How to plan for your first SE Asia backpacking trip

It's now been 5 years since I left SE Asia and moved back to the UK, and damn, do I miss it!

I would love to take a year off my career and go travelling again, but it's just not practical. I'm 51, in my prime earning and saving for retirement years, so I need to delay gratification and focus on the finances - so that I can spend my retirement galivanting around Asia. (For those who are new to this blog, I've been travelling twice before, once in my mid-30s and once in my mid-40s).

But just because I'm not planning a trip, doesn't mean I don't constantly think about it. So here are my top tips for planning that first amazing trip:

1) Pay attention to seasonal weather patterns. 

Northern Thailand, Laos, and parts of Indonesia have a burning season, when farmers burn the stubble of their rice fields en masse, and the air gets smokey and polluted. It's not fun to travel in.

Much of SE Asia has a monsoon season, which will vary from place to place - for example, the East coast Thai islands have their rainy season in the European / American winter, and the West coast has their rainy season in the European / American summer. While you can still travel in the rainy season, it can cause issues, especially if your plans involve beaches and islands. Seas become rough so ferries and boat trips become less comfortable (and sometimes are cancelled outright). Some resorts close down for the monsoon season. Formerly crystal clear snorkelling spots become cloudy with poor visibility. Even inland, some of the provincial parks and jungle treks shut down for the rainy season, as trails become impassable quagmires of mud.

So, if you know you want to travel from February to May, or you know you want to spend a month island hopping in SW Thailand, let the weather shape your plans.

2) Don't try and do too much at once. SE Asia is BIG.

I know, the airfare was expensive, you don't know when you're going to be able to get time off work again, so you want to see everything in this trip. But the reality is that distances are long, transport is slow, and delays are common. There are no Japan-style bullet trains in SE Asia.

Expect getting everywhere to talk twice as long as you think. Is the bus from town A to town B supposed to be 2 hours? Expect at least half a day tied up in travel. 

Bus 4-5 hours? That's a whole travel day. You'll need to get to the bus station from your accommodation (and the bus station is normally no where near the town centre), find out which counter sells the tickets you want and buy one, wait for the bus and board (it will probably be late - with the exception of when you turn up late, in which case it will be on time). The bus will stop for no reason multiple times on the trip. It might break down. That 4 hour journey will probably take 5 or 6 hours (or occasionally 8) and then it will deposit you at a bus station 3 miles from the town centre, and you'll still need to make your way into the town centre.

Sometimes you can take a night bus or night train, to avoid losing a day to travel. In which case you'll arrive at that middle-of-nowhere bus station at 4am, bleary eyed and exhausted from a terrible night trying to sleep sitting in a noisy, overly cold bus. Then you can waste a day trying to recover from your exhaustion instead.

So think of it like this - every time you move on to a new town, you're probably looking at a day lost to travel. If you've only got three weeks, so you want to spend most of that time exploring temples and night markets and beaches? Or do you want to spend half that time sitting on a bus???

My rule of them is try and limit yourself to 2 destinations a week. If you've got 3 weeks, you could for example visit Bangkok, Chiang Mai, the Mae Hong Son loop, Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, and Vientiane. It would be a busy trip with a lot of moving around (and quite a lot of those destinations have so much to offer that you could stay much longer than 3-4 nights in each), but it's possible.

If you're trying to fit all of the above PLUS Vietnam and some islands into the same trip, you will get to see and experience very little outside of a bus station.

Plan for quality experiences, not quantity.

3) Pack light. I've written about packing for SE Asia before (click on the Travel Tips tab at the top of the page) but the TLDR is you can get laundry done easily and cheaply anywhere in SE Asia, and buy any toiletries you need. 

4) You're never too old.

When I was a student, gap years were popular amongst the more affluent of my school-mates. I was completely jealous of those able to take a year off after high school or after uni. I couldn't afford it - I had part time jobs throughout high school and uni, but those paid for rent and groceries. Then when I'd finished education and started working full time, there was a career to establish.

