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Cambodia was more expensive than we expected. As it’s less developed than neighbouring Thailand we expected prices to be lower, similar to Laos where we travelled on £12.50 each a day. That was back in 2008 though and not only have prices risen since then but we’ve changed too. This time we weren’t travelling as rock bottom budget travellers but as flashpackers who didn’t watch our budget too much, stayed in comfortable rooms, and indulged in good food.
Cambodia has a dual currency with the US dollar being used for most expenses and Cambodian riel used for smaller items and anything less than a dollar (there are no coins). The exchange rate used practically everywhere is 4000 riel to $1. You need to be familiar with this as you’ll often pay in a mix of currencies or get quoted in riel and pay in dollars or vice versa.
We spent a month in Cambodia and visited Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Otres Beach, Kampot, and back to Phnom Penh. We tracked our expenses using our travel budget iPhone app Trail Wallet (sadly, no longer available). The summary screen displays our final trip costs in our home (British pounds) and local currencies (US dollars and Cambodian riel).
Here’s the total amount we spent for two people during our month in Cambodia:
You can see why no one budgets for their trip in riel!
You’ll also notice that we were way over budget of our totally unrealistic, plucked out of nowhere budget of £30/ $50 a day for two people. You could travel in Cambodia on that, but only if you try to keep your expenses down, and honestly we didn’t.
Our average daily spend was £46/ $77 which is £23/ $38.50 per person. Here’s what we spent it on:
Accommodation 31.63% of total, £14.56/ $24.32 a day
We spent $20 to $25 a night on accommodation in Cambodia. This got us a double room with private hot water bathroom, air conditioning, WiFi, and usually a desk and a fridge. The exception to this was Otres Beach in Sihanoukville where accommodation is much more expensive and our $25 only got us a basic wooden bungalow across the road from the beach with a fan and attached cold water bathroom. The Mea Culpa guesthouse in Kampot was the same price and palatial in comparison. In Siem Reap we even had a pool at My Home Villa (which was average but met all our requirements).
You could definitely find cheaper hotels in Cambodia, especially if you don’t need A/C or a private bathroom, for as low as $10. We chose nicer rooms as we work as we travel and spend more time in our room than the average traveller.
If you have $50-60 a night to spend there are some beautiful boutique hotels, but we resisted the temptation.
Food & Drink 43.9% of total, £20.22/ $33.77 a day
Our Food & Drink budget includes the subcategories of eating out, food shopping (snacks as we had no kitchen access), coffee (when not consumed with a meal), and drinking water. Eating out was by far the biggest chunk of the pie. Food was our most surprising expense and we found it much more expensive than Thailand or Malaysia.
This is largely because as vegetarians our street food options were limited so most of the time we ate at restaurants aimed at tourists and expats. Cambodia has some excellent Western food due to the many non-profit restaurants run by NGOs that support good causes. The French influence from the country’s time as a French protectorate also means that good bread and baked goods are common.
We frequently indulged in things like veggie burgers, pizza, grilled vegetable paninis, roast vegetable and spinach salads, ice cream, and cakes, and obviously these meals cost more than a plate of vegetable noodles. We ate very well though and I’m glad we took advantage.
A main course usually cost from $2-6 and a fruit smoothie around $2. Beers were cheap at $1 even in the nicer restaurants. Unfortunately the local vegetarian restaurants where you can get meals for $2 used a lot of fake meat which we don’t like.
Drinking water was usually $0.50/ 2000 riel for a 1.5 litre bottle. We stayed for 12 nights at the Mea Culpa guesthouse in Kampot and they provided free drinking water which saved us a lot as we drink crazy amounts of water.
Transport 11.14% of total, £5.13/ $8.57 a day
- We used tuk tuks (open sided carriages pulled by a motorbike) to get around cities ($2-3), to Phnom Penh airport ($6), from Sihanouvkville to Otres Beach ($7), and around the Angkor temples for sunset ($6) and a full day including sunrise ($20), and from Siem Reap to Kompong Khleang floating village ($15).
- We shared a taxi to the further away Angkor temples of Banteay Srei and Beng Melea and spent $39 including tip.
- Bicycle hire in Siem Reap was $1 a day and free at our guesthouse in Kampot.
- In Kampot we hired a motorbike for four days at $5 a day. Petrol was 5000 riel ($1.25) a litre.
- We split a boat to Rabbit Island from Kep and paid $6.25 of the full $25 return fare.
- Between cities we used the more comfortable and faster air conditioned Giant Ibis buses that included hotel pickup and cost $7-15. You could probably cut those prices in half by taking the more basic buses.
Entertainment 8.65% of total, £3.98/ $6.65 a day
- Angkor passes were $40 each for three days (valid for a week), plus $5 for the wonderful jungle temple Beng Melea.
- Phare circus in Siem Reap, well worth the $15 tickets.
- Various tips for guides.
- Tuol Sleng genocide museum ($2 each)
- 6 yoga classes ($5-6 each)
- Kayak hire in Kampot ($2 for an hour)
- Stand up paddle board hire in Kampot ($6 for an hour)
We also went horse riding in Siem Reap but our trip was sponsored so the cost isn’t included here.
Miscellaneous 4.68% of total, £2.15/ $3.59 a day
- Our visas for Cambodia cost $20 for one month on arrival at Siem Reap airport.
- Data packages are really cheap in Cambodia and we bought a Cellcard prepaid SIM for our iPhone 5 ($2) with 3.5GB of data valid for one month for just $5.
- Other expenses include toiletries, medication (including Simon’s pricey migraine pills), a hat, sunglasses, a few tips, and laundry ($1 a kilo).
