so three months ago i started traveling full-time this is my third country now and by far i think this is my cheapest month of traveling abroad so living in southeast asia there’s a very common misconception that well everything is cheap and that’s somewhat true but when i was living here about a year ago i could easily spend about USD 1500 if not more per month and now that i’m living here in 2021 where there’s still not that many tourists the prices of everything have just plummeted down and i think i haven’t realized how affordable it is to be here right now until i’ve started writing out my monthly expenses for the month so in today’s video we’ll be going through these seven expenses plus an additional one for you guys at the end now if you guys see me looking down it’s because i’m looking down at my laptop to see the actual cost breakdown of everything so starting off number one with accommodation so if you’ve seen my very first video here in bali you’ll know that i’m currently staying at a place called the wave house it’s not really a hotel or a villa but really a collection of private rooms in this villa compound with these beautiful pools i can’t recommend it enough honestly i love the place the only downside really is that you don’t have a private kitchen it feels almost like hotel rooms but my monthly accommodation cost for december was USD 418.57 now this is actually a very good price because my actual accommodation cost for this place the wave house where i’m currently staying at it was USD 372 now the additional 46 dollars actually came out to when i visited the cliff you might have seen that video i’ll link it right above here it was absolutely beautiful we went out to the southern part of bali in uluwatu where we just took a day trip out there just to get out of canggu area and see something different for for a change and so that’s where the extra 46 dollars came from but if you take that away my monthly cost was really USD 372, which is extremely affordable for bali seeing as you can easily spend over a thousand dollars on a private villa now going into transportation cost and getting around bali is very easy if you’re comfortable with a scooter that is something i highly recommend you guys do the total monthly cost for transportation was USD 73.77 so most of that was my scooter rental i have a yamaha nmax i pay 1 million idr which is USD 63.29, the extra 10 came from gas gas is really affordable here in bali you can spend maybe USD 2-3 for gas each time you fill up an empty tank and that’ll last you about a week even if you’re still making trips around bali it’s very affordable to get around and if you’re not comfortable with the scooter, you can always rent a taxi or even a gojek or grab if you’re not familiar with gojek or grab it’s a app on your phone that you can request a driver and they’ll come pick you up and that’ll cost you a dollar if not more just to go one place moving into grocery costs i really didn’t spend too much it was USD 33.88 most of that’s really coming from me going to the grocery store to buy drinks, sodas as you know i really don’t cook at home that much and being that i am living here where there’s no private kitchen it’s not really convenient for me to go out to a grocery store and buy food for an entire week when i don’t have a fridge i mean i have a small little mini fridge which can hold just about a few drinks and that’s really about it so uh groceries aren’t really a convenience for me right now maybe if i did have a villa i’d be spending more on grocery costs but as you’re gonna see my dining out costs gonna be a lot more than my grocery costs now dining out in bali is super affordable typically about a year ago if you would go to a cafe you’d be paying western prices about maybe USD 6-10 for a meal but now because of covid there are a lot of promotions and a lot of deals going on around cafes and restaurants a lot of them are doing 50k promotions which is IDR 50,000 roughly about USD 3.
