Paths and trails throughout South-East Asia are well beaten. Backpackers, adventurers, food enthusiasts and high-end travelers are coming back year by year, season by season, because this region has something for everyone. It’s welcoming, warm and sunny, full of bright colors, unusual flavors and exotic smells. 2 months in south east asia
I was dying to go to Asia and experience it all on my own skin, see it with my own eyes and taste all the delicious authentic food with my own taste buds! I am also still confident enough to bring you some new information and points of view to help you plan your trip to this part of the world. 2 months in south east asia
Although I had been to SE Asia before, I haven’t explored ‘the land part’. Bali, Philippines and Singapore gave me a little taste of Asian delights and ever since then I’ve known I will be coming back for more. In this article I will present you some general information about this region plus our itinerary. We were travelling for almost two months through five countries and we tried to fill our days with different activities, spend some time with locals and get a little bit off-the-beaten-path experiences.
Itinerary
This is our rough itinerary for 2 months in south east Asia following all the places we visited. I wanted to see as much as possible and visit as many places as possible, but I also made sure that we stayed in each place long enough to really get to know it. You can see articles from each destination on the ASIA on my blog.
Planning
For me, a good planning is essential before every longer trip and this one wasn’t an exception. I started months before just to decide where to go and what to see there, plus some extra activities, places where to eat and what to eat etc. If you are going to Asia for a limited time, I would recommend doing your research properly beforehand. I was helping myself mostly with other travel blogs and these two I considered the most useful: Nomadic Matt, who backpacked around Asia many times and his blog is very detailed full of useful information, and The Blonde Abroad with some stylish places to visit and how to stay safe. 2 months in south east asia
Weather
Situated within the Tropics close to the Equator, South-East Asian region characterizes hot and humid weather with an average temperature of approximately 25 degrees Celsius all year round (depending on particular country). There are two main seasons during the year – the wet season, a.k.a. the monsoon season and the dry season. The “land part” of SE Asia (North Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) suffers from the monsoon season from May/June till October. Even though during these months the monsoon rains are rather a temporary annoyance, you can also experience some tropical storms that can last for days which will have significant impact on your plans. During the dry season you can expect lower temperatures and humidity, but also bigger amounts of tourists everywhere.
Rainy season
We travelled to SE Asia at the beginning of the rain season – from the end of May until mid-July and we experienced all sorts of weather but it was mostly sunny and very hot. The storms were intense but only about 15-20 minutes short and after that the sky cleared again. We got the most rain in Kuala Lumpur, where it rained every night and occasionally during the day. In my opinion, this was a good time for travelling. Yes, it was very hot, but at many places we could significantly feel the smaller amount of people and in Myanmar in most of the places were the only foreigners.
If you decide to travel in wet season, I recommend you to carry your raincoat at all times, bring a good bug spray and save some buffer days in your itinerary for museums, galleries or nice cafes in case it rains. For more detailed info about weather in Asia head to this link.
Transport
South-East Asia is a big region but getting from one place to another is really not that difficult (even though it can be adventurous sometimes!). As I mentioned at the beginning, more and more tourists travel to this part of the world every year and so the transportation network is becoming more and more customer friendly. 2 months in south east asia
If I want to know estimated price and route options from A to B, I usually use Rome2Rio website which literally connects every part of the world. From there I plan my route and check available websites for transportation in each region.
Flights
When you see the map above, you can notice that we were flying a lot. I don’t have any special secrets to find the best flights – Skyscanner does the job for me! When I started to plan our trip, I always kept the dates open to see which day the airfare was the cheapest. Then I booked through the link directly on Skyscanner.
We had (almost) no problems with low cost Asian airlines. We were able to get the flights for under 100 AUD per person (approx. 62 EUR) with 20 kg luggage included even when we booked last minute, and there were also snacks and drinks on board! I said we had almost no problems because once it happened to us that Vietnam airlines changed our flight 4 hours earlier without letting us know, and so we obviously missed it, but on the other hand we got hotel for the night and access to the business lounge at the airport for the whole day so it wasn’t an absolute disaster.
Buses and Trains
Over-night long distance buses are very popular in SE Asia and from our experience I can say they are quite comfy. You can recline your seat very low and make it into a bed. The roads are bumpy though and our drivers liked to honk a lot but we were still able to get some sleep and saved one night on accommodation.
Over-night train was my favorite mean of transport when we were travelling through Vietnam. We were on the train for 12 hours, but each of us got a proper bed (bunk bed for a couple) with clean linen, coffee, tea, soda or beer and we were even served breakfast! To make your train ride a good experience, you have to purchase the first class ticket! In the 2nd class you will get a wooden bench to sleep on (no pillow nor blanket) and in the 3rd class, you will have to share the bench with other people. There’s quite a big difference in price but just imagine spending 12 hours like this.
