Traveling in Asia can be ridiculously cheap and fun if you know what you’re doing. Cheap Asian travel is done by being intelligent with your cash and being well informed of what is going on. Last year when I was in Thailand the ratio of the dollar to the thai baht currency was about 40 baht to 1 dollar, now it is about 30 to 1! Paying attention to the local politics and what is going on in the world is just one of many ways that you can make Asian travel cheap.
One of the most basic things for cheap asian travel is to live like the locals. This doesn’t mean that you are going to be out the rice fields work from dawn to dusk like some of the locals, but you will have a similar lifestyle that will also add a lot of culture to your trip. Instead of eating at that nice Westerner restaurant go down and eat from one of the street stalls. You’ll have a blast eating with the locals and attempting to communicate with them and you’ll also get a chance to really sample some of the local flavor that is quite good. Don’t worry about getting sick, the locals wouldn’t be eating there if they were getting sick, so you shouldn’t either.
One of the biggest keys to cheap asian travel is how you decide to go about seeing asia. Clearly if you want to fly it’s going to cost you quite a bit more then the local bus. Now there are some tourist busses that are great and get you to where you need to go for cheap, but be warned, there is a reason for why they are cheap. One of the reasons is that they stop at specific locations for meals that are out in the middle of nowhere so they can jack the prices up. So if you do take these busses take a sack meal or bit the bullet and pay the jacked up prices. The best option in my opinion for cheap asian travel is to take the local bus. You’ll experience that countries culture up close and directly and you’ll be doing it for the same price as the locals themselves.
There are plenty of great tips about cheap asian travel on my blog at http://bumtravel.wordpress.com but the most basic thing to remember is “Live like the locals and follow what they do." They live there, they know the prices and are going to do what is going to save them the most money, so follow their lead and watch for where they eat, how they travel and where they shop.
The Bum Traveler
