When the 4th edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations book came out in January, I posted some advance review comments from various other writers and bloggers. Now that a few months have gone by, here’s what people have said in the early reviews.

 

“Even as an experienced traveler, with some 60 countries under my belt (many of them cheapies), I still was able to find the book useful and interesting.

The World’s Cheapest Destinations will be helpful for travelers at different stages: newbies who would like to start traveling to other countries for the first time, individuals with some international travel experience who are looking to push their comfort zone a little bit, and folks just looking for a little more luxury without spending more money. This book tells you where and how to look.”

- Stephen Bugno of GoMad Nomad

“If you’re currently considering traveling to destinations where your ‘travel money is worth a fortune,’ I highly recommend you pick up the fourth edition of Tim Leffel’s well-researched, chock-full-of-details book The World’s Cheapest Destinations.”

- Kara Williams, The Vacation Gals

“If you’re up for a wry sense of humor and aren’t put off by the occasional unabashed assessment, The World’s Cheapest Destinations is not only an easy read and a money-saving Bible, but also a veteran traveler’s look at places that many travelers in the U.S. tend to leave off their dream lists.”

- Kristin Mock, freelance travel writer

“The 4th edition of Tim’s book has totally inspired us to travel even more by visiting cheaper places.”

- Ashley Steele, Wandering Educators

“Leffel wastes no time outlining some of the world’s cheapest destinations in a concise and honest fashion. Refreshingly pointed, this compact guide is an ideal handbook for those looking to stretch their money further.”

- Stuart McDonald, editor of Travelfish.org

“His advice ranges from the common sense (albeit often forgotten) to the wise been-there-done-that genre. The most intriguing reason to pick up this book is its nature to inure interest in destinations that may have been left by the wayside on your travel itinerary, but are an absolute must-see for any global traveler worth his weight in passport stamps.”

- Ramsey Qubein, Examiner.com

“With a little ingenuity, a bit of creativity and this book, you’ll be able to travel many places in the world you never thought possible. The World’s Cheapest Destinations is hands down the best guide to traveling the world on a budget.”

- Beth Whitman, editor of Wanderlust And Lipstick

“The very first step to saving money when on the road is to figure out where you can stretch your money the furthest. Due to the ebb and flow of international finance, wars, and natural disasters… the cheapest places are always changing. Tim offers a great way to hit this moving target.”

- Doug Lansky, author of more than 10 travel books including First Time Around the World

“Tim is correct: where you travel has more to do with saving money then how you travel. The cheapest hostel dorm bunk in Zurich will be more expensive than a large, quality hotel room in Bangkok. I’ve been to most of the countries outlined by Tim and can attest that they are great value destinations. This book is a must for affordable travel planning.”

- Gary Arndt, editor of Everything-Everywhere.com

 

Get Your Copy!

So where can you get this book? Pretty much everywhere online:

Direct from the publisher – paperback ($15,95 plus shipping) or PDF ($8.99, no shipping)

Kindle version from Amazon, Nook version from Barnes & Noble, Apple version from iBookstore – all around $8.99.

Paperback from Barnes & Noble, paperback from Amazon.

If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, you can order a copy from Fishpond.

In one city, should you take a taxi from the far-flung airport to the center, it will cost you more than $250.

In another city, taking a taxi from the airport to the center will cost you less than $5.

How much does that tell you about expenses in the destination?

Quite a lot. The first city is Tokyo, in many respects the most expensive in the world. The second city is Sofia, Bulgaria—one of the best values around.

This study put out by British foreign exchange company Moneycorp found a staggering variation in the cost of getting into the city from the airport in capitals around the world. Some of this can be chalked up to distance: the cab fare in Quito just doubled, for example, because the new airport is a lot farther away from the center than the old one.  Switzerland is crazy expensive, but the airport in Geneva is only 6km from the city.

