What Order to Do Southeast Asia: The Overland Route, Honestly

Everyone arrives with the same mental map: Thailand, then Laos, then Vietnam, then loop down through Cambodia and back to Bangkok. Neat circle. Looks great on a napkin.

Two problems. The Thailand–Cambodia land border has been shut since June 2025 and is still closed as of May 2026 — so the bottom of that circle is gone. And nobody planned around the monsoon, so half of them end up in Hanoi in a downpour wondering why Halong Bay is just fog.

I've run this region overland for five years. Here's the order that actually works in 2026, why, and where the old advice is now flat wrong.

Start in Bangkok — it's the gateway for a reason

Fly into Bangkok (BKK). Not because Bangkok is the best city in the region — it's chaos, and the backpacker strip on Khao San is a theme park now. You start here because it's the cheapest long-haul hub in mainland SEA, every onward bus and train leaves from here, and it sits in the geographic middle of everything you'll do.

Heads up on visas: Thailand just gutted the famous 60-day visa exemption. The Cabinet approved the change on 19 May 2026, dropping most Western nationalities to a 30-day visa-free stay (the new "Phor 30" list — US, UK, Australia, most of the EU). It takes effect 15 days after it hits the Royal Gazette, so depending on when you land in 2026 you might get 30, not 60. Check your exact entry date against the live rule before you build an itinerary that assumes two months in Thailand. Thirty days is plenty to start the loop and come back later.

Give Bangkok two or three nights, eat your weight in boat noodles (kuay teow reua, a small fierce bowl for 20–40 baht, about $0.60–1.20), then move. The country opens up the second you leave the capital.

The mainland loop: go counter-clockwise

Here's the order I'd run it, and it's deliberately against the napkin circle:

Bangkok → Chiang Mai → Laos → Vietnam (south to north or north to south) → fly to Cambodia → back to Bangkok.

Counter-clockwise, the logic is mostly about the Laos slow boat and elevation. From Chiang Mai you head north to the border town of Chiang Khong, cross the Mekong into Huay Xai, and take the two-day slow boat down to Luang Prabang. Around 400,000–500,000 kip ($20–23) for the boat itself, overnight stop in Pakbeng, you buy your own food and water on board.

It's slow. That's the point. Two days drifting down the Mekong past villages with no road access is the kind of thing the region used to be all about, before everyone optimised it into a one-hour flight. Bring snacks, bring a book, do not believe the "VIP fast boat" touts — those things are speedboats that flip, and people have died on them.

From Luang Prabang you've got a decision: push east overland into Vietnam, or hop down through Laos and into Cambodia. I'll get to why the Cambodia leg is broken in a second.

Let the monsoon pick your direction through Vietnam

This is the part 90% of first-timers get wrong. Southeast Asia doesn't have one rainy season — it has several, and they hit different places at different times. Sequencing your trip around the rain is the single biggest upgrade you can make.

Quick version, as of what I've tracked through 2025–26:

• Mainland (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, south Vietnam): dry roughly November–April, wet May–October. Peak misery is around September.

• Vietnam is three countries in a coat. The north (Hanoi, Halong, Sapa) is best roughly October–April. Central (Hoi An, Da Nang) flips — it's driest around January–August and gets hammered by rain October–December. The south (Saigon, Mekong Delta) is best December–April.

• The islands run opposite. Bali, the rest of Indonesia, and most of the Philippines have their dry season roughly May–October — exactly when the mainland is soaked.

So the move is: chase the dry. If you're doing the loop in the wet mainland months, you ride Vietnam's length to dodge it. Land in, say, central Vietnam in July when Hoi An is dry, while Laos is drowning. If you're here in the dry winter window, do the whole mainland loop guilt-free and save the islands for a separate trip — because in December the islands are getting rained on.

The mistake is treating Vietnam as one stop with one season. It's a 1,600-km coastline. Pick your entry point — north or central or south — based on the month you arrive, then move along the coast in whichever direction keeps you ahead of the rain.

Vietnam's visa is the easy part now: the e-visa is open to all nationalities, valid up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, applied for online at the official portal before you fly. Don't use the agent sites that charge triple — go to the government one.

The Cambodia problem nobody's updated their blog about

Here's the fact that breaks every "classic SEA loop" guide written before mid-2025: you cannot cross from Thailand into Cambodia by land right now.

