Every time I venture into a new region of the world, my stomach starts doing somersaults and my nerves threaten to get the better of me as I board the plane for destinations unfamiliar. The first time is always the hardest, whether it be to Eastern Europe, The Caribbean, West Africa or The Caucuses. On my first trip to Central America, I visited Honduras and Nicaragua and had no idea if I would be able to hack it. Having fallen in love with Tegucigalpa and Managua, their respective capitals, I felt none of my initial unease when I made a second Central American voyage to El Salvador and Guatemala. Each country and capital is different, but there are many cultural similarities amongst these destinations as well. When I eventually return to visit Belize, Costa Rica and Panama, it will all feel like old hat.
Southeast Asia was the next area of the world on my list to visit, and although a thriving touristic infrastructure exists there, my feelings of unease were bubbling back to the surface. Before I dive into my individual city guides for this sojourn, I want to take a moment to share some general travel tips that will make your trip better.
The Banana Pancake Trail
When travelers say they went “backpacking in Southeast Asia,” what they usually mean is they visited Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Of course, there is more to the region than these four countries; Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Myanmar, Brunei and Timor-Leste all more than carry the portmanteau of Southeast Asia. Still, the Big Four often steal the backpacking spotlight, in no small part to a little thing called the Banana Pancake Trail.
In 1972, long before the internet or smart phones revolutionized travel, married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler departed from Europe and traveled overland throughout Asia before ending up in Australia. After their journey, the Wheelers put pen to paper and published their first travel guide, Across Asia on the Cheap in 1973, and with that, Lonely Planet was born. Upon the book’s great success, they returned to Asia and in 1975 updated a second edition with the new title: Across Asia on the Cheap: A Complete Guide to Making the Overland Trip. (The Wheelers sold Lonely Planet in 2007 for £63 million and many, including myself, have noted a marked decline in quality after they handed off the reigns. Still, Lonely Planet remains an industry leader, having sold 150 million books worldwide.)
Lonely Planet opened the doors for adventurous Western backpackers to begin exploring Southeast Asia. Originally called the Hippie Trail, a loop winding through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia began to form. Guesthouses and hostels sprouted up along the route which would cater to the influx of tourists that were bringing their spending power into these nations. Pancakes are a decidedly un-Asian breakfast food, but the hostel owners wanted to cater to their guests’ tastes, and thus the tradition of serving free banana pancakes as a hostel breakfast was born. Lodgings would display signs for these banana pancakes, denoting welcome watering holes for weary backpackers along the way. Even today, hostels will still serve banana pancakes to their guests.
Urban Stops Along the Trail
If you want to take in all the sights along the Banana Pancake Trail, it will take you roughly three to four months to complete. I neither had the time required, nor the desire, to complete the trial. All four country capitals are on the loop, as well as Ayutthaya (the former capital of Thailand), Luang Prabang (the former capital of Laos) and Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon (the capital of the formerly-separated South Vietnam). I wanted to visit these cities in addition to Bangkok, Vientiane, Hanoi and Phnom Penh, allowing me to cram in everything I wanted to see in about six weeks. It was going to be a fast-paced trip, but sharpening my focus to just the urban areas would make it manageable.
Another thing to consider when traveling the trail is how you will get from one spot to the next. There is an extensive and well-maintained train system in these countries, as well as cheap buses (including overnight, sleeper buses with beds) that will take you anywhere you want to go, albeit slowly. (The slowest mode of transport is the aptly-named “slow boat” down the Mekong river that will take you two-three days to reach Vientiane from points north.) As interesting as it may have been to utilize some of these transportation options, I knew I need to cut corners anyway I could. I opted to fly between the major cities; flights are fairly inexpensive and most lasted no more than 45 minutes to an hour. I essentially was able to add an extra day in each city by flying and not traveling overland.
The Rainy Season? Sign Me Up!
The Big Four are just north of the Equator, ensuring a year-round tropical climate that is generally divided into three seasons: the dry season, the hot season and monsoon season. You don’t need to consulate an Oracle to figure out that the dry season (November-February) is the most popular time to backpack the trail. Temperatures are warm, but lower than the rest of the year; skies are blue and you will generally avoid heavy rain. The downside is that hostels will be fully booked, the sights will be crowded and prices for lodging and activities are higher than during the other two seasons.
The hot season runs from March through May and temperatures can sit at 40C/104F well into the evening. This season sees fewer travelers than the dry season, but it still remains a reasonably popular time to visit the region.
I purposely decided to traveling in August/September, during the height of the rainy, or monsoon, season. Why would I do such a thing, you ask? Let me explain. Yes, it rains everyday, but it doesn’t rain all day long. In fact, I experienced many mornings with clear, blue skies, perfect for sightseeing and taking photos. The storm clouds usually roll in for the afternoon hours, thunder storming until the early evening, before clearing up again. With a little planning (outdoor activities in the morning, museums in the afternoon), you can still have a great time in the rainy season. The weather is humid, but temperatures are not nearly as scorching as in the hot season. This season sees the fewest amount of visitors; while you won’t exactly have places to yourself, you won’t be fighting the crowds like in the dry season. Hostels will not be full and many offer up to 50% off their already cheap room prices. If you can put up with the rainy afternoons, this is absolutely the best time to come to Southeast Asia.
