Every question, in one place

No. Every Thailand–Cambodia land crossing has been closed since late June 2025 and was still closed at the end of August 2026. Any operator selling that leg overland is selling something they cannot deliver.

We fly it. Bangkok to Siem Reap is about an hour and we price the ticket into the trip rather than presenting it as an extra.

Only if you fly every leg and accept two nights per country. We will quote it, but we will also tell you in writing that we think three countries in fourteen days is a better trip.

The arithmetic is on the how many days page.

No. Every trip is private and runs on your dates. The eight-traveller ceiling is the maximum size of your own party, not a number of strangers we fill a bus with.

It depends on your passport and, more awkwardly, on which border you use. A Laos eVisa is not valid at any land crossing from Vietnam except Dansavanh–Lao Bao, and that one is visa on arrival rather than eVisa.

The visas and entry page sets out all four systems and the border-specific traps.

No. Every route runs privately on your dates, for your party only. The eight-traveller ceiling is the maximum size of your own group.

Often yes, and usually for less than the sum of the two, because the overlap days disappear. The Vietnam fourteen-day route and the Cambodia seven-day route combine into about eighteen days rather than twenty-one.

Because we will not run one. The security situation and the question of where tourist money ends up both point the same way. If Myanmar reopens in a way we can defend, we will say so here.

One traveller. A solo trip costs roughly 35 to 45 per cent more per day than the same trip for two, because the vehicle and guide are the same and there is a single-room supplement on top.

Usually three things: our guides are on a day rate rather than earning from shopping stops, we staff a separate guide in each country rather than one guide across all four, and we do not put a commission stop into a sightseeing day.

Ask the cheaper quote to name the hotels and to confirm there is a guide on every transfer day. The answers will explain most of the gap.

The hotel component does, sharply. Luang Prabang and Siem Reap rooms can double between May and December. Guides, vehicles and entrance fees barely move.

A trip in May or September can be 20 to 30 per cent cheaper than the same trip in December, and in Laos and Cambodia those months are often better than their reputation.

Yes, for the three-day pass, which is valid on any three days within ten. One day is USD 37 and seven days is USD 72. Buy at the official counters or at ticket.angkorenterprise.gov.kh.

A pass bought after 17:00 lets you into the park that evening and counts from the next day.

We quote and invoice in USD. You can send another currency and your bank will convert it, but the amount that must arrive is the USD figure on the invoice, so leave room for the spread.

For November to February, three to five months, and for Luang Prabang and Siem Reap hotels in December, longer. For May to September, six weeks is usually enough.

The binding constraint on multi-country trips is rarely hotels — it is the intra-regional flights, which get expensive rather than sold out.

We would rather not. You will get a better fare with your own miles and your own airline preferences, and open-jaw tickets are easier to manage when you hold them.

We will tell you exactly which airports and which dates the itinerary needs before you book.

Tell us as soon as you know. If a visa refusal makes the trip impossible and it is more than 30 days out, we treat it under the cancellation ladder and refund everything not already committed.

Refusals for standard tourist visas in these four countries are rare for most passports, but they are not unknown, and applying early leaves room to fix a problem.

No. You see a full day-by-day itinerary with named hotels and a price breakdown before any money changes hands.

Because it is a bad hour badly spent. Roughly two thousand people crowd two small reflecting pools, the temple interior is closed until after the sun is up, and you lose the following afternoon to being tired.

We go at 07:30 and reach Angkor Wat at about 08:30, when the sunrise crowd has gone for breakfast. If you want sunrise anyway we will arrange it — we would just rather you knew what you were buying.

Yes, and it is cheaper, but we think it is the wrong trade. The bus crosses at Bavet–Moc Bai into Ho Chi Minh City in six to seven hours and skips the delta entirely.

The river crossing is one of the three or four moments on this route that people remember years later.

From late February to mid-April, yes. Agricultural burning fills the northern valleys and visibility in Nong Khiaw can drop to a few hundred metres for weeks at a time. Flights out of Luang Prabang are occasionally delayed by it.

It is not dangerous for most people and the towns still function. But if the mountains are why you are going, do not go in March.

It has not stopped the Phnom Penh–Chau Doc service in recent years, unlike some smaller river routes. If it did, we would drive you to the Bavet–Moc Bai crossing instead and refund the fare difference.

We would tell you before you left home, not on the morning.

Because the road does not exist as an option in 2026. Every Thailand–Cambodia land crossing has been closed since late June 2025, including Poipet–Aranyaprathet, and there is no announced reopening date.

The flight is about an hour and returns most of a day compared with the old overland crossing, so the itinerary is arguably better for it. It is still a border we would rather cross on the ground.

