Dilemma: Inter-railing or SE Asia for summer?

lukiej · 30-11-2011 02:33AM #1

Right,

I've done two summers in America and loved every bit of both of them but want to try something different this summer. Im 21. Iv done a bit of research into inter-railing and into Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

iv read a good bit of stuff on both ideas on here, and from what I could gather, to do SE Asia properly, you'd want a good 3 months, that would be to cover, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. I plan on working for June and July and heading off for August.
Is a month to 6 weeks max too short for SE Asia?

My other option was inter-railing, starting with the Tomorrowland festival in Belgium, moving on to Amsterdam - Berlin - Prague - Krakow - Budapest - Ljubljana - Zagreb - Split and then home. This would be over a 4-5 week period.

They are the two options Im thinking of?

Wondering which one you guys would recommend for the time frame? Am I including places that are not worthwhile? Am I leaving out places that are worthwhile?

Any advice would help!
Cheers!

okiss · 30-11-2011 02:49AM

The trip your planning be inter rail could be expensive to do due to the number of countries you are planning to go to
see eurail.com for more information and costs.

Do you know that if you go from London Victoria with eurolines.co.uk you can get a bus/ferry or channel tunnel to a lot of Europe cities which could be cheaper.
They also a eurolines mini pass which includes a few cities stop and you have this for up to 90 days. I have contacted them recently about the journeys they will do in 2012 under this and they will have details up on the site in Feb 2012.

JayC5 · 30-11-2011 12:34PM

lukiej wrote: »

Right,

I've done two summers in America and loved every bit of both of them but want to try something different this summer. Im 21. Iv done a bit of research into inter-railing and into Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

Go to SE Asia!!! Forget about Europe, SEA is cheap, warm and full of nice looking fillies

I've been to Thailand and Cambodia and loved both places. Check out Chiang Mai in Thailand and Phnom Penh / Siem Reap in Cambodia - I also hear that Sihanoukville is a good spot. Why not try and fit in Laos and/or Vietnam also?

Anway, in summary, asia will give you more bang for your buck (accom for $5-10 a night!?), better weather, better food and amazing beaches if you go to the right place. Don't bother with internal flights when you get there either, just bus it or use night-trains. Do it! you can go to Europe anytime, it's only an hour or two away

mectavba · 30-11-2011 12:40PM

I am presuming you are in college OP?

If I was to choose one I would go for the interrailling option. It is the perfect trip for the 4-6 weeks you have. SEA can wait until, maybe, you are finished college and have more time to go travelling or you do it en route to OZ or whatever.

Most people dont really take time to travel through Europe when they go on longer trips, so it's a great opportunity to do it now. It's a great route you have chosen as well, I did something very similar years ago. In Croatia, you could probably skip Zagreb and maybe Split. Dubrovnik might have become a major tourist mecca recently, but is still definitely worth seeing. You should definitely try make it out to one of the islands too, Hvar being the most popular. I would also make sure you stop in Munich along the way.

Check out the interrail passes. They can sometimes be very good value, sometimes not. You might want to mix and match a bit. Trains are very expensive in Germany, but then dirt cheap (mostly) in Eastern Europe. Some trains you have to pay a supplement on even if you have the pass as well.

Plus, if you are into festivals try as hard as you can to get to Budapest for Sziget, it's in August.

Just my 2 cents, you will have a ball if you go to SEA as well I'm sure.

lukiej · 30-11-2011 03:24PM

okiss wrote: »

The trip your planning be inter rail could be expensive to do due to the number of countries you are planning to go to
see eurail.com for more information and costs.

Do you know that if you go from London Victoria with eurolines.co.uk you can get a bus/ferry or channel tunnel to a lot of Europe cities which could be cheaper.
They also a eurolines mini pass which includes a few cities stop and you have this for up to 90 days. I have contacted them recently about the journeys they will do in 2012 under this and they will have details up on the site in Feb 2012.

