Cost of Backpacking SE Asia

There’s a saying that goes like this: “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then, take half the clothes and twice the money”. I agree with the clothes part, and when traveling in places like Europe, you definitely need twice the money. This doesn’t hold true in SE Asia though, where western currency goes quite far and budgeting is much simpler.

So far I’ve only been through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. This budget I created might not be suitable for the other SE Asian countries. Although, I have spoken with dozens of backpackers traveling the whole region and heard that the cost of travelling in the other SE Asian countries is pretty similar. This budget definitely does not hold true in Singapore.

Keep in mind that this is a general guideline. I have created this budget based on my MY travel standards and MY spending habits. That being said, I think that this budget can be beneficial for the average backpacker. I am neither a minimalist and I don’t splurge often nor unnecessarily. I like to keep costs low as much as possible, while still allowing myself the financial freedom to do or buy small things when I want.

Here’s what I discovered after a few months of travelling in the region:

Overall, I shoot for about $30 a day. There have been days where I have spent almost $50, and other days I got by on $15. $30 per day is a good average. It comes out to roughly $1,000 per month. That’s for accommodation, food, transportation, and buying personal items here and there. There are backpackers who can easily spend less than $1,000 per month. There are also others who are spending way over that. This is my personal budget, and it has been working out great for me. Here’s the breakdown of a good budget and a few tips to cut costs:

 

• Accommodation – From $3 to $12. That’s staying in whatever I could find; hostels, guesthouses, or cheap hotel/motels. The cheapest place I stayed in was in southern Laos and cost me $2.50 per night. The most expensive was around $12. I keep finding the magic number to be $7 per night for most budget accommodations in the region.

 

Tip: look at the cheapest price of accommodation in a guidebook such as Lonely Planet. Go to that street, and find out the prices of a couple hostels/guesthouses/hotels within a couple blocks radius and before checking out the one in the guidebook. Also, never book online unless there’s a holiday during that time or the hotel you want to stay at is particularly popular. Most places always have a room available when you arrive at their door without a reservation.

 

• Food – from $1 to $5 a meal, $3 to $15 a day. That’s assuming that you eat three meals a day. I eat 4 meals a day, and I am addicted to fruit shakes, so my personal budget for food is usually about $15 per day.

Tip: To cut on food costs, seek out the places where the locals go. In any country, these are the street food stalls or restaurants with only a handful of items on the menu, if they have a menu at all. The more items there are on the menu, the higher the price. Many backpackers find restaurants with Western food. They see the menu at one of these places, do the currency conversion in their head and think “that’s not bad”. Remember, the locals are eating for a fraction of that cost and so can you. Plus it’s more authentic…

 

• Transportation: Under $10/travel day. This one has a lot of variables. If you are going long distances each time and changing cities frequently, trying to ‘see it all’, you’re going to spend a lot. I have been staying in most cities at least 2 days, and closer to a week in places that really grab me.

 

Tip: Take local buses from place to place by showing up directly to the bus station early in the morning. The local buses will be less comfortable and will take a little longer to get there, but they cost a fraction of what a ‘nice’ bus does. While in any city, avoid taking a tuk tuk unless it’s absolutely necessary. They are overpriced. Instead, walk or rent a bicycle or motorbike to get around town. A bicycle is usually less than $2 and a motorbike less than $7 per day including fuel.

 

• Splurge items – everything that’s not necessary but fun and makes you feel good. Souvenirs, new clothes or accessories, electronics, museum entries, bowling (awesome in Luang Prabang), beer, dessert, and massages all fall under this category. This one is hard to quantify. I myself am not buying anyone any souvenirs. My weakness is for buying a new clothing item for myself every couple weeks and chucking an item that no longer works for me. In Vang Vieng, Laos I bought a motorbike for $300, definitely a splurge.

 

Tip: This one you’ll have to go about your own way. Remember that any objects you buy, you’ll have to lug around in your backpack/suitcase. Instead, try to spend money on experiences rather than objects.

 

I don’t pretend to be a minimalist. I travel light, and cut corners on costs a lot, but I don’t often deny myself something I really want for myself. This is how I find balance in life on the road and I feel happy with my travel spending and budget habits. Explore what’s right for you and you’ll have one less thing to worry about.

 

Learning French

 

La belle Tour Eiffel

In two weeks I will have passed the 5 month mark of me being in France. Living here has been an experience that will definitely shape my outlook on life just like all my travels have (which is one of the reason’s I’m so addicted to travel!). One of the biggest things defining my experience here is learning to speak French. After about my first 6 weeks of being here I became super dedicated to getting the most out of my time here by acquiring a new skill, or in this case a language, that I could use professionally in the future.