In Quito though, you could hire a car and driver for days for less than it’s going to cost you for a taxi to your hotel in a place like Japan. The destination costs matter more than anything.

A taxi from the airport to your hostel bed in Cusco will cost less than a night’s lodging. In Madrid it’ll cost you five times as much.

““What our research into airport taxi costs reveals is the wide variation in taxi fares depending on which country you’re visiting.”

As the article points out, knowing this information in advance can determine whether you want to find an alternative means of transportation or not. When I arrived with my family in Bangkok at 4 am, jet-lagged, I was happy to pay the $18 it cost for a taxi there. When I arrive in Madrid next month after a week in Portugal, however, no way we’re shelling out $100 to ride in a car.

This is another case where reading a guidebook before you depart is a smart move. Instead of pecking around the web for an hour looking up answers to questions like this, it’s all there in front of you in one place, properly researched by someone on the ground.

Remember that some cities are far easier than others when it comes to public transportation alternatives. JFK airport in New York City is great, my other former home of Nashville is impossible. Mexico City has a subway, but you’re not allowed to take luggage on it. Bucharest has a great bus to the city, so does Salt Lake City (and soon it will have a train as well). The only way to know what the options are is to do some research.

Meanwhile, you can be sure that The World’s Cheapest Destinations also have reasonably priced airport taxis in their main airline gateway cities. Even in the honorable mention countries (Turkey, Mexico, Argentina, Czech Republic) you’re not going to see a fare that makes your jaw drop except in rip-off resort areas like Cancun.

Have you encountered a particularly cheap taxi fare—or one that emptied your wallet?

[Flickr Creative Commons photo by bornin78]

Turkey is dynamic, exciting, and has with a few thousand years of history on display. It’s filled with terrific food and interesting people.

The days of bargain prices are long gone, however.

When I was a young strapping lad out circling the globe for the first time, my girlfriend and I planned to teach English in Greece when funds got low, but ended up in Istanbul instead. This was a quick pivot based on what we found within 24 hours in Istanbul after coming from Athens: it was easier to get a job in Turkey and we could enjoy a more interesting life on the cheap. Our salaries were low, but so were the costs. Inflation was terrible—so terrible that if I remember right we got three raises in five months—but it remained affordable when we went shopping in the street market in our neighborhood and we were having fun, so all was well.

This was back in the mid-1990s, when you were an instant millionaire as soon as you changed money into Turkish lira: there was actually a million lira banknote and it wasn’t worth very much. We would get a whole stack of them on payday. But hey, for a dollar you could get a large doner kebab sandwich, or four simits, a couple beers in a store, or a round-trip train ride into the center from our suburb town.

Alas, a lot can change in 17 years when it comes to a country’s economic health. Just look at Peru, Thailand, Cambodia, or Brazil on the upside. Spain and Ireland on the downside. Argentina down then up then down.

Turkey is a lot wealthier and healthier these days than when my now-wife and I spent months there around 17 years ago. They chopped zeros off the currency, reformed or sold many state-run enterprises, tamed inflation, and put exports into hyperdrive. On the surface this translates in a lot of ways: more cars, newer cars, better roads, city metros, high-speed rail, a great airline people actually enjoy flying, new bridges.

It also means higher wages and higher costs for nearly everything.

In general, many prices are similar now to what you would see in the U.S., with only a few things being significantly less. The cheaper items can generally be grouped under food and labor: agricultural products, simple restaurant meals, basic services like a haircut or shoeshine. Gasoline costs what it does in Western Europe, however, which translates into high costs for anything transportation related. For a traveler in Turkey, that’s a bummer. So is the price of beer and wine: the Islamist party in power has turned the tax screws on anything alcoholic. (On the plus side, cigarettes too, so the country is not the giant ashtray it once was and buses aren’t filled with second-hand smoke.)

