Southeast Asia

Eight countries, 15 bases and 300 slow routes: temples at dawn, night markets, limestone bays, volcanoes and islands. Pick a country, then a base, then lose an evening reading.

I started these notes as a list for friends who kept asking where to go after Bangkok. It grew. Each base below has twenty routes: half-day walks, day trips and a few overnights, with how to get there, what it costs in effort, the stories behind the places and the things that went wrong for me so they don't go wrong for you.

Nothing here is sponsored. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences and are credited on every page.

Thailand

100 routes

Temples and night markets, mountain towns in the north and islands on two seas. Five very different bases, twenty routes from each.

Bangkok · Chiang Mai · Phuket · Pattaya · Koh Samui

Vietnam

40 routes

A long, thin country of limestone bays, lantern-lit old towns, mountain rice terraces and the endless Mekong delta, with some of the best street food anywhere.

Hanoi & the north · Hoi An & Da Nang

Indonesia

40 routes

Seventeen thousand islands; four of my favourite bases: Bali's temples and terraces, Javanese royal Yogyakarta, Lombok's volcano and the dragons of Komodo.

Bali · Yogyakarta