Upon my arrival 5 months ago I believed that I had a good level of French. In college I had taken my first four semesters of lower division French packed into one year. After I graduated, I moved to New Orleans with my girlfriend where I continued to audit upper division French classes such as French Phonology & Phonetics, Advanced Grammar & Composition, and a French Conversation class. Whenever I encountered French or French Canadian tourists in New Orleans (of which there were a lot) I would often strike up conversations with them and be congratulated on my level of French.

Imagine my surprise when I arrive in France and while trying to carry out everyday tasks such as buying a cellphone or asking a ticket agent questions about prices, I was given that ‘what the hell are you saying?’ stare. Some people even became quite annoyed with me and even worse, would reply to me in English. That was definitely a humbling experience and it was only when I had to use French every single day that I saw what my real level of production was like. So after my first 6 weeks of getting settled in, I decided that I was going to leave here not just having gotten better in French, but extremely fluent.

Taking the advice of Benny the Irish Polyglot, author of The Language Hacking Guide, I made one major decision that changed everything: I cut out English of my life (Except when updating my blog, or calling my friends, family or girlfriend). I decided to do everything in French, and when I say everything, I mean E-VE-RY-THING. Since my commitment about 3 months ago, on a daily basis I:

• Only listen to music in French.
• Watch all movies in French (I’m kinda a movie buff and I often watch movies before bed) without subtitles.
• Read the newspaper everyday (there’s a free newspaper called Direct Matin that comes out every weekday that you can find in various Metro stops).
• Listen to comedy and news podcasts in French.
• Only read novels in French, even if they’re not originally in French.
• Convert all my email inboxes, Facebook, cellphone, kindle and computer software into French.
• Most importantly, strike up conversations and speak French often, even to Parisians who speak English.

 

On top of that, I study for about 1 ½ to 2 hours a day on the train to work or at my desk when I’m not out and about. I knew that my grammar needed a lot of work, so the first month or so I studied from a grammar book called Ultimate French Review and Practice. Each chapter is full of exercises that I used to test myself with. This was in my opinion the best grammar book I found. I would check my answers for each chapter or section, and if I got less than 80% correct I would go back and redo it the next day.

My next phase was to focus on Vocab, of which I’m now at the tail end of. I’m using a book called Vocabulaire Progressif du Français : nivel avancé. I love this book because there are no translations, only synonyms for the words, descriptions, context clues and drawings of scenes and characters to make you learn the new vocab. Each section is different and quite thorough touching topics such as politics, cooking, emotional reactions, quantities and measures, and forms, materials and textures to name a few.  Each new vocab page has a corresponding quiz page.  This book has really helped me expand on the variety of topics I can discuss.

My next project will be working on reducing my foreign accent and I will write more in French. I have already been learning to sing and play songs on the guitar in French, practicing tongue twisters, and mostly reading out loud to hear myself but starting next month this aspect of my learning will take center stage.

None of these study phases are absolute. While I was working on my grammar I was also learning new vocab daily and working on my pronunciation, but grammar was more of the focus. I rotate each aspect of learning the language as I self-diagnose my strengths and weaknesse . I also enjoy learning slang and swear words (of which French is particularly rich in) by always keeping a list in my pocket of slang vocab and sentences. Another great recommendation that Benny had, which he called “time hacking,” was to make the most out of all those minutes in the day we waste by spacing out when we could be learning a language. He recommends making use of those minutes spent waiting in line at the post office, waiting for a web page to load, or even waiting at a traffic light. I incorporate this into my day by glancing at a vocab list while waiting for the computer at work to load (slowest computer I’ve used since the 90’s), reading the newspaper on the metro and quickly switching to listening to a podcast while I’m walking to switch to another line, or reading a book while I wait for the bus.

Also, something I learned studying linguistics in college that really helped me: Imitation. In Bilingual Language Acquisition, we learned that babies learn to speak a language simply by imitating those around them, namely their parents. So why can’t we do the same as adults? One major way I’ve profited from watching French movies, is that whenever I hear a new phrase, a way of saying something, a slang word I heard during the movie, I imitate it and integrate it into my daily conversations with people. Of course sometimes there’s a little bit of gray area as to who you say what to and in what context but for the most part, I’ve learned a good amount of my French here by imitating what I heard others say.

End result: My French has improved DRASTICALLY. In three months of hard work I’ve seen a difference weekly. A movie I watched six weeks ago that had very colloquial language and that was very difficult to follow at that time is almost crystal clear today. Making progress quickly has been really motivating to me to continue with this method.

I still have 3 more months here, not including a couple trips to Spain to visit my girlfriend where I’ll use Spanish instead, to get my French to as high a level as possible. For any of you out there if you have any other tips or ideas, want to share your own experiences, or just feel like leaving feedback please feel free to comment below. Until next time…

 

 

 

Language Learning part 1

This is the start of a series of posts on language learning.

