My First Ever Low Budget Trip to Thailand

“ Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.”

— Jennifer Lee.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so I’m actually super excited to share my travel experiences with you all.

In this blog post, I would only share the budget calculations and how we managed to stay on our budget on our way through the whole trip, and not compromising one single thing that we wanted to enjoy on our first ever leisure trip.

Back in May 2016, I had the chance to visit Thailand. It is southeast Asian country known for tropical beaches, opulent royal palaces, ancient ruins and ornate temples. It was a leisure trip for me after getting a much-needed break from my work for about a week. I was utterly excited about the trip and it was going to be my first trip besides any official trips till then. I was joined by one of my classmates, Raihan – It was his initial idea of us going for a trip somewhere but later it was me who came with Thailand as our destination.

Both me and Raihan were short in cash, thus it was troublesome for us to manage an expensive trip itinerary all together. One handsome tip – it is always better to plan a trip at least six months ahead of the desired travel date if you want to get the airfare cheaper, get good deals on hotels and so on. On this occasion however, we could only decide about our adventure in March, just two months before we made our trip. It was tough in a sense that –

• We got our day-offs approved late from our respective workplaces.
• We still didn’t know whether to hire an agent or to look for deals ourselves.
• We were traveling Thailand first time, so needed Visa on our passport in a quick time.

Our initial budget was 800 CAD (approximately 50,000 BDT) per person – a decent amount yet much less if anyone wants to enjoy a 5-star experience or an expensive leisure time on vacation. For someone for whom cash is not an issue, the cost per person would rise way up from 1200 to 2000 CAD considering the best travel experience anyone could ask for.

We had to do quick research on below checkpoints that would fit to our budget as well as could be done quick before our flight –

• Air tickets: We looked everywhere from airline websites to Skyscanner to Google Flights – none seemed convincing of saving us a little slack from out budget as most of the airlines had the price between 550 CAD to 630 CAD (round-trip) from Dhaka to Bangkok. It was way too much for us as we could only manage somewhere between 400 – 450 CAD for a round-trip based on our initial budget for this trip. However, we were also contacting several local travel agents and one of them found a sweet deal for us – only 400 CAD round-trip on Thai Airways! It was worth going for as we couldn’t find anything better than this that could save a little cash for us at that time.

TIP: Try to book a flight at east 2 months before your desired flight date, just to be sure of the price you are thinking of. Airfares may go up or down ridiculously considering peak and off-peak season. Some handy research websites are below –Skyscanner.com, Kayak.com, Tripfinder.com

• Visa approval: The rate was fixed for Thailand visa for any Bangladeshi resident (55 CAD), which we could understand would take time to get approved as it was our first time traveling to this country. We were helped by one travel agent who took a small commission in return. Overall, we got our visas in one week notice for 60 CAD each.

TIP: Always research on visa approval time at least 2 months before you intend to apply for visa, as it is different for countries to approve visa based on certain country’s citizens.

• Hotel Bookings: Our trip was supposed to be 1 weeklong (7 days and 6 nights) and we planned to visit Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket (including Phi Phi Island, James Bond Island and a whole day of island hopping with fellow travelers). We thought hiring an agent as we did for air tickets and visa processing – but found some good deals while doing research ourselves. Some handy online travel booking websites are –
  • Booking.com
  • Agoda.com
  • Tripfinder.com

I did my thorough research on which one could possibly give us the best deal and found booking.com offering great deals as cheap as 25-30 CAD per night stay throughout our journey path. Bangkok hotels seemed expensive compared with Pattaya or Phuket, but nevertheless the deal was so impressive that we couldn’t say no to it. To summarize, the 6 nights stay in hotels (Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket) had eventually cost us only 150 CAD per person – an awesome deal to enjoy.

TIP: It is always important to stay on your budget. We thought of our budget way before we paid for our air tickets, because it is important to cut according to your cloth when you are moving for a low-cost trip. We knew we had to consider minimal comfort with maximum security in terms of our residence in Thailand, as there are so many options to choose from but very few to trust upon.

That is all for now, but I’ll come back with more from my travel diary. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.