Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you book through one of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Penang is the stop travellers add for two nights and wish they had given four. The island packs a UNESCO-listed old town, Malaysia’s most celebrated hawker food, a major Buddhist … Read more
Krabi sells more boat trips than almost anywhere in Thailand, and from the Ao Nang beach road they can all start to sound the same: islands, snorkelling, lunch, sunset. They are not the same. One heads an hour offshore to the famous Phi Phi Islands. One hops between four small islands you can see from … Read more
Krabi is not one place — it is a mainland coast, a roadless peninsula, a local provincial town and a laid-back island, all sharing one airport. That is exactly why where you stay matters more here than almost anywhere else in Thailand. Sleep in Ao Nang and every boat tour picks you up at your … Read more
Krabi is the part of Thailand people picture before they know its name — limestone towers rising straight out of turquoise water, longtail boats nosing onto white sand, and a jungle interior hiding hot springs and a temple on top of a mountain. It is not an island. It is a mainland province on the … Read more
Almost every visitor to Phuket books the same three days out — the Phi Phi Islands, Phang Nga Bay and an elephant sanctuary — and almost every visitor faces the same problem: for each one, there are a dozen tours that look identical in the listings and feel completely different on the day. The gap … Read more
Phuket is a big island — roughly 50 kilometres from the airport in the north to the southern beaches — and where you sleep shapes your whole trip. Base yourself in Patong and you are in the middle of the action; base yourself in Kamala or Mai Khao and you may barely hear another voice … Read more
Phuket is Thailand’s largest island, and most first-timers make the same mistake: they pick one beach town, take one boat trip, and miss the island itself. Give it three days and a different Phuket appears — a pastel old town built on tin money, the island’s most sacred temple, a white marble Buddha on a … Read more
Photo: JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Chiang Mai is a city you can happily wander on your own — the Old City temples, the markets and the café streets ask for nothing more than your feet. But three of the experiences people travel here for sit outside that walkable square, and each … Read more
Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok are the three cities almost every first Southeast Asia trip is built from — and they work best as a set, with Ho Chi Minh City as the energetic add-on. Each one is a short, cheap hop from the others, yet no two feel alike: Singapore is the polished, easy-landing … Read more
Chiang Mai rewards a slower pace than Bangkok — temples instead of skyscrapers, a moated Old City you can walk across in twenty minutes, and a mountain watching over everything from the west. Three days is the sweet spot for a first visit: long enough for the great temples, the sacred summit of Doi Suthep, … Read more