Travelling Independently in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam: Our Travel Plan
We started planning our trip quite a few months before we
left. Lyn had previously travelled to Vietnam on a teacher’s tour and enjoyed
it so we thought it would be an interesting country to visit together and to
include Cambodia. Then, after talking with friends who had recently visited the
region we were persuaded to include Laos as well as they had loved it. We
planned to be away about three weeks and chose March 2013 as a good month to travel; it would be dry and hopefully
not too hot.
In September 2012 we acted quickly when Malaysia Airlines
advertised special fares to Asia, saving over $500 each from their usual fares,
and decided to fly directly to Siem Reap so avoiding Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s
capital city, as we wanted to spend time at the wonderful Angkor temples, but
no real wish to see the museums commemorating the black days of Cambodian
history when the Khmer Rouge were in power. We booked our return flight to
Auckland from Hanoi, having decided that time constraints meant we wouldn’t travel
to the southern half of Vietnam.
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| Angkor Wat |
Over the next couple of months we settled on exactly how
long to stay in each place, how to travel from city to city, and what hotels to
book. We preferred to stay for a few days in each place, and to take local day
tours when wanted to get out of a city, rather than take cross country tours
that flit from place to place. We relied on Trip Advisor to choose lovely hotels
to stay in, while at the same time keeping within our budget. Our hotels were moderately expensive for Asia
and averaged about $NZ135 a night for the two of us, which included transfers, breakfasts
a full day tour out of Hanoi, the occasional lunch and dinner, and four days
with a full-time tuk tuk in Siem Reap. As both of us are beyond the “roughing
it” stage of our lives we decided on a reasonable level of comfort
To take advantage of the best local airfares, through the
internet we booked directly with Lao Air to fly us from Siem Reap to Luang
Prabang (in northern Laos) and then onwards to Hanoi; and then Vietnam Airlines
for the Hanoi to Da Nang return flights so we could visit Hue and Hoi An. In
actual fact prices for these flights were unchanged a few days prior to travel
so we could have waited.
As the hotels we had chosen were very highly rated by Trip
Advisor (including their top hotels in Siem Reap and Hanoi), we booked these
well before 2012 came to an end. These hotels either provided transfers to and
from their local airports, or advised us that reliable taxi travel was easy to
arrange from taxi desks at the airport on arrival. All bookings were made
directly with the hotels. Their websites were excellent and in English, and
because of their high Trip Advisor ratings we had no compunction about
forwarding deposits to them if requested. Most of the hotels were relatively
small in size with 15 to 25 rooms, which we preferred, apart from a large resort-style hotel in Hoi
An that we chose just a week or so before leaving New Zealand because of a
required change in flights. However we were lucky because it offered rooms for
half their normal price.
A couple of weeks
before we departed in early March we obtained a reasonable amount of
U.S. dollars to have as cash. We checked the official tourist website of each
country to determine the visa requirements, and found that all needed to be
paid, in cash, with U.S. dollars on arrival at each airport. They totalled
$US95 each for the three countries. In
Cambodia the U.S. dollar is very widely accepted for all purchases large and
small (and definitely needed to pay the 3 day Angkor fee of $US40 each), while U.S.
dollars could be used for larger purchases in Vietnam. As ATMs were reported to be widespread (and
they were plentiful in all the places we stayed) we loaded up a travel card
with sufficient NZ dollars to cover the rest of our expenses.
The money that we travelled with, or set aside to be
withdrawn from ATMs in local currency, turned out to be more than enough. We most
frequently used local tourist restaurants for lunch and dinner rather than eat
in our hotels and averaged about $NZ60 a day, from either carried cash or from
ATMs, between us for all our expenses, including meals, drinks and gifts.
Eating out is cheap in Asia and beer throughout the region is excellent and
inexpensive. We only used our credit card to pay hotel costs, a full day tour
out of Hanoi and a couple of large purchases, everything else was paid by cash.
We had a great trip. We had no wet days and although
afternoon temperatures in many places were higher than expected, we worked
around this by getting out early and then having an afternoon siesta before
hitting the streets again in the evening. Travel throughout the region was
hassle free and despite some early misgivings in the months prior to travel, we
didn’t strike any problems and were
pleased we hadn’t gone on an organised
tour. Not only was it considerably cheaper than a pre-paid tour, but it allowed
us to do it our own way and have a holiday which was just right for us
The total cost of our 23 day trip, including air fares,
accommodation, all expenses and purchases was $NZ4650 each.
The hotels we stayed at on our trip were:
Pavillon d’Orient Hotel, Siem
Reap (4 nights)
L
otus
Villa Hotel, Luang Prabang (5 nights)
Essence
Hotel, Hanoi (6 nights)
Orchid
Hotel, Hue (3 nights)
Hoian
Pacific Hotel, Hoi An (3 nights)
