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Asia travel tips

106 guides across 26 countries — when to go, how to get around, which ATMs not to use, and what a fair price looks like.

BangkokThailandTemples, street food, and organized chaos

BaliIndonesiaRice terraces, temples, and surf breaks

TokyoJapanWhere ancient tradition meets neon-lit future

SingaporeSingaporeA hyper-organised city-state with extraordinary food

KyotoJapanA thousand temples and the old soul of Japan

SeoulSouth KoreaPalaces, street food, and relentless energy

HanoiVietnamOld Quarter chaos, lakeside calm, and extraordinary street food

PhuketThailandThailand’s biggest island, from party beaches to quiet coves

Chiang MaiThailandTemples, mountains, and Thailand’s digital nomad capital

Koh SamuiThailandCoconut palms, quiet beaches, and villas with a pool

KrabiThailandLimestone cliffs rising straight out of the Andaman Sea

Koh LantaThailandLong quiet beaches and an old town on stilts, at the pace Thailand used to move at

Koh PhanganThailandJungle, empty northern beaches, and the Full Moon Party

Koh TaoThailandWhere half the world learns to dive

PaiThailandA mountain valley of hot springs, waterfalls and slow days

AyutthayaThailandThe ruined capital of a kingdom that once dwarfed London

Kuala LumpurMalaysiaTowers, mosques and temples in the same square mile, and the best eating in Southeast Asia

George TownMalaysiaShophouses, street art and the food capital of Malaysia

LangkawiMalaysiaA duty-free island of rainforest, mangroves and quiet sand

Kota KinabaluMalaysiaBorneo’s coast, with a mountain behind it and orangutans inland

Luang PrabangLaosA UNESCO town of monasteries where the Mekong meets the Nam Khan

Vang ViengLaosKarst towers over a river, and a town that grew up from its wild years

Ho Chi Minh CityVietnamVietnam at full volume — motorbikes, markets and rooftop bars

Da NangVietnamA long beach, a mountain pass, and Vietnam’s easiest city to live in

Hoi AnVietnamLantern-lit trading port frozen in the eighteenth century

Phu QuocVietnamVietnam’s largest island, with jungle behind the beaches

Siem Reap & AngkorCambodiaThe largest religious monument ever built, and a town that grew up to see it

Agra & the Taj MahalIndiaA tomb built for one person, visited by eight million a year

GoaIndiaPortuguese churches, Arabian Sea beaches, and no hurry at all

MaldivesMaldivesTwelve hundred islands, none of them more than two metres above the sea

PalawanPhilippinesLimestone islands out of the sea, and lagoons you can only reach by boat

Cebu & BoholPhilippinesWhale sharks, waterfalls, and the country’s oldest city

Hong KongHong KongSkyscrapers against green peaks, and a ferry across the harbour for pennies

Beijing & the Great WallChinaAn imperial city, and a wall that runs off into the mountains

Sri LankaSri LankaTea hills, ruined capitals and two coasts with opposite seasons

TbilisiGeorgiaSulphur baths under a fortress, wine made in clay eggs for eight thousand years, and rents that brought the nomads

SamarkandUzbekistanThe blue domes of the Silk Road, in a city Tamerlane rebuilt to be the centre of the world

OsakaJapanJapan's kitchen, and the one city where people talk to strangers

Kathmandu & PokharaNepalA medieval valley of temples, and the lake town where every Himalayan trek begins

TaipeiTaiwanNight markets, hot springs and mountains inside the city limits

JaipurIndiaA pink city laid out on a grid in 1727, with a fort on every hill above it

Chiang RaiThailandA white temple built like a hallucination, hill villages, and the corner where three countries meet

KanchanaburiThailandThe bridge on the River Kwai, a seven-tier waterfall, and a war cemetery kept immaculate

HiroshimaJapanA city rebuilt around the one building it left standing, and a floating gate an hour away

SapporoJapanDeep snow, beer brewed since 1876, and the best powder skiing in the world an hour away

KanazawaJapanA garden three hundred years in the making, gold leaf on everything, and a samurai district that survived the war

