Travel Blog

You have one Southeast Asia trip. Two cities made the shortlist. Hanoi or Bangkok, which one do you choose? Bangkok is the reflex answer. It has the infrastructure, the name recognition, the Instagram grid. But here’s what most experienced Asia travelers will tell you quietly: Hanoi is the one that stays with you. The one...

December is generally one of the more reliable months to visit Thailand, but conditions depend heavily on where you go. Bangkok and Chiang Mai sit in the heart of the dry season, with daytime highs of roughly 29 to 32°C and noticeably cooler nights in the north. The Andaman coast, including Phuket and Krabi, is...

Visiting Vietnam in September means arriving as the rice terraces of the northwest shift from green to gold. It is also a transition month, and the country does not share one climate. The north is easing out of its rainy season, central Vietnam is moving into its wettest months, and the south remains in the...

Laos vs Cambodia is less a contest than a question of what kind of trip you want. Cambodia is organized around Angkor, Khmer history, lively cities and a southern coastline. Laos is built around mountains, the Mekong River, waterfalls and a Buddhist culture that moves at a slower pace. Neither country is better in general....

Phong Nha Cave lies within Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in central Vietnam and can be entered only by boat along the Son River. Visitors therefore travel first to Phong Nha town, where the boat pier is located. The nearest major transport hub is Dong Hoi, which has an airport and a railway station, about...

Con Dao or Phu Quoc? It is one of the most common island questions we hear from travelers planning Vietnam tours through the south, and the honest answer is that neither is better. Phu Quoc is the easy, varied, resort-style island, with direct flights from several Asian cities and plenty to do beyond the beach....

Bangkok in March marks the start of the hot season: dry, sunny and getting warmer by the week. The city remains highly workable in these conditions, but only if you stop treating the whole day as sightseeing time. Temples, markets and river life belong to the early morning and evening; the middle of the day...

Bangkok’s headline sights earn their reputation: the gilded halls of the Grand Palace, the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, the riverside temples, a street food culture few cities can match. Yet the capital has a second, quieter register that most itineraries skip. It lives in Chinese shophouse alleys, canal-side timber houses, a centuries-old Muslim community,...