As you probably already know, Southeast Asia has a reputation for being very cheap. Well, we can now confirm that that’s true! We really do feel like any place in the world can be affordable, but some just take a lot more work and sacrifices. The good part about Thailand is that you don’t have to make too many sacrifices to save money. We ate out every single meal because it’s probably just as cheap if not cheaper than trying to buy groceries. The only thing that can add up rather quickly are all of the tourist opportunities (tours, excursions, hikes, etc.) but you just have to use your best judgement. Below is our Thailand cost sheet.
We’ve noticed that our cost sheets are usually pretty satisfactory when our food and drink price hovers right around our lodging price. For lodging we stick to a pretty hard rule of never exceeding $50/night. In Southeast Asia that number is probably closer to $30. So if we just try and keep food to the total of our lodging costs then that usually means we will be coming out under budget in the end. The biggest expense was probably the elephant sanctuary, but that’s to be expected and was absolutely worth it.