Planning · Length

How long a country actually holds

Two numbers per country: the night count below which it stops being worth the flight, and the night count at which nothing is being cut. Most trips go wrong between them.

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Every country, in nights

Nights, not days, because nights are what a hotel and a quote count. A ten-night trip is eleven days on the calendar and about nine and a half usable ones once the two ends are counted honestly.

Country	Minimum nights	Comfortable	What the extra nights buy
Vietnam	10	14	The centre. Ten nights buys the north and the south; four more add Hue and Hoi An without a day given over to moving
Thailand	8	12	The north, or a coast. Eight nights is Bangkok and the central plain; twelve reaches Chiang Mai and the river west
Cambodia	6	9	Angkor unhurried, Battambang, and two nights in Phnom Penh rather than one
Laos	6	9	The Nam Ou above Luang Prabang, where the road ends and the boats take over
Japan	10	16	Ten nights is Tokyo and Kyoto. Sixteen adds Hiroshima and Miyajima, a night in a ryokan, and a third region
South Korea	7	10	Busan and what lies between: the KTX covers Seoul to Busan in about 2 hours 15 at its fastest
India	10	16	India is several trips. Ten nights is one of them; sixteen is one of them properly, with Udaipur or the backwaters attached
Nepal	8	12	Pokhara and Chitwan, and a walk long enough to be a trek. Kathmandu to Pokhara is 6 to 8 hours by road
Bhutan	7	10	Punakha over the Dochu La, and a spare day for the weather at Paro. Every night carries the USD 100 development fee
Sri Lanka	9	12	The hill country at the pace the Kandy to Ella train sets — 6 to 7 hours for 120 km — plus a park and a coast
Indonesia	10	16	Every island costs a flight. Ten nights is Java and Bali; sixteen reaches Flores or Sulawesi as well
Uzbekistan	8	11	Khiva, at the far west. Eight nights covers Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara
Jordan	7	9	A second day at Petra and a night in Wadi Rum rather than an afternoon
Oman	8	11	Wahiba, Sur and the turtles at Ras al Jinz, and a mountain: Jebel Shams or Jebel Akhdar

The minimum is not a recommendation. It is the point below which the flight stops earning its cost — below which you are paying long-haul money to see the inside of a car. The comfortable figure is where nothing is being cut and no day exists only to move you. Between the two columns sits the trip most people actually take, and the choice of which nights to lose is the real planning work.

Six countries on this site have journeys but no country page of their own, because we run one region of them rather than the whole. Taiwan is nine days as a loop from Taipei. Sabah in Malaysian Borneo is nine, of which the Kinabatangan needs three days and two nights at a minimum for the wildlife to be worth the trip. Palawan is ten. Georgia and Armenia take eleven between them, and Kyrgyzstan appears inside the sixteen-day Silk Road rather than alone.

What a border costs, in days

A country change eats most of a day and no itinerary can argue it away. Check out by eleven. Transfer to the airport, which is rarely less than an hour and is sometimes far more — Siem Reap’s airport moved in 2023 and now sits about 50 km and 45 to 50 minutes from town, where the old one was fifteen minutes away. Two hours before an international flight. The flight. Immigration at the far end. Another transfer. Arrive at five, tired, in a city you have not seen.

That is a day. It is not half a day, and it is not a day you can also give a temple to. On a fourteen-night trip, two of those days is fourteen per cent of the trip spent moving between countries, and it comes out of the good end of the holiday rather than the tired end.

Two borders that cost more than the average

The Thailand–Cambodia land crossings have been shut since mid-2025 with no reopening timetable, so Bangkok to Siem Reap is a flight, not a road, whatever an older itinerary says. And Paro in Bhutan is served by two airlines into an airport with no radar approach, flown visually in daylight and good visibility only; a Bhutan leg carries a buffer day at one end as a matter of course, not as a precaution.

Internal moves are cheaper but not free. Where a fast train exists the cost falls to a couple of hours — Tokyo to Kyoto is 2 hours 13 on the fastest service, Tashkent to Samarkand about two and a half on the Afrosiyob — and where it does not, a road day is a road day: Kathmandu to Pokhara is six to eight hours, nine in the monsoon. Which legs join cleanly and which force a backtrack is set out on multi-country routing.

The two-countries-in-two-weeks rule

Two countries fit inside a fortnight and three do not. The arithmetic is visible in our own catalogue if you hold it against the table above.

Jordan and Oman in 16 days holds fifteen nights, which is Jordan’s minimum of seven plus Oman’s of eight exactly, with the flight day absorbed by the Muscat arrival. Japan and Korea in 18 days holds seventeen: Japan’s ten and Korea’s seven, again to the night. Neither route is padded and neither has slack in it. Take three nights out of either and one of the two countries drops below the line where it was worth the visit.

Sixteen days is the length at which two countries become comfortable rather than tight. Fourteen works when the two share a border and a short flight; it does not work when the second country needs an internal flight of its own once you are in it.

