How much money I spent living in Cambodia

My budget for groceries, eating out, rent and fun

I think airing out our finances is very important. It’s so cool that as a society we’ve gotten better at it, and its helped make conversations about money and wages less stigmatized. But I still don’t think a lot of people are willing to say exactly what they’ve spent on vacations or long-term travel. That’s still pretty taboo.

And I get it. I feel weird telling people exactly what I spend too. Part of me worries it makes me look like an idiot—like I’m overspending or making bad financial decisions. But the bigger fear is that people will say I can only do what I do because I’m rich, which I really don’t feel like is true. I make $15 an hour and work 5-10 hours a week. That’s not rich. But I also know that compared to local wages in Cambodia, or compared to someone working minimum wage in the U.S. without the flexibility to work remotely, I am very privileged.

It’s a weird line to walk. I don’t want to seem out of touch, but I also don’t want to hide the reality of what things cost. Because transparency is the only way people can actually plan their own trips.

But I’m not doing any of this to make people feel bad. I just want people who are in a financial or life situation similar to mine to know that what I am doing is possible. If you make roughly what I make and you’re willing to work hard to save up, you can do this too.

So here it is: the full breakdown of what I actually spent living in Cambodia for three months.

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Somehow, I actually spent a lot of money living in Cambodia for three months. Well, don’t get me wrong, it’s still significantly less than I would have spent living in Raleigh, North Carolina. But still more than I would have expected for living in Cambodia.

To be fair, my gauge for deciding how expensive a place is to live is more than a little bit uncalibrated.

The last three places that I have stayed for more than a month, I barely spent a penny. In Scotland this time last year, my accommodation and food were 100% covered. In Morocco earlier this year, I spent three weeks in the desert spending $5 a day to cover my accommodation and meals. Later in Morocco, I had my bed and breakfast covered by the hostel I was volunteering at. And in Istanbul, when I was working at a language center, I had my housing covered and was given a food allowance that easily covered a week’s groceries.

To say I’ve been blessed would be an understatement.

Granted, all of these were volunteer exchanges, so it wasn’t just pure luck—I did have to work for these housing exchanges. But I’ve never had to pay for my accommodation in those places, and I’ve very rarely had to pay that much for food. I volunteer with the platform Worldpackers, which has been nothing but good to me.

Important note: There are some ethics around volunteering abroad that need to be talked about, and I’ll leave that to Fialka with their article “Let Me Ruin Volunteering Abroad for You” and Emma in their essay “Running Away from My Workaway Host in the Middle of the Night.” Both are well worth the read if you’re considering volunteering—not to scare you off, but just to be aware that there are hosts that aren’t worth your trust.

So when I came to Cambodia and had to actually pay for everything? Yeah, it felt expensive, even though it’s supposed to be one of the cheaper countries in Southeast Asia.

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Before I get into the numbers, I need to be clear: I wish I could give you a hard and fast total, but the truth is, even if I went through my credit card statements for the last few months, that wouldn’t do the trick. I’ve spent a lot of money, and not all of it was on living in Cambodia.

A lot of it was on my Vietnam visa (I spent $125 on a visa that should have cost $25) and the subsequent five-day weekend vacation I took to Ho Chi Minh City. I’ve also spent money on flights to Thailand for the next leg of my trip, and some domestic mini-vacations within Cambodia that I’m not sure if I should include in this breakdown.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on the regular cost of living in Siem Reap—the weekly and monthly expenses of just existing here. I’ll mention the extra stuff at the end, but I want to give you a realistic picture of what it costs to live here, not just visit.

Also, I’m going to do these expenses for one person, even though there are two of us. My cost per person may be slightly lower than it would be for a solo traveler since we split rent and utilities.

Weekly Expenses:

The Cafe: $6/week

I go to the café just about every other day, and I don’t feel bad about it. I get to be in a place removed from my living space — which is always where I do my best work. And I get a matcha with coconut water that costs $1.75. Not a bad deal, in my opinion.

The Market: $5/week

The market is great. Vegetables are dirt cheap, and since I buy my vegetables every week from the same woman, she always gives me a good deal and throws in extra green onions and cilantro. I also buy fruit here, and whenever I need, noodles, beans, and rice.

The Grocery Store: $15/week

This is the real money drainer. It’s so much closer to go to the grocery store than to the market. And I can get things that the market simply doesn’t offer — milk, chicken in the afternoon, yogurt. And once I’m already at the grocery store, I might as well get everything I need, even though I know they have it cheaper at the market.

I think we could easily spend $50 a week at the grocery store between the two of us if we’re eating a lot of chicken and cooking every night. Because of this, we’ve really cut down on our chicken consumption to 4-5 times per week, including lunches, and almost never eat any other meat.

