Help in planning: Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailand
 

Hi,

I have been planning for a trip to the countries mentioned for long now. Finally I have managed three months out for travel - October to December.

I would request the people here to help me with planning my trip. This will be my first trip to these countries, and hence it would be great if I could use your experience - which country should be the first, what are the places that I should definitely go to, how many days should I ideally spend, budgets required, and everything that could help. I will be travelling on a tight budget, and would be surfing couches.

Looking forward!

Thailand is a logical place to start... it has the best infra structure and the most English.

I suggest you start with a good guidebook (s) for each country and establish you interests.

we need to also know ranges for your expenses. i.e. daily hotel expectations.

Myanmar will be the most difficult, as you cannot surf couches there. Special permission is required to stay with local families, and if you stay without the special permission, the family will be in trouble. Myanmar is no longer a low budget country as there has been a shortage of accommodation for the last few years, so prices are up. If you still want to go to Myanmar, you will need to do a lot of research.

The other countries are pretty easy travel, but you will still need to do a lot of reading. Make sure you understand the visa situation. Are you planning on traveling overland or flying? This makes a difference in terms of visas. Start by buying or borrowing guide books for each country. Lonely Planet will best match your budget. Also, go to the Lonely Planet website and look for Thorntree, LP's travel forum. You will find more people there who travel with small budgets.

Borrow a guidebook from a library which covers all of SE. Asia to help you decide where you want to go and what you want to see. As well as Lonely Planetl, have a look on www.travelfish.org which is more geared towards budget travel than this forum and also has an active forum. You can also sign up to a very informative newsletter.

Your first objective should be to try and work out a rough timetable of how much time you want in each country and take it from there. Budgeting is always a challenge and costs vary from country to country place to place. Think about what you can afford for the whole trip and try and work out a daily spend for each country. In addition to the usual accomodation, food and transport don't forget entrance fees, tour costs, travel insurance, visa costs, vaccinations etc.

Where you go depends on interests. Asking strangers to design a plan for you when they dont know your interests is like asking a doctor for a script without telling him what the problem is.

I dont get the tight budget approach. Go for 4 weeks and having fun is better than living like a beggar for 3 mths.