Who makes this

Why it exists

Every mainstream planner optimises for speed, so it answers "Vientiane to Kuala Lumpur" with a flight. Nothing was answering the question I actually had, which was how to get there while staying on the ground. The operators in this region share no timetable and several publish nothing at all in English, so the answer was never one lookup — it was a fortnight of cross-referencing, and then a border post where the thing you read turned out not to be how it works.

This is that fortnight, done once and written down. 49 journeys and 17 frontiers, each with the mechanics rather than the brochure.

What is measured, and what is estimated

The distinction matters more than any single number here, so it is worth being exact about it.

Structural — which stations exist, which gauge the line is, which side of a frontier stamps you out and which stamps you in, whether a through service runs at all. These are facts about the network. They change rarely, and when they are wrong they are wrong in a way that can be corrected.

Indicative — durations and fares. Durations are typical scheduled running times, not promises. Fares move with the season, the class and the exchange rate, and are there to tell you whether a journey costs twenty dollars or two hundred, not what you will pay.

The one thing this site will not do is invent a departure time. The operators do not share a timetable, several do not publish one, and a plausible-looking 14:05 that does not exist is worse than useless at a border at night. You get frequencies and the connection buffers that actually hold.

How it is kept current

The network was last reviewed in 2026-07, and that date is generated from the data rather than typed into this sentence, so it cannot drift away from the truth while nobody is looking.

Things change here faster than anywhere I have travelled — a ferry operator folds, a line reopens, a crossing changes its visa rules with a fortnight's notice. If something here does not match what you found on the ground, that is the single most useful thing anyone can send me: hello@slowasia.com. Tell me the date you crossed and I will take your word over whatever the operator's website says.

What it costs you to use

Nothing, and that is not a trial. There is no account, no newsletter, no cookie banner and no analytics of any kind. On this website the planner's map is Google Maps, so opening the planner fetches map imagery from Google and Google receives those requests — the privacy policy says exactly what that means. Nothing else reports back, and the written route pages load nothing from anyone. The apps use Google's map too when there is signal, and draw their own when there is none, planning the whole journey from data inside them, so they still work at a border with no signal.

Some booking links are affiliate links. Where one is, it is a link to the operator or agent I would have sent you to anyway, and it never changes which route the planner recommends — the routing code cannot see them. The privacy policy says what is stored on your device, which is four settings and no identifier.

Who it is not

Overland SEA is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for any railway, ferry operator, tourist board or booking agent. Nobody pays for placement and nobody has ever asked to. When a service is bad I say so on the page for it.