I have used as they are specialists in the area.

For last minute try http://www.latestays.com. Or http://www.bangkok.com. Have used http://www.diethelm-travel.com to book internal flights from Bangkok. Just go in with passports and they issue tickets.