If you are looking to travel to Thailand on a budget, this article will set you on the right path. When traveling on a budget it is very important to do everything and plan everything budget consciously. That involves first creating a budget. That means sitting down and creating a number that you are comfortable paying for your travels. Then after that, planning within those bounds!
A realistic “budget” trip to Thailand from the U.S. depends on many factors. These factors include: length of time, the types of hotels you plan to stay at, and how you plan to travel. This article will detail a budget trip I took in November/December of 2019 to Thailand coming from Detroit, MI. My set budget for this trip was $1300 for the time frame of one week trip. From looking around, I believe my budget was quite moderate. The important thing is that it didn’t feel like I was living below my means, due to creative budgeting!
Budgeting and Planning Cheap Flights to Thailand
When creating a budget for a cheap trip I believe the most important things to plan out is your transportation. If you do not look for transportation information and prices early, it can come back and bite you. It is also very important to monitor these prices. For me, I spent about a month contemplating when I could take my trip to Thailand. After a while I decided that the day after Thanksgiving would be the best day to leave. Since most businesses are closed in the U.S. for Black Friday, it meant it was one less day I had to take off from my job.
With that in mind, I began to pull up SkyScanner (www.skyscanner.com) and Google Flights every other day it seemed. For SkyScanner, I would enter the dates I was planning to go to Thailand and noticed that the cheapest airlines from the U.S. to Thailand was typically China Air and China Eastern Airlines. From looking at Youtube reviews, I determined that China Eastern would be the best bet!
The key when looking for cheap flights to Thailand from the U.S. is to fly out from a major airport. I would suggest only flying out from either New York (JFK) or Los Angeles (LAX), whichever is closest to you. I found an afternoon cheap flight to Bangkok Thailand from New York JFK for that date on SkyScanner. The offering was actually through one of their partners, ExploreTrip. The flight was only $450! (View screenshot below!).
After booking what people would call the “main leg” New York to Bangkok, I immediately began to book my shorter flights that same day. Since I was coming from Detroit, MI I still had to book a going flight to New York and a return flight from New York. To book my going flight, I went to the cheapest domestic carrier I knew here, Spirit Airlines (www.spirit.com) . I found a leg for only $87 there and quickly booked it.
Since I wasn’t very flexible on the dates I could choose, I decided to fly into a smaller airport. I decided to fly into Laguardia (LGA) New York. Flying into smaller nearby airports is a major travel hack that I think everyone should use when they can! For my leg returning home, I went to Expedia.com and basically booked the cheapest flight they had. This flight happened to be on American Airlines for $104.
This brought my total airfare for the trip to a total of only $641! Which is an amazing price! A major travel hack is to book all of your flights with your credit card. Before this trip I had recently received a new credit card. The credit card bonus helped me pay for the next section of travel.
Getting Quality Hotels in Thailand at Budget Prices
After paying for flights I knew that Hotels and Lodging would likely be another big use of my budget. I decided to approach this strategically and tactically. The credit card bonus I mentioned above that I received gave me 20,000 credit card points to use. The value of these points equates to about $200 USD. If you are looking for a good, NO ANNUAL FEE credit card with great perks, this is the card I used, The Capital One Venture One!
Keeping in mind that my bonus was $200 I challenged myself to stay within that $200 budget for hotels. I thought that this challenge would be hard considering I was staying 7 nights in Thailand, but that was before I knew about Agoda. Agoda is the premier hotel booking website and mobile application used in Thailand. Booking with Agoda will save you major money, especially if you take advantage of their deals. Breaking my trip down I knew I could only spend about $30-$35 a night to stay within my $200 credit.
I had decided to book the first few days of hotels on Agoda. Then decided I would book the rest of the hotels when I got there. I suggest everyone to do this because it will allow you to move freely when you get there. Don’t worry there are tons of hotels in Thailand, you won’t be homeless. I started my Agoda search for Bangkok since that’s where I was spending the first half of my trip. On Agoda, I found a very clean, newish looking hotel that had good reviews. It was named Aspira Sukhumvit. It was definitely more than I wanted to pay, at $153 for 3 nights. I figured since it was my first time there and I would just be getting off of a 20 hour flight that I would just want to make sure I was comfortable.
To explore as much of Thailand as possible, I decided to spend my trip in Bangkok for the first 3 nights. Then after that, would go to Pattaya for 3 nights. Then spend the last night in Bangkok to catch my outgoing flight the next morning. I decided to book a cheaper hotel in Pattaya, mainly because of the fact that I splurged a bit on the first hotel. I booked a very decent hotel with good reviews, in a good location, called Red Planet Hotel. The hotel was clean, was located near the beach and shopping areas. It was a great deal at only $27 a night, totaling $82 for the 3 nights in Pattaya.
