The following will be an accounting of my 2023 trip to Morocco and Bahrain. If you’ve not read the blog, you can do so here. Or if you want a small wrap up, you can check that out here. It can provide some context to the costs below! All prices will be in Canadian (or converted into Canadian when it shows up on my CC bill).
The Costs
All in all this whole trip cost (me individually) $3192.40 with a per day cost of $187.79 over 17 days. And it breaks down as follows:
| Transportation | $529.74 (+ Points) |
| Accommodations | + $1123.25 |
| Food & Beverage | + $269.18 |
| Miscellaneous | + $1270.23 |
| Total | = $3192.40 |
The Transportation
In total, the transportation costs for this trip cost $529.74 with a few frequent flyer redemptions. For me transportation and logistics can be broken down into two main sections: Airfare and Ground Transportation which costs $361.03 and $168.71 respectively.
The Flights
In total my airfare cost $361.03, 187500 Aeroplan points and 75000 Alaska Miles. For the Airfare the following are all my flights taken on this trip:
- (Air Canada, Royal Air Maroc and Gulf Air. All in business class) Vancouver-London-Casablanca-Bahrain ($185.07 + 127, 500 Aeroplan Points)
- (Gulf Air Business Class) Bahrain-Bangkok ($83.30 + 60000 Aeroplan Points)
- (JAL First & Business Class + Alaska Air positioning flights) Bangkok-Tokyo-Los Angeles-Seattle-Vancouver ($92.66 + 75000 Alaska Miles)
I’ll have to check, but this may be the first time I have actually flown completely around the world in one trip. While it wasn’t the goal to do so, going from Northern Africa to Japan in order to try JAL’s first class facilitated this. While not as complicated as some of my previous trips, it is still a fair amount of flying, especially the latter portion. Though being someone that enjoys being in the air, I’m pretty happy with the value and experiences accrued this time around!
Getting around on the Ground
In total my ground transportation cost $168.71. A majority of this is my car rental in Bahrain. The rest are a combination of taxi’s, airport transfers and train tickets. The following are all my ground transportation costs for the trip:
- Bahrain car rental ($111.18)
- Morocco train from Marrakech to Casablanca ($18.08)
- Various Taxis around Casablanca ($30.24)
- Train from Casablanca to the airport ($9.21)
Overall ground transportation is pretty straight forward this time. It helps that a majority of the time in Morocco, we are with a tour and are being bussed from one place to another. This certainly removes a lot of complexity and cost in each of the places we visited. Also, after doing a bit of research, renting a car in Bahrain turned out to be the most economical and straight forward choice. Taxis are expensive and public transit isn’t as developed as other places. Additionally, being an oil rich country gas is actually very cheap! So all in all I’m happy with the choices I made this time around.
The Accommodations:
A majority of our stays were included in the cost of our tour, so I will ignore that for now. All of my accommodation costs in total come out to $1123.25. Below are all the different places I stayed at (excluding the tour accommodations):
- 1 Night Hotel Campanile ($30.05) (This cost is split between Gimpy and I)
- 2 Nights Riad Etoile d’Orient ($253.67) (This cost is split between Gimpy and I)
- Additionally, this cost includes laundry, transfers to and from the riad, rooftop dinner, and an in-house hamam
- 1 Night Marriott Casablanca ($123.37) (Gimpy stayed an extra night, this is not reflected in the price)
- 3 Nights Le Meridien City Centre Bahrain ($611.42)
Food and Beverage ($269.18)
Food is one of my favourite parts about travelling! It’s not always easy to track food costs, especially in countries where credit cards aren’t accepted. Morocco is one of these places. So while I have some tracking of my expenses via paper receipts and credit card bills, this total is not complete. In addition several of our meals were covered under the tour costs. In total my trackable expenses for meals and snacks throughout my trip amounted to $269.18.
Miscellaneous Expenses ($1270.23)
Normally, these are more minor expenses incurred throughout the trip. However, a big expense this time is the GAdventures Morocco tour which I didn’t break down into expenses for the categories above. There were numerous activity and miscellaneous expenses I incurred on this trip. In total these expenses add up to $1270.23. The remaining expenses are either entrance fees (to an attraction or country in the case of the visa!) or internet connectivity fees. The following are most of the trackable activity and miscellaneous expenses:
- GAdventures Kasbahs & Desert Tour ($1129.00)
- Bahrain eVisa ($33.00)
- Bahrain Fort Museum ($7.91)
- Bahrain National Museum ($3.94)
- Hassan 2 Mosque ($17.12)
- Bangkok Healthland Massage ($24.20)
- Airalo eSIM for Morocco ($38.64)
- Airalo eSIM for Bahrain ($6.22)
- Airalo eSIM for World ($10.19)
Totals
After adding everything up, we get a grand total of $3192.40. Averaging this out over 17 days, we get an average cost of $187.79 per day. If you’re still reading, I hope you find this a little helpful or interesting! I am continually trying to track my costs to see where I can focus my efforts to bring my overall trips down! If there is extra information you’d like to know, or have suggestions on how this can be done better, please feel free to drop a comment below and let me know!