Accommodations

Where to sleep, and why we book the neighbourhood before we book the room.

Where you sleep shapes the trip more than any other single decision. A good guesthouse owner in Ubud will tell you which warung the locals eat at; a bad hotel chain on a Bangkok ring road will leave you in a taxi for forty minutes every time you want a meal. The categories below are the ones we cycle through depending on country, length of stay, and how much energy we have for the booking process that day.

Table of Contents

Guesthouses

The default in Southeast Asia. A good guesthouse in Hoi An, Luang Prabang, or Ubud is a family-run building with eight to twenty rooms, a breakfast included, a courtyard or pool, and an owner at reception who knows the town. Prices in 2026 run roughly US$25–$60 a night for a double with air-conditioning. The single biggest predictor of quality is whether the family lives on the property; if they do, things get fixed and breakfast is honest.

Ryokan

The Japanese country inn is its own category and worth experiencing at least once. A traditional ryokan gives you a tatami room, a futon laid out at night, an evening kaiseki meal of eight to twelve small courses, a morning meal almost as elaborate, and access to an onsen bath. Expect US$200–$400 per person per night including both meals, and book three to six months out for the famous ones in Hakone, Kinosaki, and Kurokawa. Less famous ryokan in smaller towns — Yufuin, Beppu, the Kiso valley — are half the price and often better.

Homestays

In Vietnam’s northern highlands (Sapa, Mai Chau, Ha Giang) and in Indonesian villages off the main tourist trail, a homestay is exactly what it sounds like: a room in a family’s house, dinner around their table, sometimes a shared bathroom. The price is low (US$15–$30 a night with meals) and the experience is the closest you’ll get to actually living somewhere on a short trip. Book through a local operator on arrival rather than online — the online middlemen take half and the family sees little of it.

Apartment Rentals

Airbnb and its competitors win for stays of a week or longer in any city where you’ll cook a few meals. A two-bedroom apartment in central Bangkok, Hanoi, or Lisbon for a week is routinely cheaper than seven nights of mid-range hotels and gives you a kitchen, a washing machine, and a sense of which neighbourhood you actually like. The trade is that check-in is less reliable, the host is rarely on site, and the place may be technically illegal under local short-let rules — which means it can disappear from the platform a week before you arrive. For under three nights, hotels are simpler.

Hostels with Private Rooms

The modern hostel — Selina, Mad Monkey, Bodega — is half a co-working space, half a backpacker dorm, and most of them now offer private rooms with en-suite bathrooms at prices between a guesthouse and a hotel. The advantage isn’t the price; it’s the social layer. If you’re travelling solo and want company at dinner, a hostel private gets you the social benefits of a dorm without the snoring. If you’re a couple or family on a long trip, you’ll usually prefer the quiet of a guesthouse.

When Hotels Actually Win on Price

Three cases. First, business-traveller cities on weekends: a four-star hotel in Singapore, Tokyo, or Hong Kong on a Saturday night is often cheaper than a comparable apartment because the corporate clientele has gone home. Second, last-minute bookings inside 48 hours, where chain hotels release inventory at deep discounts on Hotel Tonight or directly on their app. Third, anywhere with a strong loyalty programme you’re already in — Marriott, Hyatt, IHG — where free-night certificates and elite breakfast can quietly halve the effective rate.

How to Read Reviews

Skip the five-star and the one-star reviews; they’re written by people in love or in a fight. Read the threes and fours. Look for specific, falsifiable complaints — “the wifi only worked in the lobby,” “the pool was closed for renovation,” “the room above the lobby bar is loud until 1am” — and weight them heavily, because they’re the things that won’t change next week. Also: read the most recent ten reviews regardless of score. Properties decline fast when they change hands, and a place with a 9.2 average from three years of reviews can be a 6 today.

Neighbourhood-First Booking

The single best habit we’ve developed: pick the neighbourhood before the property. Open a map, look at where the things you actually want to do are clustered, find the nearest walkable area with a few cafes and a metro stop, and only then filter accommodation inside that polygon. In Tokyo, this means Yanaka or Kagurazaka over the chain hotels around Tokyo Station. In Hanoi, it means the Old Quarter or Tay Ho rather than the airport hotels. In Ubud, it means the rice-paddy lanes north of the centre rather than the Monkey Forest Road strip. The neighbourhood is the trip; the room is just where you sleep.

See also: Budgeting for what the rooms above actually cost across the regions.

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