Help with budget planning
 

Hey guys

I'm planning for a longer trip for end of 2017 and the places I really want to visit are: India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam. Now I'm trying to figure out if I would have enough time (aka. money) to start here in Europe and drive all the way or if I have to ship my bike over. To get a feeling of how long I can stay on the road, I tried to put together my costs per day, and landed on around 300 USD per day.

This is far away from what I read in certain blogs, where people claim to live of 30 USD or so.. So, I was just wondering: Am I calculating something wrong (I know I'm more on the "safe" side with my budget) or are those claims just with a veeery low standard of living?

Br
Beni

I didn't do a budget per country so far, just a rough best guess overall and this is what I came up with:

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Bike
  Fuel            6  l/100km       
  KM / day        300 KM
  Price / l        2  USD       
  Ferry, Highway  10  USD       
  Service/Parts    20  USD           
  Sub-TOTAL Bike:                        66 

Food                                      40 
Entertainment  Party/Drinks/Entry fees  50

Accomodation  Tent  20%  20 USD     
              Hotel  80%  100 USD
  Sub-Total Accomodation:                84 

Home-Based
  Mobile      100 /Mnt        3 
  Insurance  650 /Mnt        22 
  Rent      1100 /Mnt        37 
  Sub-Total Home-Based:                  62

Total per Day:                            302

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This sounds like an amazing you are planning!

But .... These are European prices, not Asia prices, and luxurious even for Europe. To be honest, I don't know if I am even capable of spending $300/day in the countries you are talking about visiting! Here are some thoughts and comparisons for my own trip. To show you how extreme this is, I have lived in Thailand for a month on just over 2 days of your daily budget and I felt like I was living like a king. I ate at the best restaurants, I got a massage every day, I drank wine (expensive there) and paid for other people's drinks regularly.

(I am using Thailand as an example as that is a country I visited somewhat recently so the prices come to mind easier)

It sounds like your home-based expenses are fixed so I won't comment on those (though you could always rent out your apartment while traveling to get rid of the "rent" expense).

As for the rest .....

300 km / day, every day, is an insanely fast pace of travel, especially in the countries you are talking about (poor roads, slow speeds and lots of interesting things to see off of the bike).

Hotel ... $100/Day? In Thailand I can easily stay in a hotel for $15/day or a hostel for $5/day (A hostel can be $3 / day if I don't mind being a bit uncomfortable).

Tent ... Even in the USA I rarely paid more than $10/day and often a night in the tent was free.

Food ... In Thailand, I'm not certain I am even capable of eating $40/day worth of food, the quantity would be too large. Perhaps if I go to the best restaurant in the city every night? Sometimes a meal was as cheap as $1 USD when eating at a street stall (which sometimes will have by far the best tasting food).

Drinks, etc. ... No limits here of course. However, a glass of wine (expensive in Thailand compared to beer) at a high end tourist bar (even more expensive) was a maximum of $5 USD for a glass. A beer can be as cheap as $0.50 per beer if I remember right. 100 beers in a day sounds like an amazing party! But I question if you'll be doing much riding the next day. :)

Bike Service / Parts .... I'm guessing you are on a BMW or KTM that is expensive to repair? Maybe you can spend that much, no clue. On a Kawasaki KLR650 doing most of the work myself, this came to an average of $2.77 / day (over 2.38 years with 3 big repairs and buying new luggage).

Ferries & Highways .... I was not on my bike in SE Asia, but my own personal average daily expense for ferries & highways averaged out to approximately $0 / day. If I include the cost of shipping my bike between continents, that rises to $2.14 / day average.

I hope this perspective helps!

Wow i usuarly live on 5 Dollars per day + Petrol or renting bikes if i dont have my own to save shiping costs. The price of flying is not so bad. If you stay for many months, tralveling its still cheaper as to live in your home country.

Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are one of the cheapest countrys to travel in. Motorbikes can be rent for just 5 Dollars per day and meals start from just 1 Dollar per Portion. Wild camping und beautifull countryside is free http://schoene-motorradreisen.de/?re...ailand_bangkok

Also, the service/parts costs are rather steep. 20USD / day amounts to about 600USD per month. Many modern bikes have service intervals of 10000km.

