Travelling through Asia monthly budget.

hiya redgrave, im new to this and im afraid i havnt actually been anywhere apart from europe yet but, iv done a lot of research and spoken to a lot of people about living cheaply in asia and it seems it can be done and your goal is very realistic!! your basically going to all of the same places as my girlfriend and i are, but your budget is quite a bit more than ours :S i think were aiming for about £5000 each, but also aiming to stay for about 10 months, two months of our trip is going to be in india so i imagine that would keep the costs down a little!
iv read most of the lonely planet books on the places mentioned and if i remember rightly, cambodia, malaysia, indonesia and laos will be the cheapest, where you can apparently survive on well under $15 dollars a day, although that would depend on what your comfortable with! im afraid it looks like my girlfriend and i will be staying in rat infested cellars with only a bucket for a toilet/shower, but we will have the occasional splurge thank god!
singapore will no doubt be the most expensive, and if your planning on staying for as long as possible i would stick to the cheaper countries and just make short trips into the expensive ones! also depends on your habits, do you drink a lot? i drink like a fish but will be going tee total on this trip (apart from maybe at the full moon parties haha) really hope this helps but remember im a complete novice so it probably wont have haha!!!
hopefully see you somewhere, kuta beach in bali perhaps?

Hi Redgrave, I'd say it is pretty realistic.

I spent a year in South East Asia in 2009 and my average monthly spend was around 500 pounds a month. Some months were a little more and some were a lot less. I spent time in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Touristy areas in any of these countries were always more expensive but we didn't spend all that much time in there. Laos, Vietnam and parts of Indonesia turned out to be the cheapest for us. We did travel rather cheaply. Taking public transport 95% of the time, staying in cheap (but still great) guesthouses and eating cheaply. Although we ate cheaply we did eat out three times a day every day but always in a cheap place/street food. We aren't heavy drinkers but had a few beers whenever we fancied. I'm sure we could have done it cheaper if we had really tried but were quite happy with our lifestyle/spending.

Have a great time!

China will be more expensive than you think. The cost of entering attractions, etc is really quite high and bus and train fares have risen considerably.
#1, $15 is only about 44MYR, (and do we have to assume you're talking US or is it AU or NZ $'s??) Realistically, how much less than that do you think you could survive on??

Thx guys for the advice/info, forestj it's great to hear you got by on £500 a month (give or take) I intend to do somewhere between 6 - 8 months so that would enable to me to 'splash out' alittle when a rare occasion calls for it!

Yes, you can get by at 1000$ per month or less.

But that's what you will be doing - getting by.

At that budget you will have to choose destinations and time spend there accordingly to your budget - and dot accordingly to your liking.

And you will have to choose your activities the same way - to your budget and not to your liking.

Don Det, Laos. People hanging out there for days on end. Not doing anything really - hiring a boat going to other islands is not possible, budget wise. But hanging out there is great nevertheless. Because you can get by at 8 bucks a day, food, hut and two beer all included.
What a great place.

You ask 'how was Laos'.
'oh so wonderful, so cheap'

You ask 'how was Singapore'
You know the answer...

But at the end of the day it's each owns decision.
For myself I prefer to have 2000 bucks per month and do things - instead of getting by...

......

Thanks for the advice tool! I'll try to aim for a little higher so i won't be to restricted in what i can or cannot do.

#3 I'm so sorry I meant £15 for each country haha, not $15, feel like a bit of a muppet now, I meant about $25 per day in each country!! Sorry for the error!