Travel Cheap

Scream Aye! if you’ve got a bucket list of dreamy locations filled with gorgeous people, champagne flutes and burgers with gold dust! Now say a softer aye if your bank account doesn’t keep up with your dreams!

Yeah, thought so.

You could wait, you know, another 10 years or so until you can make that idyllic holiday photo happen in the Maldives. Or you could leave tomorrow and do a lot more with what you’ve got saved up right now!

When I decided to switch to full time travel, money was my biggest concern, of course. People love me but not enough to feed me for free for the coming years! So I decided to work a year more and save and in hindsight that is the best thing I did to myself because come Corona, I had a bit of spare cash to fall back on comfortably. So before I tell you how you can travel cheap, I’m going to tell you how to do it safely.

SAVE:

There’s no two ways about it. You need little money to travel if you do it right, but things do go wrong. I had over 3000 euros stolen from my bank account in one go. If that’s all your savings, you’re in deep tatti. Corona disrupted our plans and we ended up being stuck in a place for 4 months (the plan was to be there just for 1 month).

Things happen, but you have to be ready for it. And one way to do that is to have a Plan B fund, safely tucked away in another account. Don’t use that card for anything at all. Even if you’re now at the end of your holiday and have that money still left over, leave it there! It’s never a good idea to come back empty handed (empty walleted? idk). I’ll carve this on a stone tablet for you if you promise to treat it like the gospel :

Always. Have. Reserve. Funds.

1) Pick your destination well: You want to go Goa but bank account says Gorai? No problem! Go to Gokarna instead! Every fancy, over visited destination has a better and cheaper alternative to it. My family comes from Goa and I absolutely despise the place for what it’s become. Decided to go to Gokarna instead and realised just how different the experience was! To give you an example, I managed to haggle down the price of a damn tent on a Goan beach to Rs. 450 per night, at the butt end of tourist season. In comparison, a private shack on the beach in Gokarna in the middle of tourist season cost us Rs. 250. The beaches were cleaner and emptier and we got to do so much more simply because we weren’t being hustled by anyone. This was the real sussegaad destination!

Gokarna truly is beautiful!

2) See that famous landmark? Now turn around and walk away from it!

You know how tourism works. You know things will most definitely be overpriced closer to the attractions. So why not hunt for accommodation far away from there? This fits in with our idea of slow travel as well. If you’ve got the whole week to spend there rather than just 2 days, you wouldn’t mind walking 15 minutes to the beach and getting much much cheaper rates. Bonus: You get to explore the town and inch closer to the hallowed traveller status.

3) Don’t always book ahead:

Booking.com and hostelworld are our go to websites for finding cheap accommodation but most times we just show up at a destination and walk around. It’s always worked out cheaper to do so as people are willing to haggle, especially if you book for longer. If we were travelling during peak tourist season, we would generally book the first night online and then walk around looking for cheaper alternatives.

4) Don’t be afraid to work:

If you are the sort of industrious person who likes to be busy, a lot of hostels will offer you cheaper or even free accommodation in exchange for a bit of work. A place in Goa gave us free board and access to their kitchen in exchange for a couple of hours of cleaning and bar work. We ended up staying for over a month for practically no money. I know lots of hostels in South Korea, Japan and South America offer these options to travellers so don’t be afraid to ask!

Tom's best effort at being my Instagram boyfriend.

5) The different types of ‘surfing’:

Couchsurfing / Sofasurfing (for all you posh people) has been big in the backpacker community for a while now. I’ve been an active surfer for over 8 years and I’ve had my fair share of positive and negative experiences. I know some people hate the idea of ‘forced socialisation’ but if you’re a solo traveller, I cannot think of a better way for you to make some local friends. Although who knows where the world will go post-Corona. Another option we accidentally discovered was tapping your social network. I would post online about my destinations and so many of my friends and family rose to the occasion and offered us a home, a meal or even just their company while we were there. All of these things are so appreciated when you’re out on the road. It was overwhelming to see how much people care about you. Do not be afraid to ask your friends and family if you can crash with them. Of course it depends on your relationship with people but I’ve always let them know that I’d only hate them a little if they refused.

