Three to five weeks, overland, across three countries

A typical journey on this site runs for about four weeks. It starts in Hanoi or Siem Reap, or at the Lao town of Huay Xai on the Mekong, and finishes two or three countries later. Between those ends there are eight to ten stops instead of the much longer list a fast itinerary packs in. Most stays run two to five nights; one-night stops are kept for the slow boat, the night before a border, and start or end towns.

The legs between stops are mostly on the ground or on the water. The north–south railway carries you from Hanoi to Hue overnight in about fourteen hours, then over the Hai Van Pass to Da Nang in about two and a half. The slow boat on the Mekong takes two days from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, with a night in the river village of Pakbeng. A speedboat runs down the river from Chau Doc to Phnom Penh in roughly six and a half hours, with the border formalities done at a riverside post halfway.

Fewer flights costs time. A flight covers Hanoi to Hue in a fraction of the train's time; the train takes a night. We think that trade is worth making on some legs and not on others, and every journey page says which is which. Where the only overland option is a long day in a minibus that adds nothing, we say so and suggest the flight.

That is the outline of The Long Way Round, our thirty-day journey from Hanoi to Angkor with no internal flight at all.

• Leg by leg. Every journey is drawn as a list of legs first. Each leg has a mode, an approximate time, a comfort note and a source with the date we checked it. The hotels come second.
• A rest day every five or six days. Not a half-day with a cooking class. A day with nothing booked, placed after the hardest legs — usually the morning after a night train or a border crossing.
• Laundry stops. On a four-week trip with one bag, clothes run out around day eight. We put a stay of three nights or more at roughly that interval, so a laundry service has time to turn a bag round.
• Hotels named, not starred. A quote that says 'three-star hotel in Hue' cannot be compared with anything. Ours names the hotel and the room type.
• One flight at most, and only where it earns its place. Vientiane to Pakse is the usual candidate.

The pacing guide explains how we decide where to stop longer, and how the seasons shift as a route crosses three climate zones.

Every journey is private: your party, your dates, your pace. None of them run on a fixed calendar and none of them put you in a group with strangers. The pricing page explains what moves the price of a trip this long, and how to book explains the steps from first message to first night.

You do not need a route to send the form below. Tell us how many weeks you have, the month you want to go, and which of the three countries matters most. We reply by email to the address you give, with questions first and a leg-by-leg outline second.