Tam Coc, Vietnam (or as Lonely Planet dubs it, “Halong Bay on the rice paddies”), is named after the low caves that the Ngo Dong River flows, and which visitors are guided through, usually by a female rower. The longest, Hand Ca, is over 400 feet long, and is an [...]

Battambang, Cambodia’s second-largest city, is unfortunately overlooked by many travelers to the country. Given Battambang’s location about 5 hours west of Siem Reap, most people simply decide to head east instead, continuing on to Phnom Penh and then Vietnam (given the animosity between Thailand and Cambodia, traveling overland the other direction [...]

Southeast Asia is probably the best place in the world for your first extended backpacking trip. The food is delicious, the locals friendly, the beaches extraordinary, the accommodations well-established and the sites varied and unforgettable. You’re likely to return home with plenty of fond memories and incredible photos of Southeast [...]

With the end of Secretary of State Clinton’s historic visit to Myanmar (Burma) wrapping up last week — the first of any high-ranking official from the U.S. in 50 years — it’s safe to assume that a good portion of the millions of eyes that watched as Clinton toured Shwedegon [...]

Fresh from the crop of travel videes from our “Travel Videos” Vimeo group comes Asiantrip TV’s mini-epic from the Ha Long Bay portion of their trip in Southeast Asia. Yes, that is dreary fall outside your window you’re looking at. Yes, these French students are having way more fun than [...]

I’ve never been to Laos, but it seems like everyone who has inevitably spends some portion of their trip tubing in Van Vieng, a town in Vientiane Province that has begun to take on the dreaded moniker: “Backpacker Ghetto.” And when I hear this I ask why they ended up [...]

As travelers all know, people gripe about the problem of the outdatedness of guidebooks enough, and that’s in reference to current guidebooks. Imagine heading out on the road with one pushing 40 years old. That’s exactly what Brian Thacker attempted on a dare from friend and Lonely Planet founder Tony [...]

“Tan Khao Ma Rue Yung?” asks our cooking instructor, as she holds up ginger root, also known as khing in Thai, its sharp and slightly tangy scent awakening my sense of smell. We are standing in a Chiang Mai market choosing fresh ingredients for the day, and she has just [...]

GoMadNomad.com founder and friend of our site Stephen Bugno spent a good part of this year traveling through Southeast Asia as part of his nomadic wanderings. To try to encapsulate such a trip in 10 or 11 pictures would be futile, but I asked Stephen if I could share with [...]

“I’m Drunk!” I found Sue sitting on a bamboo bench basking in the glare of a dangling florescent light bulb. The bench was directly below the communal stilt house we were sharing, but we hadn’t spent much time at home. Sue kept an exhausting itinerary that I had no choice [...]