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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but how much are trains and coffee in Thailand? China? India? Malawi?

There's a lot of world out there beyond Europe. For the vast majority of it, $500 goes a long way.

Try to keep in mind that there are lots of things that are possible that you don't yet know how to do. It sounds like you're just now learning that you can travel cheaply on the road (from people who have actually done so, no foolin'). Rather than accuse us of lying to you, you might be better served taking some of it on board.

Then book a flight out here. I'll use 1/1000th of my monthly budget to buy you a beer!

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I live half the year in Vietnam, half the year in NYC. I'm mildly frugal, but Vietnam still runs me about $2K a month, $1.2k if I don't leave my apartment. NYC, a frugal month costs me $3.5k.

SE Asia is cheap, but its not as cheap as people think it is.

My wife and I spent a month in Thailand a few years back. We paid $120 for an apartment in Bangkok for the month, including utilities, and spent about $6/day on food. Travel to and hotels in Laos, N. Thailand, a beach town, and Cambodia probably cost us about $300.

I do speak the language, but that only helped with finding a cheap (i.e. Thai-priced) place to rent.

> a few years back

There you go. Things develop at light speed down here in SE Asia!

That being said, GP's version of Vietnam living is perhaps like my Phnom Penh version: "costing as I would in Europe, but get way more bang for the buck" (to qualify---not that kind of bang, thank you very much..)

So down here I can get a furnished condo thingy with pool/gym/view/flatscreen/balcony for the same bucks that would get me an unfurnished hole without all of these in say Berlin, to not even mention other parts of Europe.

BUT, it's still a multiple of $120. If I were harder-pressed financially, indeed $120 would also rent me .. "something".

I knew a guy that would spend half the year living in Bali. He's a trippy-hippy dude who makes his money doing astrology readings.

Even though it didn't really fit in to how he wanted to live his life, he ended up getting a local housekeeper. She'd basically just do all of his shopping (groceries, clothing, whatever) and pay the local price, rather than the tourist price. With the money he saved, he paid her above market rates and still managed to save money on the whole deal.

Yeah, I agree. Don't spend money seeing Europe until you are old and have money. You won't be able to properly enjoy Europe unless you can stop worrying about your daily spend. Places like Laos and Bolivia are the way to go when you're young: super cheap and lots of adventure!

It's fairly self-evident that some places are cheaper to travel (SE Asia, South America) than others (Western Europe, Japan).

Most 20-something backpackers choose to travel to places like SE Asia precisely because it is cheaper.

It's nice to be able to do a mix of both though, there are definitely interesting and worthwhile places to visit that are also unfortunately more expensive (Japan comes to mind!).

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