Thailand | Vietnam | Cambodia | Laos 2014

cson

Hey folks, looking for advice on planning a trip.

Basically will have 20-23 days (3 weeks basically) to take a trip from 5th September onwards. Thinking about doing the South East Asia thing. Would like to divide it up half and half ideally; first 10/11 days on the culture trail and the last 10/11 on the relaxation/party island trail.

Obviously there's a limit to what you can do in 3 weeks and still enjoy it so its really that kind of input I'm looking for - what's reasonable to do in that time frame? I'd be looking at putting 2k ish towards it including the cost of the flights (~€600 via LHR with BA the last time I checked to Bangkok); so internal flights wouldn't be out of the question (checked Air Asia from Bangkok to Hanoi and it was coming out @ €50 one way).

Would like to catch a Full Moon Party; Koh Phnangan has them on the 8/9 and 8/10 so if I could schedule the 3 weeks to coincide with that, it'd be great. Obviously I'd be a little reticent to do the early September one, I'd prefer to leave the partying until the second half of the holiday.

So to nail it down;

-> 25 year old males
-> 3 week trip
-> ~€450/week for Accom/Food/Drink/Activities

(a) What's possible travel wise in that time frame?

(b) What's possible budget wise in that time frame?

(c) Any must-see's in that part of the world?

Cheers

foyle

I think your trying to do a bit much, we had longer than your planning and just did Vietnam, Hanoi to HCMC and it was amazing but we really could have done with some more time !!!
Booking internal flights in VN is very easy and fairly inexpensive, we booked one on Thurs to fly the day after so you can easily do that when you are there

Gatica

I presume you want to pick what country/countries to visit out of the 4 you mentioned. I'd recommend Thailand and Vietnam at most.
Don't know about full-moon parties, but would recommend hiking in Chiang Mai (N Thailand) and in Sapa (N Vietnam). Both amazing locations and great food. Flights between the two countries are not cheap though, the internal flights tend to be cheaper.

cson

Cheers lads.

Yeah I'm thinking it'll be only feasible to fit in 2 out of the 4 and that's doing some internal flights.

They're not too bad, Bangkok to Chiang Mai is showing up @ €19 one way! Maybe something like 3 nights in Bangkok; return flight to Chiang Mai [5 nights]; return flight to Ho Chi Minh [3 Nights]; return flight to Ko Samui and spend ~10 nights between Ko Samui and Ko Phangan.

It's about €300 on internal flights there but it seems like a decent whack of time in each place and it saves serious amounts of time travelling given that the flights are all only ~1hr long.

Like I said; will have about 21-24 days to spend in SEA so trying to get the most from it.

foyle

If you have to pick one city in Vietnam, don't pick HCMC....its very disappointing imo...I thought it was unbelievably European and modern, it felt all wrong to be honest...on the other hand I loved Hanoi, and it felt very vibrant and real to me !! It also seemed more old world and less 'anywhere in the world'

SarahBeep!

cson wrote: »

Hey folks, looking for advice on planning a trip.

Basically will have 20-23 days (3 weeks basically) to take a trip from 5th September onwards. Thinking about doing the South East Asia thing. Would like to divide it up half and half ideally; first 10/11 days on the culture trail and the last 10/11 on the relaxation/party island trail.

Obviously there's a limit to what you can do in 3 weeks and still enjoy it so its really that kind of input I'm looking for - what's reasonable to do in that time frame? I'd be looking at putting 2k ish towards it including the cost of the flights (~€600 via LHR with BA the last time I checked to Bangkok); so internal flights wouldn't be out of the question (checked Air Asia from Bangkok to Hanoi and it was coming out @ €50 one way).

Would like to catch a Full Moon Party; Koh Phnangan has them on the 8/9 and 8/10 so if I could schedule the 3 weeks to coincide with that, it'd be great. Obviously I'd be a little reticent to do the early September one, I'd prefer to leave the partying until the second half of the holiday.

So to nail it down;

-> 25 year old males
-> 3 week trip
-> ~€450/week for Accom/Food/Drink/Activities

(a) What's possible travel wise in that time frame?

(b) What's possible budget wise in that time frame?

(c) Any must-see's in that part of the world?

Cheers

Doing the exact same!! 19th July - 19th August. Going to the full moon part on the tenth. We're hoping to do Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.

I just have a few definite things I want to do. I want to do the cultural stuff in Cambodia and I want two or three days lazing about on a beach with white sand, blue water and cocktails.

I'd also love to see the wildlife! An elephant or tiger walk would be unreal.

Graham_B18C

You need to factor in a visa for Vietnam too, think it was about 50 quid.

