Budgeting

What a day actually costs — and the small habits that keep a long trip from quietly going off the rails.

Budgets are mostly a confidence trick: if you have a plausible number in your head and you check it against reality once a week, you’ll come home roughly on target. If you don’t, the trip will cost whatever the most expensive day was, multiplied. The numbers below are 2026 working figures for two travellers sharing a room, eating mostly local food, drinking moderately, and taking the occasional taxi. Solo travellers should add roughly 25 percent for accommodation; flashpackers should double everything.

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Southeast Asia

Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia still run on roughly the same daily number for budget travel: about US$60 to $90 per couple per day for a clean fan room or simple guesthouse, three meals at local prices, a couple of beers, and short hops on local transport. Push to $120 and you’re in air-conditioned mid-range hotels with pools. Hoi An, Ubud, and Chiang Mai are the cheapest of the comfortable bases; Bangkok, Singapore (a different country, but the regional outlier), and Bali’s Seminyak strip can run double. The cost of an excellent bowl of pho, a plate of nasi campur, or a green curry has barely moved in a decade — about two dollars.

Japan

Japan is more expensive than its reputation but cheaper than people fear. Plan on about US$180 to $250 per couple per day for a business hotel or modest ryokan, three meals (one of which can be a $7 set lunch that would cost $40 in London), and intra-city transport. The shinkansen is the line item that catches people: a Tokyo–Kyoto round trip is about $200 per person, and the JR Pass — once a bargain — is now only worth it if you’re covering serious ground. A traditional ryokan with two meals included can be $300 a night for two and is worth it once or twice; do it every night and the trip doubles in cost.

Pacific Islands

The Pacific is where budgets break. Fiji, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, and French Polynesia all import most of what tourists eat and drink, and the small-plane inter-island flights are not optional. Budget about US$250 to $400 per couple per day on most of the inhabited islands, and considerably more in the French territories. The honest answer is that the Pacific is an occasional trip, not a backpacker circuit; pricing it as the latter is the fastest way to come home broke.

Europe

Europe spreads more than any other region. Portugal, Greece outside the famous islands, and most of the Balkans run roughly Japan-priced (US$180–$250 a day) and feel like a bargain after Switzerland or Iceland, where the same comfort is closer to $400. The trick in Europe is to slow down: a week in one apartment with a kitchen costs less than four nights of hotels and restaurants in the same city, and you actually see the place.

Flights vs. Ground Costs

For trips under three weeks, flights are usually the largest single line item and worth optimising hard. For trips over two months, ground costs dominate and a $300 flight saving is a rounding error against the accommodation total. We mention this because plenty of long-trip planners spend three weeks chasing the perfect fare and then book the first hotel they see in Bangkok at twice the local rate. Spend the planning time where the dollars are.

Cash, Card, and ATMs

Get a debit card with no foreign-transaction fees and no ATM fees — in the US, Charles Schwab is still the standard answer; in the UK, Chase or Starling; in Australia, Wise or Macquarie. Pair it with one no-FX-fee credit card for hotels and restaurants where cards are accepted. Pull cash in larger amounts (the local equivalent of $200–$300) to amortise the operator fee that bank ATMs charge in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia — usually about US$5 a withdrawal regardless of amount. Japan is a partial exception: 7-Eleven ATMs are everywhere, take foreign cards reliably, and don’t charge an operator fee.

The Sinking Fund

Big-ticket items — a Komodo liveaboard, a week of diving in Bali, a JR Pass, a Bhutan permit — should not come out of the daily budget. They distort it and make every following day feel like an overspend. Instead, set aside a separate “sinking fund” line at the start of the trip with the cost of the two or three things you already know you want to do, and treat the daily number as if those don’t exist. It’s the same trick households use for car repairs and Christmas, and it works for the same reason: the money was always going to be spent, so naming it removes the sting.

See also: Accommodations for where the daily-budget numbers actually go.

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