Destination Report: Koh Lanta – Part Two: Cost of Nomad Living

Last week we shared everything we did, ate and saw in Koh Lanta in the first part of this destination report. In this week’s blog post, we are now taking a deep dive into our budget and how the two of us spent about $1,000 USD for a 4 week stay in Koh Lanta, Thailand in November. We picked Koh Lanta for the cool paradise factor and the fact that it was a quiet island that definitely fit our slow travel lifestyle. Are you ready to see our numbers and find out what surprised us the most in Koh Lanta?

We stayed in Koh Lanta for 25 days and the two of us spent $21.81 per person per day, or $1,090 in total.

Where We Traveled Koh Lanta, Thailand

What did we do, see, eat? Check out our destination guide of Koh Lanta

Number of Days 25 days (from November 13, 2019 to December 07, 2019)

Type of Travel Married Couple, Slow Travel/Nomadic, Price Conscious

Total living cost $1,090 (for 2 people) – or $15,921 per year (for 2 people) – or $1,308 per month (for 2 people) – or $21.81 per person and per day

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from the local currency (THB or Thai Baht) to USD using a 1:30 ratio. (so 1 THB = 0.033 USD).  

With our previous trips to Montreal, Quebec City, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Oaxaca City, San Miguel de Allende, Aruba, Porto, Lisbon, Kotor and Chiang Mai our average monthly spend per person was around $35 / person / day (Excluding cost of getting in & out). Koh Lanta was well below this average with a daily budget of $21.81 / person / day. This makes Koh Lanta one of the cheapest destinations we’ve been living in since we started our nomadic journey, not bad for staying on a tropical island! (Aruba, our other tropical island stay, was on the much more pricey side)

Here is a breakdown of our living expenses for this trip:

Our accommodation topped our budget category (representing 43.4% of our living expenses), followed by our dining out budget (representing 17.8% of our living expenses), entertainment (representing 11.7% of our living expenses), our visa budget (representing 11.5% of our living expenses) and then our groceries budget (representing 11.1% of our living expenses). Note: The visa budget was due to the fact that we extended our 30 days visa we received for free upon arrival at the airport. If you stay only a month in Thailand, you won’t have to worry about this line item.  

For this budget, we ate out at least once a day, rented a car to explore the island, booked a snorkeling tour, enjoyed weekly hour long massages and much more. We did all of this while staying in a really comfortable studio apartment nested in the jungle and just a few minutes away from the beach. What did we spend on this budget? Well let’s look into each main budget category in more detail. 

If you want to know every single expense we had, fill out the form below to download our itemized budget spreadsheet.

(For more details about what to do, eat, see & avoid, please check out Part I of our destination guide about Koh Lanta)

How much did we spend? 

Note: If you are curious about how we generally decide to spend our money, check out this article where we explain our decision making process.

Accommodation: $9.48 / person / day

(Or $288 / person / month).

Accommodation in Koh Lanta can be very affordable if you do a long term stay and book off-season as we did! We spent $473 USD for 4 weeks.

For this price, we stayed in a comfortable, modern, huge studio in the middle of the jungle. It was even better than we expected and we highly recommend it!

👉 You can check out our Airbnb rental listing here.

The owner thought of everything to make the place feel like home – fans, A/C, beach mat, umbrellas, kitchen appliances, pots and pans, nice furniture etc. Good kitchens are hard to come by in Thailand but we had everything we needed for daily cooking. We also loved the big balcony to hang out and have meals. It’s about a 7 min walk to the main road where there are plenty of restaurants and about a 10 min walk to Relax Bay and maybe 20 min walk to Secret Beach which was our favorite – if you have a scooter, it would be even easier to get around. It is a perfect place to be based while enjoying the beautiful island, we look forward to coming back one da

Note: We got a 50% discount deal because it was a long-term stay plus it was a new listing and the owner wanted to attract their first guests in order to get reviews.

Although this monthly rent felt like a great value to us (and it definitely was outstanding), it turns out that you can show up in Koh Lanta and visit apartments for a monthly lease. We definitely noticed many places like this. Of course what you will get will vary but if budget is a concern, you should be able to find something even more affordable than our AirBnB. 

If you want to know how we score great deals with AirBnB, check out our own AirBnb tips.

⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $473 on this apartment for a total of 25 nights (the booking was for 28 days though).

Local Transportation: $0.66 / person / day

(Or $20 / person / month)

Public transportation is non existent on the island. You can get a taxi easily but be prepared to negotiate your rate. Unfortunately Grab isn’t currently available on the island. Our recommendation is to use your two feet to walk around and pick a place that is centrally located to the main place you want to check out. You can then rent a car for a few days if you want to explore the rest of the island as we did. (We got one for 1000 THB per day – or 33 USD). If you’re brave enough and properly insured, renting a scooter is a popular option. To be honest, we saw enough injured people walking around that we did not want to take this risk.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $33.00 on local transportation.

