Discovering 6 ASEAN countries: Introduction

31 days, 11 flights, 6 countries, 2 travellers, 1 love for ASEAN

In January 2013, we @hirekaeric and @radenicu decided to embark on a 31-day journey across ASEAN countries, right after coming back from the 39th Ship for Southeast Asian Youth Programme (SSEAYP) held from October to December 2012. Icu learnt about an AirAsia promo and asked me to have a journey together. The primary purpose is to revisit our friends, fellow SSEAYP alumni and host families living in the countries of destination, and to know more about our closest neighbours in Asia—Southeast Asia. We both had academic holidays throughout January, which allowed us to take up this challenge. We actually wanted to invite our Indonesian SSEAYP friends (I had a group of four in my mind), but they all had consideration for work and studies, whereas promo tickets would usually be sold out pretty quickly.

Below is the illustration of our flight and overland itineraries. Some changes were made either in the months leading to the journey or on the actual travel. AirAsia rescheduled some of our flights, we had to book a Vietjet Air flight to go from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh city (we weren't aware that the overland north-south Vietnam train ride can take up to three days!), we didn't go to the Enchanted River because bad weather damaged the access to the site, we cut short our stay in Boracay and preferred to spend time in Iloilo, and we joined friends to Naga city instead of heading northwards for Baguio's rice terraces. However, these changes are pretty normal in all itineraries.

Generally, it is divided into two rounds with around two weeks each: (1) mainland Southeast Asia and (2) the Philippines, with Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur as the primary hub. In total, there are six countries and more than a dozen cities.

1. Mainland Southeast Asia: Jakarta – Kuala Lumpur – Chiang Mai – Chiang Rai – Luang Prabang – Vientiane – Hanoi – Ho Chi Minh City – Phnom Penh – Siem Reap – Bangkok – Kuala Lumpur
2. Philippines: Kuala Lumpur – Manila – Davao – Manila – Kalibo – Boracay – Iloilo – Kalibo – Manila – Naga – Manila – Kuala Lumpur – Jakarta