I may be wrong here as Im new to interrailing but i looked on interrailnet.com and found the global pass which gives me access to 30 countries for €409? I think this is a resonable price considering the countries I hope to cover? are there additional costs of trains that I may not be aware of? From what I could gather once you buy that pass you can hop on whichever train you want within that month? Correct me if Im wrong please! Also do you know how much money I would need for the trip? rough estimate?

lukiej · 30-11-2011 03:31PM

mectavba wrote: »

I am presuming you are in college OP?

If I was to choose one I would go for the interrailling option. It is the perfect trip for the 4-6 weeks you have. SEA can wait until, maybe, you are finished college and have more time to go travelling or you do it en route to OZ or whatever.

ya I was thinking the same to be honest but just wanted to get peoples view on here. As iv said iv done America twice, California both times and loved it, but want to try something new. The reason I thought of interrailing is because I dont know if I would ever do it again if I dont do it this summer, the following summer I will probably be doing a post grad and after that probably heading to Oz or somewhere, maybe then I could take some time to do Thailand and SE Asia properly. Getting back to interrailing, can you give me any advice on the cities I have included, I have heard very good things about Slovenia and Croatia and the surrounding islands? How much spending money is needed? and would 5 weeks be enough time to cover that route?

R.D. aka MR.D · 30-11-2011 05:35PM

I would go to SE Asia. But maybe that's because i think that i can see europe when i'm older without too much hassle whereas being old in a backpacking context might be weird.

dory · 30-11-2011 07:23PM

I agree, Europe is for oldies.

You can always fly to a European city when you're in a 9-5 and only have long weekends to see the world. Go to SE Asia!

lukiej · 30-11-2011 09:03PM

hmm... really cant decide! would I not want more than 4-5 weeks to see SE Asia properly? I know that if I dont do interrailing now I never will! whereas Im thinking I can do SE Asia when I finish college over a longer period of time? But then again SE Asia does sound very appealing! Thanks for advice so far. I'll see what others have to say!

Todd Gack · 01-12-2011 12:12AM

SE Asia in 6 weeks is doable, you'd just need to be either more picky about what you want to see or more rushed to get as much as possible in.

That said, I would definitely go inter-railing. It seems to be overlooked a bit more these days cause it's not as "exotic" but it's a great trip. The possibilities are endless and a train is the best way to travel. It'll cost more but if you can afford it then go for it as you've said you'll probably be heading to Australia in a few years so in all likelihood you'll have the opportunity to visit SE Asia then and you'll probably have as much time as you want.

I did inter-railing first and it's definitely up there with the best trips i've done, Europe is small in comparison to the rest of the world but has so much variety to offer so it's easier to do on a 4-6 week trip. Plus if you're a football fan you could work Euro 2012 into the trip.....big football tournaments are great craic, great buzz around everywhere.

Been to SE Asia a couple of times and it's great too but if you'll be heading there eventually you don't want to be thinking you're seeing the same places twice having missed out on most of Europe. A few of my own mates did the RTW route but missed out on inter-railing and regretted it. Some are married with kids so prob won't ever get the chance. You're better off doing it while you have the chance, Europe is on our doorstep but it's not going to see itself.

As Dory says most cities are a short weekend trip away but there's so many to see you could visit a few every year for decades. Plus you see a lot more on the actual train journeys themselves.

As for your route, it really depends on what you're into but if you're goin that way you should go down to Dubrovnik from Split. Lovely spot and a nice place to end a trip.

Good luck.

mectavba · 01-12-2011 11:40AM

Without trying to make this into a SEA v Europe thread (both would be great), I just think, given 5 weeks, interrailing is perfect.

I'm a little older than you OP and am glad I did interrailing one summer. I am going travelling next year and plan to do 3-4 months in SEA. In my year (or more) of travels I dont see myself going to much of Europe.

The other posters are right that you can visit places in Europe on weekend/week breaks, but that isn't the same as having 5 weeks there to get on a train and go wherever you want on a whim. You won't get to see everywhere, but you will get an idea of where you might like to go back to on shorter trips in the future.

