Travel Guides

Sri Lanka is the rare destination where you can watch leopards at dawn, walk a 2,000-year-old city before lunch, and be swimming off a palm-backed beach by late afternoon — all in the same week, often within a few hours' drive.

The island is compact, roughly the size of Tasmania, but it holds 8 World Heritage sites, 26 national parks, a hill country carpeted in tea, and 1,300 kilometres of coastline. The variety per kilometre travelled is unmatched anywhere in Asia.

It's also a place of enormous warmth and layered cultures — Sinhalese, Tamil, Moor and Burgher — visible in the temples, mosques, churches and kovils that often sit within sight of one another. Sri Lanka has recovered from recent economic difficulty, and travellers are genuinely welcomed.

Explore our Sri Lanka Tour Packages to see how it comes together as a journey.

South Korea packs an extraordinary amount into a peninsula roughly the size of Tasmania — mountain temples and glass towers, royal palaces and pop culture, and a food scene that has quietly become one of Asia's most exciting.

Seventy percent of the country is mountainous, which means that even in its densest regions you're rarely far from a granite ridge, a national park or a hillside monastery. Twenty-two national parks sit within a few hours of the capital.

The country is astonishingly easy to travel: high-speed KTX trains connect the major cities in a couple of hours, transport runs on time, English signage is good, and it's among the safest places in the world to walk at night.

What most visitors are unprepared for is the depth of the history — a continuous cultural record stretching back two millennia, preserved with real care and set directly against one of the most modern societies on earth.

Explore our South Korea Tour Packages to see how we bring the regions together.

China is less a country than a continent — 4,000 years of continuous civilisation spread across deserts, river deltas, karst mountains and megacities, with a cuisine that changes completely every few hundred kilometres.

The scale is the first thing to reckon with. China spans five geographic time zones while officially keeping one, holds more than 100 cities of over a million people, and contains 56 recognised ethnic groups. No single trip covers it — the art is in choosing well.

Travel has become dramatically easier. The high-speed rail network is the largest on earth and has turned journeys that once took days into a matter of hours, while the hotel industry at the upper end now rivals anywhere in Asia.

Explore our China Tour Packages to see how we build a coherent route through it.

Nearly 1,200 coral islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, of which fewer than 200 are inhabited — the Maldives is the most concentrated expression of the tropical ideal anywhere on earth.

In the Maldives, choosing an island matters far more than choosing a region — and this guide covers exactly how to do that, plus when to go, how long to stay, and what it costs.

The country is arranged into 26 natural atolls — ring-shaped coral formations enclosing turquoise lagoons — spread over 800 kilometres of ocean. Its highest natural point is under three metres above sea level, making it the flattest nation in the world and giving it that unmistakable sense of floating.

What makes it exceptional is the model: most resorts occupy an entire private island, so your hotel is the island and the island is the hotel. There is no passing traffic, no town beyond the trees, and often no other property in sight.

Explore our Maldives Tour Packages to see the range.

Thailand is the country that made Southeast Asia easy — and then quietly kept a great deal of itself in reserve. Beyond the beaches and the famous street food lies a landscape of ruined capitals, teak temples and river towns that most visitors never reach.

Thailand is the only nation in Southeast Asia never colonised, and that continuity shows: in a monarchy and a Buddhist practice woven through daily life, in an architectural tradition that developed without interruption, and in a confidence that makes the country feel welcoming rather than deferential.

Thailand stretches from the misty hills of the Lao and Burmese borders to a tropical isthmus with a coastline on two separate seas — which is why it can offer trekking, temple ruins and world-class diving in a single fortnight. Travel here is straightforward and excellent value.

Explore our Thailand Tour Packages to see the shape of a full itinerary.

Vietnam runs 1,700 kilometres down the eastern edge of Indochina, and it changes character every few hours of that journey — terraced mountains in the north, imperial cities in the centre, and a delta in the south where life is lived on the water.

Vietnam is a country that rewards travellers who slow down. The scenery is spectacular, but what people remember is the texture: a bowl of pho eaten on a plastic stool at six in the morning, a lantern-lit street in the rain, a grandmother expertly threading a motorbike through a crowded market.

Vietnam is remarkably good value, deeply safe, and increasingly well connected. A coastline of nearly 3,500 kilometres carries a new generation of resorts, while the interior remains genuinely rural — rice, coffee, buffalo and limestone.

Explore our Vietnam Tour Packages to see how we build these regions into a single seamless journey.

Japan rewards curiosity like almost nowhere else. In a single week you can stand beneath a thousand vermilion gates, sleep on tatami in a mountain farmhouse, and eat the best meal of your life standing up at a counter with eight seats.

Japan is a long, narrow archipelago stretching roughly 3,000 kilometres from the subtropical south to the snowbound north — which is why the country can offer cherry blossoms and ski season in the same month. Four main islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku) carry almost all of the population, with the Okinawan chain trailing toward Taiwan.

Three-quarters of the land is mountainous and largely uninhabited, which is why cities feel so dense and the countryside so empty. The country combines extraordinary contrasts with an almost unreasonable attention to detail — in its trains, its gardens, its food, its manners.

First-time visitors are usually surprised by how easy Japan is to travel: the rail network runs to the minute, cities are safe at any hour, and the welcome extended to travellers is genuine.

Explore our Japan Tour Packages to see how we build these regions into a single seamless journey.