So I didn't get around to taking a gap until I was in my 30s. I loved it so much, I did it again a decade later. I would have done it more often than once a decade if it had been more feasible to fit in with career and mortgage and everything else.

Taking a gap year in middle aged or later is definitely different than doing it as a 20 year old - you're probably less willing to sleep in a dorm or a grubby guesthouse with inch-thick rubber mattresses and shared bathrooms for $3 a night. You probably don't want to spend your evenings getting drunk with other backpackers on Khao San Road.

But you can still meet other travellers in the common areas and breakfast room of the slightly nicer guesthouses you're now staying in. It's not all 20 year olds - there are plenty of middle-aged people and oldies travelling around (and there's nothing to stop you going on a day trip with the 20 year olds, anyway). The fact that you probably aren't interested in party hostels any more doesn't mean you can't meet loads of other travellers, can't still have an amazing backpacking adventure.

You're never too old.

5) Take travel insurance. You hopefully won't ever need it, and medical attention is way cheaper in SE Asia than it probably is at home (if you just need to see a GP, you can do that for $30 at a walk-in clinic). But for anything serious, hospital bills really add-up.

Back in 2016, I had a bad accident in Malaysia. Had major surgery and spent 2 weeks in hospital. The hospital bill came to $14,000 US dollars. Way cheaper than it would have been if I had been injured in the States, sure, but not a bill any of us want to have to face. 

Plus the insurance company sorted everything out for me, so I could focus on healing rather admin. That may not seem like much when you're sitting on your sofa planning your trip. But when the accident happened and I was badly injured, I was struggling to remain awake and conscious (due to a combination of injury and serious opiate painkillers). I was not really capable of sorting out payment schedules, and dealing with some hospital administrator who told me that I couldn't have life-saving surgery until my proof of payment or guarantee of payment had cleared. My insurance company stepped in and took care of all of that. They kept my parents informed once I was out of surgery. They booked my flight home when I was ready to be discharged from hospital.

Get good quality travel insurance. I can't emphasize this enough.

So those are my top 5 tips for planning a backpacking adventure in SE Asia. Hope they've been useful, and hopefully one day I'll see you in the guesthouse breakfast room!

Real safety trips for women travellers (or, how to stop worrying and love the world)

I've been travelling solo for almost 20 years now, and one comment I hear time and again is: "You're so brave! I could never do that."

Bullshit.

We live in an age of constant media inflation. Everything's dangerous, especially for women:

Getting into a taxi? The driver will rape and murder you as soon as look at you. Better text his registration number to a friend, in case you go missing.

Walking home after a night out? You'll get attacked; better take a taxi.

Except we've already established that the taxi driver is dangerous too.... do you spot the problem yet?

While I'm not denying that terrible things occasionally happen, the constant media coverage around those things, and the constant barrage of "how-to-be-safe" articles, both keep undue emphasis on a bogus message that travel, and life in general, is not safe for women.

Case in point: there was recently a Buzzfeed article on 46 Safety Tips for Women Travellers. It was garbage. most of the "tips" would apply equally well to men as well as women, and the rest were paranoid (again, that old chestnut: always take a photo of a cab's license plate and text it to a friend before you get in, in case you end up missing or dead).

These articles perpetuate the myth that travel is unsafe for women. You don't see articles on 46 Safety Tips for Male Travellers, do you? They're pretending to reassure while, like a 5th column, eroding confidence.

So, here's my own Real Safety Tips for Women Travellers:

1) When a stranger tries to talk to you on a bus, or when you're sitting on a park bench, try talking back. He'll probably recommend cool places to visit, tasty non-touristy restaurants, and show you pictures of his kids until you're blue in the face. There are a few scammers about, but the vast majority of people just want to make a connection and are curious about how you live on the other side of the world. They want to say hi, not hurt you. So there's no need to treat every stranger with utmost suspicion. Don't be an idiot, but don't be paranoid, either.