I think 5 weeks would be plenty, but of course you could spend months doing that route and feel you haven't seen everything.

Amsterdam, Berlin are going to be expensive compared to the rest, but great cities. As I said in my last post, definitely consider Munich. I've not actually been to Krakow, but heard great things and it's supposed to be very cheap. Prague can be done on the cheap, but western Europe prices are definitely creeping into the main areas. I wasnt mad on Prague, but others rave about it. Maybe I just came across too many British stag parties.

Budapest is great, I've been back twice since I went interrailing, once for the Sziget festival. Really cheap. Ljubljana is cool for a couple of days and is a good place to break up the journey down to Croatia.

We did Ljubljana to Dubrovnik in one go. It's a long old journey. Forget about trains in Croatia (and more or less the rest of the Balkans). They are slower than the buses. From Ljub we got a train to Zagreb in the afternoon, then that evening got a night bus to Dubrovnik. Trains only go as far as Split, so you are going to have to bus it to Dubrovnik if you want to go down. Or else you could go to Split, go out to Hvar and then go on to Dubrovnik. It is possible to get a boat from Hvar to Dubrovnik as far as I know, but it's not a regular service so you might want to research that.
Croatia is great, but it is one of the more expensive places in Eastern Europe.

I got that global pass. I'm not convinced whether it was worth it though. If you are doing more of Western Europe it definitely is, because the trains are more or expensive. There are some trains that arent covered, but we used to just hop on whatever train we wanted. We did have to pay a bit extra on some of them. Of your 5 weeks, you will probably only spend a week between Amsterdam and Germany, maybe a couple in the Eastern Europe cities and then 10 days-2weeks in Slovenia/Croatia (you could also go on to Montengro easy enough). I'd get a calculator out and google as much as you can to see what the trains will cost, but remember there wil be extra transport costs in Croatia.

Re spending money, it's a bit of how long is a piece of string question. You should get hostels for between €10-€15 in most places...maybe closer to the €20 mark in Amsterdam/Berlin...and Dubrovnik. You will be in high season in Croatia so the islands could be up to €20 as well. Again do a search on hostelworld, it will give you a better idea. After that, a lot (if not most) will depend on how much you are going to booze. Again East is cheaper than west, except for having to watch out for the mega touristy places. Same as here, you get your pre booze in an off license to save cash. Food...depends if you want to eat out or are happy to go to suppermarket and cook yourself something.

If you want a ball park figure (I could be completely out of touch with some places) I would say, not including flights or train pass (if you get it) €1500-€2000 for 5 weeks would do it. It could be done cheaper and if you are going out to clubs every night you will certainly spend more.

lukiej · 01-12-2011 09:07PM

Todd Gack wrote: »

SE Asia in 6 weeks is doable, you'd just need to be either more picky about what you want to see or more rushed to get as much as possible in.

That said, I would definitely go inter-railing. It seems to be overlooked a bit more these days cause it's not as "exotic" but it's a great trip. The possibilities are endless and a train is the best way to travel. It'll cost more but if you can afford it then go for it as you've said you'll probably be heading to Australia in a few years so in all likelihood you'll have the opportunity to visit SE Asia then and you'll probably have as much time as you want.

I did inter-railing first and it's definitely up there with the best trips i've done, Europe is small in comparison to the rest of the world but has so much variety to offer so it's easier to do on a 4-6 week trip. Plus if you're a football fan you could work Euro 2012 into the trip.....big football tournaments are great craic, great buzz around everywhere.

Been to SE Asia a couple of times and it's great too but if you'll be heading there eventually you don't want to be thinking you're seeing the same places twice having missed out on most of Europe. A few of my own mates did the RTW route but missed out on inter-railing and regretted it. Some are married with kids so prob won't ever get the chance. You're better off doing it while you have the chance, Europe is on our doorstep but it's not going to see itself.

As Dory says most cities are a short weekend trip away but there's so many to see you could visit a few every year for decades. Plus you see a lot more on the actual train journeys themselves.

