Laos & Thailand Trip Costs For 1 Month A Family of 4

We are going to mix things up a bit this time and share our Laos and Thailand trip costs with you in a different way. We usually go by calendar month, so I will share that info with you. I also think there is some use to viewing the expenses within one country as well, so I will add that too.

Cost of living in Southeast Asia – Laos & Thailand Trip Costs for 1 Month

Flashback to 2015:

Let’s start with the traditional calendar month of expenses for our family of 4. Remember our budget is to spend approximately $3000 a month for everything. That is just about $100 a day or $25 a day per person. It isn’t realistic to break it down per day or per person as there are base costs that are just there if it is one person or 4 people. For example accommodation for one maybe $15, but it isn’t $60 for 4 people. Anyway, you will see as we go.

During the month of November 2014 we spent a total of 16 days in Thailand and 14 days in Laos. Most of the time in Thailand was spent at our apartment in Chiang Mai, so living expenses were pretty similar to the prior few months. The final 2 nights we spent at hotels (1 night in Chiang Mai near the bus station and 1 night in Chiang Khong).

Note: As you know my mother, Gma Bev, is traveling along with us for a few months. Read all about it under our tag of Adventure333 (3 Generations, 3 Months, 3 Countries). She is paying for her own expenses, so we are only covering what it is costing Wagoners Abroad as a family of 4.

Our total Laos and Thailand Trip Costs for the month was $2949.

To be honest, I don’t know how we managed that. I was certain we were over budget, but we did it! Let’s hope we continue to do well. Here are the visuals for you.

Below is the breakdown by category as well as a chart showing the percent spent for each category. As half of the month was in one place and the other half moving around, it took us a little while to figure out the nomadic part. It was a difficult transition going from cooking at home to eating out every meal. You need to realize, we aren’t on “vacation” or “holiday” and we need to remember that as well. It is difficult seeing everything on a menu and sticking to a daily budget, rather than just getting what you want.

We changed the category of Food/Supplies into Eating Out and Groceries/Supplies. Eating Out is just that. While we still purchase snacks, drinks, water, toiletries, and other things from the store. Those items will now be in the Groceries/Supplies Category.

Transportation is a category that has jumped up for us, as we are obviously more mobile. The slower we travel the lower it will be. For the next 3 months, we plan to move about every 5-7 days, so we will see. We took a few different forms of transportation and shared our experiences with you. The bulk of the transportation costs were flights from Vientiane Laos to Hanoi Vietnam. While we didn’t actually fly until December 9th, the cost occurred in November. It was about $95 each for 4 one-way tickets on Vietnam Airlines. The remaining costs were for the 2 VIP buses in Laos. Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng and Vang Vieng to Vientiane.

As we will be moving around to different countries, we thought it would be helpful to capture any Visa/Passport related fees separately, so they don’t get lost in the Misc section.

We paid $36 each for our visa into Laos. It was $1 extra per person for a weekend crossing.
We also purchased passport photos in Vientiane. 6 photos each for a total of $10.
We used the electronic visa on arrival for our trip from Laos to Vietnam. It was $65 for the online fees, which were made during the month of November. We actually traveled to Vietnam in December, so the “stamp fee” upon entry into the country will show in our December report.

Activities were too much fun and very low-cost.

Now for a different way to look at things!

Cost of living in Laos for 23 nights (Family of 4)
November 16 – December 9, 2014

We already shared with you all of our accommodation in Laos, included the cost of each. That seemed to be a popular way to present information to you, especially if you are just researching one particular country. We will do our best to break it down for you.

First of all some things needed to change in our expense tracking, as we went from a living in a single apartment to being mobile and nomadic, moving regularly. Things like utilities, virtually don’t exist when you are on the move. It really just factors into your accommodation prices. So let’s see how we did and where we spent our money and take note of our new expense categories. This is still a work in progress and I will fine tune until it is where I like it.

Our Cost for 23 Nights in Laos for a family of 4
$1862.38 (Average of $80.97 / day)

NOTE: Now there are a few important things to note for you that may have been sponsored or were out of the ordinary purchases. This is not representative of all of our costs, such as travel insurance, storage in the US, etc. Those would all be found in our monthly costs noted above. This is purely what we spent in the country of Laos, for that trip.

We used our Chase Sapphire preferred Visa Points for 5 nights accommodation in Vientiane.
Here is the full break down of our 23 Nights Of Accommodation In Laos – Family Friendly!
Our transport on the two-day slow boat on the Mekong was sponsored, so we did not include any cost for that transport.
Communications was very high, as we purchases a MiFi device! Woo Hoo. We have a wireless hotspot with us on the go. It works wherever we can get a cell signal, so this was cool to be able to use on the bus trips or as we are on the go. We do need to purchase a SIM and data in each country to use, but that is very low-cost. The MiFi was about $50 and works in most countries. The SIMs are just a couple dollars, and the data is as much as you would like to buy. I believe we spent $4 for 5G of data to use within a month.

If you want to view any of our past cost of living / travel budget posts. We do our best to share all of our expenses with you.

Thanks for following along. Don’t be shy, ask us questions. I find it funny that many people will send us an email and ask. Go ahead and ask in the comments, that way more people with the same question can benefit from the answer.

Tell us what you think. Should we keep this format by sharing the cost of a country as well? Or should we just share it by the month, as we have in the past?

Read more about our
Adventure333 (3 Generations, 3 Months, 3 Countries)
Laos, Vietnam & Cambodia

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