Hi everyone
I'm busy planning my little adventure for September 09. Not officially booked and paid yet, but the plan is London - Sydney surface to Cairns (6 weeks) -Auckland ( 1 month around NZ) - Fiji ( 2 weeks) - London. Will stop in Singapore on the way out and LA on the way back, a few days each.
After flights, insurance, visas etc looking to take around £3000. My calculation makes that around £30 a day. Will sleep in hostels, eat/drink out a few times but not too crazily, bit of diving/surfing but no jumping out of planes and the like....Travel on buses (greyhound etc) and may get a bed in Brisbane with family.
Wondering if those in the know would be able to give me some feedback on this, am I totally mad or is it do-able?
Reply to this Hello Ruth 😊
It is rather a tight budget if it has to include intercity and town and country transport. But you could possibly still get by on it. Hopefully somebody who has travelled in the countries you want to go to will post here and give some kind of breakdown of expenses.
Mel
Reply to this Ruth, your budget of £30 a day is going to be a bit tight for Australia. If you intend just sitting in one place not moving around much, you should be okay - but even a cheap hostel in Sydney or Brisbane is going to set you back about £10-15 pounds for a dorm.
I think travelling in Oz is on par cost-wise with travel in Europe - but only a little bit cheaper - transport, eating out (at least the quality of food is first-rate!) and admission fees will all nibble at your budget. New Zealand is cheaper, but not by a sizeable margin. Cannot comment on Fiji.
Also, if you can - try to fly into Cairns and then go to NZ via Sydney or Brisbane - it is cheaper. Competition to NZ from Australia is fierce and the choices are many, so it may be best to book that from Australia. Currently, one of the major airlines has recently offered a one-way trip to NZ from Brisbane for only £35 (excluding taxes).
Reply to this I think 1 month to cover the whole of NZ would feel rushed - I'd suggest just covering either north or south island, or select the places from both that you particularly want to see.
As Shane mentioned, don't rely on NZ being much cheaper than Aus. Remember also that the more you move around, the more you buy ready-to-eat food, so you'll spend more.
You could check somewhere like hostelworld.com to give you an idea on accomodation costs at all your destinations. Couch surfing is also an option to stretch your dollars/pounds.
Reply to this on average I spend about $80 or $90 per day if backpacking in Australia (roughly 30 pounds) and about $60 (roughly 20 pounds) per day in Fiji. Couldn't give an average for
backpacking in NZ because I live there, but it would only be a LITTLE bit cheaper than Australia (not much too make much of a difference).
The costs of course depend entirely on what you want to do when you're travelling. I spent almost a week in Lamington National Park near Brisbane where the camp site fee was $4.50 a night and I had cheap camping-type food. Hardly cost me anything.
Bear in mind, regarding flights, that a plane from Sydney to NZ costs about NZ$200 but from Cairns to NZ is over twice as much.
Singapore is relatively expensive compared to other southeast Asian countries. The Singapore dollar is almost equal to the NZ dollar, and the cheapest accomodation you can get is about S$15-20 for a dorm
Reply to this Hi Guys
Thanks for the input, now thinking of putting the trip back to January '10, same itinary, but looking to then have £4000-4400 making that at least £40 a day....how does that sound??
Reply to this Hello again Ruth, £40 a day is better.
With such a lot of money to spend, keep an eye on the exchange rate. At the moment the Australian dollar is weak - so for foreigners it is a good time to travel - but it should rise again by a small percentage. However, when I was providing my comments, I was basing them on the Aussie dollar being a bit stronger than it is now. Not sure what the NZ dollar is like at present.
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