Travelling around South East Asia
Tip 0330 Draw a map
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As mentioned many times within this website, planning and research is the key to any successful travel adventure and we always recommend "orientation" as high on the list for travel.
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Our top tip here is to always draw a map of the countries/places you intend to visit. This gives you complete familiarisation of the areas you plan to travel around. It helps with planning your route also, as you get to realise the scale and cover the geographical points needed to understand how long it will take you to navigate and if it is at all possible to cover in the time frame allocated.
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This will also take the visual appearance of looking at a map into another dimension and you will be amazed at how different an area appears once you have physically drawn out your planned travel routes.
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Start off with an outline map of each of the intended countries you wish to visit. Look at the natural borders of each country be it ocean, landlocked, mountainous or baron regions. Mark out your intended border crossings or point of entry to each country and see what works best for you.
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You will soon see why each country has it's own natural borders and learn more about the history of why, where and when they came to be. This also helps in understanding the varying cultures of each country and why the customs are so varied even in close proximity.
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Of course you may just want to fly in and out of each country and not be so concerned with the physicality's of getting from one country to another but we still highly recommend you become familiar with each country to fully immerse yourselves into the exciting world of the seasoned traveller.
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The added advantage of this tip is that should circumstances change, be it for extended travel, weather or change of route for example, you will be more prepared and more relaxed about alterations to your travel plans.
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Try not to be too fixed in your choice of route and time frames. Many people set out on their adventures so focussed on their original plan that they don't allow for any change or deviation. This can lead to missing out on a whole heap of places that are just around the corner from you.
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Always try to leave some flexibility in your itinerary, especially if you travel for more than a couple of weeks at a time.
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So this is our first inclusion of our trip around South East Asia
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Here we will be sharing our travel experiences, tips and useful insider information of a 3 month journey and why we flew from Brisbane up to KL and then into Hanoi to start our pre planned mapped out route of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia.
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Having visited some of these countries before we will explain our choice of route and the routes of fellow travellers we met along the way. Our choice of flash packing for this trip and means and modes of travel.
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We will explain our choice of luggage and what we took along with us, as well as what we didn't take and all the reasons why.
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Our choice of season for travelling and timings on route to see as much as possible in the short time we had to travel these wonderful countries.
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We hope this will be of use for anyone wanting to travel to this area of the world and look forward to and welcome all feedback on our website forum page.
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Our first tip in this section will be Tip 0330 Draw a map
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We will publish this travel adventure as soon as we can.