Asia Trip Itinerary: 9 Countries and 16 Flights in 4 Weeks

Guess how many flights fit into 4 weeks in Asia? We took 16 — plus one Shinkansen and a few buses — through 9 countries between July 29 and August 27, 2026. Seven of those countries were new to me, #80 to #86, and a hot, crowded day on the Great Wall of China closed my list of the New 7 Wonders of the World at 7/7. This post is the overview: the route, and the few things that made 16 flights feel easy.

The travel style, as I put it on Threads halfway through: not budget, but simplified luxury. Cheap regional flights, a lounge before most of them, and rooms picked for a bathtub or a sea view rather than a brand.

Every flight is on my travel map — it replays all my flights in order, so you can watch this trip draw itself across Asia.

#Asia trip itinerary: the full route

Dates	Where	Highlight	Read more
Jul 30	Beijing, China	16-hour layover and a free Great Wall tour	Beijing layover
Jul 31 – Aug 1	Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam	The riverside walking street at night	Vietnam
Aug 1–6	Da Nang, Vietnam	An intro dive, Dragon Bridge by electric scooter	Vietnam
Aug 6	Bangkok, Thailand	The Grand Palace area after closing time	Bangkok
Aug 7–8	Vientiane, Laos	Overland from Udon Thani, a 2-hour massage for $20 for two	Laos
Aug 8–9	Bangkok, Thailand	Baiyoke Sky, 83rd floor, with friends	Bangkok
Aug 9–11	Taipei, Taiwan	Local food and a sunset hill instead of Taipei 101	Taipei
Aug 11–14	Seoul, South Korea	Lotte World Tower before sunset	Seoul
Aug 14–17	Kyoto, Japan	Gozan no Okuribi bonfires on the mountains	Kyoto & Tokyo
Aug 17–18	Mt. Fuji, Japan	Up the Subashiri trail, down the Yoshida trail	Climbing Mt. Fuji
Aug 18–20	Tokyo, Japan	A public bath and Shibuya Crossing	Kyoto & Tokyo
Aug 20–24	Siargao, Philippines	Fireflies in the mangroves, surfing at Cloud 9	Siargao
Aug 25	Singapore	Gardens by the Bay between two flights	Below
Aug 26–27	Beijing, China	CCTV Headquarters and a lounge massage	Beijing layover

The new countries, in order: China (#80), Vietnam, Laos, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines (#86). Thailand was a revisit — my 3rd time in Bangkok, if not 4th — and so was Singapore. Japan was the main highlight, and Mt. Fuji — where we also got engaged — the best part of it.

#How the trip was shaped: one long-haul ticket and many cheap flights

The backbone was a single Air China round trip: Warsaw → Beijing → Ho Chi Minh City, and the same way back, at about $1,000 per person. It was booked on a card that came with lounge access and travel insurance for whoever held it — though the insurance only covered the countries printed on the ticket, China and Vietnam. Comfortable seats, good food, and a long layover in Beijing in both directions — which, thanks to visa-free transit and a free airport tour, turned into sightseeing. The Beijing post has the details.

Everything in between was a chain of short, mostly low-cost flights — VietJet, Thai Vietjet, AirAsia, Jeju Air, Cebu Pacific, Scoot. On the map it looks like a scribble, but most legs were simply the cheapest way to the next place. In Laos, for example, flying Bangkok → Udon Thani and crossing into Vientiane by road came out about $150 per person cheaper than flying straight to Vientiane.

9 countries in 4 weeks sounds rushed. It mostly wasn't: 5 nights in Da Nang and 4 on Siargao balanced out the one-night sprints. Some legs were brutal, though — our flight from Cebu to Singapore left at 2 am.

#Airport lounge access card: free lounges at almost every airport

The most useful thing in my wallet on this trip was a monobank card. monobank is a Ukrainian neobank, and its premium cards come as a pair: the Visa Infinite gives DragonPass access, the Mastercard World Elite gives LoungeKey. When I checked in September 2026, entry was free as long as you'd spent ₴10,000 or more over a 30-day window that excludes the last 5 days and the departure day. Mine is the Platinum tier, ₴300 a month (roughly $7), or nothing if you spend ₴40,000+.

We used a lounge at most airports on the route, twice in one day at Changi. In Beijing, it came with a free 30-minute massage and an hour of rest. With 16 flights, many of them early or overnight, a meal and a nap before boarding changed how tired we were at the other end. Not sponsored — I just really liked it.

I'm not sure it's worth a monthly fee if you fly twice a year. For a trip like this one, it wasn't even close.

