It seems the more I read on this site, everyone has stayed in hotels that would cost me a week's worth of my budget for one night! Recommend guest houses or hostels or budget hotels in Vietnam???? Is it necessary to book in advance for February or March? Same in Ankor Wat area in Cambodia! Thanks. Michael

I have never been to any of these places at the time of year you are going -- we went last September -- so, of course, some of my answers may be very wrong for your particular time of year. But as for shoestring budget.... well, there I CAN help you, as we (family of four) went to several places in all three of your countries, and we found bargains everywhere. I'd be very surprised indeed if you couldn't live in these countries on twenty dollars a day -- food, lodging, sightseeing, the lot. And for that you DON'T have to sleep in a rathole and scavenge food from bins, I assure you!

For a start, if you are landing in Ho Chi Minh City, don't bother taking a taxi from the airport to the centre of town. It's only a short bus ride, and the bus stand is right at the terminal (on the right, as you exit, from the main door). The cost to get into town will be 4000 dong (around 25c).

Even if you can't speak another word of Vietnamese, the words "Pham Ngu Lao" as you get into the bus will tell the conductor all he/she needs to know, and you'll be put off at a bus stop which has a long strip of park on one side, and lots of shops on the other. This is Pham Ngu Lao, and there are a host of budget hotels around there. The street running parallel to Pham Ngu Lao is De Tham, and it has even more, and cheaper, hotels. If you don't want to hunt one down, just look like a tourist and you will have lots of people coming up to you with offers. We chose the Phoenix 74, at 74 De Tham, because they had a very cheap (and clean) family room, with a view, which cost us $17 for the four of us; however, since you're apparently a single, I am sure you could do much better than this at any one of the hotels around this area.

The same idea applies in Hanoi. From the airport into town is at least a half-hour drive, so taxis are expensive. However, the bus outside the terminal(bus no. 7, red and yellow) takes you to the Kim Ma Bus Station, from where you can catch another pubic bus to anywhere you want to go... or, if you already know that, the conductor will tell you where is the best stop to make a transfer, and will see you safely off the bus and at the correct waiting berth. The buses cost about 30c each, probably less for the second one.

Hanoi accommodation: if you head through the old quarter and ask for the Dong Xuan Market (it's one of the largest markets, on all the city maps), you can stay at the Dong Xuan Hotel, which isn't much of a building, but is in a wonderfully exotic location, right opposite the street stalls. Ask for an upstairs room with a balcony and be prepared to be woken up around 5 a.m. by the sounds -- and smells -- of the stallholders setting up their vegetables and spices. We spent two hours just watching them, and smelling the aroma of their fresh produce. Then we strolled outside and breakfasted -- for less than a dollar --on fresh fruit from one of the better-looking stalls. I hear that a second hotel has opened up a few hoiuses along in the same block, and it's also called the Dong Xuan Hotel; I can't tell you anything about that, but if it doesn't have balconies running across the front, it's not our Dong Xuan.

Travelling between Cambodia and Vietnam is best done from HCMC; there are MANY buses going to Phnom Penh every morning, most leaving at about the same time. One particular bus -- a yellow one, which starts from alongside the strip of park mentioned before -- just about 200 metres further along from where you got off the public bus -- is a little more expensive than the others (nine or ten dollars, and they don't give you breakfast, like some of the $6 buses do), but it's worth it, as it is a Cambodian-run bus which leaves earlier than the others (I think it goes out at around 6 a.m., with another at 8) and breezes (maximum twenty minutes) through the border facilities (which can, apparently, take several hours with the cheaper buses, as with them you actually have to swap buses at the border), having you in Phnom Penh at lunch time. It will drop you at the bus station opposite the Capitol Hotel, well-regarded by budget travellers. We didn't particularly like the look of it, and wandered up the main street, eventually settling on the Asia Hotel, which gave us an air-conditioned family room with a balcony looking up and down the main street.... for $15. They also sell bus tickets to Siem Reap, and they will drive you to the bus stop for free. There are buses at various times of the day.... we only spent twenty-four hours in Phnom Penh (but it's a pleasant town, and we could have happily extended that), and were on the lunch-time bus to Siem Reap, which arrives at around 5 p.m.. It is met by a vast assortment of tuk-tuks, all begging for your services to take you into town; some of their prices are too cheap to be true -- they convert to something under TEN CENTS -- and, of course, they are! When you accept one of these bargain-basement rides, you will be pressured into hiring the driver for your driver/guide to Angkor Wat, and the price quoted for this will, of course, be far more (we were asked for $15 a day!)than the "going rate" which you can negotiate right there in the streets of Siem Reap (we finally chose a fine man named Chan Rith (telephone 092 25 94 12), who drove us out and back for $3 each way (that's for all of us, not each). So before you agree on a price for the ride into town, make sure the driver understands that it's JUST the ride you are agreeing to.

