The dream: Get by on a fiver a day with plenty of money to buy clothes that are so cheap you can discard them at the end of the trip

In reality: "Where is our money going?!" I asked every time I pulled out another £200 worth of cash from the ATM.

There are some countries in Asia where your money does indeed go far. Vietnam is a great example, where most of our hotels cost £13 per night and dinner ranged between £5-£15 for two (depending on quality). Meals in Pai, a small hill town in Northern Thailand, cost £3-£8 for two. Those nights were brilliant. On those nights we felt like millionaires.

But there are some days when we stretched our brunch out until 4pm to save on money. The most exciting cities such as Mumbai, Bangkok and Hanoi, are naturally more expensive and we were constantly exceeding our budget of £25 per person, per day (including hotel).

"Why didn't you stay in hostels?" I hear you ask. Hostels are naturally the cheapest option, but if you're at a point in life where you've worked for a few years and are in or about to hit your thirties, sharing a room with teenagers on bug-ridden bunks just isn't an option. Most backpackers we met within our age group shared the same sentiment.

It's also cheap to do nothing. It sounds obvious, but many reviews brush over the costs incurred outside of food and accommodation. The moment we threw in tickets to a Muay Thai fight and a mini-bus fare to a national park, we blew our budget. After all, tourism is expensive and when you're doing it for longer than a month, very little will feel cheap.

“What people who quit their jobs and go travelling don’t tell you”