Second-class air-conditioned sleeper: two berths per bay, curtains, clean linen, a working dining car. It is comfortable in the way a good European sleeper is comfortable, not in the way a hotel is.

If you would rather not, we can fly Vientiane to Bangkok instead. It costs roughly the same and loses the best travel day of the trip.

Yes, and the honest cut is northern Thailand. Dropping Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai takes four days out without breaking the geography, because Bangkok is the flight hub anyway.

Cutting Laos instead saves the same time and costs the trip its best week. We will say so.

Day 18. Chiang Rai to Bangkok to Siem Reap is two flights and about eight hours door to door, and it exists only because a border is shut.

We schedule nothing that evening and we do not expect anything of you the next morning before 07:30.

Not with someone doing the paperwork. Cambodian exit at Kaam Samnor and Vietnamese entry at Vinh Xuong, both riverside posts, roughly forty minutes each with the boat waiting.

The only friction is the unofficial extras: the one-dollar “health check”, the fixers at the pier. Our staff decline them before you have to.

Yes, and we will build it, but the boat leaves Chau Doc at 07:30 which means a 05:00 start, and Angkor lands at the end of the trip rather than the beginning.

Most people who ask end up going downstream once they see the timings.

Kampot and Kep add three days and fit neatly after Phnom Penh: pepper farms, a decaying French seaside town, and the best crab in the country. The river crossing then happens on day nine instead of day six.

Because the three-day pass costs USD 62 against USD 37 for one day, and the marginal day is the cheapest good day of the whole trip. Two days sees the central group and Banteay Srei; the third day is where Angkor stops being a checklist.

Yes, in the ordinary sense: it is a slow, heavy wooden boat on a wide river with an experienced crew, and it has a good record. It is uncomfortable rather than dangerous.

The speedboat on the same route is a different matter and we will not book it.

One street on a steep bank, a dozen guesthouses, a few restaurants, and about a hundred and fifty passengers arriving at once every afternoon. Electricity can be intermittent.

We book the best rooms available, which means clean, hot water, and a river view. It is still Pak Beng.

Upstream takes three days rather than two and costs more, because the boats fight the current. Most people who ask decide to go downstream once they hear that.

Cut Bangkok. Fly straight into Chiang Rai on arrival, and the trip works at seven days without losing the boat.

Cutting the boat instead saves the same two days and removes the reason for the itinerary.

Because the Lao eVisa is not valid at any Vietnam land border, and the northern crossings do not issue visas on arrival. You would need a visa from a Lao embassy before flying, which is possible but adds weeks and a courier.

Lao Bao issues on arrival. That is why the route goes where it goes.

It is the hardest day of the trip and we do not pretend otherwise. Three hours to Dong Ha and up Route 9, about an hour at the border in a normal queue, and three hours across the plain to the Mekong.

We break it properly, the vehicle is comfortable, and we do not schedule anything that evening.

Perhaps. The Mekong population has recovered to somewhere above a hundred animals from a low of about eighty, and the pool near Don Khon holds a handful of them.

Anyone who guarantees a sighting is guessing. We put you on the water at the right hour and that is the honest limit of what we can do.

Yes, and the border works the same way, but you would need a Vietnamese eVisa in advance because Vietnam does not issue on arrival at Lao Bao. That is straightforward — USD 25 online, three to five working days.

It is enough for four places in three countries, which is not the same as seeing three countries. You will have a clear sense of Hanoi, of Luang Prabang and of Angkor, and almost none of the countries around them.

If that trade is clear to you, it is a good trip. If it is not, take two countries instead.

Because it costs a day of driving or a flight plus two transfers, and at ten days there is no slack to pay for it. It is the first thing we add at twelve days.

Yes, and it prices the same. Most people prefer to end at Angkor because it is the strongest single thing on the route and it reads better last.

We rebook, we pay the difference first and settle later, and we compress the following day rather than the current one. With two flights in ten days, one cancellation costs you an afternoon rather than a country.

Ha Giang, and it is not close any more. Sapa town has been comprehensively built over and the valley walks are crowded; Ha Giang has harder roads, better landscape and a fraction of the traffic.

Sapa is two hours closer to Hanoi and one day shorter. If your days are tight, that is the argument for it, and we will build it.

Yes, using the north-south railway, and it adds three days. The Hanoi–Hue sleeper is a decent overnight; Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City by rail is seventeen hours and we would not recommend it.

If trains are the point, say so and we will rebuild the middle of this route around them.

Vietnam is 1,650 kilometres long with three separate climates and a Cham civilisation in the middle of it. Fourteen days is not long for that; it is the minimum for doing it without a permanent sense of leaving somewhere early.

