Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit South Korea, in One Sentence The first time I saw it, I was standing on a bridge over the Cheonggyecheon stream in central Seoul on a cold-bright October morning, coffee going lukewarm in my hand, watching the gingko trees along the water turn the kind of gold you usually only see in films. A month earlier I’d nearly booked April instead, chasing the cherry blossoms everyone photographs. I’m glad I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why further down. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Spain, in One Sentence We had the August week half-booked when my brother, who lives in Seville, sent a one-line voice note: “You’ll cook. Come in May or wait for October.” We almost ignored him, because August is when everyone has time off. Then I checked the forecast for the days we’d picked and saw a string of 41 C afternoons, and the same flights priced a third cheaper six weeks later. We moved the trip, walked the Alhambra in shirtsleeves under a soft 26 C sky, and further down I’ll tell you the small mistake we still made with our dates. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Sri Lanka, in One Sentence We almost cancelled. Three days before flying to Sri Lanka in July, a friend messaged a photo of Galle Fort under sheets of grey rain and asked why on earth we’d booked the monsoon. What he didn’t know was that we weren’t going west at all — we were heading to Arugam Bay on the east coast, where July is bone-dry, the surf is glassy, and the sun barely quits. That single quirk of geography is the most important thing to understand about this island. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Switzerland, in One Sentence It was a July morning above Grindelwald, and the cog railway had just spat us out into a meadow so green it looked retouched. Cowbells clanked somewhere below, the Eiger’s north face loomed grey and enormous across the valley, and we ate bread and Gruyère on a bench while paragliders drifted past at eye level. Idyllic — and, I’ll admit, eye-wateringly expensive once the lift tickets and the hotel were tallied. That bill taught me something about timing Switzerland that I’ll come back to, because the season you choose changes everything here. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit the Philippines, in One Sentence The ferry captain just shrugged. We’d shown up in El Nido in late August expecting island-hopping paradise and instead got a sky the colour of wet concrete, a typhoon warning two islands over, and boat trips cancelled for the third day running. We’d booked on price alone, and the price had a reason. I sat on the hostel porch watching the rain and made a promise to come back in the right season — which, six months later, I did, and the difference was night and day. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Turkey, in One Sentence It was a Tuesday in late September, and I had the rooftop terrace in Istanbul’s Galata district almost entirely to myself. The call to prayer rolled across the Golden Horn, ferries cut white lines through the water below, and the tea the owner kept refilling was still warm enough to wrap my hands around. Three weeks earlier, the same terrace would have had a queue. I’d come in the shoulder, almost by accident, and it turned out to be the smartest travel decision I made all year. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Vietnam, in One Sentence We were three days into Hoi An when the sky simply fell out of itself. Lanterns still glowing over the old town, and the street outside our guesthouse turned into a calf-deep brown river while a man paddled past on a plastic stool, grinning. It was late October, and I had booked the whole trip around the south being dry without once checking what the central coast does that month. The lesson cost us a soggy afternoon and a lifelong habit: in Vietnam you do not plan one season, you plan three. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Bali, in One Sentence We almost cancelled. Three days before flying, my wife was reading me February rainfall charts off her phone — “over 300 millimetres, the wettest month of the year” — and asking, gently, whether we’d just booked two soggy weeks in a monsoon. We went anyway. And the morning we wandered the Tegallalang rice terraces with maybe four other people on them, the paddies glowing a green I didn’t know existed, I did the math on what the same villa would have cost in August. Triple. We’d stumbled into a secret, and I’m going to ruin the surprise for you below. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Croatia, in One Sentence We nearly didn’t go. Three days out, my wife was reading me a forum thread on her phone — “season’s basically over by September, half the ferries stop, you’ll be swimming in cold water” — and asking, gently, whether we’d booked a fortnight of shuttered konobas and empty harbours. We went anyway. And the afternoon we slipped off the back of a Hvar beach into water that turned out to be 25 C, warmer than the sea had been all summer, I did the math on the villa we’d booked for a third of the August rate. We’d timed it almost perfectly by accident, and I’ll tell you exactly where the trap is below. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Japan on a Budget, in One Sentence We had the April flights in the cart. Then my wife refreshed the fares one more time and read the number out loud, and we both just sort of stared at the laptop. Cherry-blossom week to Tokyo cost almost double what the exact same route cost six months later. So we did something that felt slightly heretical at the time: we skipped the sakura and booked late November instead. I’ll tell you how that turned out lower down — and why the maples we got might have been the better deal anyway. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Portugal, in One Sentence The August quote came back at 240 euros a night for a plain Lagos apartment, and my wife just turned her laptop around so I could see it. “Or,” she said, scrolling, “the same place, last week of September, is 150.” We almost booked August anyway, because everyone tells you Portugal in late September is “a gamble.” It isn’t. We swam in a sea that was warmer than it had been all summer, walked a clifftop trail with maybe six other people on it, and I’ll tell you below the exact mistake we nearly made with the dates. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Thailand, in One Sentence My wife nearly booked us onto a Gulf island in October. I remember her turning the laptop around in our kitchen, grinning at a half-price bungalow on Koh Samui, and me having to be the killjoy: that is the exact week the Gulf gets its heaviest rain of the year. We went two months later instead, in December, and stood on Railay Beach on the Andaman side under a sky that hadn’t seen a cloud in days, water like warm glass, paying high-season rates and not minding one bit. The lesson cost us nothing because we caught it in time. It’s the one almost everyone misses, and I’ll come back to it. ...