Two Months in SE Asia
I don’t usually write blogs or document any of my travels, however this one was special. I’ve had many ask about the money, planning, and experiences in these 2nd world countries. So let’s cover it all.
Money
My goal was to stick to a $30/day budget, or around $900/mo. I found this to be very easy if I didn’t do some sort of expensive tour or travel that day. My total spend ended up being around $3,500 for the two months. The two month breakdown looked like so:
- Roundtrip flights — $1000 (If you know your start and end destinations, you can probably save up to $400 here)
- Living costs — $1800
- Impromptu scuba certification and Indonesia dives — $400
- A week of balling out on a surf school — $200
- Subsidizing my daily overages — $100
I tried to book flights at least a week in advance. Bus tickets and ferries I purchased pretty much the day before I traveled. Each day was planned day to day, talking to hostel-mates and doing research the night before. My daily budget broke down like so:
- $5–10 — Hostel/Homestay
- $5–10 — Food & Water
- $5–10 — Misc Expenses (bike taxis, motorbike rentals, petrol, surfboard rentals, laundry, entrance fees)
As you can see, if you were conservative with your spending in these 3 categories, you could live for around $15/day. Most days I probably came in around $20–25, which offset for extra spending on travel days.
Average Prices of Random Things
- Hostel — $5–10
- Homestay — $10–20
- Big bottle of water (1.5L ) — $0.50
- Local meal/street food — $0.80-$1.50
- Western food/touristy prices — $3–5
- Scooter rental — $3–5/day
- Surfboard rental — $3.33/day
- Laundry, washed, folded and pressed — $0.50/lb (I normally paid $3.50 per load, which was about 8–10 days worth of clothes)
- Bike taxi — $0.50/mile
- Temple & Park entrance fees — $1–4
- 1.5h flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai — $14
- 6h bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore — $15
- 3h flight from Singapore to Bali — $100 (booked a week prior, probably could’ve found a better price)
- 5h flight from Bali to Hanoi — $170 (booked a week prior, probably could’ve found a better price)
- 1h roundtrip bus pickup & ferry to Nusa Penida in Bali — $20
- 16h night train from Hanoi to Da Nang — $40
- 1.5h flight from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh — $40
People I Met
One of the first things I noticed was how many people were doing the exact same thing I was doing. I’d say this held true for 95% of the people I met. Many of them for much longer.
A couple popular trends I noticed were people who went to Australia to work on farms where the pay could be as high as $25 USD/hr with little to no experience needed. Working and living on the farm for 6 months allowed them to live in SE Asia for around a year.
Another popular option was teaching English. In China you can teach English, in person OR remotely, for 30 USD/hr. In Thailand you can teach english and earn around $9–12 USD/hr, this is plenty to live, especially outside of Bangkok. Others has done what I had and saved up enough money to take off an extended period of work and travel.
The Locals
There’s two types of locals. Those who work in the tourism industry (taxi drivers, shop owners, travel agents), and those who don’t. If you work in the tourism industry, your job is to extort the tourists for as much money as possible, and for this reason, they are quite unpleasant to deal with. As you walk by each shop, they will yell at you, “Hey bro”, “You want…?”, and my least favorite, “Hey buddy”. I’m not your “buddy” pal. If you actually decide to go in their shop, which probably sells the same thing as the other 15 shops on the block, they will follow you around, remaining no further than 3 ft away, incessantly telling you how high quality their stuff is and how good their prices are. This resulted in me ignoring most shops to avoid being hassled.
Coming from a western world, if someone talks to me, I usually assume they have the best of intensions, and my immediate reaction is to be nice in return. After a week or two in SE Asia, you will become “numb”. Outside of your hostel, your natural reaction to someone talking at you is to completely ignore them or give a firm “Nope”.
Having doubts yet? Well I’m pleased to inform you that the other half of the population is the complete opposite. Hostel owners, restaurant servers, farmers, etc, are some of the nicest, most genuine people you will ever meet in your life.
In Bali, a friend and I had an interest in coffee cultivation, from farm to cup. We ended up finding someone roasting coffee in a cafe, and asked where they got their green beans. It turned out the farmer was at the shop making a delivery and he came over and talked with us. He (Joe) said he’d never shown the farm to anyone before, but if we wanted to stop by the following day, he’d love to give us a tour. The next day, after we met up, Joe took us to a place where some older women were making food for everyone in the small village. While we ate our $0.66 meal, the kids of the village (~8 children) were all shyly staring and smiling at us. Many of them saying hello and then hiding behind their hands. I’m assuming they hadn’t seen tourists up in their small mountain village all that often.
From there, Joe took us to the farm. He showed us how the beans were picked, washed, and dried. Afterwards we went back to his house where he gave us each a cup of his coffee and some fresh fruit from his farm. We talked for nearly 2 hours about everything from family life, their coffee business, and eco-tourism. At the end, there was no money exchanged, just smiles all around, and a friendship for life.
