Shishira and I left home on May 15, 2022 on this little adventure of full-time travel.

For a few years now, we’d been dreaming about travelling full-time and so we planned to take a year off our corporate careers and explore the world. From what we had saved up until May 2022 we earmarked a portion called the full-time travel fund. Our plan is to use this money to fund the expenses of travelling around the world and living this lifestyle while also working towards earning on the go.

Before we left home on this journey, I often looked for similar reports of people travelling long-term. And when I did find a few, I spent many hours reading one periodic report after another! And I figured – if I like it, so could many more travel nerds who might enjoy reading this! So, we began documenting every expense (like stay, activities, etc.) and decided to publish it here.

Yes, we are (were?) accountants – so we’re going to present this in a way that makes the best sense! But if you prefer a more insightful view, let us know in the comments section below and we’ll attempt to get it right.

Hopefully, you’ll find this full-time travel expense report as interesting as I do… anyway, here goes:

SEASON 1: South East Asia (May 2022 to March 2023)

Before we get into the expenses, here’s a quick background of where we travelled in this season between May 2022 and March 2023. If you’ve been watching the travel vlogs from this season, you probably already know this.

The Route: Andaman → Thailand → Vietnam → Cambodia → Laos → Singapore → Philippines → Indonesia → Timor Leste → Brunei → Malaysia

That’s ten months, covering every SE Asian country (except Myanmar, which we’d visited just before the Covid-19 pandemic).

Our first destination on this journey brought us to an area within SE Asia that is a part of India – the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. We originally planned to spend a couple of weeks here – trying to get out of the “corporate routines” that we were so used to. But we spent nearly six weeks across the archipelago in pristine blue water, before heading up north to Kolkata and Sikkim!

In July 2022, we left Kolkata on one-way tickets to Bangkok, Thailand! Over two weeks we explored the capital and the beautiful mountains around Chiang Mai before flying to Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. We spent the next four weeks travelling slowly from the south of the country to the north stopping at many cities and towns on the way until we reached Hanoi. We made our way back to HCM city and took a bus across the border to Cambodia.

Over the next two months, we explored the two beautiful countries of Cambodia and Laos. Laos is still one of my favourite countries – I sometimes imagine retiring there surrounded by amazing nature and simple people! After that, we flew to Singapore for a short stopover before proceeding to Cebu Island in the Philippines. We island hopped, swam with whale sharks, jumped into waterfalls and so much more over the two weeks there. We flew back to Singapore and two days later, headed to Indonesia!

Our original plan was us to spend the month of November in Bali. This would have given us another full month to visit Brunei and Malaysia before turning homeward. But we quicly realised that we did not want to leave so soon. We decided to extend our visas, stay another month in Bali and also began researching about visiting Timor Leste.

Our days in Bali were very fun! We made new friends, enjoyed visiting cafes and ‘warungs’ and riding our rental scooter down to the beach or up to see hidden waterfalls! And around New Year’s Eve, we arrived in Kupang and a couple of days later, crossed the border to East Timor.

We spent the next ten days exploring this stunning little country – we could barely speak Portuguese, but it never stopped us from having the best time there! We flew to Jakarta and spent the next three weeks exploring the Java island of Indonesia, until we miraculously got our ‘so-hard-to-get’ Brunei tourist visas. Over the next ten days, we explored this tiny country (which surprisingly had a lot to see!), we flew to Malaysia for our final fortnight.

After nearly ten months on the road, we had officially completed visiting all SE Asian countries (we’d been to Myanmar before Covid). And we decided it was time to go home…

This chart shows how much time we spent in each country on this journey – from May 15, 2022 to March 1, 2023.

This pie chart shows how much we spent across each category over the duration of our trip:

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the categories. If you’re more interested to know the grand total, just scroll down the page to skip the details.

✈️ Flight: INR 185,519 / USD 2,262

In this season, we flew on 15 flights across India and SE Asia. Nearly all of the flights we took were budget airlines (no, we did not use credit card points and miles for this). All flight tickets were affordable – less than USD 120 per person. The most expensive flight we took was the one from Bali to Kupang in Indonesia. The cheapest flight was the “free” ticket we found in Vietnam.

We usually book flights online by first searching on tools like Skyscanner or 12goAsia depending on where we’re getting the best deals!

⛺️ Stay: INR 150,211 / USD 1,832

The best thing about SE Asia is that you’ll always find very pocket-friendly accommodation nearly everywhere. We slept in over a 100 different rooms over the ten months we were on the road – ranging from hostels to small hotel rooms to luxurious villas (in Bali).

We also spent a few nights here and there on transport (like red-eye flights, overnight buses, etc.) and also stayed with friends and relatives whom we visited in Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia.

The cheapest room we stayed in was on Havelock island – it cost us only INR 200 (USD 2.5) per night and it was located in a beautiful forest patch just off the blue Vijayanagar beach! 

But Shish says, the best room we stayed in was at a beautiful homestay in Nusa Penida (Bali). We had a view of the volcano, a swimming pool, yummy food and very friendly staff – all for less than ten dollars a night! A close second was a family-run homestay in Ninh Binh, Vietnam. 

You’ll find these stays in our vlogs from those places. We’ve mostly used Booking and Agoda to find stays in SE Asia. Another popular website is AirBnB – many a times, you might find the same accommodation listed across all these websites.

🍕 Food: INR 178,830 / USD 2,181

Breakfast (sometimes), lunch, snacks and dinner; includes water too. Typically we ate two meals and a day and shared our food to cut costs. As a result, most meals costed less than INR 300 or USD 3.5.

We definitely ate more street food and at small cafes than at popular restaurants. We aimed to keep our food bills under INR 700/day. Most of the food in SE Asia was very delicious – but Thailand (Pad Thai) and Vietnam (Banh Mi sandwiches and Pho) were definitely the highlights!

Finding vegetarian food was not a problem at all… neither was finding Indian restaurants (which were omnipresent too). We did spend more money at Indian restaurants because we just wanted home-style food and Indian food is rarely cheap in foreign countries. However, in Timor Leste, we bumped into a very kind Indian chef who cook some delicious Timorese and Indian food for us for practically free. Thank you Jay! 

Also, I don’t think we cooked our own meals anywhere except when we visited our relatives and friends’ homes and cooked together. 

🤿 Sightseeing and activities: INR 51,419 / USD 627

🚌 Transport: INR 135,485 / USD 1,652

🔖 Visa: INR 68,666 / USD 837

🧾 Insurance: INR 11,909 / USD 145

💊 Others: INR 21,447 / USD 262

Here’s a quick summary of how much we spent in each country on this journey. I definitely did not realise we spent that much in Indonesia – but then again, we were there nearly three months, so it does make a lot of sense. 

THE GRAND TOTAL