I booked most of our bus and train connections through 12go.asia where you can see reviews from other travelers and price comparisons. Sometimes the transport was cheaper when booked through a hostel, but usually it was also worse. With shorter 3 – 5 hours long drives, it’s okay, but anything longer than that, I am choosing comfort over price.
City Transport
The easiest way to get around any bigger city in SE Asia is taking a Grab. Grab, similar to Uber, is cheap, fast, reliable, the price is set in advance so you’ll avoid scammers and you don’t have to pay with cash. We haven’t used any public transport during our travels, because there wasn’t a big difference in price for two people anyway. If there was no Grab available, we booked our first transport from the station with the hostel we were staying in and then we just hired a motorbike for a day or two.
If you are interested in more details about transportation in SE Asia, for example the price comparison, drivers license requirements etc., you can check out these two articles – here and here.
Visa
Get your visa in advance! Do not wait until you leave your country because you don’t know what unexpected requirement will occur. As EU citizens we didn’t need visa for Malaysia and Thailand if our stay wouldn’t extend 30 days. The rules, however, differ from country to country. Also some South-East Asian countries require your passport to be valid for 6 more months before its expiration date after the day you leave the country (and they can be very strict about this rule).
We were able to apply for all our visas online and they got approved within few days. I write more about the visa process for each country in separate articles. For more general info head to the Lonely Planet website here.
Currency Exchange
Exchanging a big amount of money in an exchange office in SE Asia can be a little bit tricky and the rates are usually not in favor of international travelers. Before our trip, we exchanged couple of hundreds AUD in Sydney for every currency we’d need just to have something at the beginning and then the rest we withdrew from an ATM. ATMs are rare but not impossible to find. From our experience, those at the airports or bus/train stations charge less for a withdrawal with foreign credit card.
You cannot rely on paying only by your card because most of the establishments and shops don’t have EFTPOS terminals. We even had problems in few hotels and hostels to pay with our card. I would also recommend having some US Dollars on side. US dollars are widely used in Cambodia but we were able to occasionally pay with them in Malaysia and Myanmar too.
Water
You most probably know this already, but there is no drinking water on tap anywhere in SE Asia. You have to buy all your water in plastic bottles and I can tell you, you’ll drink a lot as it can get very hot. Excessive use of single-use plastic, poor garbage disposal and lack of recycling are a big problem in these countries. Personally, I don’t like buying bottled water. Although I knew I won’t be able to avoid it while travelling, I still managed to reduce our plastic waste by purchasing water cleaning tables.
These water purifying tablets will get rid of any germs and microorganisms in water and make it clean for drinking and brushing your teeth. I got mine from a friend from an outdoor store in Sydney, but you can also buy them on Amazon, for example here. They are easy to use – usually one tablet cleans one liter of tap water. We stored the water in the fridge and we always took 2l bottle to start our day. It will not save you much money, but if you care about the environment, it’s really the least you can do!
The tablets are 100% save, we didn’t have any health issues during our trip (I just got heat stroke once but about that later). 2 months in south east asia
Travel Scams
South East Asia is generally a safe place to travel around, but it’s also a poor region and people, even though they are nice, will sometimes want to take advantage of you and they will try to scam you.
I’ll give you an example: we were walking on the street in Ho Chi Minh City when suddenly a man, sitting on the ground with a box full of glues and sewing accessories next to him, started to point at Tomas’ shoes yelling it’s broken. This is a pretty common “innocent” scam in Vietnam. If we stopped, he would have put a piece of tape or a bit of glue on his shoe and would demand money for fixing it. If we refused, some more men would have appeared from nowhere and they would make us pay. As scary as it sounds, we were aware of this scam and we didn’t stop to check the “broken” shoes.
A family that was walking behind us fell for it, but the scammer was, in this case, alone and the father of the family was a big guy so they just walked away. I heard from some travelers who we met along the way, that if you wear sandals or flip flops, they take your shoes and refuse to give it back until you buy them back. 2 months in south east asia
Of course, travel scams can happen anywhere in the world and unfortunately they are more and more common. For more information about how to avoid them and what to expect check out these websites here, here and here.
I hope you’ll find my travel tips useful and if have any additional questions, feel free to shoot me a message here
Two Night Cruise in Halong Bay
Introduction to Halong Bay Halong Bay is a real gem...
Itinerary for 11 Days in Myanmar
When I was planning our trip across Southeast Asia I...
Magical Bagan – Best Things To Do
Bagan was my favorite place not only in Myanmar but...
Nice blog post on your travels around south east asia. If you come back to Singapore, maybe you can consider exploring these off-the-track gems in Singapore
5 hidden gems in Singapore