#Staying online: local SIMs, eSIMs, and the cheapest deal I found

Connectivity followed a rough progression as we crossed borders. Local SIMs in Vietnam and Laos — the Laos one bought right at the border. An eSIM for China and Thailand next: the China one a roaming eSIM, so the traffic leaves mainland China and Google Maps works without a VPN (more in the Beijing post). In Taipei and Seoul I think I bought a fresh eSIM from an app on the App Store each time we landed, and in Kyoto I'd bought a cheaper one online ahead of time — 14 days, about 10 GB.

From the Philippines onward I found Trip.com's app sells its own cheap daily eSIMs, and they turned out to be the best deal of the whole trip — as far as I can tell, they resell a large eSIM marketplace rather than issuing their own. Nine countries in, my takeaway is that connectivity is a solved problem now: you land, get on the airport Wi-Fi, and buy and install an eSIM right there.

I also drowned my phone and my drone's controller right before departure, so the trip doubled as a shopping run: a new iPhone in Da Nang, a new DJI controller in Taipei. The iPhone 17 Pro Max, by the way, couldn't last 12 hours of normal use in Low Power Mode. In 2026.

#Visas and entry paperwork on a Ukrainian passport

What a Ukrainian passport needed when we went, in July and August 2026, in trip order:

Country	What we needed
China	Nothing for the layovers: 240-hour visa-free transit
Vietnam	Multiple-entry e-visa — we entered twice, on Jul 31 and Aug 25
Thailand	Visa-free, plus the online Thailand Digital Arrival Card
Laos	E-visa, accepted at the Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge near Vientiane
Taiwan	A sticker visa from the Taipei office in Warsaw — Ukraine isn't on Taiwan's visa-exempt list
South Korea	A C-3-9 short-term visa, applied for in person in Warsaw — the only one that came without a passport sticker
Japan	A sticker visa from the embassy in Warsaw
Philippines	eVisa (single entry) plus the eTravel registration
Singapore	Visa-free transit for up to 96 hours — see the Singapore section below

The sticker visas were the slow part: they're issued in person, so the trip started with two round trips from Kraków to embassies in Warsaw. The Philippine eVisa, by contrast, came through fast.

Rules change often, so check the official sites before booking. Each country post has what we actually did.

#Is Japan expensive? Prices, maps and languages across the trip

Day to day, Tokyo, Kyoto and Seoul didn't feel more expensive than Warsaw — sometimes Warsaw was the pricier one. The Philippines was the opposite: cheap food and services, but expensive housing. Our beachfront villa on Siargao came out at about $150 a night.

Google isn't the default everywhere. China blocks it, which I expected. South Korea surprised me more: Google Maps opened fine but couldn't build walking routes, so we switched to a local map app. Korea approved exporting its map data to Google only in February 2026, with conditions, after turning Google down in 2007 and 2016 — so walking directions may show up soon.

And websites kept guessing my language wrong. Thai, Korean and Japanese sites confidently served me pages I couldn't read — while having English versions. My browser tells every site which language I prefer through the Accept-Language header; many of them seem to go by location instead. As an engineer, this one hurt :)

#Singapore layover: Gardens by the Bay between flights

The way home was a relay: Siargao → Cebu, a night in a $17 guesthouse on Mactan, a Scoot flight out of Cebu at 2 am, Singapore at 5:45, and the next flight to Ho Chi Minh City at 16:00. Ten hours — too long to sit in the airport, too short for anything ambitious.

It was my second time in Singapore. The first one, in 2022, was an accident: we found out mid-layover that we needed a visa for Indonesia and explored Singapore for a couple of days instead.

A Ukrainian passport normally needs a visa for Singapore, but Ukrainians can use the Visa-Free Transit Facility: up to 96 hours when you're travelling to or from a third country and leave Singapore by air on an onward ticket. You also submit the free SG Arrival Card within 3 days before arrival (the arrival day counts). That's what got us through this time — no visa, just the onward ticket and the arrival card.

We spent the first hours in a Changi lounge, and around 9:30 a Grab took us to Gardens by the Bay, the park on Marina Bay with the Supertrees. Walking among them — 18 structures, 25–50 meters tall — is free; the Flower Dome, which Guinness once listed as the world's largest glass greenhouse, and the Cloud Forest are ticketed. My fiancée went into the Cloud Forest and came out impressed, if a little tired of the crowds; I stuck to walking the free part of the park. Three hours in the city was about the limit in that heat anyway.

We bought a few souvenirs at the gardens and even got a small GST refund for them through Global Blue. Singapore's Tourist Refund Scheme needs at least S$100 (including GST) from one retailer, and you can combine up to three same-day receipts to get there.

Around 12:30 we took a Grab back to Changi, visited the lounge for the second time that day, and flew on to Ho Chi Minh City.

After one more night there and the second Beijing layover, a night flight landed us in Warsaw at 6:55 in the morning. We met friends in Warsaw and were home in Kraków the same day. I'm at 86 countries now. Tokyo is the best city I've ever seen, a few days there were absolutely not enough, and I already want to go back.