Tips on saving a bit of cash in Thailand

Travelling can be rather stressful at times: booking hostels, haggling with taxis drivers and getting extra charges on your card for silly admin fees.
If like us you've saved all your hard earned cash on the trip of a lifetime and you want to it to go as far as possible, then hopefully some of these tips might help.

1) Transport

Grab - Taxi app

Grab is a Taxi app much like Uber that operates all over Southeast Asia in most of the cities.

TIP: you should never take a driver who's got a low rating - always take the higher rated ones to be on the safe side.

You don't have to connect any credit or debit card to Grab, just simply download it and book your trip. When you enter your destination from A to B it will give you a fixed price there and then. This saves you haggling a taxi on the street - who by the way, often charge you double and never have their metre on!

Also, look out for promo codes in hostels you're staying in or near you. We found one and got 2 free trips from a hostel around the corner from our hotel. You have to get the taxi from and to the hostel
for the promo to work.

2) Accommodation

Booking sites

One of the best ways to book a hostel is to just turn up to a town or city and walk into one you fancy rather than pre-booking it. However, if you want to be certain where you're staying (like us) there's plenty of sites you can use to research the best location and hostel for you.

We first started using Hostel World, but then realised it was charging us an admin fee of about £5 per booking! We then started using Booking.com instead. They don't charge you for anything and you can just reserve your hostel and pay when you get here.

If your plans change you might want to move your hostel booking or cancel it all together. With Booking.com you can do that free of charge (until a certain date before your booking) without losing a single dime.

Also, if you frequently book hostels on the site you become a 'Genius', which means you get 10% off all your bookings. It's bookin' great!

Promo codes and coupons

Whenever you sign up for a new booking site or you're an existing member, there's alway deals to be had.

I subscribe to Normadic Matt, who's an amazing travel writer, he gives away coupons too. We got £29 off (when your booking is £62 or more) our Air Bnb in Hanoi, which only ended up costing £52 for 4 nights!

3) Food

Eat at markets

This is probably a no-brainer, but eating at markets will save you paying service charge or VAT on food you could probably get much better and fresher at the market. Also, it's a more enriching experience than a restaurant because you eat like a local.

Going to the markets also allows you to try a whole range of things, rather than a sit down meal. 

Tip: busy stalls usually mean it's damn good food, which will ease your mind if you're thinking it might gives you the runs.

Use the local supermarkets 

You can't drink the water in most of the countries in Southeast Asia, which means you'll have to fork out on bottled water everywhere you go.

7-Eleven is probably the most common supermarket you will see on your travels. You can pick up 7-Eleven's own 'Select' brand water for 13 baht for a 1.5 litre bottle. Also, look out for deals - I recently got two Chang (not the beer) 1.5 litre waters for 20 baht. Alternatively, go to the local superstore and pick up a multipack of water for 40 baht.

Most hostels stock water bottles too, but you'll often pay double or a little extra for them. It's only a few baht, but hey it all mounts up!

Speaking of beer, supermarkets are often cheaper than bars too. If you can get a few tinnies and sneak them into your hostel or go sit on the beach with them, then you get drunk cheaper hehe.

4) Managing your budget

If like me you're a bit of tight arse and it takes you a bit of time to get used to the fact that you no longer have a wage coming in - then a spreadsheet might help.

I started a Google sheet pretty much straightaway, it contains cost of:

• accommodation
• food and drink
• transport
• visas
• bills (Netflix, phone bills)
• others (clothes, gifts, entry fees etc)

I then have a column that calculates all the costs in the day so we can then see how much we're averaging. It's really interesting to see, right now we're averaging about £40 a day. That's including accommodation, food, drink etc.

All the day to day costs on the sheet subtract from our overall budget that I have at the bottom of the sheet. This way we can keep a rough eye on how much we have left overall.

5) Let go

I already mentioned I was a bit of a tight arse, and yes I still am, however when you're in a country where beer is nearly the same price as water you do have to just let go and relax now and then. Don't get to het up on the little costs of things - this is me actually giving myself advice haha.

I'm sure I will add more to this post the longer I travel, but for now I hope this helps :).