If it were me, I'd do Thailand and Cambodia. The visa for Cambodia was 25 usd, and in 4 days you'd see Phnom Penn and Siem Reap. 3 days really ain't enough for Vietnam. I was there for over three weeks and had to speed up towards the end. I also agree that HCM wouldn't be the best place to visit in Vietnam.

Before I went to Thailand loads of people told me the full moon wasn't great, I ignored them and kinda planned our trip so we'd be in Koh Pha nGan for it. It was honestly the biggest mistake I made on my travels. If you are passing and it's on then happy days but if not, you really ain't missing anything very special.

For partying, I found Phi Phi and Siem Reap far better than Koh Pha nGan. Haad Rin (where the full moon is) is a bit of a kip.

Gatica

foyle wrote: »

If you have to pick one city in Vietnam, don't pick HCMC....its very disappointing imo...I thought it was unbelievably European and modern, it felt all wrong to be honest...on the other hand I loved Hanoi, and it felt very vibrant and real to me !! It also seemed more old world and less 'anywhere in the world'

Had heard negative things about Hanoi before we travelled but TBH I actually really liked the city. I especially love their architecture, very art-deco.
You can do Cambodia as an alternative as suggested, and see the Angkor Wat temples. Very impressive, plus you probably wouldn't want to spend more than 3 days at it, as it does get a bit tiring and samey after a while.
Or Laos, as Luang Prabang is a lovely relaxed town with lots of cycling, long-boat tours and trekking that can be done around...

cson

I'd be open to altering it for Cambodia, Laos or Burma too. Air Asia seem to do return flights from Bangkok for ~€60 to most destinations in SEA from a quick look on Sky Scanner.

I think what might trip us up is trying to fit too much in and burning out/not getting the proper experience. I'm going to say the only two things I'd definitely want to do are (i) Chiang Mai and (ii) have the last week of the trip as a beach/partying week but after that; any further countries and the Islands themselves are up for discussion.

How many days would you need in all the various places to see them properly?

Gatica

We did those 4 countries in 4 weeks...
It was an amazing experience, but we were wrecked the last 4 days before our beach-time... Retrospectively we should've cut one destination and put those 3-4 days towards the other locations.
We were in Chiang Mai for 3 days. We got to visit Tiger Kingdom, see the town and get a massage, visit Elephant Nature park, the night market and do a cooking course. Would've been good to stay there at least another 2 days and do a trek I think. We had 4 days in Luang Prabang, which were probably the least active. We did a cycle trek to the waterfalls and a long-boat tour to an old Buddist cave (can't remember the name). Other than that, wandered around the town, had nice food, a few beers and climbed up to the top temple a couple of times.
So give yourself time to relax, remember with many flights you end up spending quite some time getting to/from and at airports, as well as packing/unpacking. That's probably the main killer for a lot of travel.

cson

What kind of costs would you be looking at?

-Beers
-Food
-Hostels
-Transport (Tuk tuks/Scooters/Taxi's)
-Treks (Chiang Mai Elephant treks etc)
-Diving on the Islands

Anything else from an attraction p.o.v I'm leaving out?

Would €10er on food and €20 on beer be good to see you through daily? €10-15 a night for hostels?

foyle

cson wrote: »

What kind of costs would you be looking at?

-Beers
-Food
-Hostels
-Transport (Tuk tuks/Scooters/Taxi's)
-Treks (Chiang Mai Elephant treks etc)
-Diving on the Islands

Anything else from an attraction p.o.v I'm leaving out?
Would €10er on food and €20 on beer be good to see you through daily? €10-15 a night for hostels?

I can only comment on Vietnam but its really cheap (we found the North cheaper than the South), good double room in 4 star hotel about 12-15 euro per night, dinner under 10 euro in fancy places usually, beer about 1 euro max per beer, sometimes less...money is not really something to worry about...we lived it up for almost a month, booked trips, did a 3 day cruise etc and spent less than 1000 euro each !! So the other countries you have mentioned are probably similar, although I have heard Cambodia is cheaper than VN

Graham_B18C

I found Vietnam to be the cheapest country by a mile. Thailand is a lot more expensive. In Vietnam beer varies from about 10c to about 50c. I don't think I paid more than 50c for a large bottle of Tiger or Hanoi beer. In Thailand was about 1-2 euro a beer.

Same goes for accommodation, Thailand is more expensive. Especially the islands. For diving though I think I paid 9000 baht for the open water course so that was 4 dives and 4 nights accommodation. For a 3 week holiday though 4 days of no drinking is a lot. I done 9 dives in Koh Tao and I honestly saw more fish in an afternoon snorkeling around Phi Phi.