Questions for Chef and anyone else who's done an extended Far East trip

**Moscow Mule** · 4 November 2008, 21:57

Lots of hostels I've been in have private rooms too.

Good resource for research is the lonely planet forums.

**ace00** · 5 November 2008, 07:32

First thing go to Air Asia .com & Asia rooms .com. You will some good deals, should help in working out an itinery.

**oracleslave** · 5 November 2008, 08:19

Originally posted by ace00 View Post

First thing go to Air Asia .com & Asia rooms .com. You will some good deals, should help in working out an itinery.

itinerary

**chef** · 5 November 2008, 08:45

In planning my trip i did the following much geekiness way of planning (i had loads of time)

-buy large map of the world, mark locations of all places i'd love to see

-with the locations/marks/dots visualised it's fairly easy to see a logical route and work out which ones arent that feasible (i had some places in north america, canada and africa marked but the rest were mainly based around the pacific)

-once you have a very rough idea of route buy the Lonely Planet Shoestring guide most related to where your going i.e SE Asia
They are a great help in setting approximate budgets for countries and routes within the country. The Rough guides are ok but I found them to be to broad and not enough details on travel but each to their own preference.

-i used Lonely Planet Thorn Tree for most of the research, the folks on their are helpful irrelevant of if your doing much cheapness or a luxury world tour.

-once you've got an idea of countries, route and direction you'd be heading then go speak to a travel agent to work out round the world flight packages for the main stops, i used Trailfinders but STA Travel are also recommended

-finally make sure you check out what jabs/vacinations you might need and book an appointment with your GP, the jabs arent cheap and if your travelling lots of countries you might need a course of jabs before you go

HTH, PM me if you need any more help

**chef** · 5 November 2008, 08:55

cheap asia flight companies:

Air Asia
Jetstar
Bangkok Airways
Tiger - singapore based
Lion Air - indonesia based
Silk Air - the cheap arm of Singapore Airlines
Laos Aviation - laos based

Attitude Travel - similar to Skyscanner

**chef** · 5 November 2008, 09:09

for ideas on where to go and what to do, that's a bit more tricky as it's a personal thing and very much dependant on time and funds..

for some ideas you might want to try looking at Lonely Planet Blue List, i also found BootsNAll a useful sight for ideas

in short, i found the planning is almost as much fun as the doing, once you start writing down ideas and putting them on the map then you'll soon realise you dont have the time or funds to do this in 1 trip

you also have to factor in the fact that travel in these countries is never predictable, buses leave when full not by a timetable and your route will most likely change when you are on the ground as you'll meet people and decide that the 1 week elephant mahoot training, the 2 weeks diving course or the mule trek up a chinese mountain is far better than the 5 day trip you had planned to Hong Kong and you only need 3 days there anyway..

ahh now you've got me thinking about it again.. where did i put that SE Asia guidebook

**Mehmeh** · 5 November 2008, 09:12

I did it the most unorganised way possible...

Went to STA travel to book multi stop ticket of the places i wanted to go....turned up in the country, got in the first cab and asked to take me to where the backpackers go.... wandered around and stayed in the first place that had a decent bar.

Did it cheap and was fun.

**rootsnall** · 5 November 2008, 09:13

Chef's approach is probably the best one. But the other method and more in tune with being a 'real traveller'

is to pack your bags and go the travel agent and buy the cheapest one way to Asia that you can find. Rock up and head for local backpacker ghetto and take it from there. A lot of your time will be spent hanging around talking tulip to other backpackers and that is where you pick up the latest and best info.

When that fit Swedish blonde begs you to go to Bongo Bongo Land with her you don't want to have a pre-booked ticket to Singapore !

**chef** · 5 November 2008, 09:20

Originally posted by rootsnall View Post

Chef's approach is probably the best one. But the other method and more in tune with being a 'real traveller'

is to pack your bags and go the travel agent and buy the cheapest one way to Asia that you can find. Rock up and head for local backpacker ghetto and take it from there. A lot of your time will be spent hanging around talking tulip to other backpackers and that is where you pick up the latest and best info.

When that fit Swedish blonde begs you to go to Bongo Bongo Land with her you don't want to have a pre-booked ticket to Singapore !

totally agree, i just loving having ideas, it's kind of like looking at the line up at glastonbury, you plan and plan making sure you can fit in all bands possible but in reality you arrive, get wasted on pear cider and wander around.. as long as you know roughly which way your heading then it doesnt matter..

as for flights i flew into beijing and 10.5 months later flew out of singapore, landing and knowing that you have 10.5 months to get across the continent in whatever way you see fit is great (and it only cost £15 to change the dates anyway), any internal flights you can book when you need them

visa's for countries in SE asia can all be sorted on Ko San Road, Bangkok. They take your passport for 3-5 days and it comes back full of entry visa's.. much cheapness, some countries allow you to just turn up and pay the fee ..

Questions for Chef and anyone else who's done an extended Far East trip