Cheap accommodation in Siem Reap? Just check some of the internet booking sites! We used [email protected] (the only time we used an internet booking site, but the deal just seemd too good to pass up), and got two doubles at a place called the Long Live Angkor Guest House, for $6 per room. It's a clean and quite modern little guest house, and the management is very helpful, but our rooms only had cold water in the bathrooms..... is that a problem for you? Also, if we used the air-conditioner (we didn't), the price went up to $9 a room.

Well, this post is getting longer than "War and Peace", and we haven't even mentioned Laos as yet! I guess I should send this part off now and wait to see if, perhaps, your shoestring budget isn't quite THAT shoestring, and you were really looking for the Sheraton! (Actually, we did have our "big splurge", in Luang Prabang; we booked the best room in the house at Sayo's Hotel, which set us back $40 a night... and we did it for two nights. But what a place! Anyway, more later).

Hope this has given you a few ideas!

Alan: Thanks for taking the time to repond so thoroughly. We will research most of your suggestions. We are on a budget - retired- and travel without the frills. You can do this and still have a great time and get to know the country and the people. I would rather give my money to the locals than the Sheratons! Thanks again! TREP

Trep, you and I are of the same mind. I am almost 64 (although my children are only 11 and 13), and we always go backpacking when we vacation, travelling as the locals do, and sleeping where the locals sleep. I think our experience is richer for this; we are not the kind of people who sit in an air-conditioned coach and see the country from that comfortable but remote perspective. We have a few iron-clad rules when we travel: one is that we NEVER pack any more than we can fit into a backpack (even for a nine week tour of Europe back in 2003), and another is that everyone (even my daughters when they were four and six) carries his/her own gear. We've been lucky, I suppose, travelling with young children -- people tend to go out of their way to help you and give you a better deal -- the best room in the hotel, a free breakfast -- once even a packed lunch for the children! -- and we very seldom have been "ripped off".

Last thing about Angkor Wat: the one big expense that can't be avoided is the entrance fee. If you buy a three-day ticket, it turns out as economical as buying two single-day tickets.... but it's still very pricey! To facilitate matters, have a couple of spare passport photos with you, as your multi-day ticket is like a photograph drivers' licence.

We flew from Siem Reap to Luang Prabang, thanks to Bangkok Airways' "Discovery Airpass", which gave us bargain-basement rates on Lao Airlines (you have to book at least three flights; we did SR-Vientiane; Vientiane - Luang Prabang; and, later, Vientiane - Hanoi).

Luang Prabang is full of quaint, cheap guesthouses, but we had heard that the best ones are often full (this place is growing in popularity, and UNESCO is currently spending a great deal of money making it more tourist-friendly; it's the only place in Asia I ever saw which has marked parking spaces on the main street!)so we booked ahead, and had our "big splurge" at Sayo's (where the UNESCO people stay when they visit). My kids thought it was worth every cent of the forty dollars, but there are a lot of cheaper places around, including another old place right next-door to Sayo's.

The manager of your hotel would love to help you book a tour of the Pak-Ou caves and the waterfalls, but walk down the street and negotiate with the tuk-tuk drivers who are just idling around looking for business. We managed to get both those tours for less than the price that the Sayo's people were trying to charge us for one.

