Before you go
Visa, onward ticket, insurance, jabs, apps, a bank card and an eSIM. Half a day of work in total, but not in one afternoon: a travel clinic wants three months' notice and an arrival card will not open until three days before you land. Put your flight date in below and this page turns all seven into real dates.
The last few metres before the gate
Put in the day you fly and the planner works backwards to the day you have to start on each one. Date not fixed yet? Pick the month you are aiming for. It is the order that matters, not the exact Tuesday.
12 weeks out
Three months out is comfortable: every course fits and nothing has to be rushed. You do not need a finished route to book, a rough idea of the region is enough.
Book it anyway. A tetanus booster and your first hepatitis A dose still work in the week you fly, and one dose of hepatitis A already buys you a year.
Go to vaccinations6 weeks out
Myanmar and India can only be done in advance. Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia can be done in advance too, and that saves you a queue at the border. Reckon on a few working days, and more around public holidays.
Check whether your countries do visa on arrival. Only Myanmar and India genuinely have to be sorted before you fly.
Go to visas3 weeks out
The physical card comes in the post, and the post has never once waited for somebody's flight. The virtual card works straight away, so put that in Apple Pay or Google Pay now. Look up your PIN in the app while you are there: that does not arrive by letter either.
Use the virtual card, and switch on withdrawals abroad with your own bank as a backup.
Go to bank cards1 week out
There is no waiting time here, so why a week? The add ons. Adventure cover and electronics cover can only be chosen at the moment you buy and can never be added later. Decide before you fly whether you are getting on a scooter, because in Bangkok it is too late.
You can still buy it once you have left, that is rather the point of SafetyWing. Just read the add ons properly before you click.
Go to travel insurance5 days out
Install it at home on wifi and activate it only when you land: the validity starts at activation, not at purchase. Buying it three weeks early therefore costs you nothing.
This works right up to the airport, as long as you still have wifi to install it on.
Go to eSIM3 days out
Download them at home. Put the map of your first stop into Google Maps and pull down the language pack, and you can find your hostel from the airport with no sim card at all.
Do it at the airport, there is wifi there. On the plane there is not.
Go to travel appsThe day before
Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia want proof that you are leaving again, and it is the check in desk back home that asks, not the border. This is deliberately the last thing you do: a rented reservation only lives for 48 hours.
You can still do this at the airport. A reservation lands in your inbox in about two minutes.
Go to onward ticketsThe day itself
Passport, policy and bookings saved offline on your phone, and a screenshot of your arrival card. Now you can board.
What we count with: twelve weeks for a travel health appointment, six weeks for an e-visa, three weeks for a card in the post and three days for the arrival cards. Those numbers come from the pages below, where you can see exactly where each one is from.
In the order of the menu, so the order you meet them in. Every one of these says the same four things: what you have to sort, what it costs, what we do ourselves, and who it does nothing for. Bank cards and eSIMs are still being written, so for now their advice lives in the countdown above.
Most of this page is an evening's work. These three are not. There is a waiting time in them that neither money nor panic shortens, so if you do one thing today, make it one of these.
Almost every country in Asia wants your passport valid for six months after you leave. If yours runs out within the year, apply now: in the summer there are queues and an emergency passport costs extra. Japan is the one exception, and it is not the one you are planning around.
Hepatitis B fits into 21 days on the accelerated schedule, Japanese encephalitis is 28 days between doses, rabies is 21 to 28. There is a faster version of most of them, but you still cannot fit a month into a fortnight.
A physical card has to be delivered, and delivery does not know about your flight. The virtual card works immediately, so that is your safety net if you have left it late.
None of these is a step of its own. They all hang off one of the seven and fall just outside it. Together they cost you half an hour, and without them you are improvising at the worst possible moment.
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and India only open the form three days before you land. Put it in your calendar, because this is the thing people end up filling in at the gate more than anything else on this page.
Riding the Ha Giang Loop, or just renting a scooter for an afternoon? You need one, and the version matters: Vietnam only accepts the 1968 permit, Laos and Cambodia only the 1949. You get them at home, from the motoring body in your own country, and without one your insurance is not riding with you.
Plenty of banks have payments and withdrawals outside your own region turned off by default. You switch it on yourself in the app, and you find out that you did not at the first cash machine.
For a visa at the border in Laos, Cambodia and Nepal you want a few twenty dollar notes, untorn and unfolded, plus two passport photos. A torn note gets handed straight back.
Screenshot your policy number and put the emergency line in your phone before you go. You do not want to be searching for either of those at the moment you actually need them.
A photo of your passport, your policy and your tickets somewhere you can reach without your bag. Losing the bag is bad enough on its own.
Two months is comfortable, six months is ideal. The long pole is the travel clinic: three months out and every course of jabs fits without anyone having to rush. Everything after that is a few hours of work in total. Insurance, the card, the eSIM and your apps are all jobs for the last few weeks.
No, but ring a travel clinic tomorrow. A tetanus booster, your first hepatitis A dose and the accelerated rabies course all still work from here, so jabs almost always have a point. Then check whether your countries do visa on arrival, and use the virtual version of your bank card: that works immediately, even while the plastic one is still in the post.
Your visa, your passport and, in four countries, your onward ticket are not optional: without them you do not get in. Insurance is optional on paper, but outside your own healthcare system you pay medical bills up front, and that is the bill that can end a trip. Jabs, a card, an eSIM and apps are choices, and on each page we say plainly who they do nothing for.
Yes. Work out roughly which countries you want and ring the travel clinic anyway, because they work by country and not by your exact itinerary. Checking your passport you can do today. Save the visas and the eSIM until the route is real.
Too variable to put one number on: it depends on your countries, how long you are going for and how old you are. Insurance you price up on its own page, the visa page lists the fee per country, and the jabs you settle with whichever clinic you go to. The apps are free, and so is checking your passport.
An eSIM, a visa for the next country and most of the apps: yes, and we do that ourselves. Insurance you can still start abroad, although the add ons have to be chosen at the moment you buy. Jabs on the road cost you travel days. So the rule is simple: anything with a waiting time in it you do at home, and the rest can find you on the way.
Ring a travel clinic and look at the date in your passport. Those are the two with real time in them, and together they cost you one phone call and two minutes today. The rest can wait for the weeks right before you fly, and by then you will actually know where you are going.
Route still open? Start with the destinations, and see what we did ourselves.