How expensive is Thailand?

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Trying to plan your Thailand Itinerary but not sure how much money you should save up in advance? Last July I spend a month in Thailand and since I always like to have an overview on how much money I spend, I wrote down all my daily expenses, also to be able to give you an idea on what costs you could encounter when going to Thailand. To summarise: How expensive is Thailand?

Thailand is always considered as a really cheap country to travel to, but especially on the islands in the South prices will go up massively compared to the North. The amount of money spent while traveling to Thailand will therefore not only depend on your choices of accommodation or your general way of living but also where you will in the country most of your time. 

While I always try to stay within my budget and travel as cheap as possible, I do sometimes like to go for a less cheaper hostel or a couple of beers more and then I do spend more money than I would have wanted to.

To stay organised while traveling I always carry around a little notebook to not just write down on what I had spent all my money on, but I will also write down information such as hostel addresses, flight information, telephone numbers and I also write down what I did on each day.

To save myself a little bit of work I separated my expenses in Thailand into different categories such as food, accommodation, transportation etc.

1. Food

By far the most important one! This category includes all kinds of food, breakfast, dinner, snacks and non alcoholic drinks.

Chocolate should get its own category, of course, so make sure to check out this awesome guide to the best chocolate stores in and around Bangkok.

Food can be as cheap as 30 Baht for a nice Pad Thai but prices will vary a lot. Street food will always be the cheapest option but if you are planning to having some western food every now and then, your budget will be a little higher. I was in Thailand for 29 days and I managed to spend 214.20€ ($240) on food. My daily budget for food expenses was therefore around 7.39€ ($8.28). If you are planning on traveling to Chiang Mai, also check out cheap eats in Chiang Mai.

Complete guide to solo female travel in Thailand!

2. Accommodation

As the name says it already, this category includes the costs involved to pay for hostels. I spent two nights on buses and overnight ferries, so I saved accommodation costs for these two nights but I will count them into my calculations anyway. And four nights I lived for free accommodation was included in one of my diving courses. So in total I spent 281.3€ ($315), leading to a daily budget of 10€ ($11.2).

3. Transportation

This will include all types of transportation such as taxis, planes, buses and ferries. The flight to Thailand and back was put into a different category but for all my transportation within Thailand I managed to spent a total amount of 246,8€ ($276,6), which sums up to 8,5€ ($9,53) a day.

4. Souvenirs

Everything from clothing to bags to postcards. I spent 108.78€ ($121.9), which is a daily budget of 3.75€ ($4.20). However, you can save a lot in this category, shopping is really cheap, but for some reason I thought I needed seven pairs of elephant pants.

If you would rather like to get a more permanent memory of your Thailand trip, how about a Sak Yant tattoo?

5. Night Out

Probably that category that will either make or break your budget. This category includes all entry fees to parties and alcoholic beverages. A beer here a bucket there. Let’s just say your budget will be a lot less if you leave out the parties, but who wants to leave out the parties? A bucket will be around 200 Baht (5€) and a small Chiang beer anywhere between 50 to 100 Baht, but it really depends. I spent 150€ ($168.11) in total in those 29 days, leading to daily costs of 5.17€ ($5.79).

6. Laundry + Medicine

Self explanatory. It doesn’t really fit in any other category. 18.5€ ($20.73) in total, which is 0.63€ ($0.71) a day.

7. Activities

This category includes all kinds of activities such as going to the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, a boat tour, a Thai cooking class or a day trip to Chiang Rai. I wrote some posts about it if you want to check them out. My total budget was 152.56€ ($170.98), leading to a daily budget of 5.26€ ($5.90). Now this is about the same amount of money that I spent on nights out which gets me a little worried.

8. Scuba Diving

As Thailand is known as being one of the cheapest locations for diving you might want to give it a try. I did a night dive on Koh Tao and it was awesome! This was part of my Advanced Open Water course and I also did my Rescue Diver Course, including an Emergency First Response Course plus two separate fun dives and a scuba review so it did sum up to quite a lot of money, which why I put it into a separate category.

In total I managed to spent 621.8€ ($696.9) on my driving activities but it was also one of the main reasons why I came back to Thailand.

9. Flight + Insurance

This just includes the flight to get to Thailand and back. It deserves its own category as it will differ enormously depending on where you are coming from and should therefore not be considered in the daily budget. I booked some kind of insurance with it but I do not remember which one but in total it was 680€ ($762.11) from Frankfurt to Bangkok and back.

Summary of my Thailand Expenses

Now as I have everything separated into categories I will be able to calculate my daily budget, which might give you an idea of how much money you could spend in Thailand. Without the main flight, insurance and the diving activities I have had a daily budget of 40.7€ ($45). 

The only other thing not included in this calculation are fees for getting cash out at the ATM as this will depend on your bank. But overall my daily budget was pretty high. I read that some people suggest around $35 a day but also that it is a lot harder to live on a strict budget in Thailand compared to other countries in South East Asia, which I can’t really evaluate since Thailand is the only place in this area I have been to so far.

I was looking out for my budget but at some point I didn’t really care anymore I was just having the time of my life and it just adds up, but I believe it is possible to live on a lower budget. It could have also been a lot higher as well. 

I hope this post answered some of your question on about: How expensive is Thailand?

Now, you might be wondering how I save up my money for traveling but this will be another post that I am working on right now and will be up soon! Have you been to Thailand before? Did you spent more or less money than you intended to?

Let me know in the comments, I’m curious 🙂

Love, Becky x

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