HOW YOU LIVE IN THAILAND FOR 40 BUCKS A DAY

Today, we left the quite pitoresque town of Krabi and headed for the slightly bigger, Asian New York that is Kuala Lumpur. That means that our 26 days in Thailand are over for this time, and to be frank, we were eager to leave the country.

Thailand brought us so much unnecessary pain. We lost almost two weeks to food poisoning, which really destroyed our moods and our plans.

But. We did have some great time in Thailand as well. Our days in Bangkok was great, the week in Chiang Mai even better. We almost can't wait for the day when we return to the city of great daytrips. We also took an overnight train which was quite the adventure in itself, being the first time and all.

We ate good food and we stayed at good hotels. We tried to manage our selves to some sights when we felt energized enough. We traveled in slow pace and enjoyed being abroad, inhaling a different culture.

BUT HOW MUCH DID THIS PARTY COST US? 

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In general, we spent $40 USD a day per person. That is 35,000 THB for 26 days, everything from flights (except flight into Asia since than can wary a lot depending on where you are from) to sunglasses included.

The number would have been higher if we hadn't been sick. Then we would have done so many more fun stuff, and would had laid more money on trips and transport. But considering, we did do a lot of fun and I wouldn't undo any of them.


Just so we are clear: this is not a list on how you live as cheap as possible in Thailand.
We know we weren't.
I created this list because I wanted to give you a taste of how cheap it is to stay in Thailand for almost a month even if the life on a shoestring doesn't appeal to you.

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● We rather put our money on acommondation than food, 
knowing we weren't picky with food and that we were in the country with all the best flavours.
Generally, we budgeted 100 baht per meal at most, but was open to each put about 1000 baht per night on a hotel. Often, we ended up with great hotels that we each put in 400 baht for.
 Approximately half of the days we had breakfast included in the price, and approximately 10 out of 10 hotels were booked via internet.


● So our hotel standards was quite high for the average backpacker, but then again we are not backpackers...

We looked for rooms with WiFi (not always working as described on Hotels, though...), fridge (for storing water and snacks from 7-11 to keep us energized throghout the day) and air con. We looked for clean, fresh rooms with mostly good reviews with easy public transport access if possible.
We also choose hotels because of small details we liked about them, like a bookshelfs or a pruning garden.

Pictures from Rainforest Boutique in Chiang Mai

● We took public transport when possible,
otherwise we took advantage of free shuttlebuses or haggled down the price of a tuk-tuk to under 120 baht (success in 9 times out of 10).
Sometimes we did not have the energy, and we just took a cab beacuse we were tired or confused about our surroundings. It's good to have that possibility too.



● We usually ate 2 meals a day and one snack. 
This was possible, no, preferable due to the heat. It was simply too hot to eat.

We did on the other hand eat a lot of chips, bananas and KitKat, always bought from 7-11 after carefully comparing of the prices in the neighbourhood (7-eleven is cheaper than any other store in tourist areas, as far as we saw. And we saw a few..)



● We did a minimal amount of shopping

We enjoyed the night markets for crowd watching rather than souvenir buying. We bought things we needed, like pants, sunglasses, conditioner, but we didn't feel like buying stuff that we had to carry around for 2 months. That was not an act of cheapness though. Neither of us are crazy about stuff.

But would we have shopped, everything is really inexpencive in this part or the world and you can easy squeeze in some shopping, both in markets and in malls, without breaking the budget.

● We focused a lot on putting that money we could have bought souvenirs for on activities,

like Art in Paradise, a daytrip to Doi Inthanon and Elephant Nature Park.

● We drank almost no alcohol. 
We had the occacional drink now and then, but in general and for the time in our life we are at the moment, alcohol simple does not interest us, and therefor this money saving tip was no sacrifice for us.

Mai Tai in the afternoon sun after a hell of a day.

● We DIO - Did It Ourselves 

We bought washing powder in a store for about 10 baht which was enough to wash about 25 items of clothing, which should weigh more than the average kilo that you pay about 40-50 bath to get cleaned. Also, after hearing about clothes being "lost" in the washing machine for other travelers (only the brand clothes, strangely enough) we were rather safe than sorry. 

We also bough big 6 litre-bottles of water to filled our more human sized bottles with. When the price for 1,5 litre is so close to the price for 6 litres, why not spend minimal amounts on the thing you usually get for free at home? 

What we DNDO - Did Not Do Ourselves - at least not enough in my taste - was walking from one place to another. I sometimes missed the feeling of getting purposly lost, but there was also no chance you could walk around for hours in the heat, so I guess wheeled transport was inevitable.

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OR IF YOU HAVE 

ANY QUESTIONS 

BE SURE TO COMMENT! 

This is for our fellow pinners!