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alipop0305 · 2 years

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saving the money, it ain’t cheap

one of the main reasons that people choose to backpack in south east asia is because the cost of accommodation, food and even transport (once you’re there) is so much cheaper than in places like europe and northern america.

but the fact of it is, if you’re backpacking south east for anything more than two months, you’re going to need to save up. not to mention the cost of the flights to get all the way to the other side of the world (it’s not like you’re just hopping on the eurostar to france.

i went backpacking in my gap year between the end of sixth form and first year of university, but didn’t actually leave the uk until may. the girl i was travelling with and i both planned on doing working through summer and the 3 months at the official start of our year out (september - november), doing a ski season for 5/6 months (december - april) and then backpacking the remainder, with a bit of time at home before starting university.

but as with all big plans like this you have to be prepared for the fact not everything will go to accordingly. i didn’t end up managing to get a job doing a ski season, but my friend did (which i will talk about in another post). i had been working full-time all summer (basically since the first week after finishing school in may) so by the time we went travelling i had been working full time for almost exactly a year.

in comparison, my friend worked a bit before going on the ski season and did a few shifts in the month between getting home from her ski season and flying out to india. yes, she earned money on season, but much of her wages had to go into her accommodation out in the alps (which of course, isn’t cheap, even with the staff prices she’d get).

i’d like to start by saying that we both were able to easily afford the expenses a trip like this comes with, it just meant that i was less worried about how much i was spending each week, and had more left over at the end (which was nice, since i wouldn’t be able to work as much when i went to uni).

but i’ll finally dive into the nitty gritty of the costs! we booked an outline of our travels (to ease our parents worrying) through trailfinders. in retrospect, we didn’t need to do this, but since i was trying to organise all this alone while my friend was on the ski season, it did make it a lot easier and they were super helpful.

the payment we each made to trailfinders was £2,725 each and it included:

flights london, england → delhi, india (via dubai) dehli, india → bangkok, thailand bangkok, thailand → chiang mai, thailand chiang rai, thailand → phuket, thailand (via bangkok) (we had to organise our flights into and out of cambodia separately) hanoi, vietnam → london, england (via dubai)

hotels (for 1 night because of late/early flights, or just so we had somewhere to go when we first arrived) delhi - last night in india, 5am flight the next morning bangkok - first night chiang mai - first night phuket - first night ho chi minh city - first night hanoi - last night of the whole trip, had a 1:30am flight the next night (so was good because we could leave our bags there

transfers to and from the airport bangkok airport → hotel chiang mai airport → hotel phuket airport → hotel ho chi minh airport → hotel hanoi hotel → airport

g adventures tour through the golden triangle (delhi, agra, jaipur) - 6 days (the whole time we were in india pretty much, which is why we did the tour, since we didn’t think we’d have time to see everything we wanted to) - 5 nights accommodation included - 5 meals provided (breakfast) - entry tickets for the tourist attraction - all transport - a local tour guide to show you around and tell you all about the amazing landmarks - costs £459 per person when booking for two travellers more info here: https://www.gadventures.com/trips/golden-triangle-independent-adventure-delhi-agra-jaipur/TAHGTC/?ref=asearch

bamba travel pass through vietnam - all transport through Vietnam (minibuses, overnight buses) - 2 nights of accommodation - 10 meals (2 breakfast, 7 lunch, 1 dinner) - 8 amazing experiences (ranging from street food tours to a 2 day, 1 night cruise through ha long bay!!) - a local tour guide to show you around and tell you all about the amazing landmarks - at the time it was $862/£662 but it seems to have gone up significantly to $1219/£999 so i guess i’m glad we did it when we did haha - the way it worked was you would message them to book the activities or transport 24-48 hours sin advance so you were a bit more free to do what you wanted when you wanted (i.e. stay an extra day somewhere) - this was honestly an amazing thing to do but i wish we had more time to do spread them out more info here: https://bambatravel.com/adventure/Vietnam-Travel-Passes-Backpacking/Vietnam-Circuit-&from-Ho-Chi-Minh-City&-Travel-Pass/35978/162

travel insurance (through trailfinders included in the above total and cost £207 each for the whole trip and had amazing cover as seen below

and it does cover covid related emergencies which many countries still require for entry

of course this is not the way to do it, there is no correct way of planning a trip like this, but it worked for us. maybe it’ll work for you, maybe it won’t.

this doesn’t include expenses whilst out there (such as hostels, food, entrance fees to attraction, other activities we organised while there etc.)

i hope this is able to help someone out there!

thanks for reading,

alice :)

#savings #backpacking #travelling #travel #india #thailand #cambodia #vietnam #planning #money

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