At that cost I wouldn't even bother doing any service, but sell the bike when it's due for a service and spend that money plus what I've saved on service on a new bike. :Beach:

I don't think you calculated anything wrong. I think people that make such claims ignore to include certain costs. For example, if I interpreted your estimate right, you didn't include tires in yours. Fine if you don't expect to change those.

I've going for 5.5 months, mostly camping in Africa and Europe. I have shipping, flight, accommodation (with the internet this has become way too easy) visa, TIP and tire quotes/prices and I'm at about US$135. This doesn't include beer money, but I'm going to ride, not socialise and I've got schedule constraints. So I've allowed for US$25pppd for food and drink which is probably conservative.
Even when I remove my estimated costs for food and accommodation I'm still at US$95/day.

Hey guys

Already thanks for the great feedback, I knew this was the right place to post this question :)

And with some adaptation according to your feedback, I think I can stay longer and longer on the bike :clap: And it slowly looks like I could make the trip starting here in Europe and drive down there :scooter:

Regarding some of your topics:
Bike:
KM per day dropped to 200 km on 6 out of 7 days, so around 180km on avg. And also dropped the Ferry/Highway and Service/Parts (which would actually include new tires) to a probably more reasonable amount.
The "Ferry/Highway" part would also include the price for a guide around China where I found some reealy scary costs.. But I'm still trying to figure out how much it will really cost.

Food/Entertainment also dropped a lot, but not sure how much it will cost when starting here from Europe, I guess the avg will come down a bit, but I don't want to go all the way down. I assume just one.. I don't know.. Whale watching trip or a good meal in a bigger city or something would increase the avg again.

Regarding the hotel prices, I'm really not sure what happend there. I checked out some hotels in India regarding prices, and back then (last year ;) ) I found prices around 100 USD as well. Well, I guess it wasn't the best idea to check for prices at Agonda Beach during christmas / new year time.. Now those prices dropped to around 30-50 USD as well. So I think it's safe to assume the avg. cost will not be that high.

Which would leave me with something like 200 USD including my "home-based" costs, withouth it around 140 USD, which would bring me to around the same standard as tmotten. But still somewaht over-estimated (at least for Thailand) to have some security in it:

:D India is probably the cheapest country in the world when it comes to hotel prices. We rented a whole little house directly at the dream beach in goe for two persons for just 5 Dollars per day (so we could also lock our stuff while swiming). In Mumbai Hotels were way more expensive: 10 Dollars for a double room with air condition :D
Most of the time we were wild camping anyway because in the nice areas far away from the tourist spots there are no hotels ;) Our total per day in India: Visa + Flight + 4 € Food + 5€ Bike + 4€ Petrol per day.

http://schoene-motorradtouren.de/?report=mumbai

Sorry, I am negative: Remember you must hire a guide, in Thailand. See FB New regulation.

I know importing a bike has become more difficult

http://reisemotorrad.eu/zaehler.php?...d_einreise.pdf

but a guide while riding in Thailand must be a joke or someone is trying to sell his expensive tours. Any Info about this outside of Facebook? Does this affect rented 5 dollar per day bikes as well? If been riding around Thailand without a guide like million other tourists every year and think its a myth...

http://schoene-motorradreisen.de/?re..._hong_son_loop

Sorry, but I can not laugh anymore .
Have given up trying to ride on imported bike.
Buy or rent in the country.No Import permit, no guide. Cheaper and easier to plan.bier

These are my words. Shiping and flying bikes around the globe is a big waste of money anyway. Better ride, what anybody else rides. For local bikes its also much easyer to get parts if needet and one dont look and will be treeted as money on legs ;)

Apparently this new guide rule seems to be true. Rich people get treated as money on legs

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...174#post554199

so ALoneRider should better fly to India, Rent a bike, Ride to Nepal and back, fly to Thailand, Rent another bike there, do a loop, take the bus and slow boat to Laos, Rent another bike there, take the bus to Vietnam and rent another bike there as well. Just as i did ;) If hes short on money, geting a Carnet for Iran and fly a bike over Myanmar and ship it back home ist too expensive anyway.