There are currently around 6,000 languages spoken in the world. I’m kind of a linguistics nerd. I like pondering the connection with the mind and perception, how languages change over time, as well as the fun stuff like vernaculars, accents, slangs and colloquialisms. When traveling, it is essential to at least know some basics of the language(s) spoken in that region. If you speak English, you have the advantage of knowing one of the major lingua francas (widely spoken languages used to facilitate intra-language group communication) in the world. English will get you by in many places, but there are still tons of countries out there where English is hardly spoken if at all.

The languages that I currently speak to one degree or another are: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian. That’s starting with the language I speak the best, English, to the language I’m the least proficient in, Russian. The path I took to learn each one has been very different and I feel confident in commenting on the different methods of language learning and what has and hasn’t worked for me.

Language learning in general

First of all, in my opinion the most important thing, especially for travelers, is effective conversation rather than reading or writing. You will need to be able to read signs and restaurant menus of course, but most of your beginning efforts towards learning a language should be geared towards being able to speak the language in basic day-to-day interactions with people. Here are some things to think about:

What methods you use to learn a language will be dependent upon your environment and the resources available to you.

Environment is important in providing the resources. Are you already in the country where the language you want to learn is spoken? If not, are language learning resources such as internet, access to books, music, movies, formal classes or informal tutoring available to you in that language?

After figuring that out, how well you learn a language is completely dependent upon you. Although certain people definitely have a natural aptitude for learning languages, in my opinion  how  well most people learn a language depends upon their motivation, attitude, and how much time they put into it.

Motivation– this includes external as well as internal motivation. How much do you need to learn the language? If you’re in a foreign country without any knowledge of the local language, the external pressure is always on for you to learn some quickly to be able to fit in and get around. How much do you want to learn the language? How much you want to learn the language is proportionate to how quickly and effectively you will reach your personal goals.

Attitude– There are plenty of people who take several semesters worth of language classes that they’re not interested in and finish not really knowing very much at all. Inversely, there are people who take only one or two semesters of a language and can use what they learned quite well. You need to be interested in the language you want to learn if you want to learn it well. Taking an interest in the culture also helps a lot. Enjoying the process of learning the language is much more productive than viewing it as a chore. Another thing that hinders people is shyness. When learning a new language, if you speak you are going to make tons of mistakes. You are also most likely going to have a thick accent in the beginning. If you can get over it and just continue to try using whatever bit of the language you’ve learned thus far you will get better at speaking very quickly. Many people study a language for a long time but don’t want to speak much until they are good at it, which is an oxymoron because you need to speak a lot in order to speak well.

There are many ways to learn a language and it is ideal to employ many methods at once for best results. Many people swear by one method or another, by I’ve found that you can and should use any method at your disposal to mix it up and help you learn in a variety of ways. Some of the methods I’ve used include watching movies in a foreign language, language meet-ups (usually in cafes or on college campuses), writing to language exchange pen pals, language learning audio tracks, taking classes at a local university or junior college, downloading e-books online, and using the internet to look up any specifics about the language I’m trying to learn. In my next posts on the subject I’ll go into more depth about each of these methods and talk about their efficacy…

Stuck in LAX

Last weekend I was on my way to Phoenix to attend my cousin’s wedding. I was flying standby as I always do, which I have previously written about here . This is a story about how I didn’t follow my own advice and realized just how good it really is. I made the mistake of thinking that the direct flight from New Orleans looked wide open (having plenty of extra seats open for standby passengers). I assumed (what’s that quote about assuming and jackasses?) that I would for sure get on and I didn’t prepare for the possibility that I would get stuck in the airport. As my luck would have it there was a cancellation earlier in the day, and all the people from that flight took up all the seats on the flight I was trying to catch. So…I missed that flight, and I had to get creative with how to get to Phoenix via an alternative route. Long story short I ended up in LAX (Los Angeles) having to spend the night. I had foolishly worn shorts, left my toiletries bag in my large suitcase (which I had checked), did not bring a sweater or jacket, and had no extra clothes with which to use as a pillow…pretty much all the things that can make sleeping in the airport less uncomfortable than it has to be. Also, LAX is not a good airport to crash in. All the chairs have armrests separating them, so there are no three seats together in a row (the best spot for catchin’ z’s in an airport). I bought a travel fleece for $16.00 at the store and ended up having a very restless night switching back and forth from the armchairs to the carpeted floor in an attempt to sleep at least a few hours. In reference to my earlier post about sleeping in airports, I must add a few things…if you’re traveling standby never assume you’re going to get to your destination that day and always prepare for a night in the airport just in case. If you check your bags bring a backpack or bag with:

• Light sweater
• Change of clothes
• Small toiletries bag
• Wear pants
• Entertainment (deck of cards, laptop, mp3, book)

Although a very sleepless night, it helped my see that my own advice wasn’t useless after all. So if you’re ever traveling and there’s the slightest chance that you could get stuck in an airport, ye be forewarned.

 

Wishful thinking…