TRAVEL: What a Two Week Holiday in Indonesia Cost Us

Indonesia is one of those far-flung places, packed to the brim with beautiful beaches and blessed by sunshine for a large part of the year, that can just seem so out of reach for a two week summer holiday. I chatted to someone who said they had been quoted almost £3,000 per person from a travel agent for two weeks in Bali, but our trip cost HALF that. So I thought I’d share exactly just what two weeks in Indonesia cost us and what we spent our money on.

Flights

First up, the flights. This is where it pays to plan in advance! We booked ours in November 2016 to travel in July 2017. Now, my flights were a little bit unusual and it’s safe to say we got a hell of a deal on them, because I redeemed a load of air miles I had with Emirates that were about to expire.

We flew Newcastle to Jakarta (via Dubai) in Emirates economy class and that cost us £540 for both of us. Of course that is dirt cheap and will have brought the overall price of our trip down, but a quick check of the Emirates website today for June next year shows flights for just over £500 each, and I’d say that’s pretty good value.

Total – £540

Trailfinders Tour

We are fans of Trailfinders – we used them to book our honeymoon – and so they were the first port of call for some itinerary ideas for Indonesia. They definitely gave us food for thought, but in the end we couldn’t afford to book our entire trip with them (they quoted around £4,000 per person for two weeks). We knew we could definitely do it cheaper ourselves!

However, we were quite taken with their idea of a tour around Central Java, because we thought it might be quite difficult and expensive to sort it out ourselves. I’m going to write a full post of this part of the trip because we did FAR too much to cover in just this!

Total – £1,341

Internal Flights

Indonesia is a big group of islands and the quickest way to get around them all is by flying. In total, we took three internal flights and just looked on Skyscanner for the best deals. The best airline we flew with was Garuda – the national airline of Indonesia. But be warned, I think every flight we took was delayed, so if you’re connecting or need to be somewhere, leave PLENTY of time. We gave ourselves at least four hours to transfer.

Total – £351

Accommodation

There is a HUGE choice of accommodation in Indonesia, ranging from less than £10 a night to way more than £250 a night. Hostels are your cheapest and can cost anything from £3 for a bed in a dormitory room. At 30 odd and married, that was never going to be an option for us, but we did stay at a guest house in Ubud and that cost us only £70 for both of us for three nights. For that we had a private room, with air conditioning and breakfast, in a great location in town.

The most expensive option we chose was a four star resort on the island of Nusa Lembongan. We really wanted somewhere a bit more upmarket to round off two weeks on the road to just kick back and relax in. It was nowhere near the most expensive resort on the island though and it was our second choice. We had originally booked a resort twice the price, but we cancelled that because we just didn’t want to spend our money on that.

Ubud total – £70 (3 nights)
Nusa Lembongan total – £622 (5 nights)

Spending Money

Indonesia was not as cheap as I thought it was going to be. Andrew and I have been to Vietnam and I swear a beer cost less than £1. A large Bintang in Indonesia could set you back anywhere from around £2.00 (35,000 rupiah) to about £3.20 (55,000 rupiah). Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s not expensive compared to the U.K., but it’s not dirt dirt cheap like you might expect it to be!

We budgeted £1,000 for spends while we were there and to be honest that was a bit of a finger in the air estimate, we had no idea what to allow. We knew we wouldn’t be spending that much during the Trailfinders tour because our accommodation, breakfast and a lot of lunches were included. In the second half of the trip, we paid for lunch and dinner every day and to be honest I don’t know what else we really spent our money on! Endless bottles of water, ice cream, coffee, beer, taxis and the occasional entrance fee or activity.

Total – £700