Backpacking Southeast Asia

Count on €25 to €35 per person per day, and that covers a hostel bed, three local meals, a beer and the bus or boat to the next place. Call it €750 to €1,100 a month, not counting flights, visas and insurance. Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are the cheapest countries to move through. The Philippines cost more, mostly because you are constantly on a ferry or a domestic flight between islands.

November to February is the easy answer for Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines: dry, warm, and not yet punishing. Vietnam stretches that window into April, but the country is so long that the north and the south never have their best month at the same time. Malaysia flips it round: March to October are its best months, because the islands on the east coast get their monsoon in winter. Singapore is hot and humid all year with a shower most days, so it fits wherever your route puts it. The Thailand page has a month picker that shows you what each month actually does, so you can plan around the time you can genuinely take off rather than the other way round.

Three to four weeks per country is our number: enough to be somewhere instead of repacking your bag every second morning. Want all seven countries? Count on three to four months. Only got two weeks? Pick one country and one corner of it. A lap of everything in fourteen days is a lap of bus stations.

Southeast Asia is one of the easiest places on earth to backpack alone. The routes are obvious, and you meet people in hostels, on tours and on the bus whether you meant to or not. The risks worth knowing are the unglamorous ones: riding a scooter without the right licence or insurance, taxis with no meter, and your valuables on a night bus. Every destination page tells you what to watch for in that particular place.

Because this site is not written for one country. One currency means one number everybody can compare, instead of seven conversions that go stale within a month. Local prices are named in the local currency where it matters, with the euro next to it and the exchange rate and the date we used. Your own bank app does the rest.

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