Yes. Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh is a six-hour bus or a fifty-minute flight, and five more days gives you Phnom Penh and three at Angkor. That is the eighteen-day classic in a different order.

Almost nobody says so afterwards. The three-day pass costs USD 62 against USD 37 for one day, so the marginal days are the cheapest good days of the trip.

Day one is the central group, day two is the outer temples, and day three is the quiet ones with no crowd — which is the day people describe when they get home.

Chong Kneas is forty minutes closer and has been comprehensively organised around extracting money from visitors, including a well-documented orphanage-visit scam.

Kampong Phluk is a working village on the flood plain. We do not stop at any school or orphanage in either place.

Kampot and Kep add three days after Phnom Penh: pepper farms, a decaying French seaside town and the best crab in Cambodia. We do not send people to Sihanoukville.

By air. Bangkok to Siem Reap is about an hour and runs several times a day; Bangkok to Phnom Penh is seventy-five minutes. Overland from Vietnam via Bavet–Moc Bai is open and ordinary.

Read crossing borders for the current picture.

In parts of the main street, yes, and it is uncomfortable to watch. Vendors sell rice to visitors who then hand it over as a performance, and some of that rice is not fit for the monks to eat.

We watch from a side street, standing, no flash, no rice. It is a religious practice, not an activity, and the best way to attend is quietly and at a distance.

No. The flight is forty minutes but with airport time it is barely faster door to door, it costs three to four times as much, and it is far less reliable.

The train is the best thing that has happened to travel in Laos in decades.

Ninety minutes up, roughly 350 metres of climb, on a rough path with two sections of bamboo ladder. It is steep rather than technical.

It is entirely optional and roughly half our travellers skip it. The village and the river are the reason to be there.

Yes, two nights from Nong Khiaw into Khmu and Hmong villages, sleeping in village houses rather than a lodge. It adds two days and USD 290, and it is the best thing we run in Laos.

It needs reasonable fitness: five to six hours walking a day on steep, unpaved ground.

Because the word does very little work. Riding is indefensible; bathing and feeding programmes still involve chained animals off-hours and a training process nobody films.

There are a small number of observation-only projects we think are genuine. We will name them and let you decide, but we do not sell them as an activity.

As a contemporary artwork by a living artist, yes, for an hour. As a temple, no, and treating it as one leads to disappointment.

It is also very crowded from 10:00. We get there at opening or skip it.

Yes, and it is one of the better onward moves in the region. Chiang Khong is ninety minutes from Chiang Rai, the fourth Friendship Bridge accepts the Laos eVisa, and the slow boat runs from Huay Xai down to Luang Prabang in two days.

That is the nine-day Thailand and Laos route.

Yes, and mostly for the reason people do not expect: it is a good city to have unscheduled time in. The temples take a morning; the rest is markets, food and the valleys behind the city.

If the delta is not interesting to you, take the bus. It is cheap, it works, and it takes seven hours.

The five days exist for the delta, which is the most densely populated agricultural landscape in Southeast Asia and reads completely differently from a boat than from a road.

Two small riverside posts, roughly forty minutes each, with the boat waiting. It is orderly. The only friction is the unofficial extras, which our staff decline before you have to.

Yes. Phnom Penh to Siem Reap is six hours by road, and three nights there gives you the three-day pass properly used. That turns this into an eight-day trip.

Only at 05:45. It is a wholesale market that starts before dawn and thins out by eight; the nine o'clock version is a handful of boats selling drinks to tourists.

Because a page we cannot write honestly is worse than no page. These are the fifteen we send people to often enough to know what has changed since last year.

We would rather have fifteen pages that are current than fifty that are copied from a guidebook.

Usually yes. The list reflects what we write up, not the limit of what we run. Ninh Binh, Hue, Phong Nha, Battambang, Savannakhet and the Bolaven Plateau all appear inside our routes without having their own page.

If you allow only one answer: Angkor, because there is nothing else of that scale and age anywhere in Southeast Asia.

If you allow a second: the Nam Ou valley at Nong Khiaw, which is the place people are most surprised by.

Hanoi and Phnom Penh, yes — both carry a great deal of what their countries are. Vientiane is worth one night for the COPE centre and not much more. Bangkok is worth two or three nights on its own terms and you will pass through it anyway.

Parts of it are — the block around Ta Hien street in the evening is essentially a bar strip. But the working trade streets north and west of the market are not, and they are ten minutes on foot from the tourist block.

A guide who knows the guild grid turns it from a maze into a legible thing, which is most of what the first morning is for.

Loud and constant, and not actually dangerous at walking speed. Motorbikes flow around pedestrians; they do not brake. The rule is to walk steadily and never stop or step back.

