What were our expenses in Malaysia as part of our world trip? What was our budget? And, were we able to stay within our budget? During our three-month stay in Malaysia, we kept notes of our expenses and grouped them into categories such as transportation, food, and accommodations so that we could keep track of everything. We use an app that helps us keep track of our expenses during our world trip.

If you’re wondering what the easiest way is to keep track of all your expenses, it is best to use an app. It is really great and very easy to use. Immediately after we buy something, we enter what we spent in the app so that we don’t forget anything and have a good overview of our costs and expenses on our world trip.

Tip: The app that we use is called Trabee Pocket for Android Phones. When we had iPhones, we used the Travel Wallet app on our sabbatical in 2016.

While the Travel Wallet is free, we paid a small amount (less than 5 euros), because the free version was limited to only 100 entries. The Trabee Pocket app which we use now does not have a limited amount of entries and is free.

You can also create as many categories with subcategories as you need. With both apps, you can download and export your expenses to Excel.

The costs listed below are our total costs, i.e. that is what we have spent together for our three months.

Category	%	Amount
Accommodation	41,1%	1.942,43
Breakfast	3,4%	162,25
Lunch	7,7%	362,89
Dinner	8,8%	413,87
Snacks, Groceries	9,8%	462,16
Total Food	29,7%	1401,17
Flight	6,1%	288,91
Metro, Bus, Tram	2,2%	104,03
Boat, Ferry,  etc.	2,4%	115,80
Car Rental	1,0%	47,83
Petrol	0,2%	10,87
Taxi, Uber	5,7%	268,57
Total Transportation	17,3%	833,01
Misc.	4,9%	230,00
Shopping	2,2%	104,32
Sightseeing/Culture	4,2%	198,92
Laundry	0,4%	16,85
Total	100,0%	4.729,70

*Snacks also include shopping at grocery stores and places like 7/11, Family Mart, etc., where we sometimes enjoyed ice cream or bought things like coffee or soap, or other personal items.

**Miscellaneous expenses such as postcards and stamps, SIM cards, and cinema visits, as well as when we had to pay for public toilets.

Also, our visit to the dentist for a dental cleaning, which was 86.97 EUR for both of us, is included here.

As you can see above, the largest expense for us was our accommodations.

We do not stay in hostels and prefer a double room with a private bathroom, which of course increases the costs accordingly.

Tip: If you’re going to stay in one place longer, just ask for a “long-term rate.” Often you can get a small discount.

But you can save a lot if your accommodation is not as important, or if you don’t need to have your own bathroom.

We also often booked at short notice and depending on the travel time (holidays e.g.) we didn’t get a really good offer. Nevertheless, our flexibility was more important to us than booking well in advance in order to save a few euros.

Here, everyone must decide for themselves where their priorities lie.

Traveling the world with golf bags is unfortunately expensive, and therefore we didn’t get away very cheaply on our transportation. Almost every airline demands an extra fee for golf luggage, and even Grab costs more! So, we had to pay a certain surcharge extra for Grab rides because the drivers only transported us in larger vehicles because of our golf bags.

Tip: Travel without golf bags, hahahahaha!!!! 😉

The flights included in our transportation were from Sumatra to Kuala Lumpur, from Langkawi to Johor, and from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching and back. Here we booked a return flight, which we would later regret. While we were in Kuching, I had a tick bite and wanted to go back to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur to make sure everything was ok. And unfortunately, we had to buy an additional return ticket…

During our first month in Malaysia, we rented an apartment in Kuala Lumpur and often cooked for ourselves. When we went out for eating in KL, we often went to less expensive restaurants. However, we also treated ourselves to a visit to a cafe from time to time, or even Western food, which cost us a lot more than eating, for example, at Indian restaurants.

It depends… we prefer middle-class hotels rather than budget hotels, so we have set a maximum price of 30.00 euros per night on average.

You can certainly find cheaper accommodations, but for us, a nicer hotel is more important. And since we don’t have expensive activities like bungee jumping, we can save on activities.

If you’re wondering about golf, yes, that is expensive. But we have a separate created golf budget for our trip, and therefore the cost of our golf in Malaysia is not listed here.

So, was our first month in Kuala Lumpur less expensive than our next month? Not really.

Our accommodation in KL was more expensive than the following month in hotels. But, we must say, that we had a really great apartment, complete with a pool and a fitness center. And, when it came to food, we didn’t really save that much even though we cooked for ourselves. This was the biggest surprise for us.

07 May to 03 June	in %	in Euro
Accommodation	45,9%	771,96
Breakfast	3,2%	54,54
Lunch	4,6%	77,17
Dinner	8,3%	140,55
Snacks, Groceries	12,8%	215,03
Total Food	28,9%	487,29
Flight	4,4%	74,37
Metro, Bus, Tram	2,2%	36,94
Boat, Ferry,  etc.	0,0%	0
Car Rental	0,0%	0
Petrol	0,0%	0
Taxi, Uber	3,0%	51,25
Total Transportation	9,7%	162,56
Misc	8,4%	140,73
Shopping	4,9%	82,49
Sightseeing/Culture	2,3%	38,25
Laundry	0,0%	0
Total	100,0%	1683,28

04 June to 30 June	in %	in Euro
Accommodation	36,2%	609,17
Breakfast	3,7%	63,02
Lunch	7,1%	119,64
Dinner	9,4%	158,7
Snacks, Groceries	8,2%	138,87
Total Food	31,6%	480,23
Flight	3,9%	66,36
Metro, Bus, Tram	2,2%	36,31
Boat, Ferry,  etc.	1,8%	30,96
Car Rental	2,8%	47,83
Petrol	0,5%	7,61
Taxi, Uber	4,6%	78,27
Total Transportation	17,6%	267,34
Misc	1,0%	14,57
Shopping	1,4%	21,83
Sightseeing/Culture	7,5%	113,27
Laundry	0,7%	10,95
Total	100%	1517,36

01 July to 31 July	in %	in Euro
Accommodation	33,3%	561,34
Breakfast	2,7%	44,69
Lunch	9,9%	166,08
Dinner	6,8%	114,61
Snacks, Groceries	6,4%	108,25
Total Food	28,4%	433,63
Flight	8,8%	148,18
Metro, Bus, Tram	1,8%	30,79
Boat, Ferry,  etc.	5,0%	84,84
Car Rental	0,0%	0
Petrol	0,2%	3,26
Taxi, Uber	8,3%	139,05
Total Transportation	26,6%	406,12
Misc	4,9%	74,7
Shopping	0,0%	0
Sightseeing/Culture	3,1%	47,4
Laundry	0,4%	5,87
Total	100%	1529,06

Our costs on our trip around the world are definitely lower than the costs we had while living in Germany. And we see more and experience more. Win-Win, we would say!

Unfortunately, we did not meet our daily budget of 50.00 Euros per day and were over budget by 8.00 Euros per day. 

We also want to mention that 5 days are missing from our expenses, but this has a good reason.  We traveled for 5 days from Johor to Bintan, Indonesia, which was a gift for James (and me!). 

I have wanted to stay at the Banyan Tree Bintan for years, which is well above our daily budget. I had saved separately for this previously, so it came out of my piggy bank rather than our world trip budget. 

And because it was a gift, I can’t say how much it was!

Even though we were over our budget, we both agreed that it was more than worth it. We invested more in our accommodations, but therefore we didn’t have any bad surprises. 

We really loved our time in Malaysia! It was easy to travel, the food was delicious with a huge variety, the nature was stunning, and the people were very friendly and sincere. Therefore, being a little over budget was acceptable and we are happy with our expenses in Malaysia.