[Nashy]

Hello everyone

Me and my girlfriend going travelling to Thailand(1 month), Australia(2 Months), NZ(2 Months) and Tahiti(1 Month) and I am trying to work out a budget for the whole trip excluding flights as they are already arranged. We have currently got about £8500.00 for the whole trip. Will this be enough? or will I need to scrape some more money together?

We will be staying in hostels and might hire a motorhome in NZ.

Any help will be much appreciated.

[teamdoc]

Mate, with that sort of money you should be able to live like a king.

[Tim Uden]

You shouldn't spend any more than about £4000 each (£8000 for the two of you) for food, accommodation, sightseeing etc. and you could probably do it for a LOT less if you prepare all your own food and don't go out too much. By watching what you spend you should be able to cut your expenses down to around £6000 for the two of you.

However my estimate doesn't include transport such as buses, petrol or renting a campervan in NZ. More expensive activities such as scuba diving, skydiving, bungee jumping etc are also not included in my estimate.

Campervan rental can be expensive although it is cheaper in NZ than most other countries - you may want to compare it with the cost of renting a regular car. It is easy to forget about the cost of petrol when planning your trip and although NZ is a small country it is easy to cover a lot of kms (a couple of years ago I drove 16,000km in two months in New Zealand).

You should have enough money for your trip although it would be nice to have access to a credit card for any unexpected expenses.

[Nashy]

Thanks for the responses guys. I think we are going to prepare alot of food ourselves and we have got some accomodation with friends so fingers crossed we will be able to make our budget stretch to a campervan. Does anyone know who is the best company to go with for a camper in NZ? I have had a quote from Maui and I get a 15% discount with them as I work for Volkswagen but the qoute I got still seems a bit more expensive than some of the other companies on the internet.

Also, do I need to book in advance or can I just get one when I arrive there? I will be there August/September.

As always any help is much appreciated.