Budgeting for the Philippines: 2 Week Itinerary plus Costs

Traveling always comes with expense, but some locations are super budget friendly. Luckily, the Philippines fall into this category which makes budgeting for a trip there relatively stress-free.

Just how affordable you may wonder? Well, I spent 13 days hopping around the Philippines and spent a total of $561.93. You might not think of that as ridiculously cheap, but that includes:

3 dives (scuba)
1 flight from Tokyo to the Philippines
2 flights within the Philippines
1 flight from the Philippines to Hong Kong

Excluding diving it was only $463.65 or $35.67 per day. Wowed yet?

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Budget Breakdown

Let’s dive into the daily expenses to help with your planning and budgeting for the Philippines:

Food: $109.81 total or $8.45 per day
Transportation: $181.44 total or $13.96 per day
- This includes 4 flights, Tokyo > Cebu, Cebu > Kalibo, Kalibo > Manila, Manila > Hong Kong, and dozens of other forms of transit including taxis and boats.
Accommodation: $121.30 total or $9.33 per day
- I stayed mostly in hostels, except for on Bantayan Island where there were no hostels so I spent two nights in a hotel.
Activities: $122.28 total or $9.41 per day
- If you take out my scuba diving – it was just $24 total or $1.85 per day.
- This includes motorbike rental, entry to attractions, and island-hopping twice.
Going out: $24.94 total or $1.92 per day
- This was for about five nights out as the other travelers were awesome in the Philippines!
Other: $2.16 total or $0.17 per day.
- This was mostly just laundry for me.

Save Even More Money

While I did travel inexpensively by taking local transit and staying in hostels, I do not feel I skimped on anything. I explored and enjoyed to the maximum visiting multiple islands.

However, it would be possible to spend even less by doing things like:

Seeking out only local restaurants. I ate at my hostels a couple of times, and they are overpriced.
Skipping islands that don’t have hostels to avoid increasing your accommodation cost.
Spend more time in each place. I hopped around to a lot of different islands. To get an idea, my itinerary is below.

If you really just want to spend whatever it takes to have the best time, of course there are options for that. Think resorts, private tours, or even taking a helicopter ride around Boracay. No really, they kept offering me helicopter rides as though that might appeal to a somewhat broke backpacker.

In any case, the Philippines are very budget friendly, generally not as touristy as the islands in Thailand, and are postcard perfect. Add it to your itinerary!