2) When a group of middle aged women invite you to sit with them for dinner in a restaurant, say yes. You'll enjoy pleasant company, another chance to chat with locals, and you'll probably get your dinner paid for too, as you're their guest.

3) When you get lost, ask for directions. Everyone you meet, pretty much, will try and help you. Ditto when you get scared by an aggressive soi dog. People will shoo it away from you and ensure you're okay.

4) When a teenager biker offers to walk you down a monkey-infested hill, because he can see that the crafty little critters frighten you, say yes. He's being a gentleman.

I've spent more than 4 months travelling around SE Asia, and in that time I've met one person who deliberately gave me bad directions for fun, two people who potentially tried to scam me (neither succeeded, and one might have genuinely been a mistake anyway), and about 57 people who went out of their way to show me kindness and hospitality.

The world is a big, beautiful place, and it's all waiting for you.

Get out there.

How to pack like a pro for SE Asia (updated 2021)

Recently, I've noticed a lot of packing lists appearing on Pinterest. Fair enough, except most of them are nuts.

One list I saw recently suggested an Asian packing list with 4 pairs of shorts, 2 mini skirts, 4 tank tops, 4 t-shirts, 3 sleeveless jersey dresses, and 3 pairs of shoes (of which one was a strappy sandal, and 2 were ballerina flats). Seriously? They're packing tonnes of clothing, and yet have nothing practical or appropriate for most situations.

The first time I went away as an adult, I over-packed like almost everyone does. But I've now been doing this for several decades, including a 3 week trip in Burma with nothing but a small piece of hand luggage, so I'm a packing pro!

So here's the skinny on packing for Asia:

- It's hot and humid in most of SE Asia, so you want breathable fabrics. You'll also sweat a lot, so you'll be showering and changing your clothing frequently. That means you'll want clothing that's durable enough to stand up to repeated washings without falling apart, and will dry quickly.
- Even in SE Asia, it can be cool in the hill towns, and indoors the aircon is often set on iceberg, so you'll want something warm but lightweight.
- You'll need something conservative for visiting temples and smaller towns (showing your legs or shoulders is considered disrespectful in a religious settings, as well as in more conservative areas)
- You'll need clothing that protects your skin - long sleeves and long trousers to provide protection from mosquitoes in the evenings, as well as if you want to do any hiking or walking in the jungle, and to prevent sunburn (even with high factor sunscreen, it's still very easy to burn).
- Dressing like a beach bum is accepted in beach resorts, but away from the beach you'll get more respect if you look reasonably neat and presentable, especially if trying to check into a nicer hotel, or eat at a decent restaurant.
- With the heat, clothes tend to dry fairly quickly, so it's easy to wash out that day's clothes before you go to bed, and they'll often be fully dry by the following morning (although if your guesthouse bathroom has no ventilation, it could take a little longer. Plus, all guesthouses, hostels and hotels offer a laundry service, and if inexpensive places that laundry's pretty cheap, so you can get all your clothes washed for you, for about a dollar. I tend to get my clothes washed for me about once a fortnight, to give myself  a break from doing it myself.

So here's what I pack:
- 1 pair of long trousers (in a non-crease, lightweight fabric)
- 1 long skirt (ankle or calf length) or a second pair or trousers
- Optional add-on: a pair of conservative shorts. Knee length or longer shorts please: short shorts may be acceptable in the modern cities or on the beach, but in the countryside people will probably think you dress like a prostitute. Remember you can't show your legs at temple-sites, so if you do like wearing shorts, make sure you have a sarong. Which leads me to:

- 1 large thin wrap or sarong in an absorbent fabric. My favourite travel sarong is made from an ultra-thin wool-blend, so it's warm but can still be folded down to nearly nothing. A sarong has so many uses: shawl for when it's chilly, headscarf, towel, beach cover up, skirt when you're behind in laundry or want to visit a temple and need to cover your legs, etc.
- 1 long sleeved shirt, the type that buttons, for protecting skin from sunburn or mosquitoes, smartening up, or using as warmer over layer, but which doesn't require ironing.
- 3-4 t-shirts. Some people prefer cotton for the breathability, and some prefer lightweight blends for crease resistance and quick dryingness. But in either case, I recommend darker colours - lighter colours will show all the sweat stains (sweat, sunscreen and bug spray in combination is a powerful stain agent, and any pale shirts will probably become pale-shirts-with-yellow-necklines within a few weeks). Avoid tank-tops: they're considered disrespectful in some situations. and leave your shoulders very exposed to sunburn.
- 4 panties, 4 pairs of socks, 2 bras (if required)
- swimsuit if you're going to be spending lots of time on the islands / beach resorts - if you're not planning much beach time, skip the swimmers and just swim in shorts or trousers and a t-shirt. If you are planning a lot of beach time, I personally like a rashguard style suit that gives me some protection from jellyfish.
- Walking shoes: something sturdy and practical. Can be trainers, hiking boots, etc., but preferably a pair that's easy to get on and off without struggling too much with laces, as you will have to take your shoes off regularly.
- Optional add-on 2: lightweight slip-on shoes: something a bit nicer for restaurants, as well as just running from your beach shack down to the beach. These can be something like nice sandals or ballet flats, but make sure you've worn them quite a few times before the trip, to be certain they won't rub when your feet start to sweat.
- Small bag for carrying about in the day: a lot of people use small daypacks, but I prefer a smarter satchel as it can also be carried in the evening as a handbag alternative. Worn across the body it's more secure from bag-snatchers than a handbag is, too.
- Sunglasses. A sunhat is often a pretty-good idea, too.
- High-factor sunscreen: not always available or can be quite expensive when you can find it.
- Powerful antiperspirant or deodorant: again, the strong stuff isn't always available, and if you're like me and used to cold countries, you'll sweat a lot until your body acclimatises.
- Tampons (if required).
- Mini first aid kit: painkillers, immodium, band-aids, alcohol wipes and antiseptic ointment for the inevitable little accidents, anti-itch cream for the inevitable mosquito bites. But don't carry too much - only take a little bit of each as all this stuff can easily be restocked in Asia. But I like to carry enough a small amount of each, so you have them available when you need them (you don't want to be desperately wishing you had immodium at 2 in the morning on an overnight bus).
- Toothbrush, comb or hairbrush.
- Prescriptions.
- Any essential, unusual toiletries: you can buy soap, toothpaste, bug spray and shampoo anywhere on the road, normally for cheaper than you'd buy it at home, but if you have to use anything special that's hard to find, you'll need to bring it with you.

- Ear plugs (damn those roosters!).
- Optional add-on 3: Moneybelt: as a safe place to store my passport and credit card.
- A decent phone, preferably unlocked, so you can take pictures and access wifi. You can easily pick up a local pay-as-you-go sim card in many places, to enable cheap roaming and VOIP calls. I also really recommend an e-reader (less eye strain than trying to read books on your phone, and great for reading in places you don't want to use your phone, like the beach).
- Other miscellaneous bits and pieces that can be useful: duct-tape (used to repair holes in window screens), a small sewing kit (the type you sometimes get free in posh hotels - useful for making small repairs to your clothing, or sewing up a hole in your guesthouse's mosquito net), and possibly a thin sleeping bag liner if you tend to stay at cheaper guesthouses or hostels. You can read some more esoteric packing tips here.

Ideally all the clothing should work with everything else - when assembling my packing list, I lay all my clothing out on the bed and check that each top can be worn with each bottom, to give me maximum flexibility.

Don't take accessories - belts, jewelry, etc. If your clothing is decent and fits well, you won't need them, and excess weight is never your friend.

Don't take PJs (you can just sleep in a t-shirt). Don't take much (or ideally, any) makeup (you'll be sweating too much half the time to make makeup practical).