As I said in the new edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, Turkey is still a decent value for mid-range travelers. You can find reasonably priced 3-star hotels, affordable meals, good prices on interesting souvenirs if you bargain, and admission prices that will sting but are still lower than many other European capitals. And it’s fair to say that there’s more worth seeing and experiencing in Istanbul than almost any other city in the world.

I’m glad to be back and I highly recommend coming here and then exploring other areas of the country. Just don’t expect to do it on a shoestring budget, even if you’re couchsurfing. In the book The Next 100 Years, the author predicted Turkey is going to be a major power on the world stage within the next 50 years, one of the top four or five players within a century. True or not, it’s definitely a place on the way up, not heading down or sideways. A rising sea may not really lift all boats, but it’s lifting a lot of them and you’re going to pay more to tread their turf.

Remember how much and how fast things can change in a destination when some friend or virtual friend gives you advice based on their experience in the destination. The first question should probably be, “When were you there?”

Even seasoned travelers sometimes end up in a travel destination that stumps them when it comes to costs. “I can’t believe how expensive this place is”—that’s a statement you’re not happy about uttering.

It’s a painful realization when you thought a place would, at worst, be on par with what things cost at home. Then you get there and start wondering where all your money is going.

It happened to me in the Atacama Desert region of Chile last year, I heard backpackers who came from Ecuador or Panama muttering about it in Cartagena, Colombia a few weeks ago. I’m sure lots of travelers are cursing in Brazil right now. Some are shocked when they find out how crazy expensive Australia has become, or how pricey Singapore is compared to the rest of Southeast Asia.

This is why a bit of pre-trip research is necessary. As I pointed out in the book Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune, most vacationers decide where they want to go and then try to fit that trip into their existing budget. That only works though if you know most of the costs up front, like on an organized tour, a cruise, or an all-inclusive vacation. Otherwise it’s backwards: the cost of the destination should match the budget you’ve got. Otherwise you’re scrimping and sweating over the restaurant tabs.

Keep one eye on (print or web) international news because these factors all play a part.

What makes a travel destination expensive?

1) The population is wealthy.
This is the main one. It’s not an exact correlation, but the higher the per capita GDP of a country, the higher prices are going to be. Think Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Denmark. When a country’s wealth rises quickly, as it has in Turkey, Thailand, and Brazil, prices are going to rise.

2) Taxes are high.

The United States is a rather inexpensive place to travel compared to Europe, not because we’re less wealthy, but because taxes are much lower. (We get less from our government too, but that’s another story.) If citizens pay a high percentage of their income in taxes or more than 10% on everything they purchase, that affects the price of everything, from food to fuel to hotel rates.

3) Labor laws are inflexible.
This is another good/bad factor: if all workers make a good salary, prices for taxis, restaurants, and goods in stores are higher. If those workers can’t be fired without an act of God, that means a very inefficient labor system too, which adds costs at every step of the transaction chain.

4) Distribution systems are inefficient.
Another reason retail prices in the U.S. are cheaper than in many developing countries is that we have a very lean distribution system. In Japan or Mexico there may be six people taking their cut between manufacturer and consumer—and a monopoly or duopoly on top of that. In efficient countries there’s less waste in the system and fewer middlemen. There’s also healthy competition: five wireless carriers instead of one, ten grocery story chains instead of two. Five hundred beer brewers instead of one.

5) The currency is out of balance.
The reason Brazil and Chile are expensive for travelers (besides the reciprocal visa fees) is the strength of their currencies. Both countries have been on an economic tear the past few years and lots of outside investment money has poured in. As commodity prices rise, countries that put out lots of commodities from under the ground (such as these, Canada, oil countries) see their currency vault up in a hurry.

6) Supply and demand.
Basic economics still applies. If every room in a destination is sold out for three months straight, good luck finding a deal on a hotel. Thus despite Italy’s economic clusterf&%k, you’re not going to find any bargains in Florence.

