#JLAsia2018: Southeast asia backpacking trip recap

I traveled to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia for 2 weeks with my friend, Julianna last November. Half of our trip was self-planned and the other half was part of a Contiki tour (travel tour company for 18-35 year olds).

I know it’s been a long time since November 2018, but I was busy lazy. I finally finished writing all of my city recaps and my travel montage video!

Click below to see individual recaps on different cities:

Highlights

Thailand

I loved visiting Thailand in November. The weather is dry and still hot. Because of the Yi Peng and Loy Krathong festival, the cities and the people were bustling with excitement and decorations. I’ve only seen beautiful lantern releases in Tangled, so to see it in person was amazing! The sight was still beautiful even though the whole festival was a fiery shit show.

Laos

Laos was a very meaningful cultural experience because I honestly didn’t even know Laos was a country before this trip. It was humbling and the people were so kind. The biggest highlight is the piece of history I learned from this part of my trip. Beware: food was sub-par.

Cambodia

Seeing the Ankor Wat was definitely my highlight – amazing historical site to tour through.

Lessons learned

We had a pretty bad trip back to Vancouver and it was really our own faults. For the purpose of saving money, we booked flights with two layovers. The process was something like this: 1 hour flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok > 5 hour layover in Bangkok > 3 hour flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong > 5 hour layover in Hong Kong > 12 hour flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver.

The 5 hour layover in Bangkok was rough. It was around 3 am when we arrived at the Bangkok airport and we had almost zero currencies. There were also no food choices opened that late. We slept on the floors and stiff airport chairs and locked our bangs to our chairs and legs.

The 5 hour layover in Hong Kong was rough as well. At this point, I was hungry but also not hungry… a weird feeling of exhaustion. All I wanted to do was shower and lie down completely flat somewhere. Unfortunately, I had to deal with the realization that I was still 12 hours from home.

Lesson learned: Don’t do any layovers longer than 2 hours unless I have access to a lounge.

Contiki review

This was my first time being a part of a Contiki tour. I paid around $1,500 for the 8-day trip to Laos and Cambodia. This package included:

• Flights and transportation from within Laos and Cambodia. You need to plan and pay for your own flights to the first city in your itinerary, and from the last city back to your home.
• All the hotel rooms and fees.
• Breakfast every day. Some meals are included, around 1-2.
• Certain activities. Additional excursions can be added for around $20 USD each.
• 1 Contiki tour guide and 1 local tour guide.

From a financial perspective, it is not bad value for your money. After doing a week of self-trip planning, I found it relaxing to let my Contiki tour guide handle all my transportation, hotel check-ins and daily activities. Each day was jam-packed with activities.

Contiki may not be for you if you’re not a big drinker. The people party and drink a lot. This is fun when you’re in foreign bars, but if you’re not into that kind of thing, you may find most of the people to be too rowdy. There isn’t always a lot of free individual time and you are always traveling as a giant group of 30-50 people.

Another thing I wasn’t a fan of in this Contiki trip was the long hours of bus transportation. I think they planned it this way to show us the scenery (or to cut costs), but I find 4-6 hours on a bus was a waste of my time when I could’ve flown for 45 minutes instead and do more exploring on my own.

In conclusion, I think it depends on what kind of a traveler you are. If you are very introverted, this might be a nightmare for you. If you are a solo traveler worried about safety or being lonely, this could be a fun option to try. It also depends a lot on who happens to be in your group. Some people are awesome and some are terrible is all I can say.

Final thoughts

In total, I spent around $3,500 CAD on my whole trip, which is actually a very reasonable budget for me (hahahahah I am poor). This total includes:

• My $1,500 Contiki package
• 6 Flights
• 6 Nights accommodation in hostels or hotels
• A cooking class that we didn’t go to. We went to a lantern festival instead which was around $100 CAD
• Half a day at an Elephant Sanctuary
• Laos and Cambodia visas + passport photos
• Vaccinations

Basically, everything except my personal spending on food and shopping.

I had a great time on this trip with Julianna. We were able to make new friends and reconnect with old ones in a different city, which is always exciting.

I can definitely see myself traveling to Thailand again, but I think once is enough for Laos and Cambodia.

When I look back at it all, it was just a good time. November in Vancouver can be kind of gloomy so it was nice to be back just in time for the holiday festivities in December.

I’m looking forward to my next big trip this year which will be Japan in the fall! Stay tuned for more recaps on those.

Sincerely, Loewe