Southeast Asia - december '13 / january '14

The last two years i went to the southern parts of Europe to have some decent weather during New Years Eve. This time I'll spice it up a little bit: perfect weather, beaches, cheap cocktails and great food! Yeah, i'm going to Southeast Asia! Cambodia and Vietnam to be precisely.

I've been looking into cheap flights into this region quite a while before booking, so i kinda had an idea about what flights would cost. Flights from Western Europe to Bangkok can be found around the 500€ mark, to Ho Chi Minh City for about 600€. Despite Bangkok being the cheapest city to fly into, we decided not to go to Bangkok this trip as this would cost some extra money to backtrack to BKK and the Bangkok-Siem Reap route is quite a time consuming one. I expect Bangkok to be one of the most accessible cities for a while, so we'll go there next time ;)

We found a well reasonably priced flight (just around 650€) from Frankfurt (the airport is 3 hours away from my hometown with a direct intercity train) via Shanghai to Siem Reap, and flying back from Ho Chi Minh City, via Shanghai again back to Frankfurt. One thing I really liked about this flights is the layover in Shanghai. We'll have layovers from 7:00 to 19:00 and from 6:20 to 23:55, and with the 72 hour Transit Without Visa program, we can go into China without needing a visa!

Not counting the time in the plane, or the 2 days in Shanghai, we've got 20 complete days in Cambodia and Vietnam, with the current planning being something like this:

- 6 days Siem Reap / Phnom Penh (Angkor Wat and Cambodia's capital)

- 6 days Cambodian coast / Phu Quoc (beaches, bounty islands and being lazy)

- 2.5 days Mekong Delta tour

- 1,5 day Ho Chi Minh City

- 3 days Central Vietnam (Hoi An / Hue / Da Nang area, flying back and forth on one of the various cheap airlines)

- 1 day Ho Chi Minh City