When people give costs per day figures...

are they including the cost of intra-country transport?

I've heard $35/day Thailand...$25/day Laos...$60/day Morrocco...

Can't speak for others but I do, Laos my food & lodging costs were $14/day, add a couple tours + bus fare,total costs averaged over 13 days = $23/day which included bus ticket to Vietnam

Now Vietnam food & lodging came in at $26/day (stayed at mid-priced hotels) but did more costly traveling like 3 day boat trip to Cambodia, average for 7 days $48

To give you an idea how skewed costs can get I spent 3 days in India in an $11 hotel, 1st day prwled local Bazaar, 2nd a private tour Delhi, 3rd private tour to Agra for the Taj Mahal, next day boarded a bus to Kathmandu. Costs averaged over 3 days $82

Nepal where I did a tour to Chitawin Park where my $16/day was doubled to $32 by the park tour

7 day tour Kathmandu to Lhasa + train ticket to Beijing 2 days averaged $110/day for Tibet

It's not the food, hostel, bus fares that are costly but the extras that make for a memorable trip.

A month in OZ ran just over $200/day & on the extreme side 7 days in Greenland $513/day

Not sure if this is a help or just confuses the issue for you?

I think that does help a bit...let me repeat my understanding back to you, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

$25 a day in Laos, for instance, should cover my food, lodging, and transport between various cities. However, if I wanted to do some extras, private tours, whatever....that would no doubt increase the price per day figure that I've been given. Same can be said for every other country.

About right?

I usually include average expenses - excluding the times when I splashed out for some reason or another.

After being in a country for a while you get a sense of how much you are spending weekly from the ATM. Big expenses for souveniers, diving trips, etc are things I would put on the credit card and ignore until I get home@!

As far as travel - by bus I would include as a daily expense - by plane I would not since it would be a big elective expense that could have been skipped by taking the bus.

Ok, but in general, is my understanding correct?

busman7 wrote:In general I would say so as only in Laos & Myanmar were my costs in line with the averages I have seen posted here.

Not sure I understand.

If only in Laos and Myanmar were your costs in line with the averages seen posted here...wouldn't my understanding be incorrect..?

yanks26dmb wrote:are they including the cost of intra-country transport?

I've heard $35/day Thailand...$25/day Laos...$60/day Morrocco...

The answer seems to be Yes (unless specified otherwise) and somewhere in the forums exist several links to spreadsheets created by the folks who calculated every penny. Those may be of more help to you than loose estimations.

I think what busman is getting at is that per day estimates differ from person to person, as peoples' preferences differ.

Some people give detailed breakdown of expenses, some dont. I have done St. Lucia (under 10$/day food+drinks) as well as $70/day on another trip to St. Lucia.

A good friend of mine, a food writer, has a saying "Show me what you eat, and I'll show you how to make it better & cheaper"

Everyone is different in how they track expenses. My understanding is that the norm for reporting daily costs is to include everything spent on the ground (food, transportation, accomodation, site admission, local tours, running out of toothpaste...), and ignore the "just getting there cost" - international airfare, visas, immunisations, dogsitter, etc.

The grey area that some people include and some don't are large prepaid or separately budgetted expenses - week at a jungle resort, maybe domestic airfare, more expensive tours, that kind of thing.

I don't track money too carefully when I'm only on a 2-3 week vacation, but when I took a long trip, I kept a spreadsheet with all cash withdrawals and all credit card payments, and used that to come up with my daily costs after the fact that I've since given to other people for the countries I visited.

busman7 wrote:

yanks26dmb wrote:

busman7 wrote:In general I would say so as only in Laos & Myanmar were my costs in line with the averages I have seen posted here.

Not sure I understand.

If only in Laos and Myanmar were your costs in line with the averages seen posted here...wouldn't my understanding be incorrect..?

In the first sentence of my first post I clearly stated that ALL costs including tours were factored in the average daily costs!

In my next response I clearly mentioned tours were included.

Not sure what the problem is but I have explained, now for the third time, interpret my info as you like!

Do you travel around a lot because you piss people off wherever you go? Bit obnoxious aren't you?

you're such a cranky old man....