How in the world

Part 1 of 3: Planning a BUDGET for backpacking Southeast Asia and beyond in midlife

If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “I wish I could do that,” then I would have a lot more money to spend on long-term travel, the lifestyle we have chosen for our midlife years.

Maybe they think we are special. We’re not.

Maybe they think we are independently wealthy. We’re not.

Maybe they think we have always been wise with our financial decisions and habits, and this is our reward. Heavens, no.

On the contrary, we are very ordinary, even slightly irresponsible Americans whose feet got so itchy to go see the world that we finally figured out a way to make it happen. As I write this, in fact, I am sitting at a simple patio café in Laos, surrounded by lush greenery and flowers, overlooking the busy Mekong River with all its various types of boats coming and going as I sip mint tea and nibble on a buttery croissant. We have been wandering Southeast Asia since early December (nearly two months), and we are making it work, financially.

The number one question everyone asks is how we can afford this as a lifestyle. After all, travel is terribly expensive, right?

Wrong.

Short vacations to popular destinations are expensive.

Long-term travel, slow and simple, to places less frequently appearing on American bucket lists, places where the cost of living is low and the American dollar is strong, is shockingly affordable.

We are not traveling because we finally have enough money to splurge. We are traveling because the typical American lifestyle is too expensive for us so we need to spend our time living differently. Believe it or not, we are traveling long-term as a way to make our money stretch further and last longer.

Crazy, right?

Let me show you how it breaks down. I have already done the math, so you don't need to whip out your calculator. Just sip some tea and read on (or if you’d rather, click on the audio track up at the top of this post and I will read it to you).

Before I dive into what this trip is costing us, allow me to say this—we all have different levels of tolerance for what is and what is just NOT acceptable. Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, “budget travel” is in the wallet of the traveler. Andy and I happen to be fairly comfortable with very little in the way of amenities, but in the larger backpacking crowd we have met along our journey, we have found we are solidly middle-class. That means many other travelers we’ve met are traveling on a much smaller budget than we are. Many others are spending significantly more.

But here’s the catch. The scenery looks exactly the same, whether you are sleeping on a top bunk in a large dormitory hostel, or you are staying in a suite at the Ritz Carlton.

Choose what works for you and how much you want to spend. The idea of “budget travel” just means you have decided what you are willing to spend and are doing your darndest to stick to it, within reason. In the immortal words of Gen Z, “You do you, Boo.” What works for us might be way more or way less than what would work for you.

With that disclaimer, I will recommend one crucial element to budgeting your travel. If you are traveling with a partner, a spouse, a sibling, a best friend, whatever, make sure you discuss and agree upon your desired budgetary constraints BEFORE you embark. Andy and I have had a handful of disagreements and a bit of undue stress here and there on this trip because we occasionally have different ideas of budget travel—and we didn't discuss it much ahead of time.

I can be frugal to a fault. It becomes a game to me, a competitive challenge to see how cheaply I can stay, eat, and play. Finding lodging for $7.00 USD and a tasty meal for $1.50 makes me gloat with satisfaction. As a result, I tend to spend a lot of time studying ALL my options before I can decide on anything. When all we need to do is buy a few snacks before we board a train, but I can't decide on what is the best bang for the buck so I insist on wandering up and down streets for an hour, glancing in every little mom-and-pop shop for the perfect options before making any decisions, it is a real vibe-killer. And yes, this scene or something comparable has happened many times.

Andy would rather make a fairly decent decision and move on quickly, devoting more time to actually enjoying our environment, a skill I am trying to acquire.

On the other hand, Andy will occasionally choose something that looks amazing—whether food or experience, without really considering the cost. This makes me crazy, of course, as I have no concept of not noticing how much something costs.

The good news is, we tend to balance each other out eventually. If we traveled my way all the time, we would spend less, but also enjoy ourselves less. If we traveled his way all the time, we would definitely spend more than I am comfortable with, but we would have a great time doing it—if I could relax enough to enjoy it, of course. It’s a balance, and good communication sure helps.

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So, let’s break it down:

LODGING

As a challenge, I set a goal for a low nightly average for lodging. Sometimes we will go over, sometimes under, but my mental adding machine is always running, calculating our average. In Southeast Asia (with the exception of Singapore) lodging costs only a fraction of what we pay in the United States. Sometimes my desired average only buys us a bunk bed in a simple hostel, but sometimes it is enough for a deluxe balcony suite with a kitchenette a king bed, and a view of the pool.

Sometimes we will intentionally sleep rough for a bit, coming in well under-budget even when we could afford a nicer place, then treat ourselves to a few nights of more posh lodging, intentionally over-budget, just to pamper, refresh, and rejuvenate ourselves. We try to mix it up.

Anytime we can combine our lodging with our transportation costs, such as an overnight bus or train, we jump at the chance to lower our nightly average cost. Even if we don't sleep well while rolling through the countryside, we will have had a unique experience and can probably survive our fatigue until we check in to our next place for either a nap or an early bedtime. It might not work for everyone, but we like it.