My last day before my flight, I traveled back to Bangkok from Pattaya on the Bus (about $5 USD). I was very tired from all the moving around I had been doing all week. On the bus I decided to splurge a little again on a really nice hotel where I could just relax and get some good sleep. I found a great reviewed hotel that I had heard about before on Agoda called The Ambassador Hotel for $52 for the one night. This hotel was very nice and had tons of great amenities, like free kick boxing, but at that point I just wanted to eat and pass out on that king bed! Haha
All of these hotel stays combined brought my total hotel spend for the 7 days to only $287! But it gets better, remember that $200 free bonus my credit card gave me? I used that whole $200 to comp out my hotel payments. So I realistically only paid $87 out of my budget / pocket on hotels for the whole trip! Just to reconvene really quick, at this point we have all flights and hotels for 7 nights all covered for only $728 out of our budget.
How to Travel on a Budget in Thailand
This section will talk about how to get around Thailand from place to place effectively without breaking the bank. The solution for this is actually pretty simple, travel as the locals do! Thailand has an abundance of cheap transportation. Being completely honest when in the main parts of cities I just walked around. I feel that walking gives you the best perspective and allows you to pause and take things in. When in Bangkok, I spent a few hours a day just walking from location to location and loved it. Typically a walk to any major restaurant or mall shopping center was no more than 35 minutes each way.
If you really don’t want to walk and do have to go too far of a distance, in my opinion motorbike taxis or tuk tuks would be your best bet. I think I took a motorbike taxi 5 or 6 times my whole time in Thailand. A typical motorbike taxi should cost you no more than 90 baht or $3 USD to go anywhere. My suggestion would be to download and have Google Maps on your phone so that you can look up the distance of how far you are trying to go. If you are a foreigner, some of these motorbike guys will try to get as much as they can.
Another major tip when taking taxis in Thailand is to download the Grab app. Grab is essentially Thailand’s favorite Uber type app. To make sure I wasn’t getting ripped off, I’d pull up Grab and see how much my trip would cost on it. Then I would try to convince the taxi driver to take me for that price or a little bit less. Many would say yes just because they wouldn’t have to pay Grab’s fees since I was paying in cash.
Other key forms of transportation in Thailand include the MRT and the bus. I actually traveled by bus from Bangkok to Pattaya and back, as the locals do. I believe it only cost me about $5 USD each way. To me this was a major savings. Before taking the bus I asked multiple taxi drivers to take me and they all wanted close to 1000 baht, or $30 USD. Instead I just had one of them drop me at the bus station and I saved a lot of money by doing so. Once in Pattaya, I also usually walked or occasionally when I just wanted to speed up I would take a baht bus. Baht busses are essentially pick up trucks with seating in the back that will take you all the way up a long road for only 10 baht or about $.30 cents USD.
Overall if you stick to public transportation and the cheap transportation options in Thailand you should not be spending too much on travel once you get there. Overall, I estimate that I spent in total less than $30 USD or (1000 baht) on travel in Thailand. That brings our total budget usage to only $758 so far!
Budget Spending on Food, Activities, and Entertainment in Thailand
Usually food is another major expense for people when they travel. Mainly because they like to try so many new and different things, so it’s very important that we talk about the cost of that, activities, and entertainment in Thailand. So far in our budget we have spent $758, which leaves us with $542 to spend on these categories. A lot of people don’t realize how far this amount of money can stretch in Thailand.
If you got a good exchange rate on your money the $542 USD should yield you nearly 17k baht. The bulk of my funds left went to exploring and shopping at MBK and Terminal 21, as well as sightseeing activities such as The SEA LIFE Bangkok Aquarium, The Grand Palace, and The Sanctuary of Truth. Thailand has tons of activities for you to take advantage of. It’s just important to remain a little budget conscious when doing so.
For food, occasionally I would splurge for a good meal at a nice looking restaurant. There was also days where I just ate at 7-Eleven for lunch just to balance it out. I recommend everyone to do this a few times on their trip or have some budget street food for lunch so that you can splurge on dinner a little bit. Thailand 7-Eleven’s have a wide selection at very budget prices. One day I had a lunch from 7-Eleven of some chicken with rice in a tangy sauce, with a banana muffin, and Sprite. This only came out to about $2.60 USD. If you look you can find good food at bargain prices. You should still spend money and enjoy yourself, just be budget conscious sometimes.
Even after doing all the activities and spending that I did, I managed to go home with some Thai baht! I decided not to exchange my money back and put it in a scrapbook I made of my trip. If you have any further questions about how to budget in Thailand or how to get to Thailand on a budget please leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you. Thanks for reading!
