Fourteen countries, nine places, five regions
These pages describe places. They do not sell journeys. Each one sets out what a country or a city is actually like, how many nights it holds, which months work, what a day costs on the ground and when you should go somewhere else instead.
What this branch is for
There are two ways to plan a trip to Asia. One starts with a journey and works out whether the places in it suit you. The other starts with the places and works out which journey holds them. This branch of the site exists for the second kind of planner, and it is deliberately kept apart from the journeys.
Twenty-three pages sit under it. Fourteen describe countries. Nine describe a single city, valley or site that needs its own argument — usually because the number of nights it wants is contested, or because there is a ticketing, crowding or timing problem that a country page cannot do justice to. Petra is on this list because a second day there costs five dinars and almost nobody buys it. Kyoto is on it because the difference between a good day and a bad one there is measured in hours of the morning.
Every page carries the same nine things in the same order: what the place actually is, including the parts that are spoiled or overrun; how many nights it holds and what breaks if you take fewer; when to go, with the bad season and what it gives back; how you get there and move around; what a day costs on the ground; pictures; when to skip the place entirely; and which of our journeys reach it. If a page here reads like a brochure, it has failed.
Mainland Southeast Asia
Four countries that share a dry season and very little else. This is where most first trips to Asia go, and it is the part of the region where our journeys are longest and cheapest per day. One structural fact governs any route across it: the land border between Thailand and Cambodia has been closed since mid-2025 with nothing announced about reopening. Bangkok to Siem Reap is therefore a flight, and a road crossing printed on an itinerary is a day that cannot be run.
| Destination | Kind | Nights we suggest | Best months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vietnam | Country | 10 – 14 | February to April, October and November |
| Thailand | Country | 8 – 12 | November to February |
| Cambodia | Country | 6 – 9 | November to February |
| Laos | Country | 6 – 9 | November to February |
| Hoi An | Place, Vietnam | 3 – 4 | February to April; October floods |
| Angkor and Siem Reap | Place, Cambodia | 3 – 4 | November to February |
| Luang Prabang | Place, Laos | 3 – 4 | November to February |
Vietnam is the long thin one, and the length is the planning problem: the north and the south are in different climates on the same dates. Thailand is the easiest country in Asia to travel, and on 15 September 2026 its visa exemption halves from 60 days to 30. Cambodia is small, hot and concentrated. Laos is the slowest and the least changed, and rewards travellers who are not in a hurry.
Island Southeast Asia
One country page and one place page, which understates the region badly and reflects what we actually run rather than what exists. Indonesia is not one destination: rain does not arrive everywhere at once, the months that are wet in Java are not the months that are wet in Flores, and choosing which two islands to take decides the length, the month and most of the budget.
| Destination | Kind | Nights we suggest | Best months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | Country | 10 – 16 | April to October, driest June to September |
| Ubud and Bali | Place, Indonesia | 3 – 5 | April to October |
Malaysia and the Philippines each carry a journey on this site — Sabah and Palawan — without a destination page behind them yet. Ask and we will send what we would have written; we would rather do that than publish a thin page to fill a gap in a table.
Northeast Asia
The expensive end of the site, and the one where the arithmetic has moved most this year. Japan tripled its departure tax to ¥3,000 on 1 July 2026, two-tier pricing for non-residents has begun to appear at the gates, and the Korean K-ETA waiver covering 67 countries runs only as far as 31 December 2026 — a 2027 departure has to be re-checked rather than assumed.
| Destination | Kind | Nights we suggest | Best months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | Country | 10 – 16 | March to May, October and November |
| South Korea | Country | 7 – 10 | April to June, September to November |
| Tokyo | Place, Japan | 3 – 4 | March to May, October and November |
| Kyoto | Place, Japan | 3 – 4 | March to May, October to mid-December |
Both Japanese place pages exist because the country page cannot carry the argument. In Tokyo the subject is districts rather than monuments, and the real questions are which airport and how many nights. Kyoto is a timing problem: the famous temples do not work between the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon, and a day built around that fact is a different day.
South Asia and the Himalaya
Four countries and one valley, and the widest spread of price on the site: India and Nepal sit in our cheapest band while Bhutan sits in the dearest, because of a Sustainable Development Fee of USD 100 a night for every adult, held at that level through 31 August 2027. Sri Lanka's ETA became free for our four markets on 25 May 2026.
| Destination | Kind | Nights we suggest | Best months |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | Country | 10 – 16 | November to March in the north, December to February in the south |
| Sri Lanka | Country | 9 – 12 | December to March west and south, June to August east |
| Nepal | Country | 8 – 12 | October and November, March and April |
| Bhutan | Country | 7 – 10 | March to May, September to November |
| The Kathmandu valley | Place, Nepal | 2 – 4 | October and November, March and April |
Two seasonal facts do more work here than anything else. Delhi's air is at its worst between about October and January, which is exactly the peak season in the north, and the answer is to leave the capital quickly rather than to cancel. Sri Lanka runs two monsoons on opposite coasts, so there is no month in which the island is closed — only months in which you are on the wrong side of it.
