Best Online Booking Services for Trains, Buses, and Ferries in Asia
When older independent travellers visit Asian countries, they usually book land transportation for touring the country in one of three ways. They either hire a self-drive rental car, hire a car with a local driver, or use public transport as most of us did back in our backpacker days.
These days I usually drive myself as I like the independence that gives me. I lived in Manila for 10 years and it’s often said that if you can drive in Manila without breaking into a cold sweat, then you can drive anywhere in the world. Driving in India still makes me a little nervous but having a local driver doesn’t lessen that nervousness.
A lot of older travellers, for whom budget is not an issue, prefer to have a local driver as they are more familiar with the traffic rules . In most Asian countries, the cost is not much higher than driving yourself. In fact, I once hired a taxi for a day in Surakarta, Indonesia, which worked out cheaper than renting a self-drive car for the day.
However, if you are travelling on a budget, or just want to relive those backpacker days, then using public transport – trains, buses, vans, and ferries – to get around is a great way to see the country, mix with the locals and better understand local culture. It’s also a considerably lot cheaper than hiring a car, with or without a driver, so your travel budget will stretch much further.
Booking train tickets online saves queuing at ticket offices. Image: © Luliia Ilina
There are three significant disadvantages to travelling by public transport compared to travelling by car. The first is that you need to travel lighter. That’s not to say you can’t travel with two large suitcases if you want to, because most train, bus and ferry companies don’t charge extra (or only a minimal amount) for extra bags. It’s simply the hassle of dragging those bags around constantly.
The second disadvantage is that you can’t control the temperature of the vehicles in which you will be travelling. In summer months you may find yourself sweating in trains or buses where the air conditioning is not working properly. Although in many parts of Southeast Asia it’s often the opposite problem on buses. The aircon is turned up to freezer temperatures. So even in tropical countries you might need to travel with a warm jacket or blanket.
The third disadvantage is the hassle of buying tickets – and that’s what this article is all about. I should acknowledge upfront that I’ve not had a great deal of experience buying tickets for public transport when travelling, aside from when taking my car onto inter-island ferries in the Philippines, so much of this article is based on online research and listening to the experiences of other travellers.
From my own experience of buying ferry tickets in the Philippines, I know that the most reliable way to buy a ticket is to go to the ferry operator’s ticket office at the port and buy the ticket there. That way you are not paying any agent fees and you know you are getting a genuine ticket that will be honoured as you board the ferry.
Passenger ferries are often full at peak travel times. Image: © David Astley
But I also know from my own experience that leaving the purchase of the ticket until you are ready to travel may result in you finding that they are already sold out for the ferry trip that you want to take. At peak travel times like Christmas, Chinese New Year and Easter, for example, you might have to wait for up to three days to secure a ticket. The same goes for long distance bus services. So there are advantages to purchasing tickets in advance.
The biggest advantage of using an online booking platform to purchase those tickets is that you can see all the available travel options and prices. In many countries there are different classes of tickets on trains, buses and ferries, and sometimes it’s hard to work out what’s available when you are trying to buy a ticket in a crowded ticket office and perhaps dealing with a sales agent that doesn’t speak your language.
The major disadvantage to purchasing tickets in advance through an agency (whether they be a bricks and mortar travel agency or an online booking agency) is that occasionally they are not honoured by the transport operator. Most times that happens, it’s not because you’ve been scammed by the agency, it’s because there’s been a breakdown in the communications between the agency and the transport operator.
Yes, there are scam operators around, especially in developing countries, but you can avoid those by either going to an established travel agency that has good reviews online (check for how many years those reviews go back) or use one of the many online booking agencies and sticking to those that are well established and also have good reviews online.
Thailand’s long-distance buses are colourful and comfortable. Image: © David Astley
Online booking agencies (or ‘ticketing platforms’ as some of them call themselves) are not new. There are more than a hundred across Asia, but most cover only the countries where they are based, or their immediate region. One of the oldest is Easybook which started in 2006 as a booking platform for bus tickets between Singapore and Malaysia.
It grew from there to cover the whole of Southeast Asia and now offers train and ferry tickets as well as bus tickets. It claims to be the largest online booking platform in the region, but it is rated ‘Bad’ by Trustpilot with a rating of only 1.4 out of 5. With that sort of rating, it’s surprising the business has lasted this long.