Be Respectful
No matter what season you choose to travel in, it’s going to be hot and walking around will turn you into a sweaty mess. Packing only shorts, t-shirts and tank tops is probably the way to go, right? Wrong! While it is perfectly acceptable to walk the streets in shorts and a t-shirt, don’t plan on entering any Buddhist temple clad in this apparel. There are strict dress codes to gain access to temples and other holy sites: knees and shoulders must be covered. An entire secondary market has sprung up around the temples, selling overpriced shawls and baggy “elephant” pants to ill-informed tourists who have been denied entry.
I would try to plan “temple days” in each city, when I would wear long pants and try to visit all the important Buddhist sites that day. If I knew I was only going visit museums/markets/parks, I would stick to shorts. The catch would be if I stumbled upon a temple I then wanted to visit I wouldn’t be able to, but truthfully you can develop “temple fatigue” and I decided if it wasn’t meant to be, then it wasn’t meant to be.
Size Does Matter
As a New Yorker, I’m used to living in a big, crowded city, but I was still unprepared for how enormous some of these Southeast Asian cities are. Bangkok proper has roughly 11 million people (14 million when you include the metro-area suburbs) and its area is over twice the size of NYC. Hanoi has a population of 8.3 million, which is edged out by HCMC’s 8.9 million; these numbers balloon to 20 and 21 million respectively when you include the greater metro areas. That’s a lot of people! And they’re all commuting into the city each day for work making for some horribly congested traffic scenes.
Public transportation is strong in the urban centers: bus lines are numerous and easy to use, even for someone who doesn’t speak or read the language. Grab, the region’s answer to Uber, can have a moto-taxi ready to whisk you around the city in minutes. And yet, you shouldn’t underestimate how long it will take you to traverse these cities and get from site to site. In some cities I will book a hostel outside the city center if it seems like it will be a good match for my needs, but staying in a central location in a city like Hanoi will make your life easier.
Jet Lag is Real
Jet lag won’t be a big deal if you’re traveling to Southeast Asia from Japan or the Middle East, but Bangkok is eleven hours ahead of New York City and the time difference is a beast to deal with. I’ve never struggled with jet lag when the time difference is a mere three to five hours, but flying to Bangkok from New York literally turns day into night. Be sure to budget a day or two at the beginning of your trip where you won’t want to be doing strenuous activities and have some breathing room to acclimate your body’s internal clock to its new time zone.
Language Learning Curve & Currency Calculators
This comes from my Western perspective and having received little exposure to Asian languages, but Thai, Lao, Vietnamese and Khmer are very different from the European language trees I am used to. For starters, only Vietnamese uses a (heavily-accented) version of the Roman alphabet. Thai, Lao and Khmer have their own lettering systems, and while the script is beautiful, I found it nearly impossible to learn how to sound out words on a limited schedule. Luckily there are YouTube channels that can help you learn helpful words and phrases phonetically, but outside these few sayings, I never picked up on more of the respective languages of each country.
Because the dollar and the Euro are (often) so similar, mental math gymnastics are not required when traveling between the United States and much of Europe. Southeast Asia is another story. The Thai baht is the easiest to exchange rate to calculate, but only by default; the rate currently sits at $1US~35. In Cambodia, the rate is $1US~4061 riel; the Lao kip weighs in at $1~17,166; the Vietnamese dong takes the prize with $1~23,445.
This means $43US will make you a millionaire in Vietnam and $43,000US will make you a billionaire. You might be quoted 50,000 dong for a street-food lunch, which may sound like a lot, but is really only a little more than $2US. I found it difficult to multiply such large numbers on the fly, but a helpful tip is to memorize a few key values and then gauge from there. ($1US is what? $5US is what? $10US is what?)
Off the beaten Banana Pancake Trail?
The Banana Pancake Trail is popular with first time backpackers because the tourist infrastructure is so strong and there are so many other travelers along the route, that you can almost get by without putting in much effort. Many stops along the way have turned into excuses for partying and hooking up with your hostel mates. The Full Moon Party is the most notorious example of this. Taking place on the Thai island of Koh Phangan, the Full Moon Party takes place once a month (during the full moon) and seeing up to 30,000 attendees engage in wild debauchery, guzzling buckets of beer and dancing to techno music covered in neon paint and foam.
The infamy of the Full Moon Party and its ilk may attract some to the trail, but it equally has repelled other “more experienced” and/or “serious” travelers. Although the capitals and urban centers of the Big Four are part of the Banana Pancake route, with the exception of Bangkok, the other cities have become mere stopovers for many of the tourists as they favor partying on the beach or trekking through the jungles instead. By focusing on places like Vientiane and Phnom Penh, you’re more likely to be surrounding yourself with locals rather than other backpackers. A snobby sentiment has developed in the backpacking community that the Banana Pancake Trail is for novices only looking to party and get wild. Again, with the exception of Khao San Road in Bangkok, I found this far from the truth. Take a chance on the off-season and stick to the big cities and perhaps the region will surprise you.