Yes, and it is the best museum in Vietnam. It covers all 54 recognised ethnic groups with real objects and reconstructed houses in the grounds, and it makes the rest of a northern Vietnam trip legible.

It is eight kilometres west, about 25 minutes, and it is closed on Mondays.

At least two, and the second one should be a proper night. Both transfers start between 06:30 and 08:00 and both are long. Arriving from Europe and heading into the mountains the next morning is a bad plan.

Many people do, and a significant number of them crash. The road is winding, wet in patches, and shared with trucks; most travel insurance excludes motorbike riding without the correct licence.

We drive it. If riding is the point of the trip for you, we are the wrong operator.

Yes. Dong Van market is Sunday morning and Meo Vac market is Sunday too, starting before six. They are livestock and produce markets where actual trade happens.

If your dates can flex by a day or two to catch one, they should.

The plateau sits between 1,000 and 1,600 metres. That is high enough to be genuinely cold in winter and not high enough for altitude to be a health issue for anyone.

Yes, and it is short — about an hour through the Tu San gorge, which is the deepest in Southeast Asia. It also gives you the Ma Pi Leng from below, which is a completely different thing from the road above.

The access road down to the jetty is steep and rough. In heavy rain it closes.

A 120,000 dong ticket that admits you to five of about twenty heritage buildings. Walking the streets is free; entering the assembly halls, old houses and the Japanese bridge is not.

Enforcement at the street entrances has varied over the years. We buy it because the money goes to the conservation fund, which is doing real work.

Some are excellent and many are not. A good jacket takes three fittings over two days and costs USD 120 to 250; the USD 40 suit made overnight is made overnight and it shows.

If a tailored garment matters to you, build it into the first day, not the last.

Yes, at 07:00. It is the largest Cham site in Vietnam, built between the fourth and thirteenth centuries, and it was heavily bombed in 1969 — several of the finest towers are craters.

By 09:30 it is hot and full. The site is small and does not absorb a crowd.

Town if you want to walk out at 06:30 and again at 21:30, which is what the place is for. Beach if you want quiet and a pool, and you are content to cycle or be driven in twice.

Most people who have been before choose the beach.

Yes, and it is shrinking. Better roads have moved a lot of wholesale trade onto trucks, and the number of boats has fallen over the last decade.

It is still a working wholesale market at six in the morning, with produce moving in tonnes and the shop sign being a sample tied to a pole. It is not that at nine.

Ben Tre. My Tho is closest to Ho Chi Minh City and takes almost all of the day-trip traffic. Vinh Long is a reasonable middle option. Ben Tre has the best small-canal network and the least of the coach trade.

The boat stops at Vinh Xuong for Vietnamese exit, runs a few hundred metres upriver, and stops at Kaam Samnor for Cambodian entry. Roughly forty minutes each, with the boat waiting.

The friction is unofficial: a one-dollar “health check” with a thermometer, fixers at the Chau Doc pier selling visas you already hold. Decline both.

It is subsiding and salt is intruding further inland each decade, driven by groundwater extraction, upstream dams and sea level. It is one of the most exposed large deltas in the world.

It is not something you see on a three-day visit, but it is the honest background to what you are looking at.

The main street between 09:00 and 21:00, yes. The rest of the peninsula, no, and the monasteries are functioning religious institutions rather than exhibits.

Be out at 06:30 and at 21:30 and it is a different town. That is not a workaround; it is how to visit the place.

Yes. Forty-five minutes out, limestone pools in an improbable turquoise, and swimmable in the lower ones. Go after 15:00 when the day groups have gone, or before 09:00.

The moon bear rescue centre at the entrance is a genuine sanctuary run by Free the Bears, not a photo attraction.

The train, every time. Two hours against a forty-minute flight that costs three to four times as much and is less reliable door to door.

It has cleaned up a great deal since its worst years and the landscape is genuinely good. But it is a karst valley with an activity industry attached, and Nong Khiaw does the same landscape better and quieter.

We will build it if you want it. We do not put it in by default.

For landscape, yes, and it is not particularly close. Similar karst, a better river, and none of the activity industry.

Vang Vieng is easier to reach and has more to do if doing things is the point. Nong Khiaw is the one people remember.

Yes, by public minibus from Luang Prabang, which takes four to five hours and leaves in the morning. It is cramped and it works.

The boat down the Nam Ou from Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang no longer runs as a through service because of the dams built on the river between 2013 and 2021.

Five to six hours of walking a day on steep, unpaved paths, sleeping on a mat in a village house with a shared washing area. It is not a hardship expedition and it is not comfortable.