Ha Long BayVietnamTwo thousand limestone towers standing in jade water, best seen from a bunk on a boat

SapaVietnamRice terraces cut into mountainsides by hand, and hill villages where the market is the week’s event

Kerala BackwatersIndiaNine hundred kilometres of lagoons and canals behind the coast, crossed on a converted rice barge

VaranasiIndiaThe oldest continuously lived-in city on earth, where the Ganges is lined with steps and funeral pyres

YogyakartaIndonesiaA sultan still on his throne, the largest Buddhist temple on earth, and a live volcano behind the town

LombokIndonesiaBali’s quieter neighbour, with a 3,700-metre volcano, empty south-coast bays and the Gilis offshore

ShanghaiChinaA waterfront of 1920s banks facing a skyline from the future, with lane houses and gardens in between

Xi’anChinaEight thousand terracotta soldiers, a city wall you can cycle round, and the eastern end of the Silk Road

BusanSouth KoreaKorea’s port city: beaches in the middle of it, the largest fish market in the country, and a hillside village painted every colour

NaraJapanThe first permanent capital, with the biggest bronze Buddha in the world and twelve hundred deer that bow for a biscuit

HakoneJapanHot springs in a volcanic caldera, with Fuji across the lake on the mornings it shows itself

OkinawaJapanA subtropical chain with its own kingdom, its own language and the clearest water in Japan

TakayamaJapanA merchant town of dark wood in the Japanese Alps, an hour from thatched villages under deep snow

NikkoJapanA shogun’s mausoleum buried in cedar forest, with waterfalls and a marshland plateau above it

Komodo & FloresIndonesiaDragons on one island, pink sand on another, and some of the best diving in the world between them

Raja AmpatIndonesiaThe richest reef on earth, in an archipelago of limestone islands almost nobody reaches

Ninh BìnhVietnamLimestone towers over flooded rice fields, rowed through by women using their feet

Koh Phi PhiThailandLimestone walls straight out of the sea, a village with no cars in it, and the loudest beach in Thailand

BoracayPhilippinesFour kilometres of white sand that the country closed for six months to clean, and reopened with rules

SiargaoPhilippinesA teardrop island of coconut palms and reef breaks, still half the price of anywhere else this good

Banaue & the rice terracesPhilippinesTwo thousand years of terracing carved into the Cordillera, and villages you can only reach on foot

JejuSouth KoreaA volcanic island of black rock and green tea, with women who have dived for shellfish for centuries

GyeongjuSouth KoreaA thousand years of Silla capital spread through a small city, with royal tombs rising out of the parks

Seoraksan & SokchoSouth KoreaGranite spires and autumn colour two hours from Seoul, with a fishing port and a cable car below them

KandySri LankaThe last kingdom of Sri Lanka, around a lake, with the Buddha’s tooth in a temple above it

EllaSri LankaA gap in the hills with tea on every slope, reached on the best train journey in Asia

GalleSri LankaA Dutch fort on a headland, walled, walkable and lived in, with the south coast beaches beside it

Sigiriya & DambullaSri LankaA palace on top of a two-hundred-metre rock, and a cave temple full of Buddhas an hour away

BatumiGeorgiaA Black Sea resort of glass towers and old wooden houses, subtropical gardens, casinos, and khachapuri shaped like a boat

KazbegiGeorgiaA church on a hill under a 5,000-metre volcano, at the top of the Georgian Military Highway, three hours from the capital

KutaisiGeorgiaGeorgia’s second city and the budget airline gateway: a monastery on the hill, caves and canyons half an hour out, and prices half of Tbilisi’s

MestiaGeorgiaSvaneti: medieval defence towers in every village, Europe’s highest inhabited valleys, and a four-day walk to Ushguli

SighnaghiGeorgiaThe City of Love on a hilltop in the wine country, walls with twenty-three towers, and the Caucasus across the valley on a clear day

AlmatyKazakhstanA city of apples and mountains, with a ski lift from the suburbs, a cathedral built without a nail, and the best restaurants in Central Asia

