GOOD ROUTE THROUGH SE ASIA

>>1224141
I've been thinking about the same kind of trip, except need to add Laos and Cambodia.
Biggest difficulty seems most flights go through Bangkok and border crossings via road are very unreliable.

>>1224147
>Biggest difficulty seems most flights go through Bangkok and border crossings via road are very unreliable.
The Thai-Cambodian border crossing via Aranyaprathet/Poipet can be pretty bad--people get scammed or ripped off a lot, and Poipet itself is still one of the worst towns in Southeast Asia--but crossing via water to Ko Kong from Ko Chang or elsewhere in Trat Province, Thailand is mellower. And overland crossings into and from Laos are easy as pie. You can even get a direct train from Bangkok to Vientiane (although I'd do a train as far as Nong Khai, on the Thai side of the Mekhong, spend a day or two there, then go over the bridge via tuk-tuk/bus/tuk-tuk, because I like Nong Khai and the rest of NE Thailand). You can also cross via Ubon Ratchathani, in the Southern part of NE Thailand, to get directly to greater Champassak, in southern Laos, very easily. There are a couple of crossings in Northern Thailand, too, most prominently Chiang Kong, Chiang Rai-Huay Xai, Laos, but I'd advocate the Northeastern route because it's interesting and a little less beaten track.

>>1224141
How long are you there for and what do you enjoy doing, that dictates a lot.

>>1224141
To do the banana pancake trail you will need roughly 10 weeks. That's Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Look into it OP, will give you a very good foundation for your trip

Not OP here
just bought one-way ticket to Manila on April 27th. I don't care about "seeing everything"

any interesting places/cities/things to do ? Let's say 2weeks for each "thing"

Based on straight and short and really existing flight routes I would go
Bangkok
circle around in Thailand, need at least to go to Krabi and Chiang Mai
travel over land to Vientiane and putter about in Lao
from Vientiane fly to Hanoi
reverse Top Gear trail, with extra bits, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh
from Ho Chi Minh fly to Phnom Penh
Loitering in Cambodia
from Phnom Penh (via Bangkok) to Rangoon
drift around Burma
fly from Rangoon to Kuala Lumpur

>>1224421
Have a return ticket to show or they might not let you board the plane.

>>1224162
just fly across nigga, it's probably cheaper anyway.

>>1224791
I didn't plan the return date yet

but I can just have one to Cambodia or Vietnam right?

>>1225376
Try "FlyOnward" website
You can buy a plane ticket with your details for it for 10 dollars, that will be cancelled after 24 hours, that's what i did for my SEA trips, but for the countries that require a visa they usually don't ask for a return ticket, only places where you can go visa-free

>>1225370
That's absolutely what I usually do when doing to Cambodia from Thailand--you get BKK-Phnom Penh tickets for well under $100 on AirAsia. But the Trat-to-Cardamom Mountains by Boat route is actually kind of interesting, unlike the Shitty-Minibus-from-Khao-San-Road route, which is just long and boring and ugly.

And I like trains and Isaan, so Laos is always overland for me unless I'm not going to Thailand.

Not trying to derail the OP but I wanna pop a quick question in here: 4 week trip: should I do Thailand or Thailand+Myanmar? Or more specifically, would Thailand+Myanmar in 4 weeks be too rushed? Not interested in the rest of SEA since I've already been there.

>>1225493
I would do both. Have been a month in Thailand three times now. It feels time well spend at a beach or wherever at the time, but afterwards I wonder if I maybe wasted some. Who knows when the next opportunity comes and I could have seen so much more.

Here is what im doing

Thailand:

>Fly to bangkok
>train/ferry to Koh Phangan
>Bus to Krabi
Ferry to the various Islands around Krabi
>Back to Bangkok
>Train to Chiang Mai
>Bus to Pai

Laos:

>Train from Chiang Mai to Laos
>Bus to Vientiene
>Bus to Vang Vieng
>Bus to Luang Prabang
>Bus to Phonsavan
>Bus to Pakse
>Bus to Don Det

From there I enter Cambodia by land.

>Bus to Siem Reap
>Bus to Phnom Pen
>Bus to Sihanouk (To visit islands + pick up Vietnam Visa)

ill probably do more in Cambodia but im not sure yet. After Cambodia im entering Vietnam but I havnt really planned it out yet. I havent booked anything in advance and im going to just plan as I go. I have around 20k so im just going to travel until I get bored or run out of money.

