So clearly, we haven’t gotten the hang of budget travel just yet, but one could say there was…some…improvement in Jordan. We opted to rent a car so that we’d have a little bit more flexibility with our schedule rather than having to rely on busses, and we learned 2 things from this. First, Jordan is so easy to drive! No wonder so many people recommend self-driving here. The roads were good and there were a few quick and easy passport checkpoints. Second thing we learned is renting a car is not budget friendly. From the daily rental fee to gas, the convenience of having your own car comes at a cost. Hey at least we learned this in Country 2, right?

Some notes:

• Once again rental cars do add up
• We did the 3-day Jordan Pass for $232, which includes the visa to enter Jordan as well as a 3-day entry to Petra. (I think 2 days to Petra would be plenty)
• Have cash on you (around $10-20 depending on how good at haggling you are) if you want to get that famous overlook photo of Petra.
• We did a half day Wadi Rum Jeep tour through our Airbnb host for $127.
• There are 2 ways to see the Dead Sea. Public areas and via private hotel properties. We opted for the hotel property (it was around ~$100 for the night) in order to have access to showers, towels, and a way to change into clean clothes post swim.
• We splurged on a dome tent in Wadi Rum for 1 night which was a cool experience but the $10 Bedouin tent was a more personal, exciting, and in all honesty more memorable!

Everything we did while in Jordan can be found in our Jordan Itinerary.

Click here to see what we spent in Thailand.