A continuation from the post Travel Economics: The Big Picture . In our travel spreadsheet we had three categories for food: Groceries/Water Street Food/Snacks Restaurant The first category is fairly straight forward - any non prepared food or water. The second and third categories overlapped a bit. Here are a couple of examples: Street Snack: Vendor cart full of sesame seed buns - Istanbul, Turkey Restaurant: Indoor seating, menu, non-disposable cutlery - Jalgaon, India Street Food: Sold from a cart, no seating - Hyderabad, India The gray area: A couple of picnic tables next to a grocery store, no menu - Yakalla, Sri Lanka Now, that that's been cleared up here's the graph you've been waiting for: * Average does not include China **As I was solo in China, I doubled my food expenses for comparison The fallibility of bar graphs is that they fail to relate extenuating circumstances. Here are a few considerations: Greece: Mostly stationary and had r...

Last year around this time I created a spreadsheet called "Trip Budget." Sifting through travel websites I put together a vague six month budget including travel through Greece, Turkey, Georgia, India, Sri Lanka and southeast Asia. In Greece we started keeping a detailed accounting of our expenses and kept up the practice through Vietnam. The original spreadsheet, since renamed "Trip Budget Rev 2" has experienced huge growth and now consists of over half a dozen spread sheets (must to the chagrin of our netbook). I'll put up a few Travel Economics posts with analysis of the data. For the first installment we'll look at the averages over the period from May 2010 through January 2011 when we were traveling through Greece, Turkey, Georgia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Note that airfare and visa costs are not included here. The average daily expenses for Jean and myself Original Budget Categories Lodging : Hostel, hotel, mote...

September 20, 2010 Life on the road means living out of a backpack.  Back in March I put together a detailed packing list that I thought at the time on the minimalist side. You can see it here. However, As time goes by the possessions you lug around become more and more onerous. The worth of a lot of those items I thought so essential while happily creating a spread sheet in the air conditioned comfort of my own home have paled after numerous sticky and sweaty transits. As Jean and I have slowly meandered our way east we've gradual shed clothing and other articles from our packs. Four months in here is what I've winnowed my wardrobe down to. Clothing Accounting: USA Rugby Ball Cap Blue polyester polo shirt Brown cotton S/S plaid shirt Gray synthetic blend T-shirt Brown cotton trousers Black synthetic blend shorts Khaki synthetic blend swim trunks Brown leather belt Cotton boxers (6) Dark, synthetic crew socks (5 pairs) Teva sport sandals Black rubber flip fl...