>>1225620
Hey anon, i did 2 months in laos, cambodia and vietnam i can give you some recommendations:

Laos:
>do the motorbike around thakek town, 4 days or so absolutely beautiful and barely see tourists on the road
>visit savannakhet, it's like luang prabang but even more relaxed and lowkey, you can do some nice trekking there, ask in the tourism office in town
>you can go from savannaket to pakse, then from pakse to the islands
>there's a place in the southernmost tip of don det called shangri la, it's a small lodge run by a hippie couple, very chill guys, they have a shitload of good and strong weed, the accomodation is very cheap, if you ever go there tell them the bearded guy with the glasses who dropped acid at your place says hello

Cambodia
>what you can do is take a bus from the islands to banlung in cambodia, you can do jungle trekking there, it's a very lowkey province as well, nice national park
>afterwards you can go to siem reap
>then battambang it's halfway between siem reap and phnom penh (small city but there's a pre-angkor temple complex near it, a huge emerald buddha and a cave where you see millions of bats come out from it at around sunset)
>there's also an artificial lake built by pol pot's regime near that city
>go to phnom penh
>then to sihanouk/kampot/kep/etc
Haven't been to the coast desu so i can't advice you on that

basically in battambang you can rent a motorbike for like 6 dollars and explore all these temples/lake/etc

Vietnam
>you can take a bus from phnom penh to ho chi minh city
>probably from the islands too but not sure
>go from ho chi minh city to dalat or da lat (very beautiful french colonial hill station up in the mountains)
>then go to hoi an
>hoi an to hue
>hue to phong nha
>in phong nha do paradise cave and the other one where you can swim in a mud pool
>phong nha to ninh binh
>ninh bin to hanoi
>you can go to cat ba island from hanoi
>heard ajang province is very beautiful up north near china, haven't been there

>>1226606

Thanks for the advice, I looked up a lot of those places in Vietnam and it seems like a pretty good route.

Banlung looks pretty cool too, I probably would have skipped it completely.

>>1226709
you can also go south from banlung to sen monorom its even less touristic than banlung, and there's a "elephant valley project" which is a conservation area for two elephants and they teach you how to become a mahout it's worth checking out

I've been to Thailand and wow... Girls were easy.. People say that Philippines is much easier and you are treated as a rockstar especially in the non-touristy areas. Is that true?

And how good are the Filipino beaches compared to Thailand? Koh PhiPhi and Lanta haven't really met my expectations to be honest.

>>1227217
Are you talking about whores? Of course they're easy

>>1225376
Yes allot of people when first going out to live pre-book their visa run flight (more expensive but way less stress) and when asked this is good enough for them, just proof you are not outstaying the 3month period is all they need.

>>1227217
It's different. In Thailand you were almost certainly fucking an ex-whore, the "good girls" won't want anything to do with you. So you're dealing with huge sluts.

In the Philippines they idolize foreigners, and all levels of social status want you to wife them up so you they can GTFO out of their country.

In the Philippines the girls want to fuck you, but you have to deal with some very heavy catholic guilt about casual sex. The mental gymnastics they have to go through to fuck you can be pretty nuts, and last minute resistance can be a bitch, but you'll get there anyway.

>>1226606
I asked in another thread about the potential of having uninvited guests in the form of insects, snakes, rats, etc. when living in a wooden hut (I asked about Cambodia specifically, but I guess Laos is not very different in that respect).

When you're saying that Shangri-La is a lodge, will there then be snakes, insects, etc. insides?

>>1227302
there's a mosquito net in the bedroom and i personally had no guests, but in theory i guess it's possible, i once woke up to a cockroach crawling between my body and the bed in a hostel in cambodia but that was it

>>1225376
What >>1225454 said
Alternatively in SEA you can also say you're going by bus to the next country and they're usually okay with that

>>1227338
Damn I really want to see that part of the world, but I have a serious fear of insects and an experience like that would fucking kill me. How could you ever go back to sleep?

How the fuck do I cope with that

>>1227344
i just shoo'd the roach away and went back to sleep.
Alternatively pay abit extra and get a better accomodation, like i said that was the only time i had such an experience there and that dorm bed was 2 dollars a night so i was kinda asking for it

>>1227623
That's a relief to read, thanks.

>>1224141
Not interested in Burma? Wtf why. Its literally the most beautiful and untouched country in SEA.