How Much it Costs to Take Your Foreign Partner to the UK

 

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I have just returned from an 11 day trip to the UK with my Thai girlfriend and wanted to let you all know how much it costs to take your foreign partner to the UK. This trip was from the 30th September – 10th October 2016 (11 days).

My Trip

Firstly, here is a brief run down of my trip. As you can see it involves a lot of touristy activities and traveling to a few different places.

Day 1: Flight to UK, met by family at the airport at 8pm.

Day 2: Shopping trip to buy clothes for the colder weather. Dinner out with family.

Day 3: Travel to London and sightseeing. (Tower Bridge, Tower Bridge Experience, London Bridge Experience, Churchill War Rooms, St Paul’s Cathedral dinner at Medieval Banquet)

Day 4: Sightseeing in London. (Globe Theatre, HMS Belfast, Big Ben, House of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Bus Tour, Convent garden, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, Dinner in China Town)

Day 5: Sightseeing in London, travel back home in the evening. (Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, London Eye,Trafalgar Square, The Mall, Horse Guards Parade, River Cruise, Greenwich Observatory)

Day 6: Harry Potter Studio Tour. Meet with friends in London afterwards.

Day 7: Windsor Castle and Eton.

Day 8: Stonehenge in the morning, Tower of London in the afternoon. Family meal in a Thai restaurant at night.

Day 9: Trip to London to see The Lion King at Lyceum Theatre.

Day 10: Meal with extended family in Brighton.

Day 11: Shopping and then flight home in the evening.
How Much it Costs to Take Your Foreign Partner to the UKWe spent 4/5 days in London and still didn’t do all the things we wanted to (museums, galleries, Notting Hill and Baker Street among others). I think 11 days would have been perfect if we were just staying in London but we will go back again in the future and go to the other places we want to.

All places we visited were within a 2 hour drive of my parents place and we were lucky that they could drive us to a number of places such as the Harry Potter studio tour and Stonehenge.

I have broken the cost of the trip down and given totals for activities such as shopping, eating out and entrance fees to attractions etc.

How Much it Costs to Take Your Foreign Partner to the UK

Total cost £3,100  ฿132,800 (THB – exchange rate 43)  $3,765 (USD exchange rate 1.22)

So as you can see the total cost of this 11 day trip for 2 people was 3,100 British Pounds, just under 135,000 THB.

I was actually expecting to spend a little bit more and had budgeted around 150,000 THB.  Below I will show you the breakdown and what this amount includes:

(all prices for 2 people unless stated otherwise)

Visas Etc

UK visa and supporting documents for Thai Girlfriend  – 4,000 Thai Baht

Thailand Re-Entry Permit for me – 1,000 Thai Baht

Total: 5,000 Thai Baht c. £115

Flights

Return Economy Flights with Emirates  44,000 Baht c. £1,200 (based on current Baht exchange rate)

Attractions and Entrance Fees 

Harry Potter Studio Tour  £90

3 Day London Pass £189

Stonehenge £34

Windsor Castle  £40

Tower of London £38

London Eye  £120 (4 people) 

Total £511 c 22,000 Thai Baht 

Transport 

6 x Train Tickets London – Wokingham £72 

2 x Oyster Cards for London Transport £50 

2 x Train tickets Wokingham to Gatwick £28 

Total £150 c. 6,400 Thai Baht 

Food

Meals in restaurants (including drinks) – £310 

Snacks on days out – £68

Food brought back to Thailand – £30

Total £408 c. 17,000 Thai Baht

Socializing

Drinks with friends £36 c. 1,500 Thai Baht 

Shopping

Gifts for friends / family in Thailand £45

Clothes £235

Cosmetics £25

Gifts from attractions (T-shirts, magnets, guidebooks etc) £265

Total £570 c. 24,000 Thai Baht 

Others

Miscellaneous items such as toiletries, UK sim cards etc £110 c. 4,700 Thai Baht 

Important Cost Notes

I want to highlight a few important costs and some which are not in the above figures to provide more information. These are important to consider when thinking about how much it costs to take your foreign partner to the UK.

Accommodation –  You will see above that there is no cost for accommodation. We were lucky that family put us up during our travel at their house or paid for a hotel for us. This is obviously a huge saving as I would say you would need a minimum of £50 a night for a hotel and probably closer to £100 for a decent hotel. 

My family live around 1 hour by train from London and all of our sightseeing was within easy reach so we were lucky. On our next trip we may venture further afield which means paying for a hotel. I think that most people taking their partner to the UK will have the option of staying with family during at least a part of their trip if not the whole duration.

credit-card-1591492_640Payment – Flights were booked in January 2016 (see below) and were paid using a Thai credit card so the real cost in GBP at that time was closer to £850. In the above I have used the current exchange rate of around 43 Baht per Pound. All visa costs were paid in Thailand using money from a Thai account. 

All other payments were made using my British credit and debit card so there is no exchange rate fluctuations when it comes to paying the credit card bill. Money was already in my UK account from previous savings and money I already had. It is also worth noting that many costs were spread throughout the year such as the flights and entrance tickets to the major attractions. I actually spent around £1,350 (c. £150 per day) whilst I was in the UK, the rest was already paid. 

Sharing Costs – The above figure of £3,100 is the total for the two of us. Whilst my girlfriend is not going to split the cost 50/50 with me she has contributed towards the total. Every relationship is different and, as I showed in my article Money Issues With a Thai Partner,  there are obvious discussions to be made before traveling as to who will be responsible for what. 