Groceries: $2.42 / person / day

(Or $74 / person / month)

We went grocery shopping mostly at our local weekly market that was a few minutes from our apartment and went to the one on Sunday that was about 30 minutes walk away from our place when we needed to refill on specific produce. We were pleasantly surprised with the quality of fruits and vegetables on the island. We even ventured to try some of the fish and were not disappointed! Even with a small kitchen, we managed to put together some great dishes for either lunch or dinner.

We went to 7-Eleven to get things we could not find at the market (like olive oil). This is also a good place to get large containers of drinking water. We got lucky since our AirBnB host provided us with 19L jugs of drinking water for only 15 THB (0.50 USD).

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $121.11 on groceries. This covered 72/92 meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) which is about $1.16 / meal.

Eating Out: $4.15 / person / day

(Or $127 / person / month)

We generally don’t eat out much for health reasons but also because we really like to cook. However, we started eating out a lot more in Southeast Asia because the kitchens are a lot smaller and good meals are very inexpensive. It was mind-blowing to see how much a dollar can get you for some delicious Thai food. Our average meal was somewhere between $2.5 – $10 USD per person. Koh Lanta has surprisingly amazing food (for an island) and you don’t need to go to the fanciest restaurant to experience it. Food stalls and local restaurants are probably the best way to experience some authentic Thai cuisine.

We also snacked a bit on sugar cane juice, roti and some of the thai specialties during our stay,

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $193.71 on restaurants + $14.22 on snacks for a total of $207.93. Our restaurant budget covered 20/92 meals (mostly lunch/dinner). The average cost of our meals was $4.84 which is about 3.5 times more expensive than eating at home (by doing the ratio between what a full day of eating out would cost vs a full day of eating at home as per our budget). 

Activities: $2.56 / person / day

(Or $78 / person / month)

We mostly enjoyed a nice massage (once a week), rented a car to make sure we could at least see the entire island and book a 4 island tour to check out other islands and do some snorkeling(a nice day out but the snorkeling is not the greatest). Mostly what we did was enjoy swimming and laying out on the beautiful beaches which were accessible by foot. Koh Lanta is definitely a good place to get pampered and experience nature.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $128.08 on activities. 

Visa: $2.51 / person / day

(Or $76 / person / month)

Since we came to Thailand with a 30 days visa (upon arrival) and used it to visit Chiang Mai, we had to get our visa extended for another 30 days. We did the extension in Chiang Mai but are accounting for this expense here as this would be part of our cost of living if we would stay in Thailand for more than 30 days.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $125.40 on our 30 days visa extension. 

Note: If you need to get from/to the airport, private transportation is a good option. You can take a shared van for cheaper but our flight arrived in the evening after the last shared van was scheduled.We booked a private van (that could fit 6-8 people) for a set rate of 1800 THB (or $60 USD) as a one way trip that takes about 2 hours. 

Our Money Savings Tips

How did we save money for this trip?

• Avoid visiting during peak season (Mid-December to late February). We made this mistake in Porto & Lisbon and paid a premium for our accommodation! Koh Lanta is perfect in November as the rainy season is slowing down and you get great discounts on everything. 
• Use your two feet every day! This helped us reduce our footprint while increasing our exercise activity. Double win! 
• Use travel credit cards with sign-on bonuses to maximize free miles that you can apply towards your trip so you can travel for (almost) free. 
• Use this amazing debit card to avoid hefty ATM fees. In Chiang Mai alone this saved us 30 USD in ATM fee during our stay and as you’ve noticed 30 USD is a lot of money in Thailand.
• Use AirBnB (if staying one month or less). AirBnB is a website that allows homeowners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent private spaces (or entire apartments) for a fee. As nomadic long term travelers, we like to call AirBnB our home as it has helped us save a lot of money and provides us with really great places managed by wonderful hosts! Pro tip: If you sign up for AirBnB using our referral link, you will get a 45 USD credit, which should give you a pretty nice discount on your first night.

We are amazed that we were able to enjoy tropical island living for just $1000 for a month! This definitely shows that an island getaway does not have to be an extravagant and expensive splurge. We were able to have a relaxing routine and a very high quality of life on a budget.  

So that’s it folks! What do you think about our budget in Koh Lanta? Is it as affordable as you thought it was? Feel free to share your experience and ask questions by leaving a comment below.