Having done a similar trip, the cheapest, most intelligent calculation for this trip in US Dollar would be:


http://schoene-motorradreisen.de/?re...and_chiang_mai

For both Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam permits, guides, itineraries and such are mandatory (Thailand - last chance to get a permit without guides was 23 december last year. And all those requirements are mandatory and not cheap!

And where do you plan to end your trip and what do you plan to do with the bike? Permits and temporary imports presupppses that you bring the bike out of the country you brought it into. So it might be neccesary to include some shipping expenses to your estimates.

Extraordinary expences always comes too. New clutch for the bike, a dentist visit, maybe a dog bites you and you will need a hospital visit and x numbers of rabies shots. A foodpoisoning or 3 will happen for sure, do you know how to handle that - or do you go to a hospital and get amitted? Etc etc....

Thats what I mentioned above. Apart from the missing Visa costs the Carnet de Passage, flying the bike over Myanmar and shipping it back home would be the most expensive part on the list wich easily can be saved by just renting different local bikes for just 5 dollars per day. Thats the good thing about Asia. This also saves loss of value of the owned bike and repairing costs.

Don't discount flying in and buying a bike like a 175/200cc larger scooter and selling it at the end of the trip, something that size is perfect. Your budget does seem pretty excessive however and am sure you'll be pleasantly surprised when you actually do it. I'd allow max $25/day for hotels, camping you won't do too much in the tropics, most likely you'll do it in the mountains but free camping in SE Asia is not like South America and you would have to look long and hard for somewhere without any people. Petrol in Malaysia is pretty cheap at around RM2/L to give you an idea. Street food is good and cheap, most Asians don't cook at home so eating out is the norm. Plenty variety and local variations to choose from. Beer costs vary country to country but $1 is probably fairly average.

You won't be doing 300km/day too often, it's possible but the traffic conditions are not the same as what you're used to and it's not exactly stress free. Even the main north-south highway from KL to Penang is tough going in a car. Note that weekends (especially in Malaysia) are super busy on the highways and even smaller back roads to tourist places like Cameron Highlands are one long jam at weekends so plan accordingly. Also some places don't allow bikes (even big bikes) on the highways and you might have to take the smaller roads or use a specific lane, watch what the locals do.

Why should you? Dont we travel to see the country AND the meet the people? Just ask at a little vilage for permision to pitch your tent. You will be invited for supper and can get a real impression of the country

http://schoene-motorradreisen.de/sma...ng_mai_086.jpg

I allways carry some little gifts to say thanks with specially in Africa, were there is no electrycity people love the torches from the chinese shop were you can make elektricity by moving the handle.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ashlight_2.jpg

http://schoene-motorradreisen.de/?re...and_chiang_mai

Not saying you can't do that, but the OP should be aware that it's not so easy to just rock up and pitch your tent here as you can in other parts of the world. You might have some luck pitching in a Kampung somewhere. For me, it was more the humidity than anything else as to why I'd take a room over camping, but it's definitely possible.

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Well I did for many years on the road. Be aware that in some regions renting a hotel room also can be dangerous specially for your bike when its parked outside and your not close to it (if there is one. In the best places of the world there is no hotel)...

Definitely, I'd reject plenty places before I found somewhere I could get the bike safely off the road or preferably even indoors

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Uhm, nope. Not really. Maybe I'm special (my mum thinks so) but I often try not too. The staring and hand gesture conversions are the same the world over, as are the "six question" conversations,
(1: where are you from?
2: how old are you?
3: are you married?
4: how many kids do you have?
5: how much money do you earn?
6: how can I come live in your country?)
and get a little old after a not so long while.

I travel to see the world and get away from the rat race. Each to their own.


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Hey guys

Thanks a lot for all the feedback. I now have a much better idea of what to expect as well.

I think I'll now start to map out an a bit more detailed plan on where to go exactly, and check up on all the regulations. I'll definitivly consider renting a bike and just fly from location to location, probably that's a bit easier..