Welcome to the final series of my Bangkok blog posts! If you are looking for a simple BKK itinerary or curious about how I crafted one, you can check out my earlier post. For some trip highlights this time round you can also refer to my previous post.
This post will be a more reflective one as I share some thoughts about my first trip post-covid. For starters, I think my priorities for travel have changed slightly, mainly in 2 areas. First, I used to adopt a more YOLO approach in my overseas spending and would usually spend more than I budgeted for. Second, I spent quite a bit of money buying material things that I didn't really need, and many of them ended up in a corner in my room untouched after many months.
Hence, I decided to be a little more focused for this trip and intentional with my budget. I had about 4 full days plus one night in Bangkok and decided on a budget of $500. In the end, I spent a little more as I wanted to buy some gifts and snacks for family and loved ones. Excluding flights and accommodation, this was my spending breakdown rounded up to the nearest dollar for easy reference:
Transport: S$127 Food: S$296 Shopping: S$86 Gifts: S$81 Total: S$590
Here is some context for how I calculated the above. 1) Transport I went around Bangkok with my parents and paid for all Grab rides so I included the cost of Grab rides for 3 pax + BTS ride for 1 pax in my transport cost calculation. So the real overall transport cost for 1 pax would probably be closer to S$60, including the last day's Grab ride on a bigger vehicle to the airport. 2) Food This consisted of food for 3 pax during the 3 days I was with my parents and about 1 day spent with my friend. If we account strictly for 1 pax the overall food cost would be closer to S$130, with a good mix of cheap and affordable food plus 4 to 5 cafe and restaurant meals.
3) Shopping & Gifts Nothing to recalibrate here as everything I bought was for myself or close friends and family. They included a couple of t-shirts, my books from Fathom, some snacks for colleagues and a few other random items. Total amount here is S$167.
The reason for calculating the estimated breakdown is to show how affordable Bangkok can be while still having a good time there! This time round when I went, I spent quite freely on food and it was surprisingly still quite affordable especially in the post-covid era of high inflation days.
Practise gratefulness While I was researching for this trip, I realised that some of the places I used to save in my Google Maps were no longer around. It struck me that the past 2.5 years of Covid was a very real disruption to jobs and livelihoods all around the world. This led me to be even more grateful that I have a stable paying job generating cashflow for me every month. Beyond that, I count myself privileged to be able to complain about expensive air ticket prices and yet still go ahead with my holiday.
The world today is in a lot of turmoil, but if we take time to count our blessings, most of us will realise that we are still in a better place than many people. According to the website How Rich Am I, if your yearly household income is S$50,000 and it is used to support 2 adults, you are in the richest 3.6% of the global population and your income is about 12 times the global median. Mindblowing isn't it? Sometimes we fail to realise how blessed we are and it would do us good to pause and take stock of how much we actually have.
In fact, I would go even further to say that being in a place where we are healthy physically and mentally already puts us ahead of many people. In recent months, I have come to realise that health is something that I used to take for granted and I am slowly working to be more intentional in taking care of my body. This is because once our health is lost, often times we can never restore it completely. On this trip, I am also glad I managed to bring my parents around even though we had our fair share of disagreements. Seeing them become less mobile over the years reminds me that there will be a day they can no longer travel. Let us all remember to cherish our loved ones around us and live with no regrets!
Comments