The reason to do it is that it is the only way to see how most people in northern Laos actually live.

Very little, on purpose. A handful of restaurants, a few bars, and it is dark and quiet by ten. That is most of the appeal.

For COPE, yes. For the temples and the arch, not really, and we would rather say so than pad the day.

It is also frequently unavoidable: it is where the northern railway ends and where the Thai crossing is.

Not sensibly. The bridge is twenty kilometres from the centre, the train station is on the same side, and the sleeper leaves in the evening.

You can arrive on the morning train from Luang Prabang and cross the same afternoon, which is what our four-country route does.

The flight is an hour and ten and costs a little more. The train is twelve and a half hours and saves a hotel night.

The train is also a genuinely good travel day, and it keeps the crossing on the ground, which is why we prefer it.

It is an eccentric 1958 sculpture garden of concrete Hindu and Buddhist figures, twenty-five kilometres out, and it takes half a morning including the drive.

Worth it on a second night. Not worth cutting COPE for.

Perhaps. The pool holds a handful of animals from a Mekong population that has recovered above a hundred, and sightings are common but not reliable.

We use boats that hold their distance and cut the engine. A guaranteed sighting is not something anyone can honestly sell.

Don Khon. Same island group, joined by the old railway bridge, and a fraction of the party traffic. Don Det has a long-standing backpacker scene at the northern end.

Yes. The Nong Nok Khiene – Trapeang Kriel crossing is forty minutes south and it is open and ordinary. Onward to Stung Treng and Kratie.

It is one of the few land borders that accepts the Lao eVisa, which makes it easier than most.

It is a different river here. Upstream it is a channel between banks; here it is a braided system fourteen kilometres wide that defeated an empire trying to sail up it.

If the river is the interest, this is the most striking thing it does.

Three on the pass. One day sees Angkor Wat and the Bayon badly; two sees them properly plus Banteay Srei; three adds the quiet temples, which is where most people find the thing they remember.

Beng Mealea if you want the ruin-in-the-forest experience and a shorter drive; it is covered by your pass. Koh Ker if you want something structurally different — a seven-tiered pyramid from a tenth-century rival capital, UNESCO-listed in 2023.

Koh Ker is two hours each way and USD 15 extra in cash.

Shoulders and knees covered, which is enforced at Angkor Wat's upper terrace. Shoes with grip — the stone is worn smooth and often uneven.

A hat and more water than you think. There is shade at Ta Prohm and Preah Khan and almost none at Angkor Wat.

No. The park closes at 17:30 to 18:00 depending on the temple, and there is no night access. Anyone offering it is not offering something legitimate.

Forty-five kilometres, about 55 minutes in normal traffic. Siem Reap Angkor International opened in 2023 and the old airport is closed.

Build the hour into both your arrival and your departure. People miss connections over this.

By air. Bangkok to Siem Reap is about an hour and runs several times a day. Overland from Vietnam via Bavet–Moc Bai and Phnom Penh is open and ordinary.

Every Thailand–Cambodia land crossing has been closed since late June 2025 with no announced reopening.

Entirely avoidable. It is two blocks. The river, the French quarter and the streets north of the water are ten minutes away and are a different town.

Because roughly four in five children in Cambodian residential care institutions have at least one living parent, and the visitor trade is a large part of what keeps those institutions full.

It is one of the clearest cases in travel where good intentions cause harm, and no operator should be selling it.

No, and some people should not. It is a preserved prison and it is upsetting in a way that a museum about an atrocity is not.

Most people who go say afterwards that it was necessary. We will arrange the morning differently, without comment, if you would rather not.

Yes, and it is under-visited. Its collection of pre-Angkorian and Angkorian sandstone sculpture is the finest anywhere, including several pieces removed from Angkor for safekeeping.

An hour and a half, and it makes the temples read differently afterwards.

Techo is 20 kilometres out and takes 45 to 60 minutes, longer in the evening peak. Pochentong, which was closer, is closed.

For an evening departure we leave the hotel two and a half hours before the flight.

Ordinarily, yes, with the normal caution about bag-snatching from motorbikes on the riverside at night — carry your bag on the inside and do not hold a phone at the kerb.

The tuk-tuk apps are cheap and remove most of the friction.

Yes. Crab pulled from traps you can see, stir-fried with green Kampot pepper still on the stem, eaten at a plastic table on the seafront for about ten dollars.

Go at lunch rather than dinner; the catch comes in through the morning.

Not well. The water is shallow and silty and the seabed is full of crab traps. Rabbit Island, twenty minutes offshore, has a decent stretch of sand and basic bungalows.

If a beach is what you want, this is not the right coast.

