Asia

Your friends and family might think you’re crazy for wanting to travel to Pakistan, but you’re not alone: plenty of women are doing it. Come prepared, and the country will welcome you with open arms.

Seeing female porters in Nepal isn’t really the norm; the trekking industry here is very much male-dominated. Women are generally considered to be not strong enough, not fast enough. But these women look pretty strong to me.

There’s not much to see out here. Rice paddies, villages, a few roadside stands selling fruit and eggs. You certainly wouldn’t expect a tourism project; a village-run community of homestays and activities for international travellers. But that’s exactly what you’ll find at Madi Valley.

“Please don’t walk around after dark,” Mohan, the village chief, tells us as he shows us around in the late afternoon sun. “We had an elephant come through last night.”

Vietnam may not immediately spring to mind when you think about the craft beer scene, but interesting new lagers and IPAs have been brewing away in the country for years.

As the most important group of people in Nepal’s trekking industry, porters tend to be treated the worst. Meet the NGO working to fix it.

While Halong Bay may be one of Vietnam’s shining stars, Cat Ba Island is a hidden gem. Here’s why you should add it to your travel itinerary now.

Most people tend to focus their Cambodia itinerary on Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, perhaps with a jaunt along the coast thrown in. Between the temples of Angkor and the bright lights of the capital, there’s a whole country waiting to be explored.

If you want to see the face of overtourism, take a plane to Phnom Penh and catch a bumpy five-hour bus to Sihanoukville – a once-sleepy town on a little peninsula in the Gulf of Thailand. Sihanoukville is the jewel of Cambodia’s tourism industry. Or at least it used to be.