Destination Report: Penang – Part Two: Cost of Nomad Living

Last week we shared everything we did, ate, and saw in Penang 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 $1,300 USD for a 4-week stay in Penang, Malaysia in December of 2019 (pre-pandemic). We picked Penang for the food factor and the cultural heritage and we were not disappointed! Are you ready to see our numbers and find out what surprised us the most in Penang?

We stayed in Penang for 29 days and the two of us spent $21.80 per person per day or $1,264 in total.

Where We Traveled Penang, Malaysia

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

Number of Days 29 days (from December 17, 2019, to January 14, 2020)

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

Total living cost $1,264 (for 2 people) or $15,914 per year (for 2 people)or $1,326 per month (for 2 people) or $21.80 per person and per day

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from the local currency (MYR or Malaysian Ringgit) to USD using a 1:4.1 ratio. (so 1 MYL = 0.244 USD).  

With our previous trips to Montreal, Quebec City, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Oaxaca City, San Miguel de Allende, Aruba, Porto, Lisbon, Kotor, Chiang Mai, and Koh Lanta our average monthly spend per person was around $35 / person/day (Excluding the cost of getting in & out). Penang is definitely well below this average with a daily budget of $21.80 / person/day. This makes Penang a very affordable destination. 

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

Our accommodation topped our budget category (representing 47.77% of our living expenses), followed by our dining out (representing 18.38% of our living expenses), entertainment (representing 11.69% of our living expenses), our groceries (representing 11.48% of our living expenses) and then our living expenses (representing 4.54% of our living expenses).  

For this budget, we ate out at least once a day, explored the national park, splurged on a half-day private cooking experience, and got to explore George Town extensively. We did all of this while staying in a comfortable apartment providing us with a nice view of the city. 

What did we exactly spend on this budget? Well, let’s look into each main budget category in more detail. 

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

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: $10.41 / person / day (OR $317 / person / month).

Accommodation in Penang is pretty affordable if you do a long term stay and book off-season as we did! We spent $604 USD for 28 nights. For this price, we stayed in a large studio in Penang. The apartment was much bigger than expected with great WiFi. The location was really good. It is a 45 minutes walk from the historic area, 30 minutes walk from the main malls and 15 minutes walk from a local markets that we enjoyed going to. Note for people planning on long-term stays: most kitchens in Malaysia are pretty basic so make sure to check with the host what are the basic cookware provided. We did proactively reach out to our host about that and she was able to accommodate our needs. This made our cooking experience much more enjoyable!

You can check out our Airbnb rental listing here.
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 $604 on this apartment for a total of 28 nights 

Local Transportation: $0.23 / person / day (OR $7 / person / month)

Public transportation is available on the island. I haven’t heard good things about hiring a taxi as a foreigner so you might want to rely on Grab, which is convenient and pretty cheap. Walking is doable but avoid the hottest hour of the day as it gets really hot!

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $13.35 on local transportation.

Groceries: $2.50 / person / day (OR $76 / person / month)

We went grocery shopping at our local wet market that was a few minutes from our apartment. The market has really good produce. We might have to bargain with the vendor if the price felt too steep or go to the next stand. Even with a small kitchen, we managed to put together some great dishes for either lunch or dinner.

We also went to Jaya Grocer (a supermarket) for everything else (including water, olive oil, dark chocolate…).

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $145.16 on groceries. This covered 51/84 meals (lunch, snack & dinner – we don’t eat breakfast) which is about $1.49 / meal.

Eating Out: $4.72 / person / day (OR $144 / 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. On top of that, Penang being a major food destination, we would be missing out if we didn’t try the cuisine, which we did pretty much every day. 

We also snacked on sugar cane juice, coconut shakes, cendol and tea to cool down our body from the hot temperatures. 

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $232.41 on restaurants + $41.05 on snacks for a total of $273.46. Our restaurant budget covered 32/84 meals (lunch or dinner). The average cost of our meals was $3.53 which is about 2 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: $2.55 / person / day (OR $78 / person / month)

As most of activities were free, most of this spending went towards our half day private class with Chef Samuel and two movies we got to enjoy at the IMAX theater (Star wars IX and Frozen 2).

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $147.85 on activities. 

Our Money Savings Tips

How did we save money for this trip?

• 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. 
• 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 were amazed by the food scene and history of Penang that we got to enjoy for 4 weeks for less than $1,300 (which would be less than half the rent we used to pay to live in San Francisco!). We also noticed that a lot of retirees/digital nomads like Penang for the stable weather all year round and very good health care. We were also pretty happy with the quality of the road infrastructure, especially after spending 3 months in Thailand where driving can definitely be a hazard.

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