The Gym: $4/week

I go to a gym here three or four times per week, and last week they raised their price from $1 a day to $1.50 a day (scandalous).

Eating out: $13/week

Jordan and I eat out more here in Cambodia than we ever have. Most of the restaurants are really cheap, which probably contributes to our willingness to eat out. There’s a great restaurant right across the street from our apartment and we usually spend $3-$4 a person there with appetizers and a smoothie. I’d say between lunches and dinners we eat out probably three times a week on average. so being generous for the times we eat out more in a week or splurge at a restaurant, lets say our eat-out budget is $25, averaging to about $50 a month per person depending on our habits.

Fruit: $6/week

Yes, I do have a separate fruit budget. I go through fruit fast. I eat it for a snack, I eat it for breakfast and I eat it for dessert.

My favorite fruit, sweetsop (custard apple), is kind of an expensive fruit at $3 a kg and there are about five fruits in a kg. I can eat five in two to three days. And I don’t want to go all the way down to the main market to buy them since it’s so much farther, so there’s a fruit stand at the end of our road that’s a little more expensive, and I just go there to re-up on fruit.

This one is not split between me and Jordan because honestly, I eat all of the fruit.

Monthly expenses:

Rent & utilities: $225

Jordan and I could have saved a lot of money by choosing a one-bedroom apartment or a studio. But in the end, I’m glad we went for a two-bedroom place, even though it’s double the price of what we were seeing for studios. Jordan and I both have our own space. One bedroom is where we sleep, and the other bedroom was converted into Jordan’s office. I tend to work in the living room or at the café downstairs.

Our rent is $400, and our utilities usually come to $35 a month. We also pay separately for WiFi because we wanted faster internet since we’d both be working from home, which is another $15 a month. At the beginning, we also had to pay a $400 security deposit, but I won’t count that in the totals since we got that money back at the end of our lease.

Visa: $43/month (averaging the $30 arrival visa and two $50 extensions)

As a U.S. citizen, we have to pay for a Cambodian visa every month. When you enter the country, it’s $30, so that’s the price for the first month. But then when you’re in the country, you can get it extended at a travel agency for $50, which is worth it because otherwise you have to do a visa run, which will likely be more expensive and honestly isn’t worth the hassle compared to the ease of having a travel agency just do it for you.

Totals:

If I add everything up, my monthly total is about $462 per month. or roughly $1,386 for the three months I spent here.

What I Didn’t Include in This Budget

As I mentioned earlier, this breakdown doesn’t include:

• The Vietnam visa fiasco: $125 per person (should have been $25)

• The Ho Chi Minh City trip: ~$100 per person (travel, accommodation, food, activities)

• Domestic travel within Cambodia: ~$150 per person (Phnom Penh trip, tours, entrance fees)

• Flights to Thailand: ~$80 per person (our next destination)

• Tourist activities in Siem Reap: ~$80 per person (Angkor Wat pass, floating village tour, circus tickets, etc.)

Even though that wouldn’t be considered “cost of living in Cambodia” I still spent that money, while I was living in Cambodia. So, if I add all of that in, my total spending for three months in Cambodia comes to around $1,920, per person, or roughly $640/month.

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Sharing these numbers feels really vulnerable. I keep thinking someone’s going to tell me I’m spending too much, or that I’m doing it wrong, or that I’m not really traveling on a budget if I’m spending $640/month. Hell I’m questioning it myself and freaking out over how much money I spent (I wish I never did the math).

But here’s the truth: this is what it cost me to live in Cambodia for three months in a way that felt sustainable and enjoyable. Could I have done it for less? Sure. Could I have done it for more? Absolutely—some people are spending $1,500-2,000 if they calculated what their monthly costs would be, staying in much nicer places, eating at fancier restaurants, doing more tours.

If you’re someone who’s been wondering if you can afford to live abroad, I hope this breakdown helps. If these numbers feel doable to you, then yes—you can do this. If they feel completely out of reach, that doesn’t mean long-term travel is impossible for you. It just means you might need to adjust your timeline, save longer, or choose a different destination.

But the most important thing I want you to take away from this is: it’s possible. It’s not just for rich people or people with trust funds. It’s for regular people who are willing to work hard, save intentionally, and make it a priority.

I worked 50+ hour weeks for a year to save for this. I sold half my closet. I cooked every meal at home. I said no to things I wanted in the moment so I could say yes to doing this now.

And now I’m here, sitting in my favorite café in Siem Reap writing this blog post, and feeling incredibly grateful that I get to do this.

Thanks for reading!

xx abby

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