After six months of travel from New Zealand to Thailand we were ready for a bit of a rest and needed time to catch up on work and the blog. Although it has become a bit of a backpacker cliché, we decided that Chiang Mai, Thailand, was the perfect place to settle down for a month and rest up. After finding a great apartment, we settled into a comfortable routine and found living in Chiang Mai to be pretty affordable – here’s how much it cost us for one month.
31 December, 2013 /
After our first six months of non-stop travel we were utterly exhausted and desperate to put down our backpacks, settle in one place and recover for a month. So, in typical travel blogger fashion we headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand in search of some peace, decent wifi and delicious food. There’s no shortage of places to live in Chiang Mai, but the search for our ideal apartment still turned out to be more difficult than we’d anticipated – here’s how we managed to find our perfect pad.
18 December, 2013 /
We had a bit of a hectic return to Thailand due to last minute flight changes followed by a frantic few weeks travelling up and down the country with friends and family who came out to visit us. Nevertheless, we had a great time with our travel companions and squeezed a lot into our visit – here’s how much it cost us to travel around Thailand for two months.
15 December, 2013 /
As I sat on the balcony overlooking one of the bays on Koh Phi Phi, Thailand, I thought: this place is amazing; it’s paradise! Crystal clear waters bordered with soft and sandy beaches or incredible rock formations that look as if they have just appeared from hundreds of metres below sea level.
21 November, 2013 /
We were initially relived that we failed to obtain our 59-day visas for the Philippines as we'd heard that it was a tough country to travel through; reducing our trip to just three weeks also allowed us to visit Malaysia and explore Borneo too, which we loved. As it turned out though, we completely fell for the Philippines and it became one of our favourite countries. In fact, we loved it so much, especially the time we spent in Ifugao and Mountain provinces, that we plan to go back in April next year.
23 October, 2013 /
After splurging in Malaysia we were hoping to reduce our travel costs in the Philippines. We only had 21 days to explore but the Philippines turned out to be one of our favourite countries so far; the scenery in the mountain provinces of Luzon were unrivalled in their beauty and what’s more we managed to keep to a much better budget than in Malaysia. So, here’s how much we spent during our three-week Philippines travel experience.
18 October, 2013 /
We decided at the last minute to spend a few weeks in Malaysia and this was one of the best decisions we have made so far on our trip. We spent most of our time in the jungles of Borneo searching for wild orangutans and along the way had some amazing adventures and spotted so many other wonderful creatures. Although we didn't have much time left after our stint in Borneo we managed to squeeze in a few days in Kuala Lumpur, where we ended up feeling quite at home.
11 September, 2013 /
After our flight from Indonesia to the Philippines got cancelled, a two-hour stopover in Malaysia became a 23-day jungle adventure and we’re so glad that it did. We were given a free 90 day visa on arrival and we really wish we could have used it; we could have slowed down and been able to see much more of this beautiful country. After struggling with budgets in Indonesia, we figured that we needed to relax our spending in Malaysia instead of plucking a daily budget out of thin air and wildly sticking to it no matter what; with that in mind, here’s what we spent during three weeks in Malaysia.
01 September, 2013 /
After an idyllic couple of months in Australia and New Zealand we headed to Indonesia where travel well and truly got tough. We were  slapped in the face with culture shock when we arrived in Jakarta, had a hard time negotiating our way through Java, suffered severe bouts of homesickness and struggled to balance work with travel - but we did learn a lot in the process.
04 August, 2013 /
We were looking forward to getting to Asia after more than two months and over £7,000 spent in Australia and New Zealand. Before we arrived we had set ourselves a budget of about £30 per day for backpacking Indonesia (along with the rest of Asia – a little naïve no?). So, we were ready for our costs to dramatically drop from here-on-in but how much did it really cost to travel Indonesia?
31 July, 2013 /