I am all about saving money while traveling. I have been quite the penny-pincher in the past and some of those moves on my part make me a bit uneasy to recall how incredibly frugal I was. I was potentially annoying to the people that were providing services where I was staying and I was trying to get discounts and stuff for free all the time. I cut myself off from this sort of behavior when I kind of learned that these areas are already so cheap that if you try to make them cheaper you are simply making life more difficult not just for the people that own the businesses, but for yourself as well. In an effort to save a few bucks, there are some people out there that will make massive scenes and simply make their own experience kind of suck as well.
There are plenty of cheap places in the world to travel to and for the uninitiated, I'll go ahead and say that MOST of the world is really inexpensive to visit if you do a little bit of homework before arriving. The people who try to spend nothing are really annoying though and I have been around these people quite a bit in my travels.
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For starters, the people that are backpacking with a pup tent.... just stop it. This really irks me in places where it is exceptionally hot like Central America and staying in a nearby hostel costs something absurdly low like $5. I have seen these people and they are in fact breaking the law. You are not allowed to camp there... the locals are not allowed to camp there... it is clearly marked that nobody is allowed to camp there and if everyone did camp there it would completely ruin the experience for people seeking out a nice beach. The fact that there are no toilet facilities in the area also indicates where and how these people are doing their business and this is just beyond disgusting. Have you no shame?
Before anyone thinks that I am being judgmental about the poor or something like that please know that I have spoken to a lot of these people and most of the time they are traveling with thousands of dollars in electronics and have plenty of money. I have no idea what possesses them to try to do this. Thankfully this is a trend from the 60's and 70's that is kind of dying out.
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On the other side of the planet I would frequently see people in their 20's and 30's hitchhiking in South East Asia. I witnessed this quite a bit in Thailand and Cambodia, but not so much in any of the other countries where there are highways and pedestrians are not allowed on them. This gets under my skin because of the fact that you can get on a bus in both of these countries and travel from one end of the country to the other for something absurdly low like $10. How much money do you really need to save?
I guess if you were properly out of money and needed a ride I would understand but if that is the case, why are you traveling? Someone needs to make an emergency phone call to mom and dad.
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I intentionally cropped out their faces even though I think that what they are doing here is despicable. I noticed this in many places around the world but nowhere was it more common that in SE Asia. This is called "begpacking" and thankfully not very many people engage in it. Particularly in Bangkok there are a lot of beggars and some of these beggars are in really bad shape with missing limbs and horrible disfigurements. On the same bridge we'll have a couple of foreigners with a $800 SLR camera that are begging to get donations so they can continue to travel around the world for fun. I despise these people because the handouts could be much better used for the truly destitute people that actually are homeless.
Before I go I want to talk about a time that I was crossing the border in Central America and it was announced to the minibus that there was going to be a 10 peso surcharge for exit stamps. Two of the people in the van threw an absolute fit about this and insisted they were not going to pay. Please understand that this at the time, was about 20 US cents. The driver tried to be polite but this stingy couple refused to pay until the rest of us in the fan had enough of listening to them and paid for them. They then berated us for paying at all even though it was clear that we were not getting through immigration without doing this. Someone commented to them about "how it must be wonderful all the good times they are having in their travels."
You can ruin all of your fun on your trip around the world by attempting to be too stingy. The world is a very inexpensive place to travel if you know where to look. This doesn't mean that anyone should be nickel and diming the locals everywhere that they go though. We, as relatively well-off travelers need to put the shoe on the other foot every now and then and just spend a bit of money. It helps the locals who are definitely a lot more poor than you are, when you do this.
Now get out there and do some cheap traveling!