In the dry season, yes — an hour up an excellent road to an abandoned hill station in cloud, with a history involving a great many deaths during its construction.

From June to October it is inside a cloud and there is nothing to see. The contemporary casino development up there is also worth knowing about before you go.

It is one of the few genuinely distinctive agricultural products in the region, with a protected geographical indication, and the good farms sell at farm prices.

Buy at the farm, not at the airport. We take no commission on it either way.

Once, and early. It opens at 08:30 and by 10:00 it is very busy. Wat Pho next door is calmer, cheaper and, for many people, better.

Dress code is enforced: shoulders and knees covered, no see-through fabric. They will sell you a wrap at the gate if you get it wrong.

Riverside, if the city is the point. You get the express boat at the door, the old town within walking distance, and a completely different set of streets.

Sukhumvit is better connected to the airport rail and has more international restaurants. It is also anywhere.

Yes, every foreign national, every entry, including overland from Laos. It is free, it takes five minutes, and the window opens 72 hours before arrival.

Do it at tdac.immigration.go.th and nowhere else.

Not in 2026. Every Thailand–Cambodia land crossing, including Poipet–Aranyaprathet, has been closed since late June 2025 and no reopening date has been announced.

Flights operate normally. See crossing borders.

We will name the small number of observation-only projects we believe are genuine, and you can book directly with them if you want to. We do not sell them as an activity or take any margin.

Anything involving riding, bathing or feeding, we decline.

In Chiang Mai, yes, and more than in most places, because northern Thai food is genuinely different from what people mean by Thai food.

The good classes start at the market at 07:00 with what things are, not with a recipe card.

It is three hours north on a road with 762 curves and a well-earned reputation for car sickness. The valley is lovely and the town is a backpacker scene.

Two nights minimum if you go. We will build it and we rarely suggest it.

Chiang Mai is a real working city with a preserved core; Luang Prabang is a small town where the preserved core is almost the whole thing.

If you can only do one, Luang Prabang is more unusual. Chiang Mai is better to spend a week in.

The viewpoint at Sop Ruak is, mildly. The Hall of Opium three kilometres away is not, and it is one of the better museums in Thailand.

Go for the museum and take the view on the way past.

For an hour, as a contemporary artwork. It is very crowded from 10:00, so go at opening or skip it.

Approaching it as a historic temple leads to disappointment; it has been under construction since 1997.

Thai exit at Chiang Khong, a shuttle bus across the fourth Friendship Bridge because you cannot walk it, and Lao entry at Huay Xai. The Lao eVisa is valid here.

Allow ninety minutes. Then the slow boat leaves the following morning, which is why we sleep in Huay Xai.

The crossing has opened and closed repeatedly and the situation on the other side is unstable. We do not run trips into Myanmar and would not recommend a day crossing.

Nobody knows, and anyone giving you a date is guessing. The Thai position as of late August 2026 was that reopening depends on conditions being met and would be a step-by-step restoration rather than a single announcement.

We check the position before every departure and we will tell you if it changes.

In the tourist regions, yes. The dispute is confined to a stretch of the shared border. Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh and the coasts are all far outside the advisory zones.

We do not route within 50 kilometres of the disputed border in either country.

Yes, and some people prefer to. We will give you the briefing either way and have someone waiting.

The one crossing where we would push back is Lao Bao, because the visa on arrival process there benefits from someone who does it regularly.

We do not operate in Myanmar and will not while the current situation holds. The Thai crossings at Mae Sai and Mae Sot open and close unpredictably.

China is reachable from Laos by rail at Boten and needs a Chinese visa arranged in advance. We do not currently build itineraries across it.

Four to six weeks. All three eVisas process in three to five working days, but applying early leaves room to fix a rejected photograph or a mistyped passport number without a courier.

The Thai arrival card is the exception: it can only be filed inside the 72 hours before you arrive.

If you leave the airport, yes. Airside transit does not require entry for most nationalities, but every itinerary on this site enters each country properly.

Get a new one. Four countries means up to eight stamps plus visa pages, and several land crossings will refuse entry without two blank facing pages.

There is no Thai land border to get one at. Every crossing has been closed since June 2025. Arriving by air, visa on arrival at Siem Reap or Phnom Penh is USD 30 and straightforward.

Sometimes. Bangkok fares from Europe are often USD 150 to 300 below Hanoi for the same dates, and the connection to Hanoi is short and cheap.

Do the arithmetic including the extra connection and the risk of a missed bag. It is worth checking, not worth assuming.

Most Gulf and East Asian carriers allow a stopover for little or nothing. It is a decision about your long-haul ticket rather than about the trip, and we will work around whatever you book.

