The best way to get to South East Asia is by flying Aeroflot. Their prices are much lower than the other airlines, but even if prices had been the same, we would still have recommended them. There are several reasons for this:

But isn't it dangerous to fly with them? They have old planes which crash all the time, don't they?

No, it's no more dangerous than any other airline. People who say this are people who have never flown Aeroflot, at least not in the last 10 years. On Moscow-Bangkok, they fly a brand new Boeing 777 and on Singapore-Moscow a new Airbus A310 is used. Between Moscow and smaller destinations like Oslo, they're using Russian Tupolevs, but you're not going to notice much difference between a Tupolev and a Boeing unless you're an expert on airplanes.

The only downside to using Aeroflot is that they only fly a few times a week between most destinations, while other airlines might fly every day.

If, for some reason (can't think of a good one, though), you decide to fly another airline, you should at least stay away from Lufthansa. They are completely incompetent and have a hostility towards their passengers that has to be experienced to be believed. In fact, they seem to be the complete opposite of Aeroflot in every respect.

The cost of a return trip Oslo - Bangkok with Aeroflot is approximately 4500 NOK in the low season, and a little bit more expensive to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. Other airlines cost more, but they may sometimes have special offers that give reasonable value for money if you are unable to fly Aeroflot.

The flight time is about 10 hours from Moscow to Bangkok (and probably a little bit more from other European cities). From Oslo to Moscow it takes about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

No vaccines are necessary to be allowed inside any of the countries we visited, but it's probably a good idea to consult a doctor about vaccines anyway. On the other hand, the medical advice we received was quite confusing and strongly dependent on which doctor we spoke with. However, we think vaccines against at least Hepatitis A, Polio and Diphtheria/Tetanus are a good idea. These cost approximately 550 NOK in total.

According to the advice we received in Norway, we should take Lariam tablets against Malaria. However, on visiting the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute in Bangkok, we saw an official notice from June 2000 on their bulletin board, discouraging the use of Malaria tablets since they were all now believed to be ineffective. Apparently the tablets only served to give a false sense of security, and as a consequence we didn't bother taking them. Also, there appears to be only a few areas, mostly near the Burmese border, where there is much risk of getting Malaria. At least we didn't get it.

Since we never took the malaria tablets, we obviously didn't experience any side effects. However, Lariam has a pretty bad reputation for producing side effects. On doing an Internet search for "Lariam side effects", you will find that there is a large group of people who are very sceptical towards Lariam. On the positive side, we should mention that May Tina took Lariam during an extended stay in Southern Africa October-December 2000 without having any problems whatsoever. When she used Chloroquine and Paludrine during our South African Adventure in 1999 she became slightly sick a few times, which could have been due to the tablets. She therefore strongly prefers Lariam (which also has the advantage of only having to be taken once a week).

Not really. We got a few mosquito bites during our hilltribe trek, but we wouldn't say mosquitoes were a major problem. We used a mosquito repellant called Autan which smelled quite nicely, but unfortunately seemed to induce development of spots.

Norwegians don't need a visa to visit Thailand, Malaysia or Singapore. However, a visa is required for entering Russia (which you might want to do if you're flying Aeroflot). We obtained our visas from the Russian embassy in Oslo, which was now hassle at all. It took 11 days from sending in the application until we received the visas, and the total cost was only 175 NOK per visa.

When planning our trip we found it convenient to have several traveller's guide books. Our main reference was Lonely Planet's "South-East Asia on a shoestring". This book covers all the countries of South East Asia, but there are several other versions dealing with smaller areas in more detail. The Lonely Planet books are very good on practical information, but deal only briefly with history and culture of the various countries, and there are hardly any (colour) pictures in their books.

The Rough Guides are very similar to the Lonely Planet series, but they are somewhat cheaper and seem to give a bit more information about culture and history. There are lots of other travel guides available which we haven't seen, so shop around. After getting back home, it might be worth getting hold of the "Insight Guide to Thailand". This one has loads of beautiful colour pictures and is good on culture and history. However, it is pretty useless for practical help during the holiday.

We only have experience with the travel insurance from Gjensidige Forsikring, but unfortunately our experiences are almost strictly negative. To mention the positive things first, it is quite cheap and it sounds good in theory.

On the negative side, it seems quite useless in practise if an accident occurs. The most serious example of their misconduct was experienced during our holiday in Thailand in the summer of 2000. On this trip I suffered from dysentery and had to go into hospital. It is then common procedure for an insurance company to acknowledge that they will pay for the treatment of their policy holders, but Gjensidige unfortunately ignored the fax which they received from the Thai hospital, requesting them to do so. This resulted in me being refused to leave the hospital until I eventually paid for the treatment myself. Fortunately, I had sufficient funds to do so, but what if this had happened in the US, where hospital costs are much higher than in Thailand? Gjensidige's irresponsible behaviour might then have had much more severe consequences.