6) Eat like a local and eat with the locals:

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of travelling with me, you know where this is going. I do not go to restaurants on the main promenade. Those are for your standard package tours and cruise ship pensioners. Sure, go treat yourself to a fancy meal one night, but you really don’t need that dinner + drinks deal for every meal. Part of travelling cheap is making sacrifices, and that includes not doing stuff you think you should be doing. Trust me, the lady with the little shack that all the locals seem to be heading to makes better Pikante de Pollo than the shiny restaurant that offers you 70 other menu items.

No time like today to find out what you can and cannot digest!

7) Learn to cook:

Or at least learn how not to burn stuff. It’s a basic skill to take with you on the road and it will save you SO MUCH MONEY! We would always stock up on local foods and cook them ourselves wherever we went so we weren’t missing out on the cultural experience, and saving money. Also, having your own food with you means you don’t end up making silly and expensive decisions that you would if you were hangry.

Lots of mornings our breakfast has been bread with peanut butter so when we’re ready to step out, we can just go do what we have planned rather than start with the search for breakfast. Breakfast in bed? - check ;)

Fruits are a great plastic-free snack to always have with you as well.

8) These boots are made for walking!

As are those sneakers, sandals, flip flops or your own bare feet. It’s a different situation if you’re unable to for health reasons, but there’s no good reason to not walk. If I was better at record keeping, I could tell you how many hundreds of $$$ we’ve saved by just skipping the bus / taxi. Even if the journey is cheap, it adds up. And think of all the amazing little secrets sprinkled around places that you’d miss if you didn’t walk. For distances up to 4-5 km, we always walk.

9) Public Transport and inter-state transport:

You’ll find this point repeated when we talk about slow and green travel, but it’s such an underrated and under-used option! Every place I have been to, as remote as it may be, has some kind of public transport available. If people live there, they have to be able to get around and I cannot stress on how much better that is than to drop your hard earned cash on an avoidable taxi / flight fare.

10) Don’t just twiddle that thumb, put it to good use!

Hitchhiking isn’t always possible or safe everywhere, but I’ve used it successfully in Europe, India and surprisingly - Japan! We couldn’t have travelled Japan if we had to pay the transport fares. So we got a friend to make us a sign, and went the length of the country hopping between cars. Language troubles, you say? Google Translate, I say! I downloaded the Japan pack and keyboard to my phone, covered my tattoos and summoned all the patience my 29 years of existence has given me, and waited. And it worked. Every. Single. Time. We have never been stranded yet. And maybe we will be someday. It’s an eventuality we’re always ready for :) I cannot tell you how many friends we made along the way. How we ended up in towns out of our plans, in homes and hearts of complete strangers who decided to trust us, and us them.

11) Always be a Yes man, unless you want to say No.

Saying YES to most opportunities has brought me to where I am today. A few scrapes and bruises, but largely untouched. But it’s important to learn to say no if you want to. Sometimes, I found myself getting swept with the tide of people travelling completely differently. They were here to cover the highlights and jump to their next destination. They wanted to eat at the best places and drink every night. I couldn’t keep up. And while younger me felt pressured and gave in a few times, I realised these friendships aren't essential to my travel style. They were going to go back to their jobs, and I still had years of this ahead of me. So now I say no. I hang out when I want to, and make my preferences known when it’s necessary. It’s a thing I still battle with but I know I have a lot more Friday night outs at lots more destinations, while they don’t. So I make my peace with it.

And that’s it! There really isn’t a secret to how we travel for so long. And while I don’t think everyone wants to be away from home for years at a time, I hope your next holiday can be funded a little with the advice we’ve given you here. I’ll leave you with this little bit of wisdom by a late culinary genius

IF YOU’RE TWENTY-PLUS, PHYSICALLY FIT, HUNGRY TO LEARN AND BE BETTER, I URGE YOU TO TRAVEL – AS FAR AND AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE. SLEEP ON FLOORS IF YOU HAVE TO. FIND OUT HOW OTHER PEOPLE LIVE AND EAT AND COOK. LEARN FROM THEM – WHEREVER YOU GO.

– ANTHONY BOURDAIN