You'll also notice that I brought 3 bottoms, 4 main tops, 4 underclothes - I generally follow the "one to wear, one to wash, and one to dry" rule, but in really hot countries I'll take a 4th top and underwear, as I expect to wash and change clothes more than once a day. I have no objection to washing a couple of items in the sink on a regular basis, in between sending out loads of laundry, especially when it means I can get all my clothes into a small bag.

If you're planning to include cooler countries in your itinerary, you can easily pick up a cheap fleece on the road, or go to those countries early on in the trip, and either mail the fleece to family back at home or donate it to charity, so you don't need to carry around excess weight for the rest of the trip.

And finally, this is the exact same amount of gear I take for a two week or a three month trip.

Packing, sorted!

Updated 2021 - I used to take a separate DSLR camera, but these days the camera on many phones is good enough, so I stopped carrying a camera a handful of years ago.

I also find for really long trips that I crave a bit more comfort - or maybe it's just my middle-agedness. But I found over the 7 months I travelled in 2019 that what I really want, at the end of a long day of sightseeing, is a cup of tea. And not all guesthouses provide kettles in the guest room. So half-way through the trip I bought a cheap, tiny little kettle (so low powered it takes about 10 minutes to boil a single cup of water) and a plastic mug, and tucked it into bag with a packet a teabags. Sometimes I'm such a Brit....

Enjoying the frustrations of travel

I recently, as an exercise, tried to list all the countries I'd visited in the world.

I had trouble remembering some of them, but I finally came up with a total number: 33.

I don't consider myself unusually well-travelled. Better than some, worse than others. But what amazed me about the exercise is how much I've managed to forget in only a short space of time. Hungary and the Czech Republic have started to merge together in my head; I can't remember whether it was in Prague or Budapest that I visited the graveyard on the hillside. I'd completely forgotten about Ukraine, until I looked at a map and remembered that I'd taken a three day business trip to Kiev a couple of years ago. And that got me thinking:

How do we really experience the places we visit?

Two years ago, I spent three and a half months travelling in South East Asia. I'd never been to that part of the world before, and was blown away by the brain-riot of temples and crowds and hawkers and everything else.

But, like many travellers, I liked some bits of it more than others.

I liked Thailand's easy-going nature, its well-developed transport and tourism infrastructure, its friendly smiles and warm, sunny days. Thailand is an easy place to travel and enjoy yourself.

I liked Malaysia's mishmash of cultures and cuisines. I loved the spicy food, the jungle hikes, colonial plantations surrounded by rose gardens, tea plantations or strawberry farms.

I didn't like Vietnam so much. Despite the beautiful scenery, the buzzing cities, the history, and everything else that Vietnam offers, I wasn't happy when I was there. I found the constant hassle from touts wearying. I found the grossly inflated prices for foreigners annoying and the people less friendly (not all of them, of course - I met some lovely people in Vietnam too, but overall I found the people in Vietnam much more insular than in Thailand or Malaysia. Those who made a living from the tourist trade or from fleecing tourists were happy to see you. Those who didn't want to make any money off you mostly just ignored you and got on with their lives). Rereading my old journal from my month in Vietnam, I was amazed at the strength of my frustration and unhappiness on many occasions. And yet....

I still think about Vietnam on a regular basis.

I remember where I went, and what I did, and who I spoke to. I remember being lost in Saigon. I remember thinking my bus was probably going to crash and kill us all while heading North on highway one. I remember being followed by some weird guy in Dalat, and the brakes on my bicycle failing in Hue. I remember empty, windswept beaches in Hoi An, and non-stop rain in Halong Bay. I remember it all, and I think about it far more than I think about happy-go-lucky Thailand, or even spicy, vibrant Malaysia.

Which has me thinking: maybe the best way to experience a place or a culture, the most memorable way of seeing the world, is through a haze of anxiety and frustration. It's the less-than-blissful memories that stay with you.