Central and West Asia
Three countries and two places, and the part of the site where the safety position has to be stated rather than implied. Uzbekistan sits at US Level 1. Jordan and Oman were both raised to US Level 3, Reconsider Travel, after the regional conflict that began on 28 February 2026, and in June 2026 the UK narrowed its Jordan warning to a band 3 km deep along the frontier with Syria. The pages say so plainly, in the words the advisories use, and they do not tell you which risks to accept.
| Destination | Kind | Nights we suggest | Best months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uzbekistan | Country | 8 – 11 | April and May, September and October |
| Jordan | Country | 7 – 9 | March to May, September to November |
| Oman | Country | 8 – 11 | October to March |
| Samarkand | Place, Uzbekistan | 2 – 3 | April and May, September and October |
| Petra | Place, Jordan | 2 – 3 | March to May, September to November |
Uzbekistan is the least expensive country here to travel well in and the simplest to enter — 30 days without a visa — with one hard constraint: the Afrosiyob train opens for sale 60 days out and sells out. Jordan holds everything on one road and rewards a week. Oman is geology rather than archaeology and works from October to March. Where advisories are read across the whole site is on safety and advisories.
How to read one of these pages, and what it will not do
A destination page answers four questions and refuses a fifth.
- How many nights? Every page gives a band and then says what breaks when you take one out. The band is not a minimum stay we are trying to sell; it is the point below which the place stops working, and on several pages the honest answer is fewer nights than an operator would like.
- Which months? Each page carries a season table that includes the bad window and what it gives back — lower rates, empty sites, green landscape — because the wet or cold season is the right answer for some travellers and pretending otherwise wastes their time.
- What does a day cost? Ground costs, government fees and the country tier, with a date attached. Where a fee could not be verified against a primary source we leave it out and say we have left it out.
- When should we not come here? Every page has a section that argues against itself. It is the section we would read first.
What a destination page will not do is sell you a journey. It links to the ones that reach the place, in the body text, and stops there. The price tables, the day-by-day itineraries and the inclusions all live in the journeys branch, and keeping them apart is what stops the two halves of this site competing to answer the same question badly.
Every figure on these pages traces to a primary source checked on 8 September 2026. Where one could not be obtained, the line is left as a gap rather than filled in. That is why the Samarkand page carries no entrance fee for the Registan and the Kathmandu page carries none for the durbar squares. A gap costs a reader nothing; an invented figure costs us every other number on the page.
The month decides more than the map
If you have dates and no destination, start with when to go rather than with these pages. It runs month by month across the whole of Asia and answers the question in the order most people actually have it: we can travel in these three weeks, so where should we be?
If you have a destination and no idea how long it needs, how many days does the arithmetic for every country here, including what a second country costs you in transfer days. If Asia is entirely new to you, first time in Asia is blunter about where to start than these pages are. And if the question is what any of it costs before anybody's margin, that is cost by country.
Tell us the dates before the wish list
Send the weeks you can travel, the number of people and roughly how long. Our first reply will name which of these places suit those dates and which do not, and it will do that before anybody draws an itinerary.
Questions travellers ask most
Why do some countries have a place page and others do not?
Because a place earns its own page only when the country page cannot carry the argument. Petra needs one because of the ticket arithmetic. Kyoto needs one because of the hours. The Kathmandu valley needs one because the state of the rebuilding since 2015 differs square by square and a country page cannot say so in a paragraph.
Where a country page does the job on its own, we have not written a second page to look thorough. Nine place pages is what the material justifies at the moment, and the list will grow when there is something worth adding to it rather than on a schedule.
These pages recommend fewer nights than your journeys sell. Why?
They recommend the nights the place holds, which is a different question from the length of a journey. A ten-day Nepal journey is not the valley plus six days of padding; it is the valley, Pokhara and Chitwan, each given the nights its own page argues for, with the transfers between them counted honestly.
Where a destination page and a journey page appear to disagree, the destination page is the one written without a commercial interest in the answer. Tell us if you spot a gap between them and we will fix whichever one is wrong.
Do you cover countries that are not on this list?
We run journeys in a few places that do not yet have a destination page — Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Georgia and Armenia among them — and the journey pages carry the practical detail in the meantime.
There are also countries we decline. We do not sell Myanmar while the do-not-travel advisories stand and most insurance is void there. We do not build routes into Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, the 10 km strip beside the India–Pakistan border, Highland or Central Papua, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or the 3 km band inside Jordan's frontier with Syria. That list is explained on safety and advisories.
Can I combine two of these countries in one trip?
Some pairs join up and some force a long backtrack through a hub, and the difference is not obvious from a map. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan run straight on from one another. Jordan and Oman connect through the Gulf. Central Asia and the Caucasus, which look adjacent, usually mean flying back out through Istanbul or Dubai.
Which legs work and which do not is set out on multi-country routing, and the journeys that already cross borders are gathered under grand voyages.
Read next
Tell us about the journey you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.