Unless you're prepared to shell out $450/night for the Park Hyatt, Shanghai and especially Tokyo are not sensible places for a splurge. In South-East Asia, on the other hand, you can get five-star luxury for under $100 a night if you time it right and know where to go. (My favorite hotel in the world, the Putrajaya Shangri-La, costs all of $81.45 on weekends, including an amazing breakfast and guaranteed 6 PM late checkout.)
Guangzhou and Zhuhai are very Chinese and very industrial. Not much in the way of sights, and not very backpacker-friendly. For Indonesia, Bali is my favorite by a mile for everything except diving.
And purposely avoiding Bangkok on a first trip to Asia is like going to Europe and purposely avoiding Paris and London. There's a reason it's popular, dammit, and unlike Paris/London it won't cost you an arm and a leg!
jani
Splurge in Tokyo?!
Unless you're prepared to shell out $450/night for the Park Hyatt, Shanghai and especially Tokyo are not sensible places for a splurge. In South-East Asia, on the other hand, you can get five-star luxury for under $100 a night if you time it right and know where to go. (My favorite hotel in the world, the Putrajaya Shangri-La, costs all of $81.45 on weekends, including an amazing breakfast and guaranteed 6 PM late checkout.)
Guangzhou and Zhuhai are very Chinese and very industrial. Not much in the way of sights, and not very backpacker-friendly. For Indonesia, Bali is my favorite by a mile for everything except diving.
And purposely avoiding Bangkok on a first trip to Asia is like going to Europe and purposely avoiding Paris and London. There's a reason it's popular, dammit, and unlike Paris/London it won't cost you an arm and a leg!