It's time to turn your ideas into a multi-destination trip to Asia

National boundaries and identities may seem set in stone today, but it hasn’t always been that way. Over the centuries, as empires rose and fell, borders shifted, people moved, and different cultures became fuzed together or pushed apart.

At one time, the Khmer Empire stretched over most of continental Southeast Asia. At another, it was Burma’s Pagan Kingdom. Still later, it was European colonizers who called the shots. The result is that Asia today is a patchwork of countries — some only a few decades old — with a rich shared history and an infinitely tangled web of cultural influences.

A multi-country trip is not about packing in destinations or ticking more off your list. It’s about exploring the similarities and subtle differences that tie these countries together, and make each of them completely unique.