Southeast Asia
4 curated road trips
- Ho Chi Minh RoadThe legendary wartime trail reborn as a mountain highway, from Hanoi south through the Annamite highlands, past ethnic minority villages, crumbling imperial citadels, and coastal passes to Ho Chi Minh City.
- Highway 500The Crocker Range Biosphere Reserve rising above Kota Kinabalu, where truck drivers rig plastic pipes to drip cooling water onto their brake drums on the descent, and the road passes through vibrant jungle villages to the Rafflesia Information Centre, home of the world's most pungent flower.
- Dili to BaliboNot for the faint-hearted, this trail bike or 4WD-only road winds through small, pretty villages and very green countryside to Maliana (capital of Bobonaro), then a short hike to the old Portuguese fort at Balibo. Falintil used this road extensively in the Indonesian invasion of 1975; the five journalists known as the Balibo Five were killed here. The Australian Defence Forces considered it too dangerous to use.
- Flores, IndonesiaAcross the extraordinary island of Flores, from the Komodo dragon territory of Labuan Bajo through Portuguese colonial Ruteng and the spider-web rice paddies of Cancar, up to Bajawa's megalithic Ngada villages, the ikat-weaving towns of Maumere, and Kelimutu's three crater lakes that change colour between turquoise, red, and black.