Trip Planning
A few short guides on the dull, decisive work that happens before the plane leaves the ground.
Most of a good trip is decided at a kitchen table months before you go. Where to start, how long to stay, what to spend, which flight to hold out for, and whether to book the ryokan tonight or wait until you’ve seen the neighbourhood — these are the decisions that shape the next three weeks or three months. The four guides below are the ones we keep coming back to ourselves, with examples drawn mostly from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan, the four countries we know best.
Table of Contents
Itinerary Building
How to stitch a multi-week or multi-month trip together without locking yourself into a schedule you’ll resent by week two. Anchoring around weather windows and visa runs, deciding pace, leaving slack in the calendar, sequencing countries by climate, and knowing when to plan and when to wing it.
Budgeting
Realistic per-day numbers for Southeast Asia, Japan, the Pacific islands, and Europe, and how to think about flights versus on-the-ground costs. Cash versus card, ATM strategy, foreign-transaction fees, and the “sinking fund” approach that keeps a single dive trip or shinkansen pass from blowing up the month.
Booking Flights
Award tickets versus cash, when to book and when to wait, the role of open-jaw and multi-city itineraries on long trips, the alliances that actually matter for the Pacific, mistake fares, and the cases where paying the premium for a one-way is the right call.
Accommodations
Guesthouses, ryokan, homestays, apartment rentals, hostels with private rooms — and the surprising number of cases where a plain hotel actually wins on price. How to read reviews honestly, and why we book the neighbourhood before we book the room.
Adjacent reading: the country pages under Destinations are the easiest place to see how these planning ideas translate into a real two- or three-week trip.