Many blogs and guidebooks like to proclaim that having a lot of money isn’t necessary for travel. Lonely Planet suggests that one can experience Thailand on a budget of merely $11 – $15 per person per day, and there are backpackers whose travel spans the globe over the course of a year for less than $15,000 a piece. And yes, it really is possible. But travelers beware – the prices listed in the Lonely Planet guides are often outdated and in reality can be double. And what the guidebooks and blogs don’t tell you about are the trade offs that you’ll have to make on your journey to travel that cheaply.
The most obvious, of course, is that you’ll forgo fancy hotels and stay in cheap dorm accommodations without air conditioning and with shared bathrooms. You’ll eat often delicious, sometimes not, street food for all of your meals. And you’ll avoid expensive taxies by walking and taking local public transportation as many places as possible despite the oppressive heat and humidity.
You may also, like some backpackers we’ve met along the way, spend most of your days hanging around the hostel, wandering around town lost in your own thoughts, or taking photographs from outside the entry gates of the tourist attractions as a way to limit daily expenses.
All of these trade-offs are great if that’s the way you want to travel. Many backpackers are most interested in experiencing the “vibe” of a new city or country or meeting fellow backpackers while chilling out in a local bar with a cheap beer.
We are not such backpackers, but we’ve made our own set of trade offs on this trip. We’re not staying at the Westin, but we’re not living in dorm rooms either. In Thailand, we primarily eat street food from vendors (especially at night markets) because it is so delicious and more affordable than eating in restaurants. And we do try to walk anywhere we can, despite the sweat dripping from our foreheads.
But for us, if we’ve learned one thing in our past three months of travel, it’s that it’s not just about seeing the sights – we want to learn about what we’re looking at, and come away with more than the three or four sentences written in our guidebooks. And to accomplish this, we’ve found that we have to pay a little more.
Grand Palace. Wat Po. Wat Traimit. These are just three of the more than 30,000 temples in Thailand. These three, along with nearly countless others can be found in Bangkok. Each is a unique work of art, craftsmanship and architecture. Some have steep pitched triangle roofs; others are rounded and layered. They are amazing to behold, but what do they mean? It wasn’t until we hired a guide at the Grand Palace that we learned the origins of the different temple shapes. For example, a triangle roof indicates Thai-style, whereas rounded indicates Khmer-style (think Angkor Wat in Cambodia). We also learned the meanings behind the various colors used in the mosaics that cover the temple walls, with each color representing an element of nature and a fifth representing space. Our guide even covered the basic tenets of Buddhism as practiced in Thailand, which include: no killing, no lying, no stealing, no adultery and no drinking, although the last one is more of a suggestion than a mandate for most Thais. At $34.50, the price certainly didn’t fit within a typical backpacker’s budget: entry fees to the Grand Palace are 350 Baht per person ($10.50) and our guide cost an additional 450 Baht ($13.50), but our guide was able to bring the Grand Palace to life for us and provide a foundation for the rest of our sightseeing in Thailand. And if paying for a guide’s insight means we travel for less time or visit fewer countries than we intend to, it’s a trade off we’ve decided we’re more than happy to make.
What trade-offs have you made while traveling? Were they worth it?
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We totally agree!! A guide can make the site soooo much better. We have had times where the guide sucked but, for the most part, they are totally worth it. And you don’t need a guide for every site…once you understand the tenets of Buddhism and the architecture of temples in general, you can visit many more on your own…and enjoy them more too!
Hi traveling friends! We are just ending our “break from vacation” here in Washington state and will be heading to Vietnam next week. Yikes. It is crazy to think about living out of a backpack again. I love reading your blog to get insights into what we need to know about SE Asia. If you have a minute we would love a mini-guide on anything important that we should know. Your mini-guide to Dahab was excellent! Cheers, Morgan
Morgan – ask and you shall receive. We have a post publishing tomorrow that highlights our recos for Southern Thailand. Check it out and as always if you have questions feel free to email or post a comment here. Hope your departure from Seattle and flight to Bangkok is an easy one!
Our budget is set to be $100/day, but we also have a 3-year timeline. If we only end up being gone for 2 years because we “splurged” on things like this, then I’ll still consider it a successful trip. (heck, who am I kidding? Just getting to go is a successful trip!)
Glad to hear you are enjoying Thailand. Happy travels!
When Kate and I were in Ecuador, we had a guide that pointed us in the right direction(s) more than once. Rodriguo’s advice was well-worth the tip money and we definitely had some badass experiences that we probably wouldn’t have without his advice. The extra bucks were definitely worth the investment for a guide, considering the trip was a week long.