A Cute Little Food Diary…

Aug 11

Hey there! Long time, no see. It has been a little over a month since Taylor and I moved out here. Lots of people have been asking me how much we spend here since Bali has an infamous reputation of being cheap. Well, instead of doing a ‘What I Spend in a Day,’ I have tracked an entire week’s worth of spending for food.

We try to spend maximum $30 per day on food, but sometimes that is just impossible (even for here). Now before I become financially vulnerable, I just want to say a few things:

Yes, we do go to the grocery store here everyday. It is a cultural thing. I promise we aren’t just going just to be going lol.
Water is free… until it’s not. The pricing for water here is weird in the sense that a bottle of water is the same amount as almost an entire entrée. However, if the restaurant has house water, then we’re peachy keen.
Not to be obvious, but Bali is an island. This means that imported foods are double pricey (we had a rude awakening our first time grocery shopping - American style). So, the grocery store does have some American branded foods, like Poptarts, but they’re $10 for the small 8-count box.
I took totals of the overall meal, and therefore did not write down exactly what we ordered. I will have to do a more detailed food diary, tracking our spending over the weekend sometime!

It took us a second to figure out how the food budget was going to work for us personally, but after a month of living here, we finally found our rhythm! According to my calculations (and various other factors), it is about the same to eat out than make food at the villa. Plus, tipping your server is not a thing in this wonderful country, so that helps out the budget.

Alright, here it goes…

M O N D A Y