Why three countries need about three weeks

Add the minimums for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and you get twenty-two nights. Our 22-day Grand Indochina holds twenty-one, and it spends seven nights in Vietnam, five in Laos, five in Cambodia and four days moving. Every one of those three countries is therefore sitting slightly below its own single-country minimum.

That is the compromise three countries makes, and it is an honest one at twenty-two days because what each country loses is a region rather than a reason. At sixteen days the same three countries lose the reason. Something has to go, and what usually goes is Laos, which is the country most people write to us about a year later.

Four countries needs the length to match: the 28-day Asia Crossing gives twenty-seven nights to Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and it is the shortest version of that route we are willing to write. Where three countries are sampled rather than travelled — India, Nepal and Bhutan in 21 days — the page says so: that journey takes one region of India, the Kathmandu valley and the Paro-to-Punakha corridor, and does not pretend to be three countries entire.

The first day, and what jet lag really takes

From Europe the time difference to Southeast Asia is five to seven hours, and from North America it is eleven to thirteen. Add a flight of twelve to twenty hours with a connection in it. The first day on the ground is not a sightseeing day, whatever the arrival time on the ticket says, and an itinerary that schedules a temple for that afternoon is written for the brochure rather than the traveller.

Our journeys leave day one empty on purpose. A transfer, a room, a walk if you want one, and nothing that has been paid for and must therefore be attended. It costs a night and it saves the two that follow, because a guide who starts with a party that slept is worth twice one who starts with a party that did not.

Two practical consequences. First, count arrival day as half a day when you are doing the arithmetic, and the departure day as none if the flight is a morning one. Second, put the hardest thing in the trip — the altitude, the early start, the long drive — on day three or four rather than day two. On a Nepal route or a Bhutan one, where altitude is doing its own work on you, that ordering is not a nicety.

When one country beats three

A shorter trip to one country beats a longer trip to three more often than the catalogue of any tour operator would suggest, and here is when.

When the trip is under sixteen days. At fourteen nights, three countries means roughly four nights each and three moving days, and nothing gets past its own first impression.
When one of the three is expensive. Bhutan carries a government fee of USD 100 per adult per night on top of the land cost, and Japan sits in the highest of our four country tiers. Adding either as a four-night sample buys the flight, the fee and the airport, and very little else.
When you are travelling with children, or with anyone for whom packing is an event. Nine bed changes in three weeks is a lot for an adult and too many for a seven-year-old; travelling with children is blunt about what actually ends a family day.
When the month suits one country and not the others. An October trip to northern Vietnam is a good trip; the same weeks on the central coast are the worst of the storm year. Chasing a second country into the wrong season is how a fortnight becomes two half-trips. That argument is set out month by month under when to go.
When you intend to come back. Two countries done properly leaves you knowing which one you want more of. Three done at speed leaves a blur and a set of photographs you cannot place.

The counter-case is real too, and we would be dishonest not to state it. If this is a single trip to a region you will not return to, and you have the days, then the longer route is the right purchase — that is precisely what the grand voyages are for, and why they start at sixteen days rather than twelve. The mistake is not length. The mistake is buying a grand voyage’s ambition on a country journey’s calendar.

Send the number of nights before the route

Tell us how many nights you actually have, including the flights, and what month they fall in. We will tell you what that number holds and what it does not, before anybody draws an itinerary.

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Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Is the minimum column really a minimum, or a sales figure?

It is the number below which we would rather you went somewhere else. Cambodia at six nights, for instance, is three temple days at Angkor, a night in Phnom Penh and the 50 km run back to the airport. At four nights the three-day Angkor pass at USD 62 stops making sense against the one-day pass at USD 37, and that is a fair signal that the trip is too short.

We do sell journeys at the minimum. What we will not do is sell a country at half its minimum as part of a longer route and describe it as having been visited.

Can we save a day by taking a night flight between countries?

Sometimes, and it is worth pricing. A late departure that lands at dawn buys back most of a day if the hotel at the far end will give you an early check-in, which we ask for and which costs a half-night rate in most of Asia.

It works badly where the onward leg is long or the arrival is at altitude. It also works badly on carriers whose punctuality does not support it: within Vietnam, for example, Vietnam Airlines runs at roughly 77% on time against VietJet at about 55%, and a 55% chance is not something to hang a connection on. More of that is on flying within Asia.

How many nights should one city get?

Three is the working default for a major city and four where the day trips are the point. Tokyo and Kyoto take three to four each; Angkor takes three to four; Samarkand takes two to three; Petra takes two, and the ticket agrees with us, since a second day costs 55 JOD against 50 for one.

Two nights anywhere means one full day, because arrival afternoon and departure morning are not days. That is the arithmetic behind almost every itinerary we redraw for a client who has written their own.

We have exactly two weeks. What is the best use of it?

One country at its comfortable number, or two at their minimums. Thirteen nights gives you Vietnam at twelve with a spare, Japan at ten with three to breathe, or Sri Lanka at nine plus four somewhere south Indian.

What it does not give you is three countries, an internal flight in each and a day at either end. If someone has quoted you that, count the moving days in the itinerary they sent and see how many are left. The per-day cost of what remains is the number that matters, and how a quote is built explains where it goes.