Other Cambodia Budgets
- Solo female traveller Kristin of Be My Travel Muse spent $30 a day staying in dorms in 2012
- Ali Adventures spent $56.50 travelling solo staying in private rooms in 2012 and $30 per person travelling as a couple in 2014.
Although Cambodia wasn’t quite as cheap as we expected it was still good value, especially for the comfort level we travelled at and everything we experienced.
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Great blog with beautiful photo impressions and very useful information. I am planning to go to Cambodia on a short term. Thanks for the inspiration.
Wow! Thank you so much for this detailed breakdown. My partner and I are both vegetarian, too, and this was a bit of a concern when he told me that he’s taking me to Cambodia this coming winter. We don’t have an endless budget and knowing that you felt like you were splurging with 75 USD/day is great to hear. So, so glad I found your blog!
Cambodia, especially Sihanoukville is rising by the week! Unfortunately prizes rize fast!
Would love to use Trail Wallet on my RTW trip in 2015, any plans to bring it to Android?
Unfortunately not: http://voyagetravelapps.com/why-trail-wallet-isnt-on-android/
Nice to see that less than $40/day provides for a relatively comfortable lifestyle in Cambodia!
It’s true, although it was more expensive than we expected it’s still a very affordable country.
hey, thanks for this elaborated infos – it is really helpful. we are currently in Kuala Lumpur, will be moving up to Penang in May and maybe Langkawi after that before going north to Thailand etc. We planned to go to Cambodia as well sometime this year or next so will definitely refer to this as we go along. Btw, heard you guys are in Langkawi – it would be nice to meet up when we get there. You guys are such an inspiration! :)
We’ve actually just left Langkawi unfortunately. Enjoy your time in Malaysia. If you make it to Langkawi we highly recommend Soluna Guesthouse at Cenang Beach and the nearby Almaz restaurant which is ridiculously cheap.
I am yet to visit Cambodia so am not really aware of the rising prices there. However, my travel plans for 2015 do include Cambodia. Can you estimate the prices for 2015?
I’m afraid I have no idea how much things will change. I wouldn’t have thought prices would have greatly increased but you never know.
Wow, prices seem to have gone up since I was there even a year and a half ago. When I did the $30/day budget, that was staying in dorms (as you noted), but I rarely had WiFi, hot water, or A/C. Back then my blog was brand new and WiFi wasn’t as essential to me as keeping my costs low. That said, I only spent $2.50 for accommodation in Otres. Not $25! It makes sense, I suppose that as these areas see more tourism prices will rise.
I think Otres in particular is getting more and more popular and expensive. It might still be possible to get a cheap dorm bed though but we didn’t look.
Need to get this app for my next trip. I’m not big on budgeting but I do like to know how much I am spending and this seems perfect for that purpose. Thanks guys!
Hope you find it helpful! It is really interesting to see where all your money is going, even if you don’t have a strict budget.
I agree that Cambodia was more expensive than we were anticipating, although we traveled quite comfortably (and actually had 2 motorcycles for about 3 weeks of our time there) for about $55/day total. This meant we often went with fan rooms rather than air con (exceptions being Siem Reap and Phnom Penh), but we always had private rooms with private bathrooms and averaged $15/day on that. Also, even though we are street food aficionados, we did not find that aspect alluring in Cambodia either and tended to eat at restaurants as well. Because of that, we found that even the “local food” tended to be about as pricy as eating Western/International options, so we didn’t wind up eating tons of Khmer food. There we averaged about $20/day. Those are really the two areas where I would say that we were able to cut our costs down relative to your own, but we didn’t actively try to be strict with our budget.
Of course, it all depends on what you require to be comfortable—we tend to be ok with relatively minimalist lodging… we only paid $9/night for a big airy room in Kampot! It wasn’t fancy but it was clean, quiet, and comfortable and had decent WiFi, so we didn’t really need anything more than that.
I will say in reference to Adventurous Kate’s comment above regarding Laos vs Cambodia that she must not have been here recently, because as of 2014 prices seem pretty much in line with what we experienced in Cambodia last year, actually maybe a bit pricier (certain things like motorbikes and even lodging are certainly more expensive). I haven’t looked at our numbers yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we are running somewhere in the neighborhood of $50/day for the two of us.
Thanks for the info Steph. It’s definitely possible to travel more cheaply than we did especially if you go for fan rooms rather than A/C. We found Kampot to be wonderfully affordable as well.
I was shocked at how much prices had gone up in Cambodia from 2010 and 2011 to 2013. Prices in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap had gone up as much as 50% in many places. Prices didn’t rise as dramatically in Kampot, though.
Cambodia is definitely more on par with Northern Thailand prices than Laos prices today.
That’s interesting to know Kate, but I suppose it’s bound to happen as it becomes a more popular travel destination. We found Kampot the most affordable place we visited too.
I think the budget for each country in SE Asia varies depending on what you like to do. Everyone I talked to seem to have a bit of a different opinion and I think that is because they all spent there time doing different things. For example I tend to skip a lot of tours in favor of hiking/biking but prefer to spend my money eating a lot and enjoying a few beers most nights. That mix made Laos and Cambodia about the same for me and for whatever reason northern Thailand seemed to be a bit more expensive for me than most others.
Thanks for including me! It was definitely easier keeping track of our expenses this time around with the Trail Wallet app. We’re still using the app to track what we’re spending at home, love it! Looking forward to the new updates.
Glad you found Trail Wallet helpful Ali. We’ve heard quite a few people say they’ve carried on using it at home too!