So here's to all our travels, the happy and the not-so-happy alike. May we get caught in the occasional rain storm along the way. May our guesthouses be sometimes a little bit dodgy. And may all our travels be 100% memorable.

What to pack for SE Asia

Before I set off to backpack around SE Asia, I did a lot of research on what to take, and what not to take. Some of the tips from my research turned out to be brilliant, and some a waste of time. Here's the run-down:

7 things to pack

1) A small role of duct-tape
I bought one of those mini rolls (with a very small internal cardboard tube) designed for travellers, and used it multiple times. I've repaired lots of holes in mosquito screens, as well as the odd rip in a mosquito net. Worth the space in the backpack.

2) A tube of anti-itch cream (I used Anthisan)
No matter how much I tried to avoid mosquito bites (long trousers and socks after dusk, covering myself in deet) my ankles still got bitten constantly. If I couldn't avoid the bites, at least I could avoid lying awake all night itching.

3) An unlocked phone, so you can buy a local sim card (I bought one in Thailand and another in Vietnam)
I'd originally planned to stay in touch with family back home via skype, but found that the wifi connections weren't always fast enough to be able to use skype effectively. So that phone ended up getting quite a bit of use. And, of course, it also functions as diary, alarm clock, and music player.

4) A sarong
It got used as a skirt, shawl, beach cover up, towel, and sheet liner. Definitely worth taking.

5) A thin sleeping bag liner
I didn't bother taking one of these, and wished I had. Sometimes, I just wasn't sure about the sheets, as some places don't seem to iron them. They may be clean, but it's a lot harder to tell if they're wrinkled. I ended up buying a flat sheet half-way through the trip, that I could use whenever I had doubts. A silk sleeping bag liner would have been a lot smaller and lighter to carry around.

6) Sunhat
Not only prevents those annoying headaches you get from too much sun, but is good for hiding your sweaty hair (I don't think I've ever sweated as much as I did those first couple of weeks, when I was still trying to acclimatise to the humidity).

7) Earplugs
You will use them. Trust me.

5 things not to bother packing

1) Torch / flashlight
I took a small, wind-up torch, but only ended up using it a couple of times. If you're planning on camping or spending a lot of time on the sort of small island where the power gets turned off every night at 22:00, a torch would be a good idea. But apart from that, I'll probably skip the torch next time and just use the light of my phone.

2) Swimwear
Next time I won't bother. I'm not a beach-bum, but I did visit several beach locations on the trip (Prachup Khiri Khan, Langkawi, Cherating). I still only wore my swimsuit a couple of times. Half the beaches I visited were more geared to locals then farang, so I swam in shorts and a t-shirt as often as not. And even on the more touristy beaches, I wouldn't have felt out of place in shorts and a t-shirt, so next time I'm not going to bother packing the swimsuit.

3) Toiletries
They can be bought easily and cheaply anywhere, although you may have to search a little to find sensitive skin formulations (even the baby soap in Thailand seems to contain perfume).

4) Mosquito nets
Unless you're planning on camping or staying in really, really basic accommodation, you won't actually need to bring your own mosquito net, and mosquito coils can be bought easily when you're there.

5) Travel sink plug
I took one of these so I could do wash clothes in my room (when I just want to wash one or two things, so don't want to send out a load of laundry), then found it rarely fitted properly – a complete waste of space.

One more thing to remember

Clothes wear out really fast on the road, far faster than you can imagine.

I went with one pair of thin linen trousers (which were a couple of years old but still looked in decent condition), one ankle-length skirt, one pair of shorts, one long-sleeved shirt and three t-shirts. One month into the trip, the trousers had holes and threadbare patches, so I binned them (and being that I'm almost six foot tall and wear a size 16, finding replacement clothes in Asia was not an easy task). By the end of the trip, the skirt and one of the shirts were bin-worthy as well.

Pack lightly, but pack quality, and don't expect the clothes to outlast the trip.