General Travel

Have been meaning to post this since I completed a personal goal of visiting all 11 Southeast Asian countries in November last year, but have decided to give a good thought before I post what is probably the most candid entry in this blog so far.

As a traveler, I consider myself privileged to be living in one of the most diverse geographical locations on the planet. I could not imagine any other region (apart from Central Europe, maybe) with so many varied destinations within a 3-hour radius. Southeast Asia is not merely a hodgepodge of people but also notably full of biodiversity hotspots, ancient empires in ruins, and it is also home to some of the world’s most interesting cities.

In my travels through these eleven countries, I found the distribution quite uneven. There were some countries that I really liked, have made multiple trips to and would enjoy returning to in the future. Then, there were also countries where I felt a 7-hour trip was more than enough.

I shall make mention of all these. But a warning to the reader – do note that I am being subjective and providing a personal assessment of these places I have visited. For those who disagree with my views, they’re very much welcome to provide me with return tickets for me to have another look-see….

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There was a time when I resorted to collecting in-flight magazines of every airline I used just so I can check out their route maps and plan my future trips accordingly. It’s hard to believe but even during the internet age, many airlines initially did not post their route maps on their websites; leaving prospective passengers guessing how to get from Point A to Point B.

Later on, I discovered that Wikipedia had a fairly reliable list of destinations for almost all operating passenger aircraft carriers. While the information was exhaustive, it lacked one crucial element. It still did not state Point A to Point B destinations, the best it could do was provide a list of all destinations served by various carriers.

Then came Openflights, which provides a wealth of information for people who have trips in mind. I can simply type any airport code in the search field (i.e. SIN) and it generates all the direct routes from that airport on the map, complete with distance and flight duration. Alternatively, I can input any airline and it will show all the routes being served. As of now, it does not show flight schedules – but even then, Openflights is a very handy tool for those who want to plan their trips efficiently.

a sample query for London Heathrow Airport which generated over 500+ direct routes