For me, the goal is an average of $20/night for lodging, and we have been able to stick fairly close to that.

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FOOD

Food is ridiculously cheap in Southeast Asia. The oceans, rivers, plains, and forests are bountiful sources of meat. Ancient societies have passed down knowledge of which wild plants are good for eating and how to prepare them. With plenty of hot temperatures and rain, gardens and orchards flourish with very little effort. Strolling through the markets, it is shocking to see how little various food items cost. Whole ripe pineapples, for example, sell for less than fifty cents apiece.

To make this affordable food even more affordable, we frequent the places local people congregate more than the places designed to make western tourists feel comfortable. Our meals are more likely to be consumed on an open-air patio with a fan, rather than in pristine indoor facilities with air-conditioning. And we have to be ok with the fact that we won't always be able to read the menu. Sometimes Google Lens can help us translate. Sometimes we choose by pointing to pictures or to what someone at another table seems to be enjoying.

We rarely pay more than $1.00-2.50 per person for a hearty breakfast—or brunch if we can hold off a bit. Often we will skip lunch and just get a thick smoothie or some other snack for $1-2 per person. Dinner is our most expensive meal of the day, but even that averages between $2-5 per person, including a beverage. We might treat ourselves to a dessert if we are out and about and something catches our attention. So there is another $1-2 per person.

Added together, that brings us to an average of $15-20 per day for food and drinks for the two of us.

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ACTIVITIES

Our activity expenses vary widely. Sometimes, the best things to do in an area are free or close to it. Other times, we spend a chunk of change to do things that are really special and unique. On travel days, we have little to no activity expenses at all. This is hard to measure, of course, as it is all over the map. (Haha, all over the map—I crack myself up.)

Overall, I think we average $5-10 per day for activities—things we do that come with an admission fee.

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LOCAL TRANSPORTATION

Local transport is another expense, of course, since we are traveling without a vehicle. We ride buses and trains, boats, tuktuks and taxicabs, and occasionally rent a motor scooter for $6-8 per day. Other days we are on foot the entire day and pay nothing.

I would calculate that we spend an average of about $5-10/day on local transportation.

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SPECIAL EXPENSES

The last category that I will add is even harder to measure. I will just call them special expenses. Perhaps we need to catch a short flight because it is the most efficient way to cross a stretch of rugged terrain. Maybe we decide to splurge on the jet ski island-hopping tour, a cooking class, or a day of snorkeling with a local guide.

On average, I think special expenses come to approximately $40 per week.

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Of course there are other expenses. We have cell phones and insurance, for example. But these are the basic travel expenses categories.

For our lifestyle, and this region’s cost of living, our direct travel expenses come to approximately $375-400 per week. Add to that the expense of international flights to get to the region (approximately $1500 for the two of us together). A one-week trip, even as frugal backpackers, would be crazy expensive—$1500 for airfare plus $400 living expenses = $1900 for a week! Yikes!

But after three weeks, $1500 for airfare, plus $1200 living expenses, the total only comes to $2700, or $900 per week. Stay with me here. Because of the initial cost of airfare being spread out between three weeks of travel instead of just one, the average weekly cost has already been cut in half.

After four months of backpacking, the cost of the airfare has stretched so thin that the weekly cost drops to more like $475.

After six months, the average weekly expenditure has dropped to less than $450. That's approximately $1900 dollars per month.

Remember the cost of a one-week vacation several paragraphs back? $1900. By staying in a place like Southeast Asia for half a year or more, that same $1900 lasts for an entire month. And that figure is much lower if you are really willing to rough it, which we generally don't anymore.

Compare that number, $1900/month to what you currently spend in a month for lodging, groceries, eating out, drinks, local transportation, activities and entertainment. Oh, and remember you don't have to cook your own food or do the dishes or change the sheets or clean the bathroom or do any other home or yard or vehicle maintenance when you are traveling. That $1900/month also includes housekeeping, lawn care, and a chef, haha!

Can you see why backpacking around Southeast Asia for months at a time is actually more affordable than you may have originally thought?

If you could save up $23,000, you could do this style travel for an entire year, even without trying to figure out any source of income. And in today’s online and gig economy environment, it is totally feasible that you could find a way to earn one or two thousand dollars per month remotely, if you wanted or needed to work along the way to support yourself.

It’s just not as unapproachable, financially, as people think it must be.

For us, we are currently living off the income from the sale of our home. Since we sold when the market was ridiculously high, didn't owe the bank anything, and didn’t buy another home to replace it, those funds will last us a good long while.

But there is more to long-term, low cost travel than just budgeting. Next week, or perhaps the one after that, we will examine the mindset you will need for this kind of lifestyle, at least according to our experience and the wide range of reading we have done on this topic so far. In the near future, I will wrap up this little series with some notes on selecting the right gear—packing light, and bringing what you will actually need. Packing for a trip like this is significantly different than vacation travel, and we have already learned some things the hard way.

Until next week,

Sherry

This is part one of a series of three posts. To continue on to Part 2, click here.