We spent an incredible 15 months backpacking through Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia, but how much did this trip cost us? We’ve tallied up the figures to reveal how much we spent including pre-trip costs, flights and visas; we’ve also broken down how much money we spent in each country we visited.
Since Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) recommended that the tourism boycott of Burma be lifted in 2010, the number of people travelling to the country has steadily increased. However, the NLD urges tourists to boycott package tours and cruises as they benefit the ruling government rather than the local Burmese people; with that in mind, here are some tips on how to get around Burma independently.
How do you plan your trip to Burma? It isn’t as easy as heading to other nearby countries like Laos, Cambodia or Thailand. You can’t just cross overland into the country, you can’t just pick up a visa on arrival at the airport, you need all your money in crisp, unmarked US$ and you have to book your accommodation in advance, or so we thought. Burma travel planning is full-on! Read on to find out more.
Cambodia doesn’t have a wealth of options when it comes to tourist transport; there are no trains (other than the touristic bamboo train in Battambang) and flights are out of the question for budget travel. To get from city to city we had no choice but to use a mixture of buses. So read on to find out more about bus travel around Cambodia; expect breakdowns, bribes and bundles of air con! Here are our travel tips for Cambodia.
Since we found up-to-date information about how to get around Thailand hard to come by when researching our three-month trip, we’ve decided to put all we know here to (hopefully) help other travellers. So, should you travel Thailand by bus, train or plane? How long does it take to get from the north of the country to south? Here's all we know about how to get around Thailand.
After Laos we jetted into Hanoi, Vietnam to spend a month travelling from the capital city in the north down to Ho Chi Minh City in the South. We made plenty of stops along the way, visiting historic Hué, the World Heritage Town of Hoi An, the sand dunes of Mũi Né and the highlands. During our trip we also spent our first festive season out of the UK, celebrating Christmas in the mountains of Dalat and New Year’s in crazy Saigon. Here’s how much it cost us to travel in Vietnam for one month.
Like most people embarking on a round-the-world trip, during the years of planning we researched and discussed what would be best for us; buying a round-the-world plane ticket or pay-as-you-go flights. In the end we decided to book our flights as we travel, which was a good decision as it ended up being ultimately cheaper and much more flexible. Although we’ve yet to travel a full 15 months we have booked all our flights up until our temporary return to the UK in June, so here’s how much we’ve spent on flights for the first 15 months of our trip.
So far, Laos has been our cheapest country to travel in, costing nearly £5 less per day than its closest rival Indonesia. We spent 44 days travelling in Laos altogether; about four weeks during November in the north of the country and another two weeks during February in the south.  Overall, we had quite a chilled out and relaxed time in Laid-Back Laos, visiting plenty of waterfalls and temples and although the country is land-locked, we still managed to find time to see some islands! Here's what we spent during our six-week stay in Laos.
Despite being so close to Thailand, Laos is a whole different animal when it comes to getting around. For a start, there are no trains in Laos, the roads are very often just dirt paths and most buses are rickety, old and crammed with locals, luggage and livestock. We had some of our worst journeys while travelling in Laos, here’s how we got around the country.