As for your route, it really depends on what you're into but if you're goin that way you should go down to Dubrovnik from Split. Lovely spot and a nice place to end a trip.

Good luck.

thanks for advice think Im gona go with Inter-railing, I thin if I dont do it this summer I probably never will!

lukiej · 01-12-2011 09:13PM

mectavba wrote: »

Without trying to make this into a SEA v Europe thread (both would be great), I just think, given 5 weeks, interrailing is perfect.

I'm a little older than you OP and am glad I did interrailing one summer. I am going travelling next year and plan to do 3-4 months in SEA. In my year (or more) of travels I dont see myself going to much of Europe.

The other posters are right that you can visit places in Europe on weekend/week breaks, but that isn't the same as having 5 weeks there to get on a train and go wherever you want on a whim. You won't get to see everywhere, but you will get an idea of where you might like to go back to on shorter trips in the future.

I think 5 weeks would be plenty, but of course you could spend months doing that route and feel you haven't seen everything.

Amsterdam, Berlin are going to be expensive compared to the rest, but great cities. As I said in my last post, definitely consider Munich. I've not actually been to Krakow, but heard great things and it's supposed to be very cheap. Prague can be done on the cheap, but western Europe prices are definitely creeping into the main areas. I wasnt mad on Prague, but others rave about it. Maybe I just came across too many British stag parties.

Budapest is great, I've been back twice since I went interrailing, once for the Sziget festival. Really cheap. Ljubljana is cool for a couple of days and is a good place to break up the journey down to Croatia.

We did Ljubljana to Dubrovnik in one go. It's a long old journey. Forget about trains in Croatia (and more or less the rest of the Balkans). They are slower than the buses. From Ljub we got a train to Zagreb in the afternoon, then that evening got a night bus to Dubrovnik. Trains only go as far as Split, so you are going to have to bus it to Dubrovnik if you want to go down. Or else you could go to Split, go out to Hvar and then go on to Dubrovnik. It is possible to get a boat from Hvar to Dubrovnik as far as I know, but it's not a regular service so you might want to research that.
Croatia is great, but it is one of the more expensive places in Eastern Europe.

I got that global pass. I'm not convinced whether it was worth it though. If you are doing more of Western Europe it definitely is, because the trains are more or expensive. There are some trains that arent covered, but we used to just hop on whatever train we wanted. We did have to pay a bit extra on some of them. Of your 5 weeks, you will probably only spend a week between Amsterdam and Germany, maybe a couple in the Eastern Europe cities and then 10 days-2weeks in Slovenia/Croatia (you could also go on to Montengro easy enough). I'd get a calculator out and google as much as you can to see what the trains will cost, but remember there wil be extra transport costs in Croatia.

Re spending money, it's a bit of how long is a piece of string question. You should get hostels for between €10-€15 in most places...maybe closer to the €20 mark in Amsterdam/Berlin...and Dubrovnik. You will be in high season in Croatia so the islands could be up to €20 as well. Again do a search on hostelworld, it will give you a better idea. After that, a lot (if not most) will depend on how much you are going to booze. Again East is cheaper than west, except for having to watch out for the mega touristy places. Same as here, you get your pre booze in an off license to save cash. Food...depends if you want to eat out or are happy to go to suppermarket and cook yourself something.

If you want a ball park figure (I could be completely out of touch with some places) I would say, not including flights or train pass (if you get it) €1500-€2000 for 5 weeks would do it. It could be done cheaper and if you are going out to clubs every night you will certainly spend more.

Mectavba, thanks for your reply, your info has really helped, I think Im gona go with Inter-railing to be honest, I know if I dont do it this summer I probably never will and hopefully get to SE Asia in the near future!

02-12-2011 03:17PM

Don't rush SEA.. I spent 2 months in Vietnam alone when I was backpacking last year. 3 weeks at least per country.

Dilemma: Inter-railing or SE Asia for summer?

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