Hi Efe!

Your English is great 🙂 Your budget is tight but not impossible. To be honest I have not travelled on a strict budget for a while, but I spent about 600 dollar in a month in Laos when I only did hostel dorm beds, ate street food, and did cheap activities (e.g. share a ride with other people to a waterfall, or visit a temple by walking there, etc.).

The budgets mentioned in this article are not meant to be super low budget, so they include the costs of some tours or maybe a few hotel rooms instead of dorm beds. But your budget will be fairly easy to do in north/central Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Singapore is extremely expensive, Malaysia can be a bit more expensive too. Avoid famous resort areas on the beaches & islands of Thailand and such which can be very expensive. Find less known beaches/islands where it’s still cheap 🙂

Good luck on your trip!

I wanna start Southern Asia tour on next semptember or october: From Thailand, Mynmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, (maybe Singapur), Indonesia and Philipinnes finally.

Its very hard to collect dollar for us. I think i will be ‘super budget’ traveller. I visited 8 countries until today but they wasn’t long trip.

Southern Asia will be my first long journey inşallah 🙂 Then… I checked hostel prices and all of them is under 6-7 dollar in a day. If i added meal and public transport in city, total cost will increase to 12-13 dollar in a day.

If i stay 1 month in a country, 500-600 dollar is enough? (Incule intercity transport, some activities…)

Thanks.

If you mean August this year then I think you might be too early given the pandemic situation. Only a few countries will be opening by August and I’d expect there’ll be very few other people traveling at that time. The best tip might be to consider traveling later.

Congrats on your superb blog, you sir are an inspiration to all travelers!
I’m planning on doing SEA from August on, hitting the main places and making friends along the way.
Are there any sources or places you recommend for me to mingle and learn about cool plans with other fellow backpackers?

Hey Ruth! The region has a very good reputation for safety, and many countries actually have lower crime rates than the US. It’s a common sight to see solo women travelers in SEA and most people consider SEA to be pretty low-stress. If it’s your first-time do check your travel guide for safety tips though, it’s a very big region and there can be minor things to be aware of sometimes, but broadly speaking it’s very safe to go and to do it solo. 🙂

English is widely spoken in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Myanmar. Some basic English is often understood in the other countries too, enough to generally get by (e.g. ordering food, buying stuff), but not everyone is able to have a proper conversation with you. In the tourism industry people do generally speak English pretty well though (in hotels/hostels, tour guides, etc.) The language barrier is not ever a practical obstacle in my experience, especially as people are used to travelers and tourists.

Hey Abby. Yeah you should be able to stay in private rooms most or even all of the time. You can get budget rooms for $15-$20 a night in most places (with perhaps the exception of the most touristy parts of coastal Thailand). They won’t be luxurious at that price but they’ll be clean and good. Maybe take a look on Booking.com or Agoda.com to get a sense of what you’ll get in that price range. You don’t need to be a backpacker or stay in hostels to travel cheaply in Asia.

If you book tours locally (not online from US websites) they will be cheap too. 4000 for 60 days would be a comfortable budget I think. For 75 days it might be a bit tighter if you want to do lots of tours all the time, but probably still fine.

The countries all have a rainy season which is usually a less ideal time to visit. Luckily the rainy season is different in different parts of the region. You could start with Indonesia and Malaysia (dry season in September) then do the other countries where the weather improves in Oct/Nov.

I am from the U.S. and am traveling with my partner next fall after we graduate this may. I have traveled through Europe for a month (mainly in Italy) on about a $100 a day budget and did just fine. If both my partner and I save around $4,000 not including air fare and travel for 2-2.5 months in SE Asia would we be able to afford private rooms more frequently and also more tours? (we are not nessacarily backpackers and haven’t traveled out of the country without parents except once for each of us) Also is September-November a good time to travel to this area? We would probably want to travel to Nepal, Thailand, Mayalasia, Indonesia, Laos , and maybe Vietnam

In this post I’m suggesting $1000/month averaged across the region, as a very rough guideline. I think your confusion probably stems from looking at the graphs in this article and kind of averaging all the bars in them in your head — but keep in mind most people will stay in the city of Singapore for only a day or two (that’s the outlier country with the $60/night accommodation average). And unless you spend all of your time in the most touristy parts of southern Thailand, your ‘region average’ is gonna come down pretty quick.

These are also averages and things can be cheaper in practice. Let’s take a random country like Laos. The average for non-luxury rooms that I found through sampling booking sites for this article is $24, but in practice I’ve rarely spent more than about $10-$12 on accommodation per night in Laos (that’s staying in e.g. a basic guesthouse or bungalow). Maybe add $10 per day for your meals and a beer or two. That still gives you $10 a day or more to spend on activities, getting around, local tours, tuk-tuk rides etc. If you travel in the local style, your money will go a long way.

On a longer trip, you might not do (paid) activities literally every day, so that also pushes the overall cost down a bit.

Hope this helps clarify a bit!

Are these prices just for one country or are you including traveling through other countries for $1000?
I am a bit confused.