Yes, every flight inside the region is included in our prices and issued by us: Hanoi–Luang Prabang, Bangkok–Siem Reap, the domestic Vietnamese legs and so on.

We do not book the long-haul into and out of the region.

Tell us the new arrival time and the driver waits. There is no charge for a delayed arrival; the transfer is booked for your flight number, not your original time.

If a delay costs a day of the itinerary, we compress rather than cancel and we tell you what we have moved.

Booking opens seven days ahead. Agents such as 12go and Bookaway sell it with a small markup and save you a station queue; the official channel needs a Lao phone number or a passport shown at a counter.

We book it for our travellers the moment the window opens.

Rarely. They save a hotel night and cost you the following morning, and the sleeper buses in Laos and northern Vietnam have a poor safety record on mountain roads.

We do not use them. Night trains are a different matter and we use those.

Vietnamese and Thai domestic services are broadly reliable. Lao Airlines is less so, and thin routes such as Hanoi–Luang Prabang are consolidated or retimed more often than we would like.

We build a buffer around any flight that connects to another flight, and we do not schedule a border crossing on the same day as an international flight.

That is essentially what our routes are. The twenty-four-day four-country route uses a night train, a fast train, a night on a boat, four flights and about thirty hours of road.

Late November or early December. Everywhere is dry, the smoke has not started, the floods have finished, and it is not yet Christmas pricing.

January is nearly as good and northern Vietnam is colder and greyer.

No, and it is the most over-stated thing in this region's travel writing. Rain arrives in one or two heavy bursts in the afternoon and stops. Mornings are usually clear.

What you lose: some mountain roads in northern Vietnam, some river routes, and reliability. What you gain: green landscape, full waterfalls, no crowds, and 20 to 30 per cent off hotels.

Thirty-eight to forty degrees on open stone with no shade at Angkor Wat. It is genuinely difficult and people underestimate it.

We build the 11:00 to 15:00 break into every temple day all year, and in April it is not optional.

Partly. Southern Laos — the Bolaven Plateau and Four Thousand Islands — is far less affected than the north, so a March trip to Laos should go south.

That is one of the reasons our Vietnam and Laos overland route goes where it goes.

Fewer, almost always, and the people who tell us this most emphatically are the ones who did it the other way the first time.

The exception is a genuine once-in-a-lifetime trip where you know you will not come back. Then four countries in eighteen days is a defensible choice and we will build it well.

Three on the pass, plus arrival and departure, so four nights in Siem Reap in practice. The three-day pass costs USD 62 against USD 37 for one day, and the marginal days are the cheapest good days of any trip in the region.

Yes, and the best places to add them are Luang Prabang, Hoi An and Kampot — the three places where an empty day pays for itself.

The worst place to add a day is a capital city, where people run out of things to do and end up shopping.

One country, two places, and a short trip. The five-day delta crossing is the only thing we sell at that length, and it works because it is a journey rather than a tour.

Vietnam and Cambodia, joined by the Mekong crossing at Kaam Samnor, because the border is a boat and the two countries are genuinely different from each other.

Thailand and Laos is the best short pairing, and the slow boat is one of the great journeys of the region.

That is exactly the compromise that produces a trip of arrival afternoons. Better to drop a country and keep the nights.

The exception is flying every leg, which is what our ten-day express does and which we describe honestly on that page.

Yes, if Cambodia is also in the trip, because the land border is closed and the two can only be joined by air. That is a flight and an airport transfer at each end.

Adding Thailand to a Laos trip costs almost nothing extra: the Friendship Bridge crossings are easy and the train works.

Common, and usually resolvable. Send us both versions and we will price them side by side with an honest comparison like the table above.

It is easier to argue about a document than about an idea.

The multi-day cruise ships between Siem Reap and Ho Chi Minh City are a legitimate way to travel and they are a different product from what we build: fixed departures, fifty to a hundred passengers, and a schedule.

We use small boats for specific journeys instead. If a cruise is what you want, we are not the right operator and we will say so.

The two-day slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, for the length of it and for the fact that nothing is scheduled for twelve hours.

The Phnom Penh to Chau Doc crossing is the most interesting, because it is an international border at river speed.

People do. The current is strong and inconsistent, there is significant boat traffic, and water quality varies enormously. We do not encourage it in the main channel.

The tributaries and the falls pools — Kuang Si, Li Phi — are a different matter.

The scheduled boats run all year and the operators know the river. High water is faster and browner rather than more dangerous.

The exception is the speedboat between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang, which we will not book in any season.

For two people, it is often 60 to 100 per cent more than a large-group headline price. For five or six people, the gap narrows to 20 or 30 per cent.