AstanaKazakhstanA capital built from nothing on the steppe in twenty-five years: a glass pyramid, a tent the size of a district, a tower to climb, and a winter of minus thirty

Charyn CanyonKazakhstanA red-rock canyon three hours from Almaty that looks like Arizona and empties like Kazakhstan, walked in an afternoon

Kolsay LakesKazakhstanThree lakes stacked up a valley of the Tien Shan, a drowned forest in a fourth, and horses to ride between them

TurkistanKazakhstanThe mausoleum Timur built for a Sufi poet, the holiest place in Kazakhstan, and a new tourist city built around it

BishkekKyrgyzstanThe greenest Soviet capital, a grid of poplars under 4,000-metre peaks, and the base for the most beautiful mountains in Central Asia

KarakolKyrgyzstanA frontier town at the far end of Issyk-Kul, a wooden mosque built by Dungans, a Russian church, and every trek in the Tien Shan starting from it

Song-KölKyrgyzstanA lake at 3,000 metres on a plateau of grass, yurts and horses and nothing else, where the herders spend the summer and you can too

OshKyrgyzstanThe oldest city in Central Asia, a sacred mountain in the middle of it, a bazaar that has run for two thousand years, and the door to the Pamir Highway

BukharaUzbekistanA whole medieval city still standing: minarets, madrasas, covered bazaars and a pool with mulberry trees, and it is quieter than Samarkand

KhivaUzbekistanA walled city of mud brick in the desert, intact from the gates to the minarets, and the one Silk Road town you can walk round on the wall

TashkentUzbekistanThe biggest city in Central Asia, a metro with chandeliers, the world’s oldest Quran, plov cooked in cauldrons the size of a car, and the gateway to the rest

DushanbeTajikistanA tree-lined capital with the tallest flagpole in Asia, a bazaar under a green dome, and the mountains that make up ninety per cent of the country an hour away

Pamir HighwayTajikistanThe second-highest road in the world, along the Afghan border and over a 4,655-metre pass, from Khorog to Murghab in a 4x4 that stops at every homestay

UlaanbaatarMongoliaThe coldest capital on earth, half of it gers on the hillsides, a monastery that survived the purges, and the only city in a country of horses

Gobi DesertMongoliaSand dunes that sing, flaming red cliffs full of dinosaur eggs, an ice canyon in the desert, and a week in a 4x4 between them

Lake KhövsgölMongoliaA lake with two per cent of the world’s fresh water, larch forest to the shore, reindeer herders in the taiga behind, and no road round it

TereljMongoliaThe steppe an hour from the capital: granite tors, a turtle rock, a monastery up a hillside, and a ger to sleep in with horses outside

AshgabatTurkmenistanA white-marble capital with more Guinness records than people on the streets, a burning gas crater four hours north, and a visa that takes planning

YerevanArmeniaA pink-stone city older than Rome under a mountain that belongs to Turkey, a cascade to climb, the best brandy in the world, and cafés that never close

DilijanArmeniaThe Armenian Switzerland: a spa town in a forest, wooden balconies, monasteries hidden in the woods, and a lake an hour away

TatevArmeniaA monastery on a cliff above a gorge, reached by the longest cable car in the world, in the far south where the roads are the point

BakuAzerbaijanA walled medieval city inside an oil-boom city on the Caspian: Flame Towers over a Zoroastrian tower, a boulevard along the sea, and mud volcanoes and fire temples an hour out

ShekiAzerbaijanA Silk Road town in the Caucasus foothills with a khan’s palace of stained glass and no nails, a caravanserai to sleep in, and a sweet the town is named for

GabalaAzerbaijanThe country’s mountain resort: a cable car up the Caucasus, ski runs in winter, a lake and waterfalls in summer, and the ruins of the ancient capital beside it

LahijAzerbaijanA coppersmiths’ village up a gorge, cobbled by hand a thousand years ago, with a sewer system older than most capitals and the hammers still going

QubaAzerbaijanApple orchards under the Caucasus, a Jewish town across the river that has been there for centuries, and Khinalug, a village at 2,300 m that speaks its own language