trying new places in SE Asia - TravelPUNK Backpacker College Student Budget Travel Message Boards!

**buzzingtalk** · 03-26-2007, 08:31 AM

Well, this summer im off to KL to see my family, but i also have a month free in which i do every year to travel elsewhere. i was planning on going to india, but this is looking harder and harder to do as apparently the weather is terrible out there in june/july (not worried about the heat, but the dust storms) ive had asthma for 4 months now and still not too used to it so dont want to push it.

so instead, im going to go somewhere else. maybe a few places. and just wanted some suggestions! was thinking about doing vietnam/cambodia/and north thailand, been to thailand before so can anyone advise me on the others?

**freespiritz** · 03-26-2007, 09:29 AM

Heyy...three of us tpunks did 'Nambodia over Christmas last year. I'm going to start with a whole bunch of random links.

Here's our meetup thread if you want to see what we did.

Here are some journal entries from Cambodia that I posted on tpunk. And my Cambodia photos, and my Vietnam photos, so you can get an idea of what we saw. And the tpunk meetup photos, so you can see what we drank.

Okay, that being done with...I did enjoy Vietnam and Cambodia muchly. Vietnam was a lot more touristy than I thought, though. It does make it easy to get around, but harder to get off the beaten track. We also had crappy weather, but that shouldn't be an issue since you're going mid-year - which is when I want to go back to Nha Trang and go diving someday!

Cambodia turned out to be slightly more pricey than I thought - partly because they use US currency for everything, and the local notes function as change. If I redid my trip, I would've probably allocated more time for Cambodia so I could've seen more than just Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. It's very obviously poorer than Vietnam, but it was chiller and I kind of liked it better there. Angkor is definitely worth a hit, although we got templed out pretty quickly.

Not sure what you want to know, but feel free to ask. You know I love SEA and it's affordable and always an amazing experience...I got by on about US 20 a day with more drinking than I ever intended to do, and I actually have a ridiculously OCD-detailed expenditure listing for Vietnam if you ever want to see it.