It’s… de Monet !

So what is it all costing ? V will be keeping track of our budget as we go and we’ll update as often as possible. One thing we have noticed is that blogs and sites all over give completely different figures when it comes to travel. I assume it depends on a variety of factors – possibly;

• What you are willing to accept ? I’m not mad about fleas for more than two nights in a row.
• What you want from the trip ? Hanging out in hostel lounges won’t work for us. Some fun things are going to cost no matter what.
• How good you are at haggling ? What’s that !
• Do you have ‘sucker’ tattooed on your forehead ? We have matching tats.
• Chance… or lack thereof

Our budget will probably be on the high side for the average thrifty/savvy traveller, but we hope it will be accurate enough and include enough detail to be a useful guide. If nothing else we can look at it in years to come and contemplate what else we could have done with the cash, but I doubt we’ll regret it.

Pre-Launch Expenses

We have kept an accurate records of our gear purchases (V’s fetish) and other essential items. Here’s the summary;

Non Essentials

Too embarrassed to disclose. I have a backpack fetish. Its a problem I know. I need help. – V-

Essentials & Visas

So the total spent before we left home: £ 760 each  + some!

The Costs

Below are the expense and cost graphs for our trip up to our exit from China. It was a challenge to get all of it sorted – especially in China where hostel computers all had Office in Chinese. The original plan was to use a portable version of OpenOffice, but I got tired of viruses infecting my memory stick !

Some notes on the graphs:
– The average graphs do not include the 3 cameras we have had to buy over the past months.
– Costs to get to a country (eg: trains and ferry to Denmark from the UK) are included in the costs for the DESTINATION country (Denmark in the example).
– Souvenirs are not included in the average graphs (we only have a pair of chopsticks and some Russian dolls anyway)
– Visas and Visa extensions  are not included in the Average Graphs.
– The slope graph has been stretched to 240 days on the road – getting us to the end of December.

Click on the images for bigger versions

Overall Averages

Denmark and Scandanavia

Russia and the Trans Mongolian

China

South East Asia

Malaysia & New Zealand

Our Honey Pot

Our NEW Honey Pot !

When we got to the end of Cambodia we decided to dip into our ‘reserve’ funds a little. This is mainly due to the extra time we are spending on the road. The new ‘Slippery Slope’ looks like this;