Every checkpoint — Poipet/Aranyaprathet, the lot — has been shut since late June 2025 over the border conflict, and there's no reopening date as of May 2026. The old backpacker move of busing Bangkok → Siem Reap to see Angkor at sunrise? Not happening overland.

What still works:

• Vietnam → Cambodia by land is wide open. The Moc Bai–Bavet crossing between Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh is one of the smoothest borders in the region. Direct bus, around 6 hours, from about $10–20 — Giant Ibis and Mekong Express are the operators to trust. Cambodia does visa-on-arrival there; just make sure your Vietnam e-visa lists Moc Bai if you're coming the other way.

• Laos → Cambodia by land also works, down through the Dong Kralor–Stung Treng crossing in the far south.

• Thailand ↔ Cambodia: fly. Bangkok–Siem Reap and Bangkok–Phnom Penh flights run normally and they're cheap, often $40–80. Annoying for an overland purist, but it's the only way until the border reopens.

To be clear: the rest of Thailand is completely fine. The fighting is confined to remote border provinces hundreds of kilometres from Bangkok, Chiang Mai, the islands. Just don't plan to walk across to Cambodia, and skip the border provinces (Sa Kaeo, Surin, Si Sa Ket, Ubon, Chanthaburi) — some sit under "do not travel" advisories that can also void your insurance.

So the real 2026 loop is: Thailand → Laos → Vietnam → Cambodia (entered from Vietnam) → fly back to Bangkok. The circle still closes. It just closes with a one-hour flight at the end instead of a bus.

How long per country — the honest numbers

Forget "two weeks for the whole region." That's how you spend your whole trip on night buses. Realistic minimums for actually seeing a place:

• Thailand — 2 weeks. Bangkok, Chiang Mai, one island run if the timing's right. You can do the islands as a separate southern loop later.

• Laos — 1 week. Slow boat, Luang Prabang, maybe Vang Vieng or the Bolaven Plateau. It's small and slow; a week is honest.

• Vietnam — 3 weeks minimum, and even that's tight for a 1,600-km country. This is where I'd spend the most time. The Ha Giang loop in the far north alone eats 4 days and is the best thing I've done in this country.

• Cambodia — 1 week. Phnom Penh, Siem Reap for the temples, maybe the south coast.

That's about 7 weeks for a proper mainland circuit. If you've only got a month, cut it to two countries and do them right — Vietnam plus one neighbour beats a blurry five-country speed-run every time.

What about the islands — Indonesia and the Philippines?

Don't try to bolt them onto the mainland loop. They're a different trip with an opposite season, and there's no overland connection — you're flying regardless.

If your dates fall in May–October, when the mainland is wet, flip the whole plan: do Indonesia (Bali, the Gilis, Flores) or the Philippines instead, where that's the dry season. Indonesia's visa-on-arrival is 30 days, extendable once to 60 ($35, same again to extend). The Philippines gives most nationalities 30 days visa-free, extendable at any immigration office.

Treat the region as two seasons, two circuits: mainland in the northern winter, islands in the northern summer. Try to do all of it in one go and you're guaranteed to be somewhere getting rained on.

A word on the "banana pancake trail"

The classic route — Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Luang Prabang, Hanoi, Hoi An, Saigon, Siem Reap — is called the banana pancake trail for a reason. It's well-worn. The hostels speak fluent backpacker, there's a pancake cart on every corner, and you'll see the same faces in four cities.

I'm not going to tell you to avoid it. It's popular because it genuinely strings together the best stuff, and as a first SEA trip it works. Just know it's not discovery — it's a circuit, and you're on it with everyone else.

The fix isn't skipping the trail. It's stepping one town off it. Skip Vang Vieng's tubing scene, go to the 4,000 Islands (Si Phan Don) in southern Laos instead. Trade the third night in Hoi An for the Ha Giang loop. Same route, just choosing the stops that haven't fully tipped into theme-park yet.

The bottom line

Fly into Bangkok. Run the mainland counter-clockwise — Thailand, Laos via the slow boat, then Vietnam — and let whatever month you're travelling decide which end of Vietnam you start at. Enter Cambodia from Vietnam, not from Thailand, because that land border is closed and a Bangkok flight is the only way to close the loop in 2026.

Give it seven weeks if you can, two countries if you can't. Save the islands for a separate trip in the opposite season.

And double-check Thailand's visa days against your actual arrival date — that 60-to-30 cut is brand new, and it's the kind of thing that quietly wrecks an itinerary built on outdated advice.