Every journey here is a starting sketch
The twelve journeys exist so that a conversation has somewhere to start. Almost every party changes something before signing, and the changes fall into a short and predictable list. This page says which ones are routine, which ones we decline, and what each one does to the price — so you can ask for them with the arithmetic already in view.
What changes most often
Adding nights
The most common request and the simplest one. An extra night adds a room, a car day and, on a touring day, a guide — roughly USD 180 to USD 320 per person on Comfortable and USD 300 to USD 520 on Excellent, depending on the country and the party size. Adding nights to a place you are already in is always cheaper than adding a stop.
Swapping the beach finish
Koh Samui, Phu Quoc and the southern Thai coast are interchangeable in the itinerary and not in the weather. Samui is wettest from October to December and good from June to August, which is the inverse of the mainland. A swap that fixes the weather usually costs nothing; a swap that adds a flight sector costs USD 90 to USD 320 per person plus two transfers.
Dropping a country
Removing a country takes out its nights, its guide, its car and normally one flight. On a twenty-one-day route, dropping Laos removes about five nights and takes roughly USD 1,000 to USD 1,400 per person off a Comfortable quote. It also frees days, which most parties then put back into the countries that remain.
Moving a flight to a train
Vientiane to Luang Prabang is 1 h 50 by rail against about ten hours by road, with second class near USD 20; Hue to Da Nang over the Hai Van Pass takes two to three hours and is the better way to travel that stretch. A rail substitution saves USD 60 to USD 200 per person and adds two to four hours to the day. Stations are far out — Vientiane 15 km, Luang Prabang 12 km — so the transfers stay in the plan.
Other routine changes: reordering countries so the journey ends where you want it to end, upgrading only two or three nights rather than the whole route, adding a private carriage leg such as the Vietage between Da Nang and Quy Nhon, moving a temple morning earlier to beat the heat, or building the whole thing around a fixed anniversary date.
What we will not change
Five things stay fixed regardless of what the change is worth. Each one is a limit that exists because the alternative produces a worse journey, and none of them is negotiable at a higher price.
- The twelve-day minimum. Below twelve days the region becomes airports and check-ins, and a shorter version of one of these routes would be a bad trip with our name on it. Shorter journeys go to other operators.
- The five-hour driving cap. Where a leg cannot be driven inside five hours it gets flown, split across two days, or moved to rail. This is why some routes look longer on paper than a competing quote for the same places.
- Elephant camps, in any form. No riding, no bathing, no feeding sessions. This applies to venues describing themselves as sanctuaries as well.
- Commission stops. No gem workshop, no silk village, no lacquer factory, no jewellery showroom written into a day as a local craft experience. If a workshop appears on your itinerary it is there because it is worth the hour, and we take nothing from it.
- Orphanage visits, staged hill-tribe villages, Myanmar and Sihanoukville. None of these go into an itinerary of ours, and asking does not change the answer.
How much the price moves
Rough per-person effects on a Comfortable quote for four travellers. The direction holds for every party size; the size of the effect grows as the party shrinks, because fixed costs divide fewer ways.
| Change | Effect per person | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| One extra night in a city you are already in | + USD 180 – 320 | Room, car day, guide if touring |
| One extra stop, two nights, with a flight | + USD 520 – 900 | Adds a sector and two transfers |
| Dropping a country from a 21-day route | − USD 1,000 – 1,400 | Removes about five nights and a flight |
| Comfortable to Excellent, whole route | + about 54 per cent | Almost entirely the hotel line |
| Upgrading three nights only | + USD 350 – 900 | Common where one hotel is the point |
| Swapping one flight for the Lao train | − USD 60 – 200 | Adds 2 – 4 hours to the day |
| Adding a seven-night Mekong ship | + USD 3,900 – 9,000 | Cabin, not a room; fixed sailing dates |
| Moving from May to late December | + 15 – 40 per cent on hotels | Plus compulsory gala dinners on 24 and 31 Dec |
| Adding a fifth and sixth traveller | − about 22 per cent each head | Car, driver and guide divide further |
Two of those lines dominate everything else. Party size is the largest lever in the list, and the Mekong ship is the largest single addition — it can carry a third of the cost of a fifteen-day journey on its own. Everything in between is a few hundred dollars either way and should be decided on what you want rather than on what it saves.
Two constraints worth knowing before you ask
The Thailand–Cambodia land border has been closed since 23 June 2025 and Thai authorities have said there is no plan to reopen during 2026. Any change that routes you overland between the two countries cannot be built, and the substitute is a flight of about 1 h 15 with two transfers attached. This is the single most common request we have to decline on operational grounds rather than principle.
Season is the other. Mid-November to early February is dry in all four countries at once; outside it, something is always wrong somewhere. Central Vietnam floods from September to November, Angkor sits at 35 to 40 °C from March to May, and the burning season in northern Thailand and northern Laos runs from late January to late April at its worst in March — Chiang Mai PM2.5 reached 188 µg/m³ on 29–30 March 2026. A change of dates changes the route more than a change of hotels does.
Start from a route and tell us what is wrong with it
Name the journey closest to yours, then the three things you would change. The redraw comes back within three working days.
Questions travellers ask most
Can you build a journey from scratch instead of changing one of yours?
Yes, and it is the same process at the same price. Starting from a published route is faster because the flights, drive times and night counts are already tested, but a blank sheet is fine if your fixed points do not resemble any of the twelve. Send the month, the party size and the places that must be in it.
How many revisions do we get?
Two full written rewrites are included, and small adjustments after that are made as a matter of course. If a third full rewrite is needed we normally ask for a call first, because at that point the shape is still wrong and a conversation fixes it faster than a document.
Will you add a day we found on another operator’s itinerary?
Usually, if it is real. Send the link. Two things get refused: activities on our fixed list, such as elephant camps and commission workshops, and legs that cannot be operated in 2026, such as an overland Bangkok to Siem Reap day. Everything else is a question of time and money, not principle.
Can one traveller in the party upgrade and another not?
Room categories can differ inside a party and often do — parents in a suite, adult children in a standard room, priced separately in the same quote. What cannot split is the guide, the car and the route, because those are shared by the whole party and there is one of each per country.
Read next
Tell us about the journey you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.