If Tao and the Palawan region of the Philippines caught your eye in our previous post, and you are considering taking a trip yourself, then we hope this budget breakdown of our spending assists you in your planning! Or maybe you’re just nosey. Either way, enjoy! We have organised and summarised the expenses in the 5 categories of Accommodation, Food & Drink, Activities & Sightseeing, Transport, and Buffer. Just want to know the final number? Scroll right to the bottom!

The Tao Expedition

You can’t put a price on this experience… lol jokes… it’s $2,886. That includes the base price for two people ($2,500), additional drinks and one sneaky massage ($87), and the tip at the end for the Lost Boys ($81, and they completely deserved it!). An average of about $241 per day/per person, and worth every bloomin’ penny! We gushed about how incredible this experience was in our last blog post. If you haven’t had a chance to take a squiz, check it out here.

So, what did we spend on the other 7 days? Below we have outlined the expenses and summarised the average daily costs in a table

Accomodation

We had to increase our accommodation budget for the Philippines. While we aimed to spend no more than $30 per night in South East Asia countries, we had to increase this to $40 for the Philippines. Still super cheap! But just a little more than the others. Our accommodation style was simple and clean. We used booking.com to organise all our accommodation which gave us some perks such as discounts and free breakfasts. For the 7 nights we spent not on the sailing adventure, we spent a total of $234. That’s an average of approximately $34 per night. 

Activities & Sightseeing

What we spent on activities is not an accurate representation of what most visitors spend in the Philippines. In Palawan, day trips to islands where snorkelling and diving is the main thing to do. However, as we were able to do all of these with Tao, we didn’t partake in any expensive day trips. These usually sit somewhere between $60-$100 each and usually include hotel transfers and lunch. 

In Manila, our activities included our EPIC 2 hours in Timezone and entrance fees to Fort Santiago and Casa Manila. We chose to explore Coron and El Nido with our feet; afternoon drinks and a massage were our activities of choice. All up, these experiences cost us a grand total of $75, or just under $11 per day.

Transport

The most significant cost when travelling the Philippines is transport. In order to navigate the 7,641 islands, you will eventually need to hop on a plane. We took two internal flights; one from Manila to Coron, and one from El Nido back to Manila. The total cost of the flights was $941; approximately $236 per person per flight. Not super cheap, but we had to pay extra for our luggage. 

An additional $115 was spent using Grab (the Uber of South East Asia) and tricycles to travel non-walkable distances. We highly recommend Grab. We found it to be easy, safe, and we knew how much we were up for at the start of each journey. These smaller transportation costs averaged out at around $17 per day.

Buffer

Ah, yes! The buffer! Sarah’s genius addition to the budget. We did use it quite a bit. It’s all those unforeseen, “didn’t think about that” expenses that bite you in the bum. Our bum-biting costs included laundry, sunscreen, insect repellent, reef shoes, dry-bag, and environment fees. All this cost us a total of $152, or $22 per day. We’re glad we factor these costs into the budget. As you can see, they add up quite quickly!

Average Cost Per Day

So, in summary, taking away the major upfront costs such as inter-island flights and the Tao 6-day expedition, we spent a total of $157 per day for two people. Not bad, eh?