7) Everyone is out to rip you off.
Every time I read something about traveling in French-speaking West Africa, this is the main complaint. If you could pay the real price, it may actually be cheap to travel around. Since every person you come in contact is trying to charge you double what a local would pay, however, it’s a daily struggle that drives up costs. No fun.

Want to figure out where your money will really stretch instead, in places that are cheaper than where you live now? Pick up a copy of The World’s Cheapest Destinations at Amazon, B&N, Apple’s iBookstore, or the link top right for my publisher.

Getting ready to take off on an extended round of travel or a round-the-world journey? Picking up How to Travel the World on $50 a Day will be one of the best investments you can make.

Ever since I put out the very first edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations more than 10 years ago, I’ve been continually recommending other travel books that are more general in nature, with tips on planning, budgeting, and traveling well for less. I even wrote one called Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune, published by Travelers’ Tales. Apart from philosophical Vagabonding though, there hasn’t been a good current one aimed at backpackers except Rough Guides’ First Time Around the World, from Doug Lansky. All the others have gotten dated and less useful over time or were obscure titles written by people without much authority.

I’m happy to report that How to Travel the World on $50 a Day by Mat Kepnes is a different story. He certainly has plenty of authority, running the popular NomadicMatt.com blog, plus he’s been continually traveling on a budget for years. He also goes to conferences, meets lots of other travelers, and responds to feedback regularly. He knows the issues backpackers face and the mistakes they frequently make.

This book is a straightforward, sometimes opinionated guide subtitled “Travel cheaper, longer, smarter.” It lives up to the promise with sometimes hard-won advice based on screw-ups not repeated and lessons learned from others. The $50 a day pitch is an average, not something you can necessarily do in every country easily. As Matt admits, you can get by on half that much in Southeast Asia or India, but it’s hard to scrape by on $50 a day in northern Europe or Australia even if you’re Couchsurfing much of the time.

Cheap travel inclusions and omissions

It’s hard for me not to read a book like this and find flaws—even in ones I write myself—but the flaws here are minor. There’s no index, which seems odd, and there’s barely a mention of huge costs travelers get surprised by like vaccinations, visa charges, and airport exit fees. Some of the generalizations are overdone (“Trains around Norway cost about $70 USD” or for Sweden “Grocery shopping here will cost around $70 USD per week.”) The blog writing style of short, declarative sentences doesn’t work in a book as well as it does online when people are skimming and have short attention spans. It’s also squarely aimed at people who travel like Matt does: solo.

Quibbles aside, the book is organized well and covers most of the bases. It starts out with the argument that traveling is cheaper than just living at  home and backs it all up with solid evidence. It then goes through how to do it all right in the planning stages, from getting the right credit cards and bank accounts (worth the book price by itself in money it will save you) to flights to buying the right backpack.

This section is followed by 28 pages of saving money on the road, solid advice from someone with experience on shaving the big expenses: accommodation, food/beverages, transportation, and activities. I especially like his advice on knowing what’s important to you. He will shave on accommodation in order to have a good meal, but others may want to do the opposite. Some people hate museums, some consider that the main reason to visit a big capital city. Figure out your priorities so you’ll enjoy your time on the road with a limited budget.

The largest section of the book is a regional breakdown, lumping continents or travel areas together and trying to estimate specific costs. This is a tall order, but in general Matt handles it well, showing the major differences between East and West in Europe, for example, and explaining how taking different transportation options between countries can have an impact on your budget and your enjoyment.

A few tacked-on sections at the end include specific gear and city-by city hostel recommendations (where a link to one page on his blog probably would have sufficed), a packing list, and a few pages of medical advice.

How to Travel the World on $50 a Day lists for just $15, so even if you only use one section of advice in here, it’ll pay for itself several times over. Even with 20  years of travel under my belt, there were still pages in here I dog-eared to reference later and websites to check out that I had never heard of before. Get it at Amazon (around $10 for Kindle or paperback), Barnes & Noble (Nook & paperback), or at your favorite store.