For our trip my girlfriend has paid for all her shopping, presents for friends and family in Thailand and has split the cost of eating in restaurants and items we bought whilst visiting different attractions. In total this is around 30,000 Baht.

emirates-867771_640Flights – I purchased the 2 flights back in January 2016 when there was a spate of airline promotions and got a cracking deal, £425 return with Emirates. We obviously hadn’t got visas yet so there was a slight risk but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. We also secured exit row seats on all legs of the flights which was an added bonus. The current exchange rate means the price is closer to  £600 each for the flights however I priced them at today’s rate to give an idea of costs now. 

Other Activities Paid By Others –  Family and friends did pay for some things such as going to the theatre to watch The Lion King, 2 nights in a London hotel, some meals and of course a few beers here and there. I don’t have exact figures of how much these extras would have cost but I would imagine somewhere in the region of an extra £1,000. 

Keeping Costs Down

We didn’t aim to do this trip on a shoestring and I feel the budget of 150,000 Baht is reasonable but we also didn’t go for full on luxury. There were a number of things we did to keep the cost down.

We bought the London Pass which covers a number of the top paid for attractions in London and means you can enter without paying the admission ticket price. At around £95 each for a 3 day pass it proved good value as we did 10 activities and the entrance to most of these was around £15-20 if purchased individually. The other bonus with the London Pass is that it lets you skip the line at several key attractions which was ideal for us on a tight time schedule. It also meant we knew it was paid for and did’t have to line up to buy tickets for everywhere. It also meant we visited places we wouldn’t have thought of such as the amazing Churchill War Rooms and interesting Greenwich observatory. It also includes an iconic London bus tour and a river cruise. You can buy the London pass for 1,2,3,6 or 10 days, the longer the pass the cheaper per day it works out. 
How Much it Costs to Take Your Foreign Partner to the UKWhen going to places where we had to pay entry such as the Harry Potter studio tour and Stonehenge we bought packages which included guide books and audio tours at a reduced price online as we knew we would want these features. Our package for the Harry Potter tour was £45 each and would have cost £60 if each part was purchased individually on the day. 

We ate at a lot of places which had special offers and used vouchers to get some great deals on food. Eating out in the UK can be expensive but we also had a lot of great meals for under £10  each which included a drink. The supermarkets all do £3 meal deals which were ideal for lunch. The most expensive meal was at a Thai restaurant who charged us £175 for a meal which would be around £50 in Thailand. If you are smart you can get great deals on food. 

When shopping we went to a lot of stores which were cheaper than Thailand. For example Primark had T-shirts from £2 and shoes from £8. I know these aren’t the best money can buy but the value for these items is incredible. We both picked up enough clothes to last us the year and it was also cheap to pick up some autumn outfits for our trip. When it came to food we also found good deals in the supermarkets and we actually hit Poundland for all our chocolates and snacks. Finally in a Aldi we found the same toiletries we use in Thailand but they were around 50% cheaper. 

Nook has a student card from her university which is still valid until next year when she is 23. We used it successfully at some places such as the Tower of London which saved us around a third of the cost. If your partner does have a student ID card then they are accepted at most major attractions which offer student discount, including some shops.

All these tips will help but the most important thing is to use your experience. If you’re taking your partner to the UK then I am guessing you’re from the UK so you should have a reasonable idea of costs. Most Thai people have the idea that the UK is expensive for everything. Overall it is more expensive than Thailand but it is possible to do things at a reasonable price, there are many free attractions around the UK you can visit if you are on a really tight budget. You need to sit down and go through these things with your partner to make a realistic plan and then make sure you stick to it.

Final Thoughts

We really enjoyed our trip and I feel that it gave Nook the chance to see more about my culture, meet my family and to experience some great place.

This trip took us 9 months to plan, prepare and save for but was more than worth it. Next year we plan to visit Japan for a week or 10 days and to be honest I would be surprised if it will be much cheaper than visiting the UK. If you have enough time to prepare, a trip to the UK is possible financially and in terms of getting visas etc.

I will be following up this article with more on Nook’s opinions of the places we visited (to help you see if Thai people like the attractions) and also about the visa process and which documents you need – check back soon!

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment!

About Richard 176 Articles
British guy living and working in Bangkok, Thailand since 2013. Running LifeInANewCountry.com teaching and writer of Settling in Thailand expat book.

3 Comments

  1. Wasting your life in Thailand. Your blog articles are terrible – loosely accurate, and boring. Also, your youtube videos make you look like a deer in the headlights. You look confused. It is clear you are gonna hit a wall at some point. Financially, you seem to keep reassuring yourself that you are responsible and take time to save and budget…but socially, you must be struggling. Thailand is taking the best years of your life away from you, and the only reason to stay is because your gf makes you stay, and you have little or no options back home. I have never seen someone so controlled by his gf.

    Anyone can be a teacher in Thailand – and the fact is that wages havent increased in 20 years.

    this will all end badly for you when it becomes clearly that your plans to marry and have a family wont materialize and you will be left ewith nothing. good luck mate.

    • Thanks for taking the time for reading so many of them Dean, there must have been something about them that kept you coming back and for posting a long comment like this…..

      I wont go into all the details about the money I make and my social life but both are better than in the UK and I actually work for a company which operates in pretty much every country in the World so I cant transfer whenever I want.

      Anyway good luck with whatever you’re doing there is more to life than being rude on the internet….

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