The largest online ticketing platforms in Asia are 12GO and Bookaway. 12GO has been around the longest having been established in 2012. It has a rating of 3.9 on Trustpilot based on around 950 reviews. Bookaway which was established four years later has a rating of 4.1 based on around 500 reviews.
Both 12GO and Bookaway cover Asia and Europe, and both have their main Asian office in Bangkok. The main difference between them is that Bookaway also offers ticketing for Central and South America. As well as their Bangkok offices, 12GO has an office in Cyprus and Bookaway has one in Tel Aviv.
Booking online is easy with a laptop or phone app. Image: © Leung Chopan
Whilst Bookaway has a slightly better rating on Trustpilot than 12GO, there’s probably not a lot to choose between them because 12GO’s rating may have been affected by more negative reviews in its earlier years of operation. 12GO calls itself a “multi-modal travel agency of new generation” whilst Bookaway states that it was “founded by travellers for travellers . . . with a ride for any journey”.
One thing to keep in mind when reading reviews about the two companies is that a lot of the negative reviews are not about the ticketing process per se but relate to bad experiences that travellers had with the transport operator. Many people using the sites seem to not understand that 12GO and Bookaway are third party ticketing platforms which rely on the information provided to them by their transport suppliers.
Sometimes these bus operators and ferry services change their timetables and forget to advise travel agencies and online booking platforms about the changes, and this causes problems when the ticket holder turns up and finds their bus has already left or their ferry won’t be leaving for another four hours.
A good example of a negative review by a ticket purchaser who clearly didn’t understand the relationship between the online booking agency and the transport operators is this recent review of Camboticket (a popular booking platform in Cambodia) on Trustpilot:
“The worst service ever!!!
We have to go with a ferry at 10:00 am, and then a bus at 12:30 am, but the ferry was 2 hours late, so we couldn’t make it to the bus at the time that it leaves. When we was at the bus station at 1 am, they told us that we have to buy new tickets to get on a bus - but we already have paid for the tickets to the bus, and it wasn’t our fault that the ferry was 2 hours late
But there was nothing to do, we payed (sic) for the new tickets, because we was force to get on the bus!
Don’t buy ticket at Camboticket, because if you’re late (they often are) they won’t wait and they won’t never give you the money back
What a bad experience CAMBOTICKET!!!”
It's clear that this complainant doesn’t understand the relationship between the booking platform and the bus and ferry companies when she refers to Camboticket as “often being late”. The Camboticket team replied to this complaint stating that if the traveller had reached out to them before buying a new ticket, they could have helped her to reschedule her bus booking. And, of course, it wasn’t Camboticket’s fault that the ferry was late.
This experience also highlights one of the advantages of using larger companies like 12GO or Bookaway if you have to contact them to sort a problem out. As they have offices in different time zones, it won’t matter if you are calling at 1.00 am in the morning because there will always be an agent in one of their offices to assist.
You can book online any time of the day or night. Image: © Milkovasa
There is a third online ticketing platform that covers multiple countries called Baolau. It calls itself “the leading travel search engine in Asia”, but that’s marketing hype. It’s a much smaller operation than 12GO or Bookaway as it’s only generated four reviews on Trustpilot for its Vietnam website (two good, two bad) and one for its main website, so can’t be statistically compared to its more established competitors.
Baolau was started in 2013 by two Spanish expatriates working in Vietnam and appears to have attracted investors from Japan and Thailand. Its platform works but it appears the business is still in start-up mode as its website states that it is actively looking for investors “to help us take Baolau to the next level”.
Whilst Baolau might become a serious competitor for 12GO and Bookaway at some stage in the future, it’s probably best to stick with one of the two biggest trans-Asia ticketing agencies for the time being. Both have phone apps that you can download and are easy to use whilst on the road.
Of course, you might have a favourite in-country booking app that you already use, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t continue to book through that if you’ve had a good experience with it in the past, but if you’re going into a new country and are not sure what the land transportation options are for the journey you want to make, the trans-Asia booking sites like 12GO and Bookaway will enable you to view the options without downloading new apps for every country.
Header image: © Balifilm