Although Gjensidige eventually refunded my costs some months later, they have so far ignored my request for an apology, or at least an explanation of why they behaved in this manner. For more details, read the full story of our hilltribe trek and hospitalisation in Part 4 of our travel diary.

You can also read the Epilogue to our South African Adventure and learn more about our previous experiences with Gjensidige Forsikring.

Bath is the currency in Thailand, Ringgit in Malaysia and Dollars in Singapore. Consult this currency converter to find their value in your local currency.

We arrived in Thailand without any local currency and only with a few traveller's cheques in US dollars. There are ATM machines all over the various countries so withdrawing money is no problem.

However, it costs a small fortune to use regular Norwegian credit/debit cards to withdraw money abroad, usually at least 35-40 NOK per withdrawal. To avoid paying this fee, we recommend getting a VISA card from Skandiabanken as withdrawals can then be made free of charge. As an added bonus you also get by far the best interest rate on the money in your account. If you make ten withdrawals during the holiday, this should save you around 350-400 NOK. No, there is no downside to this offer. It really is as good as it sounds!

It was very easy to get around in the cities. In Thailand there were always plenty of tuk-tuks around. Actually, finding transport was not the main problem, but rather to get rid of annoying tuk-tuk drivers when we didn't want to go anywhere. In Bangkok (metered) taxis were the most convenient form of transportation. Click here for more information about getting around in Bangkok.

Public transportation was very good in Malaysia and Singapore as well. Taxis were a convenient option, but Kuala Lumpur and Singapore also had an efficient metro system. In Singapore you could also get everywhere with bus (although rather slowly).

It's extremely easy! There are cheap buses and trains running regularly to all relevant destinations in the various countries. It's also possible to buy cheap airline tickets for travelling longer distances, although we have no experience with this ourselves.

Using a regular cell phone to phone your home country is very convenient, but also very expensive! The best way is to use the Internet. There appears to be an unlimited amount of Internet cafes in both Thailand and Malaysia. They are very cheap, in particular in Malaysia where we only paid 3 RM per hour in certain places. In Bangkok, the cheap Internet cafes all seemed to be located in Banglamphoo.

Setting up a Hotmail account (or some other free e-mail account, there are loads of them) before leaving home might be a good idea. There are also several services which enable you to access your regular e-mail account through a web interface.

South East Asia uses electricity with 220V AC, which is the same as in Norway and most of Western Europe. Unfortunately, the plugs are not the same so you will need an adapter to connect your electrical equipment. We brought along a "star-adapter" which we had bought in Norway, and it seemed to work fine.

People from countries with a different voltage (like the US) will, of course need a voltage adapter as well.

There are basically two options. Either go backpacking and arrange everything yourselves or join a tour group. The advantage of going on a tour is that you'll be able to travel around faster and thereby see more in a short period of time. It also saves you the hassle of having to arrange transport and finding a place to stay every night.

A disadvantage of such tours is that you are unlikely to meet many average Asians. You will basically spend all the time with the same bunch of people, and might not really experience "the real Asia" as it is seen the average person. You sort of isolate yourself from the Asia seen by the people living there permanently.

We would generally say that since travelling around and arranging practical details is extremely easy to do on your own in South East Asia, there is no need to join a tour group, except perhaps for shorter tours. If you have only a very limited amount of time available, joining a complete tour might be worthwhile, though.

A combination of the two types is of course also possible. What is best for you depends on how much time you have available and your personality.

In Thailand this was extremely easy! We never came across a place that didn't have an available room. Quite the contrary, we often had the feeling that we were almost the only people staying at the various places.

In Malaysia things were a little more difficult, but not very bad. We never booked anything in advance and sometimes we had to walk around a little bit before coming across a hotel with something available.

It's hard to say about Singapore since we only stayed in one place, which at least had available rooms when we turned up unannounced.

The weather was much better than expected. Bangkok was hot and humid, but certainly not as bad as we had feared. Despite us coming in the wet season, we experienced very little rain, and the rain never lasted for more than a few hours anyway.

Including flight tickets, we spent around 11500 NOK per person over a period of six weeks. Excluding the flights, this is about 1000 NOK per person per week, which in our opinion is not very much as it includes all accommodation, food and transport. It can certainly be done a lot cheaper if desired. We stayed in hotels which cost in the range 50-70 NOK per person per night for a double room, but there are certainly cheaper options available.

It is a good idea to bring along a small backpack that you can use to carry stuff for your daily excursions.

We have found it convenient to make a photocopy of the relevant city maps in Lonely Planet and only carry the copies with us when we are walking around in cities. This saved us from carrying the whole book around all the time.

We personally think it is a very good idea to bring a diary and as often as possible write down what you have been doing. In the countries of South East Asia, there will be so many new experiences coming at you all the time, that you will have problems remembering everything later. We were amazed at how often we struggled to remember exactly what we had been doing yesterday! When you get home you should put your travel diary on the Internet so that other people can read about your holiday as well, and learn from your experiences.