How Much Money We Spent Travelling NZ, Australia & Southeast Asia

Last Updated on 27th September 2025

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One question that I get asked pretty frequently is “How much does it cost to travel the world?”. Now, I haven’t quite managed to travel the entire world just yet, but I did spend 11 months backpacking around New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia on a semi-respectable budget so I have a pretty good idea of what it costs to travel those countries.

If you’ve been a reader of my blog for a while now, you know that I don’t find the topic of money taboo; in fact, I kind of welcome it with open arms, unlike many people. I share a lot of honest and open posts on my blog about money, including how to save money, how to make more money and the cost of travelling in general.

I know that a lot of people will be apprehensive to even begin the planning stages of travel as they’re worried about how much everything will cost (which is perfectly understandable!), but I wanted to share some information in this post about how much money we spent travelling (some of) the world in the hopes that it’ll encourage you to do the same.

How much did we spend in total?

So I know the question that you all want the answer to is how much we spent in total during our 11-month trip around NZ, Australia and Southeast Asia.

Well, I have a pretty exact figure that I think we each spent during our travels, bearing in mind that some calculations may have gotten lost along the way.

We spent a total of £8,951.29 each between 26th April 2019 and 17th March 2020 while travelling across 9 different countries.

During that time we travelled around New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam so our average per month across those 11 months and 9 countries worked out at about £813.75 each.

How much money we spent travelling in New Zealand

I’ve already written an extensive post detailing exactly how much we spent in New Zealand (hint: £20.50 a day), so while I won’t go into extreme detail in this post, I will give a few hints and tips.

We spent a total of £1,682.88 each in just less than three months during our time in New Zealand.

This includes every last penny we spent on food, transport, accommodation, activities, flights and more. We were lucky to have our costs reduced somewhat significantly while travelling NZ as we found means of saving money where we could with the way we travelled.

Read the full post on how much we spent in NZ here.

We were lucky that we spent over half of our time in New Zealand house sitting for my old next-door neighbours from when I lived in Katikati back in 2011/2012. This helped us enormously in saving money on accommodation, transport and even food costs.

Each house-sitting experience is unique to every individual and situation so make sure you know what you’re going into when you finalise your agreement if house-sitting is an option you want to explore.

Throughout our travels in the South Island, we spent our time living in a campervan for 5 weeks so most of our transport and accommodation costs were rolled into one. We did occasionally pay for campsites, but the money we saved when staying at free sites, plus the sheer freedom you get when travelling in a campervan, was more than worth it.

We were also lucky to work with both Escape Rentals and Mad Campers during our road trip on a collaborative basis where we received a discounted media price on the rental costs of the campervans.

Top tips for saving money in New Zealand

New Zealand is often perceived to be an incredibly expensive country and while I’m not saying that it isn’t, I am saying that there are many ways you can spend as little as possible while you’re there.

Hire a campervan – your accommodation, food and transport are rolled into one!
Opt for housesitting – free accommodation!
Book your activities in advance through sites like Bookme and Get Your Guide.
Make your own food – eating out at restaurants in New Zealand can sometimes see you paying London prices for your meals. When you can, head to the supermarket and make your own sandwiches and snacks to save you money.

How much money we spent travelling in Australia

Despite only being in Australia for around 5 weeks, we actually only spent just slightly less than we did in our 3 months in New Zealand. We spent approximately £1,682.88 each in Australia.

This isn’t necessarily because Australia is infinitely more expensive than NZ (although it can be in some places), it’s largely because we didn’t have the luxury of house sitting or a gifted campervan for a large part of our trip.

We could have definitely house sat in Australia as there are plenty of opportunities and places to do so, but we wanted the freedom to travel as much of the East Coast as possible without being somewhat restricted to one place.

Australia’s vastness is also what makes it quite an expensive place to travel as you have to spend a fair bit of money to get from one place to another on either bus fares or car/campervan and petrol costs.

We spent one week in a hotel in Melbourne and then we picked up a campervan and drove it all across the East Coast up to Cairns over the course of a month. We were lucky to receive a small media discount on our campervan thanks to Ratpack Travel and Camperman Australia but as campervan hiring costs are pretty extortionate in Oz, that’s where most of our money went.

I’d still recommend travelling in Australia this way to everyone though. Backpacker buses are great and arguably much cheaper, but you don’t quite get the same sense of freedom or adventure in my opinion.

Top tips for saving money in Australia

Take backpacker buses such as Greyhound Australia for cheaper transport.
Hire a campervan or even consider buying a second-hand one if you plan to be there for a few months as this will save you money on food, transport and accommodation.
Avoid staying right in the centre of hugely popular areas such as Byron Bay and Sydney. Even the “cheapest” hostels in these kinds of places can be incredibly expensive; stay just outside of the city centre instead.
Opt for BBQs on the beach. Supermarket food can still be a little pricey but it’s nothing compared to eating meals out in Oz so where you can, pick up some BBQ food and head to one of the many free BBQ sites in public parks or beaches.

How much money we spent travelling in Southeast Asia

How much money we spent travelling Southeast Asia

We spent just over 7 months in Southeast Asia and we travelled to 7 different countries during that time. We spent £5,550.03 each in Southeast Asia, which works out at about £792.86 each a month.

Southeast Asia is notorious for being a backpacker’s haven due to its affordability, but that doesn’t mean you have to completely scrimp and save in order to enjoy everything there; I’ve known a few people to travel Asia on a pretty luxury budget too.

There are also certain countries in SE Asia that we went to that were slightly more expensive than others such as Singapore. Whereas the Philippines, Cambodia and many parts of Vietnam were incredibly cheap.

Some of the accommodations we stayed in cost us as little as £3 each a night in some places such as Nha Trang and Da Nang in Vietnam. Whereas our crappy little apartment over Christmas and New Year in Singapore cost us more than £20 each a night which is still pretty bloody cheap, especially for Singapore during the holiday season. However, it was by far the worst place we stayed during our entire trip, even though it was the most expensive!

In terms of food in Southeast Asia, we ate meals that cost as little as £1 in some places and drank beer for as little as 38p! Your food costs in SE Asia certainly won’t hold you back and you’ll likely find that you’ll actually struggle to ever spend more than £8-£10 on a meal; and that would be eating at a very fancy place!

We also found transport in Southeast Asia to be relatively affordable too. Most buses, especially overnight buses, won’t cost you an awful lot, but boats between little islands in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand for example, can sometimes be pretty pricey depending on where you’re going.

Top tips for saving money in Southeast Asia

Stay in hostels.
Eat local food and avoid chain restaurants.
Research trips and tours and look around to avoid scams.
Make sure you always have plenty of cash on you when you’re travelling the islands as many islands don’t have an ATM.
Take overnight buses and local boats where possible for cheaper transport options.

I think an average of just over £800 a month each while travelling New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia is a pretty respectable budget. Sure, you could absolutely do it cheaper if you really tried, but you could also spend way more than we did too. Budgeting for a trip around the world is really dependent on what you want out of it and how much you want to spend in each place. There’ll be countries that you might spend twice as much money in than the previous country, but the cheaper places really do balance things out which will help you to gauge an average over the course of your trip.

I hope you found this post helpful and please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to know!

how much does it cost to travel the world

how much does it cost to travel New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia?

Is this amount of money the kind of figure you had in mind? What did you think an 11 month trip would cost you around the world? Let me know in the comments or on Instagram @imjustagirl_16.