5. so now even if i wasn’t to go out to a local warung, i’d still be paying really affordable prices at a cafe or a restaurant so the total cost for my dining out at restaurants and bars was USD 212.85 which i’ll take honestly so my total food cost was less than USD 250, which is incredibly affordable i think i could have spent that in an entire week in the united states but if you do plan to go out eat street food or go to a local warung, you’ll probably expect to pay anywhere between USD 1-2, cafes maybes USD 3-6 any western restaurants expect to pay about USD 10-15 for a meal out there phone plans and data i think bali is one of the most affordable countries aside from vietnam to have a phone plan and the company that i do use here in bali is called telkomsel it is by far the most recommended and the one that has the best internet speeds here in bali so when you first come to bali you will need to get a sim card so if you head into any telkomsel shop you can get a sim card for about USD10 which is IDR150,000 and at that price you get not only your sim card but i believe like 15GB of data it’s pretty crazy so that alone will last you an entire month and after the 30 days that data does expire so every 30 days the data doesn’t transfer over unfortunately you have to renew the data every single month and for me to renew my data this month it cost me USD 7.20, which is pretty cheap and i’m getting basically 4g data all across the island except for uluwatu we did have some issues in uluwatu because we were situated right on the cliff near the ocean so we did have some slow speeds down in the uluwatu area and last but not least is going to be the miscellaneous cost so this is anything that really didn’t go into the other categories i did want to touch on a few things though to break down this section the first of which is massages that i have gotten quite a few times since i’ve been here in bali massages you can really go as affordable as USD 5 for a one hour massage anywhere up to USD 20 really so last month i spent about USD 5 going to a cheap spa it was a one hour massage, it wasn’t the best you can also get in-home service for USD 7, i haven’t gotten that one out but i’ve seen quite a few times some of the guests here in the wake house they have ordered a masseuse to come out here because they have a massage room and this month i actually wanted to go on a bit of the expensive side just to see what that would cost and how much better the end it was quite a bit better than the cheap massage of course as you might assume so the i spent USD 18 us dollars on one massage this month and that is about as much as you would pay here in bali for a massage now the second part of the miscellaneous cost that i did want to touch up on is the gym costs so i don’t have a gym membership because i don’t really know when i plan to go so i just simply show up at the gym and get a day pass the cost of that is USD 1.80 it’s quite affordable actually if you think also my haircut it’s cost USD 5 this month you can get a haircut as cheap as USD 1 here in bali and the last part of my miscellaneous cost is my laundry the laundry services here in bali charge you anywhere between IDR 5,000/kg to IDR 10,000/kg i mean that’s that’s basically 50 cents to 72 cents per kilogram it’s really affordable so there’s really no need for a washing machine here in bali because the laundry services here are just so convenient now the final cost for the entire month living here in bali during the month of december in 2020 cost me USD 776.
Now this cost actually might be a bit misleading because it is during the time of covid when there are not that many tourists here in bali still and this cost actually doesn’t include flights into bali as well as visa costs which you will have to take into account now the last part of this video i wanted to compare my mexico cost of living compared to bali so if you haven’t seen my mexico cost of living video i’ll link it right up here but comparing my accommodation costs in mexico to bali in bali was USD 418 and in mexico it was USD 574 so it’s quite a little bit more in mexico for me to live there for one month because i did stay in about three or four different accommodations during the entire month whereas in bali i’m staying at only one place so i’m getting quite a bit of a discount instead of me just hopping around from airbnb to airbnb transportation costs um of course are gonna be cheaper here in bali USD 73 compared to USD 111 in mexico because in mexico you can rent a car or a scooter or a bicycle but in mexico it’s a bit more expensive because where in bali you can rent a scooter for USD 73 in mexico it’s USD 35 a day to rent a scooter and the price of a car is just about the same actually comparing grocery costs from bali to mexico USD 33 in bali compared to USD 59 in mexico pretty much the same because again i don’t do that much grocery shopping and in mexico i only had to grocery shop when there was a hurricane coming in which happened two times in bali it’s just because i needed some sodas or some drinks and some quick snacks to purchase for me to eat at home restaurant costs which is a bit interesting mexico of course definitely more expensive USD 328 compared to bali of USD 212 but really not too much to my surprise only about a hundred dollars more in mexico and in mexico i went out to a lot of the beach clubs in tulum but most of the time i was going to local restaurants eating tacos, quesadillas and more of the local foods so very similar to bali where i’m eating at local wrongs and street food markets as well and the last part is phone and data comparing the two they’re very similar because mexico i spent USD 25 for a sim card and data where in bali i’m spending only USD 7.20 just for data so that is an entire month of costs here in bali indonesia so if you guys are planning on traveling to bali in 2021 when the borders reopen or if you’re coming in on a business visa this is what you could expect to pay now of course my costs are probably going to be a little bit different to what your cost might be depending on what your lifestyle is so it’s just something to consider but One thing i didn’t cover in this video that i did in my mexico video was entertainment and i didn’t cover it in this video because i actually didn’t do too much as far as tours or any excursions here in bali because a lot of the entertainment costs is gonna be either waterfalls, hiking tours, or cooking classes or stuff like that and i didn’t do any of that this month but if you plan on doing any tours or excursions here in bali, if you’re doing atv tours, water rafting, hiking mount batur or doing any cooking classes you can expect to pay roughly about USD 50 so it’s not too expensive but if you plan on doing just simple waterfalls that’s only going to cost you about USD 3-4 just to enter a waterfall, it’s pretty affordable so i hope you guys found this video helpful if you did give it a like, comment down below any questions you guys might have about living here and probably at the moment and i’ll do my best to answer them and i will see you guys next week