The night markets are only a couple of blocks from Sayo's, and all around them are cheap restaurants which serve the most wonderful fruit shakes; we practically lived on them, plus the fresh fruits we bought from the markets, and some garlic naan from the Indian restaurant (it goes rather well with a mango shake).

Vientiane: we travelled from LP to here by overnight bus. We took the "de-luxe" bus, which was a whole dollar more expensive (at $8, if I recall) than the "normal" bus, but the term "de-luxe" is a bit of a joke: a couple of the windows had no glass in them, just cardboard box stuck over, and the video system which provided us with the most appalling Asian pop music all night kept "skipping" with every bump, so we sometimes got the same song six or eight times, non-stop (when it finally got through a song, we would sigh with relief.... and then discover that the new song was even more inane than the one we'd just left behind!). Still, that was the least of our worries.... as we travelled a super-typhoon came over, but luckily all we saw/heard of it was torrential rain virtually all night -- we didn't note much of a wind. Toilet stops in these conditions were quite memorable, especially since there weren't any toilets, nor, indeed, any shelter!

You can see Vientiane in a few hours; so small it's hard to believe it's a capital city. Beautiful fruit desserts here, too, but the restaurant scene is surprisingly expensive. As one would expect in this part of the world, the French cake shops are extraordinarily good value. We stayed at the Hotel Paris, which is right in the centre of things; old and a bit musty, but, once again, a balcony overlooking the main street. A quad room there set us back $25.

I wish you good luck with your budget tour planning... surely if you want to save money, you've chosen the right countries; I'll bet you come back with money left over (we didn't, because we had already promised any remaining dollars and dong to a school for deaf children in Ho Chi Minh City; this really worked well for us, as it meant that we had a good reason to resist the inevitable running around buying souvenirs on the last day).

Alan: We have been researching all of your suggestions. Have a few questions. With the airpass, what were the exit fees to fly out of one country to another? Some are pretty heavy which adds to the cost of flying.
How did you travel through Vietnam? in general; bus? I read you can buy a pass on an open-tour bus in Vietnam for $22 without being held to a fixed schedule, any comments?
Our path is to go from Pattaya to Cambodia through Poipet to Siem Reap (by bus) then to Phnom Penh to Sihanourkville, (train/bus) back to Phnom Penh, (buy our visa for Vietnam in Cambodia), take a bus or boat to Saigon and make our way North to Hanoi (by bus). Then go to Laos (we have not studied Laos yet) & back into Northern Thailand making our way South back to Bangkok. Whew!!! That's all without flying......doable?

Trep, you're right about the airport taxes: we flew from Cambodia to Laos, from Laos to Vietnam, and from Vietnam to Australia, and each time there were airport taxes to pay. I can't recall exactly how much, but I don''t think it was a very significant amount. Maybe between $USD8 and $USD25 depending on the route.

Sometimes, however, the alternative road route just wasn't practical as far as time was concerned; we wanted to go from Luang Prabang to the Plain of Jars (that's an all-day bus) and then on to Hanoi by cross-border bus. This last route, however, is apparently a horror stretch, and can take over 30 hours. Nobody on Thorntree, Fodors, or Tripadvisor had a good word to say about it. By plane, as bland and expensive as it is, you can do it in an hour.

I have heard of that open-schedule bus, but I know very little about it, and I would suggest that you do a LOT of research on ThornTree before committing to it.... the idea sounds a bit dicey to me, since just about every bus we stepped into in south-east Asia was full or over-full, and people were invariably standing or sitting on plastic stools in the aisles. Getting on without a reserved seat????

We only travelled by long-distance bus between HCMC and Phnom Penh, PP and Siem Reap, and Luang Prabang and Vientiane, so I can't really tell you much about the routes you're planning. It sounds wonderful, but you will need lots of time to allow for the unexpected! Wish I could join you, though!

alan-great info, thanks!