Typhoon and monsoon season in Asia: what to know

Step one: pick the region by month, not the other way round. If your only free window is August, choose Bali, eastern Indonesia, Sri Lanka's east coast or Vietnam's south over the Philippines or Taiwan. If your window is October, the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia's west coast are safer bets than central Vietnam or Japan.

Step two: build the itinerary so the risky leg is not the last one. Put the island, the trek or the long ferry in the middle of the trip, with a city at each end. If a storm closes the airport on the way out, you still have a mainland base and a spare day.

Step three: book the pieces that cannot be changed last. Long-haul flights and prepaid resort packages are the expensive things to move; domestic flights, buses and guesthouses are usually cheap to rebook. Keep the flexible money for the legs that matter.

Step four: set up alerts. Follow your national weather service and the local one for the country you are in, and check the airline's travel-waiver page the day before you fly. Airlines publish waiver rules before the weather arrives, and that page is what the call centre will use.

The direct cost of a storm is usually a rebooked flight, a night or two of extra accommodation and meals. A new one-way regional flight booked inside 24 hours can run USD 100-400 (2026 estimate) depending on the route; a domestic flight in Vietnam, Thailand or the Philippines is often at the lower end, and a cross-border flight at the higher end. If the airline issues a waiver, the change fee is usually dropped and you pay only the fare difference, which can be zero.

Extra hotel nights in a city during a storm are typically the normal rate, though demand can spike if an airport closes and everyone rebooks at once. Budget one to two nights of unplanned cost per trip in peak season.

Time is the bigger cost. A typhoon closing an airport usually means a 12-48 hour delay, not a week. A monsoon landslide on a mountain road can close it for a day or more. Ferries in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand are the most likely to be cancelled at short notice, sometimes for several days in a row.

Insurance is the cheapest part of the plan. A standard policy for a two-week Asia trip is usually a small fraction of the airfare, and it is what pays for the unplanned hotel night if the cause is covered.

Some destinations are effectively closed in their wet season. Parts of the Indian Himalayas, trekking routes in Nepal and hill roads in northern Vietnam and Laos can be unsafe in the heaviest monsoon months because of landslides, and some guesthouses and trekking agencies shut entirely. Check locally before you commit.

Island resorts in the Maldives, the Philippines and eastern Indonesia can be cut off for days when ferries stop, even if the resort itself is fine. If you have a hard deadline at home, do not put a small island at the end of the trip.

Japan and Korea are unusual: the June-July rainy season is mild and rarely disruptive, but the August-October typhoon window can hit hard, and the country is otherwise extremely well organised for it. Trains usually keep running when flights do not, which makes rail a useful backup.

Finally, the calendar is not fixed. El Niño and La Niña years shift rainfall and cyclone counts, and a season can be much quieter or much worse than average. Treat the table as a baseline, not a forecast.

The 72-hour mark is when forecasts become useful. At that point, look at the track cone, not the headline. A storm 500 km away can still cancel your flight if it is heading for your airport or the one your aircraft is coming from.

At 48 hours, check your airline's waiver page. If a waiver is posted for your route and dates, you can usually change or refund online without a call. Do it early: seats on the flights before and after the storm fill fast.

At 24 hours, decide. If you are in a coastal or low-lying area, move inland or to a solid building. If you are already in a city with a good airport, staying put is often the safest option. Fill water bottles, charge everything, and buy a day of food that does not need cooking.

During the storm, stay inside and away from windows. Do not drive through flooded roads; most deaths in these events are from water, not wind. After it passes, expect cancelled flights for another day while aircraft and crews are repositioned, and expect power and water outages in the worst-hit areas.

It helps to know which problem you have, because the responses are different. A monsoon is a season: you plan around it months ahead, and the answer is usually to change region or month. A cyclone is an event: you react to it in the last three days, and the answer is usually to change dates or route.

The table below summarises the difference in practice.