The Hostels
I’m by no means a social butterfly. I’m not the person who starts conversations with people wherever I go. For this reason, the hostels scared me. Was I going to be able to get away to recharge? Were the dorms going to be full of partiers that I couldn’t relate to? Before leaving, I imagined I’d want to splurge on my own place ($10) to get away from it all. However, I quickly realized that none of this was the case. 90% of the people in the hostels were just like me. Going to bed exhausted from a day of traveling, and waking up early for the next days adventures. Outside of the big cities, I found the hostels to have a great social vibe. People were very eager to share their stories, as well as learn and hear from others. After a long day in 105 degree heat, there was nothing better than relaxing with your hostel-mates and a nice breeze planning where to go the next day.
The Dirty
Most of the time you see all the great pictures of these countries, and hear all the horror stories. The girls who were taken on a boat for a snorkeling trip and abandoned on a snake infested island (Thailand). The Australians who were executed by firing squad for smuggling drugs into Indonesia. The mysterious deaths of tourists on the Mob controlled islands of Thailand. The fact of the matter is these are rare occurrences and at no time did I feel unsafe in any of the places I traveled. However, that doesn’t mean these places are always made up of the breathless landscapes you see in photos. In most of these countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam), corruption is rampant. Police officers are regularly paid off, which means laws aren’t enforced. Government officials take bribes and have no interest in public programs to clean up the country. Thailand and Indonesia specifically were the worst examples of this, both littered with garbage. Pictured above is a street in Thailand. Most of the electrical poles had hundreds of wires tangled together and running separately from pole to pole with no organization. The government has no regulations on how you run wires, the Electricity Authority who owns the poles doesn’t care, and the cable companies don’t care. Therefore you’re left with this tangled, unsightly mess.
In Indonesia, skimming is quite popular. It is the art of stealing someones ATM/Debit card information. There are two popular ways this is done. The first is to install a nearly undetectable camera where the user types their pin, as well as a card reader. The next is to pose as an ATM repairman and install software on the ATM, allowing you to control it remotely, as well as collect all the users information. I would say around 50% of the ATMs I encountered were out of service. Unfortunately, one of the 50% that worked were setup by a skimmer, and I was a victim. They withdrew $500 from my account before I was able to cancel my card, shutting off my only source of cash overseas.
My Experience with the Indonesian Police
I was first referred to the “tourist police”. I walked in to a small, bare room, where two officers were watching YouTube videos and sleeping. They quickly jumped up and apologized and asked what I was here for. I explained the situation I had in as much detail as possible, however they had no WiFi so I couldn’t open up my banking app to get dates and places. This however, was not something they were worried about. The two most important questions they had were how much money do you have and how much did you lose. It was $20 to “submit” the report. I highly doubt the report went anywhere, they just give you a piece of paper which you can then give to insurance or your bank to get your money back. The amount you lost was whatever you said it was. Could’ve been $100 or $10,000, they didn’t verify, and they didn’t care. Next you had to pay up $20 to submit your police report. I only had $6 on me and explained to them that I could no longer withdraw any more money because I canceled my card. They eventually said okay and accepted my $6 as payment. The police officer then began typing up my report. His typing speed was probably close to 5 words per minute, so I eventually went behind the desk and typed it myself. He was blown away that I could type while looking at the screen. After the report printed, I noticed there was no phone number for the bank to call and verify this report. I asked and the man exclaimed that nobody ever calls to verify (I wonder why). Slowly I was realizing that the tourist police was a big scam. I got pretty animated and proclaimed this was all fake and asked how they would even investigate this based on the information I gave them. They gave me back my $6 and told me to go down to the real police station.
The real police station felt much more official. I walked in and sat down with a significantly faster typer who took my report. Again, my banking app wasn’t working so I wasn’t able to verify dates, amount, or locations. Again, they didn’t care. Meanwhile the officer taking my report continued to keep his YouTube video playing on the desk in front of us. The only difference between this place and the “tourist” police was the size of the building and a free report at the real police. At the end of the day, they made no effort to gather information which could lead to a suspect. My closing thought on the issue is that they are in on the ATM scams. I saw multiple “repairmen” in my time there, and with the amount of broken ATMs, I suspect a lot of tampering gone wrong.
Conclusion
This has easily been the most rewarding trip of my life. I’ve met so many travelers and gained perspectives from from all over the world. As someone who is always focusing on bettering themself for tomorrow, it was hard to make the decision to take two months off of professional life. I can now confidently say it was the best decision I’ve ever made. If anything, I’ve learned more in these two months than I would’ve at work. Given you have the resources, I would recommend everyone find the time off and do something similar!
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