It’s more than possible to eat healthy while travelling/wandering on a budget.

You don’t have to always eat bread, ramen, or instant food. Even if you’re budgeting $2 for a meal, as long as you’re creative, you can find ways to survive in another country at a shoestring budget eating home made and decent meal.

It’s not that hard to eat healthier, and depending where you’re from, prices can either be cheap or expensive. For me, prices are the same and I don’t have a currency advantage at all. Sometimes I find prices to be slightly more expensive but some things can be priced the same. However, that doesn’t stop me from eating cheap but healthier food if I want to. It took me a while to realize that, as in the past to keep my cost as low as possible, I survived on bread and instant noodles.

Overtime, I found that another money saving hack is booking places with free breakfast as they usually provide simple ingredients that you can customise on your own. Generally, hostels provide egg, bread, jam, and sometimes if it’s a nice one, they’d provide oatmeal, cereals and salads. Some even provide fried rice which is filling and cheap especially when you want to just go back to the basics.

I have to say that it’s true south east asia is generally a cheaper place to be. For example, you can buy simple vegetables at the market for less than $2. That is to say, spending $6/day for 3 meals is also possible. These days, since I have the advantage from the hostel that provides me with free breakfast, I make two portions every morning and put it in a storage box.

As you can see above, I made a healthy bowl consisting of chopped toast, egg, and salad. I added a little bit of dressing or sometimes I don’t. For my other portion, it would be the same and I usually add other ingredients or just meals that I bought for extra ingredients. The thing is, I also eat only two times a day. So late breakfast, then one for dinner which consists of the breakfast box I had and added with more ingredients that I can find on that day.

It depends on the country but in Thailand, I used to make rice bowls with various meats and vegetables. Another advantage that a hostel has is that you can also store ingredients or a meal in their fridge. This is why I was able to store rice, meat, and vegetables and cook it for my meal. Eating out for me is quite a luxury and I do that once a week to try something new.

However, in Laos, the coffee I get is free. So it’s even more money saving because I don’t have to buy quality coffee and I was set until dinner time. However, I think travelling with a certain dietary restriction can also be quite a challenge. In some countries, certain meats are not too common and can be expensive. For example, there is pork in Indonesia but the varieties aren’t as many as in neighbouring countries or even EU and it's not cheap. Meanwhile in Thailand itself, beef can be quite expensive and if that’s your thing to eat beef, be ready to pay more for that. Whereas in Indonesia and Malaysia due to the large muslim population, beef is more common to find and can be cheaper. But since the budget is $2/meal, meat can be off-the list 😀. Though there are times when I found $1 grilled chicken in the local market and sometimes fish for that price. So, it’s definitely possible to eat that. At the same time, you can find a bag of rice for less than $1 in the local market as well. It also depends on what you want to add or remove in your diet, if you want to remove carb, then you can use that $1 for more vegetable and protein. Whichever you want to do, you definitely can and traveling/wandering doesn't have to be expensive. The expensive part is always all about the "comfort" level. If you have high comfort level, that certainly comes with cost but if you're not, then it's gonna be reasonable :). That's all my wandering tips from me today!