Even though I relied less on other people's blogs for my budgeting for this trip, I still appreciated them when searching for attractions, or food recommendations. I will say that my two main resources for this trip were How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Revised: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter by Matt Kepnes and, thanks to this book, travelfish.org. So without further ado, here is what I spent.
Airfare (to Asia): ~$630
Airfare (within Asia): ~$390
Lodging: $850 ($283/person)
Utilities (towel rental, laundry, etc.): ~$40
Transit: ~$310
Activities: ~$330
Attractions: ~$120
Food: ~$230
Souvenirs: ~$130
Total: $3,000
The main difficulty here is that since I traveled with two friends, all the lodging and transit numbers were for 3 people, but all the food and activities are for 1. I did put 1/3 of some of these numbers in parentheses to try to help, but they're pretty inaccurate. I know this makes it complicated, but in reality if you are traveling alone you will pay more for lodging and transit (particularly taxis) since they often are not individual costs.
Since we spent time in Thailand and Cambodia, and many of our pre-trip costs were in USD, I converted my entire budget into USD. However, we spent most of this budget in thai baht. Which brings me to a big question that we had before our trip: How much thai baht do we need in cash? I tried to figure this out as best I could before we left, overestimating many of our spending categories to ensure we had leftovers and weren't short. Something important to note is that while ATM fees are ridiculous, changing money over from USD to thai baht is relatively easy, so bring lots of USD in cash is definitely advisable, since if you don't change it over you can just take it back to the US. We solved the ATM problem by taking money out in Cambodia, only incurring a $5 ATM fee for taking out $400 USD, which we promptly changed to baht on returning to Bangkok.
My pre-trip estimates:
Thai baht needed = 21,000 (=$705 USD)
USD (for Cambodia) needed= $170
The actual numbers:
Thai baht used = 25,000 (=$740 USD)
USD used (in Cambodia) = $300
You can see in these numbers why I ended up needing an additional $200 when we were in Cambodia (the $400 was split between me and Kerry). But overall, my pre-trip estimates were pretty accurate, they just did not account for some of our unplanned expenses. Mainly, these were a cab to Chiang Rai instead of a bus and two very expensive taxi rides to/from airports. Transit is definitely the area of the budget where we spent more than we wanted to, either because we did not pre-plan well or because of the reality that we were non-Thai speaking foreigner tourists trying to negotiate prices when we didn't know what we should be paying in the first place.
I'm definitely pleased with the cost of this trip. I think getting such a low cost flight from the US to Thailand was a huge plus, making me feel better when we went over our in-country budget. Of course, food, souvenirs, and activities are categories that are going to vary based on what you want out of your trip but I felt that what we did was definitely worth the money in most cases. I'm excited about the success of this trip, and can't wait to start planning the next one. I've already got a running list of countries, as well as US cities, that I've got to choose between.
Until next time!
