Travel magazine
Six running series and hundreds of articles, written by the people who plan the trips.
When to go
Seasons, month by month, region by region
What it costs
Real budgets in dollars, with tables
Routes that work
Tested itineraries and combinations
Eating across Asia
What to order and where
On foot
Treks and long walks, described honestly
Before you book
Visas, permits, timing, practicalities
Yala or Wilpattu, and your real odds on a leopard
Sri Lanka's wildlife is genuinely world class and the way it is sold frequently is not. So before the comparison, the sentence…
Vietnam with children: what works, what does not, and what we change
Vietnam is one of the easiest countries in Asia to travel with children, and family trips here go wrong for one reason…
Vietnam for the first time: what actually surprises people
A first trip to Vietnam goes wrong in predictable ways: too many stops, the wrong month for the wrong region, a single-entry…
Uzbekistan for the first time
Almost everybody arrives in Uzbekistan with the same two expectations, and almost everybody is wrong about both.
The Afrosiyob high-speed train, and how to get a seat on it
The Afrosiyob is the single most important piece of infrastructure in Uzbek tourism. It is the reason a ten-day route through four…
Uzbekistan with children
Uzbekistan is a better family destination than almost anyone expects, and it fails in exactly one predictable way.
Thailand for the first time: what surprises people, and what we would change
Thailand is the easiest country in Southeast Asia to travel in and one of the easiest to book badly. First-time visitors rarely…
Thailand with children: what works, what does not, and what we change
Thailand is the country we recommend most often to families travelling in Asia for the first time, and the reason is not…
Tibet for the first time, and how the permits actually work
The Tibet Travel Permit is the first thing to understand about a Tibet trip, because it decides everything that comes after it:…
Tibet with older children
Altitude is the whole answer to this question, and it answers it before anything about sightseeing, food or interest gets a vote.
Taiwan with children: what works, what does not, and what we change
Taiwan is one of the two or three easiest countries in Asia to travel with children, and it is the one families…
Taiwan for the first time: what actually surprises people
Taiwan is the easiest country in Asia to travel independently. The trains run on time, the signage is in English, crime is…
Sri Lanka for the first time: what we would tell you first
Sri Lanka is the easiest country in South Asia to travel in and the one most often planned badly, and the two…
Sri Lanka with children
Sri Lanka is one of the two or three easiest countries in Asia to travel with children, and the reasons are practical…
Ryokan etiquette, without the anxiety
Almost every client who books a ryokan asks us some version of the same question: what if I get it wrong?
The Philippines for the first time: what surprises people
Nobody has a bad first trip to the Philippines. What they have, quite often, is a trip in which three or four…
The internal flight problem nobody warns you about in the Philippines
The Philippines is more than seven thousand islands. That number is in every article ever written about the country, and it is…
The Philippines with children: what works, what does not, and what we change
The Philippines is a genuinely good country to travel in with children, and it is not the easiest one in Asia. Those…
New Zealand with children
New Zealand is one of the easiest countries in the world to travel with children, and one of the easiest to get…
Nepal with children
Nepal is a better family destination than its reputation suggests, with one firm condition attached: below altitude it works extremely well, and…
New Zealand for the first time: the drives take longer than the map says
Almost every New Zealand itinerary that arrives on our desk from a first-time planner has the same fault, and it is not…
New Zealand for the first time
Most first New Zealand trips are planned the same way, and they go wrong in the same three places. People choose the…
Kyrgyzstan for the first time
People arrive in Kyrgyzstan with a photograph in their head. It is usually the same photograph: white yurts on green grass, horses,…
Kyrgyzstan with children
Kyrgyzstan is one of the best family destinations in Central Asia and one of the easiest to get wrong, and both facts…
Your Asia trip, planned day by day
Answer a short questionnaire and within 24 hours, usually sooner, you get the outline of your trip: the route day by day and the hotels we suggest for each stop. Tell us what to change (two rounds included), then we build your full day-by-day plan inside a trip app with maps, navigation links, and trains and transfers step by step. Then, if you want, a free quote for ground services, and you choose what to take.
Custom trip plan
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