Some of that headline gap is not real, because group prices frequently exclude flights and entrance fees that we include. Compare inclusions before you compare numbers.

We do not run a matching service, because a trip where two parties who have never met are dividing decisions tends to satisfy neither.

If you know the other party, we will happily quote you as one group.

Roughly 35 to 45 per cent on the per-day rate, made up of the whole vehicle and guide plus a single-room supplement at hotels.

We do not add a margin on top of that. It is what it costs.

We re-price. If someone drops out the per-person rate rises, and if someone joins it falls, and either way we show you the arithmetic rather than just a new number.

Yes, and a lot of people should. Comfortable throughout with two nights at Excellent in Luang Prabang and Siem Reap — the two places where the best hotels are genuinely special — is a common and sensible shape.

We will price any combination you like.

Sometimes, sometimes not. On small independent hotels we are often at the same rate or slightly above it.

What we get that you cannot is the ability to move a booking at 22:00 when a road closes, which is most of the point.

Because a star rating is a claim and a hotel name is a fact you can check. It is also the easiest place to hide a 25 per cent price difference.

If a quote you are comparing does not name hotels, ask for the names before you compare the numbers.

Tell the guide or call the 24-hour number. We move you where there is availability, and if the property was not as described we pay the difference.

It happens two or three times a year and it is not a fight.

That is your decision and we will not lecture you about it. We will not transport you to it or arrange it, and we will tell you what we know if you ask.

Yes, and none of them involves visiting an institution. Family-strengthening programmes that keep children with their parents, the demining agencies, and vocational arts training such as Phare.

We will name specific organisations, and we take nothing from any of them.

No, and we would rather explain than sell you something. The offset market for aviation has a poor record and we do not want to charge you for a claim we cannot stand behind.

What we do instead is route overland where the borders allow it and use trains and boats over short flights.

Our day rates are USD 45 to 90 depending on country, against a market that is commonly 30 to 40 per cent lower for guides who make up the difference in shopping commission.

You can check this: ask any operator what their guides are paid and whether they earn from stops. The answer, or the absence of one, is informative.

We operate with our own staff and long-standing partners inside the four countries rather than subcontracting a route to a single regional wholesaler.

That is what makes the border days work and it is a large part of what our price pays for.

We rebuild the route, pay whatever the change costs first, and settle with you afterwards rather than negotiating in a hotel lobby.

This is not hypothetical. It happened in June 2025 and it is why the routes on this site are built the way they are.

From hotels, yes, in the ordinary way that any agent does, and it is inside the price you see. From shops, workshops and farms, no — nothing, in any country.

That is a real difference and it is most of why an afternoon with us has no shopping stop in it.

Yes. Say so in your enquiry and we will call, at a time in your time zone. Multi-country routing is easier to discuss than to email.

Within one working day, and usually sooner. If you have not heard from us in two, something has gone wrong with the email and it is worth sending again.

Yes. Say so in your enquiry with a time zone and a rough window, and we will call you. There is no charge and no obligation.

No. You get a full day-by-day itinerary with named hotels and a price breakdown before any money changes hands, and two rounds of revision after that.

Send the dates and the party size and say so. The first reply is a routing sketch precisely for this case, and it is easier to react to a proposal than to invent one.

No. Every Thailand–Cambodia land crossing has been closed since late June 2025 and was still closed at the end of August 2026. Any operator selling that leg overland is selling something they cannot deliver.

We fly it. Bangkok to Siem Reap is about an hour and we price the ticket into the trip rather than presenting it as an extra.

Only if you fly every leg and accept two nights per country. We will quote it, but we will also tell you in writing that we think three countries in fourteen days is a better trip.

The arithmetic is on the how many days page.

No. Every trip is private and runs on your dates. The eight-traveller ceiling is the maximum size of your own party, not a number of strangers we fill a bus with.

It depends on your passport and, more awkwardly, on which border you use. A Laos eVisa is not valid at any land crossing from Vietnam except Dansavanh–Lao Bao, and that one is visa on arrival rather than eVisa.

The visas and entry page sets out all four systems and the border-specific traps.

No. Every route runs privately on your dates, for your party only. The eight-traveller ceiling is the maximum size of your own group.

Often yes, and usually for less than the sum of the two, because the overlap days disappear. The Vietnam fourteen-day route and the Cambodia seven-day route combine into about eighteen days rather than twenty-one.

Because we will not run one. The security situation and the question of where tourist money ends up both point the same way. If Myanmar reopens in a way we can defend, we will say so here.

One traveller. A solo trip costs roughly 35 to 45 per cent more per day than the same trip for two, because the vehicle and guide are the same and there is a single-room supplement on top.