Arrive in Ho Chi Minh City, once called Saigon. Our representative meets you at the airport and takes you across to the hotel; the rest of the day is yours.

The morning goes to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a warren dug out beneath the fields, and to the story of how it was used during the Vietnam War. Afterwards a guide walks you through Saigon: the Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral, Ben Thanh Market and Dong Khoi Street.

Head down into the Mekong Delta for a day among canals shaded by palms, small temples and busy markets. Lunch is cooked from produce grown on the doorstep. Then the road to Can Tho.

An early departure for the floating markets at Cai Rang. A small boat carries you through channels crowded with traders selling fruit and vegetables off their decks. Over in Chau Giang District stands a small mosque built for the Cham community, Hindu long ago and Muslim since medieval encounters with Arab sailors and merchants. A fine Khmer temple follows, along with the floating houses that work as catfish farms underneath.

A speedboat runs you up to the Cambodian border, then on to Phnom Penh along the Mekong River. Later comes a cruise on the legendary Mekong and the Tonle Sap River, past floating fishing villages, closing with sunset behind the Phnom Penh skyline.

See Phnom Penh from a cyclo, the local bicycle rickshaw. On the list are Wat Phnom, the National Museum, the Silver Pagoda, plus the Royal Palace where King Norodom Sihamoni lives. The Central Market is a maze of stalls piled with CDs and DVDs, silk, handicrafts, jewelry and much else. Then Tuol Sleng Museum, a former high school turned by the Khmer Rouge into a place of interrogation and torture.

The drive to Siem Reap breaks at Skun, notorious for its Spider Market, and again at Kampong Thom for the Naga Bridge.

A pre-dawn start puts you in front of Angkor Wat temple as the sun comes up, with a proper breakfast in a nearby restaurant afterwards. Next comes Angkor Thom through its southern gate, the 'Great City', where stone faces 23m (75-foot) tall look down, familiar from the Tomb Raider film. Bayon, the state temple raised in the 12th century, stands at the heart of it, hundreds more giant faces carved into its towers. At a pagoda close by, a monk gives a blessing, an unstaged moment of real life that stays with people. Ta Prohm lingers longest of all: enormous trees whose thick roots have wrapped themselves around the walls.

Out to the floating village of Kampong Kleang, then by boat between the stilted fishing settlements on Tonle Sap, the largest lake anywhere in Southeast Asia. The afternoon belongs to Banteay Srei, dedicated in 967 A.D. and cut from red sandstone, its decorative wall carvings still crisp enough to read detail by detail. Banteay Samre temple is seen on the return leg.

By road to Poipet and over the frontier into Thailand, where a guide is waiting to bring you to your Bangkok hotel.

Begin at the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, home to the Emerald Buddha, an image Thais hold most sacred of all. Wat Pho comes next, among the oldest and biggest temples in the city, sheltering an enormous gilded Reclining Buddha. Rattanakosin Island is where Bangkok began, the ground it stood on when the capital was founded more than 200 years ago. Finish aboard a longtail boat for a klong tour on the Chao Phraya River, pausing at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn.

The day is yours to use as you please. There is time for one last shopping run through any of the malls Bangkok has in such abundance, or you can stay put beside the hotel swimming pool and book a spa treatment.

Departure day. The trip ends here, though the stories travel home with you and will be told for a good while yet. A transfer takes you out to the airport in time for your onward flights.