As we saved on the trip 400 days. The results.

So, it is time to take stock and answer the main question of the year: how much did it cost us a 400-day trip to Asia. Well, it’s not in vain that we painstakingly recorded all expenses - now we’ll calculate it. Repeatedly in the comments I was asked what kind of chiches we go to, and I never hid that all this bacchanalia is carried out on previously deferred money. But how many do they need? It turned out that not very. A brief search on the Internet showed that for the amount that we spent for 400 days, you can buy UAZ "Patriot", a house in the village of Kuporosny, in Volgograd, or an inexpensive Birkin bag. But we do not regret anything!

Let's see in more detail how much money was spent and what exactly.

In just 400 days, we spent $ 12,719.27, which is $ 31.79 per day. This includes absolutely all expenses during the trip, including flights from Moscow to Seoul and back. This amount does not include items bought before the trip, the cost of vaccinations and medical insurance, but don’t write to me, really, a laptop - all this is not necessary to buy.

The most significant expense item was food - it spent $ 3928.80. Of course, this includes drinks, water, and dishes that I described on the blog with the tag "unaware", and even our farewell dinner, 90% of which consists of premium beef. In SEA, you can eat $ 10-12 a day without any problems, if you don’t flaunt. However, it’s worth adding that we didn’t drink alcohol — that is, Pasha didn’t drink at all, and I treated myself to McGoli beer or rice wine three times, and not at my own expense. Earlier, when we drank, alcohol spent no less than food, and on such a long trip this item of expenses would have made a tangible hole in the budget.

In second place transport is $ 3438.65, of which $ 1091 cost flights from Moscow to Seoul and vice versa. Flights between Asian countries, as well as public transport, totaled $ 2347.65 for the whole time. Most often, we flew by AirAsia, buying tickets in advance and at sales. Otherwise, I think flying would be more unprofitable. For example, a ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Pinang cost only $ 5 one way, and to Medan in Sumatra - $ 10. We flew from Hanoi to Bangkok for $ 40 each, and from Malaysia to Korea - for $ 90, which is six hours fly, by the way. As for the buses, we drove through them all of Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and, in general, everywhere we preferred public transport. If the distance did not exceed 1-2 km, we walked, and the cases when we took a taxi can be counted on the fingers. It is not only a matter of savings - local passenger transportation in each country has its own unique features, and taxis are the same everywhere. In Cambodia, for example, we once rode ten with the Toyota Highlander minibus, and I will remember this trip for a long time, like the Vietnamese sleeping buses.

In third place is 1 accommodation and an amount of $ 2772.85. We always tried to live in a separate room, and not in a hostel in hostels, and in Southeast Asia it costs quite inexpensively. It’s rare when we paid more than $ 10 per night. True, not everyone will appreciate the size of the rooms and the softness of the beds in them, but after ten days spent in a Buddhist monastery, we are not afraid of anything. There we slept in a 2 by 3 meter room on a wooden bed, and nothing. Fastidious travelers, of course, prefer hotels more expensive, but we are not one of them. I want to note that everywhere we had bedding, and no one was ever bitten by bedbugs, which they like to scare "state employees". But hot water was not always. Also, almost never we had an air conditioner, but we do not turn it on, even if it is.

Further - medicine and hygiene, for which we spent a total of $ 739.91. I think that most of this money comes from mosquitoes, which are in bulk in Asia, as well as vitamins, allergy pills and colds. And also in Korea, we have been vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis. It is also worth considering that we are not the healthiest characters and periodically fight exacerbations of chronic diseases. Healthy people can safely divide the amount spent by us into two.

$ 620.25 - other expenses. These are gifts to relatives, and new points to replace old ones, and the purchase of accounts on volunteer sites such as WWOOF Korea or Workaway. It should be borne in mind that thanks to volunteering, we pretty much saved on accommodation and food, so this is entirely justified. However, even in the months when we did not volunteer at all, for example, in Vietnam and Indonesia, we still did not spend more than $ 1000 for 30 days. In Southeast Asia, you can really live very cheaply.
For entertainment it took $ 526.71. This is the guitar bought by Pasha, which lasted three months, and tickets to museums, and sightseeing paid. Do not forget Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Unlike ordinary tourists, we had fun with the help of volunteering, and this is almost free. Therefore, the costs are low.

We spent $ 393.44 on clothes, with more than a quarter of this amount spent on new sneakers. Usually we bought the cheapest things, trying to do it in countries such as Thailand and Vietnam. For example, a rag bag, bought for 70 cents in a second-hand, lasted nine months and did not even lose its presentation. But we took down a lot of T-shirts and pants, because working on farms kills things very quickly.

Visas from Vietnam and Cambodia took $ 180. We were lucky with Thailand - just at that time the visa center issued them for free, but in Malaysia, Indonesia and Korea we did not need them at all. I remind you that in Thailand without a visa you can stay up to 30 days, and in Vietnam - up to two weeks. We spent one month in Thailand for two whole months, and in Vietnam - three whole months. In such cases, a visa is required.

It cost $ 118.67 for mobile communications and the Internet. We always tried to buy cards with Internet traffic, but without calls and SMS. Who needs it, if there is Skype with the ability to make cheap calls to any phones. True, in Korea data-sim cards cost a lot of money, and we mostly cost free wi-fi.

So that’s all the expenses. Before the trip, I was worried that I would quit writing about strange Asian food because of savings and therefore allocated a separate budget for posts with the tag "unaware" in excess of $ 1,500. In fact, it turned out that only $ 230 was spent on "unaware", so a separate budget was not needed. We partially lowered this money for shopping in Korea.