Chiang Mai & Hội An Est. 2011 60–70 journeys a year
The rain is not the problem. The calendar is.
Private, self-designed journeys through Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia — planned around the monsoon rather than in spite of it. We are a planning studio of nine people, not a booking engine.
How we plan
Most of Southeast Asia is sold as one weather system with one rainy season. It isn’t. The Andaman coast of Thailand and the Gulf coast are wet at opposite ends of the year, ninety minutes apart by road. Bali dries out in April; Hội An floods in October. We start every itinerary from a rainfall table, then work outwards.
That single habit is why we turn down about a fifth of the trips we’re asked to build. If you have one week in September and you want the Similan Islands, there is no version of that week we can make good — so we say so, and we offer you the Gulf instead.
Everything after that is ordinary craft. Anchalee has been driving the northern Thai hill roads since 2007. Hà grew up four streets from the Thu Bồn river and can tell you which November mornings the water will be over the doorstep. Between us we run sixty-odd journeys a year and we know the people on the other end of every one.
The five mornings
Most journeys are
built around four or
five real mornings.
Everything between them is transfer, rest and lunch. So we fix the mornings first — to a tide table, a moon phase, a harvest window or a 4am start — and let the rest of the trip arrange itself around them.
See the eleven journeys
Sapa · late May
Terraces, flooded
Mirror season · 6 weeks only
Bromo · 04:15
The sand sea, before light
East Java · June to September
Hội An · dry months
Old town, after the boats
March, April, February
Chiang Mai · 06:30
Muang Mai, at opening
With Ploy · two hours
We book the tide,
not the day.
The sea caves at Phang Nga are only passable for about ninety minutes either side of low water. In a given week that might be 05:50 or it might be 13:20. We read the table, then write the day around it.
Month by month
The thing nobody tells you
Thailand has two
rainy seasons.
They don’t overlap.
Phuket and Koh Samui are 280 kilometres apart and sit on opposite sides of the peninsula. The Andaman side takes the south-west monsoon from May to October. The Gulf side takes the north-east monsoon from October to December. September on Phuket is a write-off; September on Samui is close to perfect.
Which means that in practice there is exactly one window a year — roughly 18 February to 22 April — when both coasts are dry at the same time. We run our two-coast journey six times, and only then.
Open the month-by-month plannerAndaman coast
Phuket · KrabiWettest in September — 340 mm. Similan National Park closes 16 May and reopens 15 October.
Gulf coast
Samui · Koh TaoWettest in November — 470 mm, when the Andaman has already been dry for a fortnight.
Mean monthly rainfall, mm. Lacquer bars mark the months we’d steer you to the other coast.
Three of eleven
Written for one
window each.
Every journey below is a starting shape, not a package. Roughly 70% of what we send out gets rewritten at least once before anybody flies. Prices are per person per day, everything on the ground included.
All eleven, filterable
The Two Coasts
Andaman for the first six nights, the Gulf for the last six, across the isthmus by road in the middle. Only possible in one window a year.
The Mirrored Terraces
Hà Giang and Sapa in the six weeks the terraces hold water and turn the whole valley into sky. Late May into early July, never later.
Komodo, Dry
Five nights on a wooden phinisi out of Labuan Bajo, then up to Wae Rebo in the Flores highlands while the mornings are still clear.
Hội An office
“Every October a few travellers arrive expecting the lanterns and find the river in the street instead. We could take their money. We’d rather move them to March and keep them for fifteen years.”
Joined Anchalee in 2013 · Hội An
From the last two years
What people write
when they get home.
Anchalee told us flatly that our September dates wouldn’t work for Phuket and rebuilt the whole thing around Samui in four days. We’d have booked the wrong coast and blamed Thailand.
Marianne & Job de VriesRotterdam · Gulf Coast, 9 nights
The 4am start at Bromo is the only time I have ever been genuinely glad to be woken in the dark. Rahmat had flasks of ginger tea in the jeep and knew the one viewpoint without a coach park.
Priya RaghunathanSingapore · Bromo Before Light, 9 nights
Third trip with them. What you’re paying for is the twenty small decisions you’d have made wrong — the boat at 05:50 instead of 09:00, the north side of the island instead of the south.
Douglas MbekiLondon · The Two Coasts, 12 nights
We travelled with a seven and a nine-year-old and at no point did it feel like a compromise. Hà built in two proper do-nothing days and those turned out to be the ones the kids talk about.
Clara BergströmMalmö · Bali, The Other Side, 10 nights
The terraces at Sapa were full of water and the whole hillside was sky. I have been shown that photograph for years without anyone mentioning it lasts about six weeks.
Tomás HerreraMexico City · The Mirrored Terraces, 11 nights
They turned down our first enquiry. Said one week in the wet season on the wrong coast wasn’t a trip they could be proud of. We came back in April and they were right.
Aoife DonnellyDublin · Andaman Reef Weeks, 10 nights
Planning now for the dry belt, February to May
Tell us the
weeks you can
actually get away.
We’ll tell you where
they work.
Three questions, about four minutes. If your dates don’t suit the country you had in mind, we’ll say so in the first reply rather than the fourth. Anchalee or Hà answers within one working day.