daily costs

Hello,
Can anyone suggest a rough daily cost at the budget end of the scale? Is it more expensive than the Cook Islands or Tonga?
thanks!

Hi. I was in Samoa for a week in March 2009.
I'd consider myself a budget traveller - and not the package resort type - but we hardly counted pennies while in Samoa.
All up, I spent about NZ$1400 which included return flights from Wellington.

A few examples of costs for us (2 people travelling together) were:
Taxi: airport - Apia was 50 tala.
Rental car: 12 tala for licence, 492 tala for 4 days hire + petrol costs (used 2 tanks to circumnavigate Upolu and Savaii)
Fale accommodation: most were around 70 tala per person per night including dinner and breakfast
Dinner out in Apia: 15-30 tala (depending on where/what you eat) each plus beers at around 4 tala for a small bottle
Entry fees for places like Sua Trench, Return to Paradise, Taga blowholes, falealupo rainforest etc were approx 10 tala (helps to keep small change on you)
Ferry to Savaii: 12 tala for a walk on passenger, I think about 80 tala each way for the car and driver

Those were our main big costs - it would've been a lot cheaper without the rental car but it was definately worth having one. To see a lot of the sights otherwise, you'd have to hire a taxi or take a tour - and so having the freedom to go wherever we liked was priceless.

We went to Raro a few weeks after Samoa for 3 full days and spent NZ$600-700 including flights (pacific blue happy hour) - staying in hostels double with ensuite at around NZ$50 per night for two.

Take your own snorkel gear if you have it (or buy a cheap set).

This is a kind of long-winded way to answer your question, but I hope it helps. It definately can be done a lot cheaper than how we did it (especially if you didn't buy so many vailima beers!), and also a lot more luxuriously and expensively.

Good luck with your research. It's an amazing country. I'm planning on going back next year for a couple of weeks to get to all the places we missed.