As I wrote a few posts back in the midst of a return to Turkey, this country is not a cheap destination anymore. It’s in my book still as an honorable mention because it’s a fair value for mid-range travelers, but it will probably disappear from that category too next time around. Overall, prices are ticking closer and closer to those in Western Europe and with their economy booming (while Europe’s languishes), there’s little chance this trend will reverse.

Minimum wage is only about $500 a month and pensions aren’t much higher, but there are plenty in the sizable middle class making a few thousand more than that each month. Taxes are not outrageous, but fuel costs are, so transportation is no bargain. The conservative government loves sin taxes, to the point that 2/3 of what you spend on booze or beer does not go to the manufacturer or retailer. Even once-cheap raki, the national drink of choice, is pricey. Real estate prices are rising rapidly, which affects store rentals and hotel costs.

Turkey is an amazing destination though, so it still feels like a special experience worth paying for, even if you are sharing that experience with more and more people each year. The cruise ship traffic is up 108 percent year over year, for instance, which nearly always has a negative effect on both prices and crowds. Most of that traffic is in Istanbul, with perhaps a stop off to check out Ephesus, so in this big country it’s not hard to get away from the crowds. Hotel costs are especially high in Istanbul, where 50 100+ room hotels are under construction or about to break ground.

I was just in Istanbul and Ankara on this last trip, so prices here are based on what you find in the two biggest cities. You can expect many of them to go down as you get into the countryside. All prices have been converted into U.S. dollars at the rate of 1.7 Turkish Lira per $.

Food & Drink Prices in Turkey
In-season fruits & vegetables at markets: $1.30 – $2 per kilo
Simit (kind of like a sesame bagel with a bigger hole) – 60 cents
5 small pastries from a simit dealer: $1
Large baguette: 60 cents
200 grams of baklava: – $2 – $3.50
Doner kebab sandwich: $2.50 – $5
Cigar kofte (ground lamb) – $1 per stick
Glass of strong tea – $1 – $1.30
Cappuccino – $2 – $3.50
Bottle of Turkish wine in a store: $5.50 to $15 for most, but some up to $35.
Liter bottle of raki in a store: $25 and up
Large Efes beer in a store/bar: $2-$2.50 / $4-$6
100 grams of peanuts or hazelnuts – 80 cents
100 grams of shelled pistachios – $1.50
Meal in a basic Turkish restaurant – $6 – $10
Meal in a fancy Turkish restaurant – about what you pay in the U.S., NYC prices at gourmet/hotel ones
Kilo of tea – $8
Ice cream novelty: 50 cents to $1.40

Hotel & Hostel Prices
Dorm room bed in a hostel: $22 – $35
Basic double room with bath – $45 – $70
3/4- star hotel on Hotwire: $95 – $165

Transportation Costs in Turkey
Taxi from airport to Istanbul center: $24 – $29
Airport bus to Taksim: $6.50
Metro/tram combo from airport: $2 – $3
Metro/tram local fare: $1.20 per trip (with Istanbulkart)
Istanbul ferry ride: 80 cents – $1.50
Ankara city bus ride: $1
Taxi ride in Ankara: $2 – $18
Long-distance bus ride: around $3 per hour of travel
Istanbul to Cappadocia by overnight bus: $38
High-speed train from Ankara to Konya (1.5 hours at 300 kms per hour): $17 – $23
Istanbul to Izmir by fast ferry & train combo: $39
Internal flights: $75 – $200 one-way

Admission and Activity Charges
Top-tier sites in Istanbul: $15
Second level sites: $9
Bosphorus tour by boat: $15
Small museums: $3 – $5
Mosques: free

By the way, cellular charges here are a good deal. To compare to what you pay at home, for about $15 – $18 a month you can get 500 minutes, 1000 text messages, and 1GB of data.

So what’s the strategy here? How can you avoid spending a fortune?
- Choose your restaurants carefully in the cities and cook sometimes if you can (produce is a bargain).
- Eat lots of nuts and fruit, which are abundant all year.
- Pick and choose which sites will get you excited and skip the others.
- Explore Istanbul by ferry as the rides are cheap, including to the Princes Islands.
- Turkey is not just Istanbul (unless you’re on a cruise). Take a bus to cheaper lands.
- Figure out the public transportation routes and methods. Taxis are expensive.
- Save your hard partying for elsewhere, a country where taxes aren’t 2/3 of the cost.

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?”

I hate paying for parking anywhere and would hate to add up how much I’ve spent over the years leaving my car at airports. When you’re flying out for a week or two and it’s not convenient for someone to drop you off, you’ve either got to pay a taxi (if it’s from home) or to suck it up and pay to park. If you live far from the airport, or you’re in an area where it’s sometimes cheaper to go one city over, you’re really out of options.

Thankfully I don’t pay nearly as much as most other people do when this happens. Half or less most of the time.

See, I rarely park in the actual airport lot—even at economy one—because it’s usually dramatically less to leave my car in a private lot nearby. I’ve never paid more than $7.50 per day to park in Fort Lauderdale, for example, until recently when I had to park in the airport garage when running late for a flight. (Long story.) There it’s $15 per day. If you’re away for a week, that’s $105. In a major city, it can be even worse.

In Orlando a couple weeks ago, I paid $6 a night to leave my car in the lot of the Airport Marriott, where I caught an airport shuttle in a flash. That’s another advantage of these places: usually they have a more frequent shuttle schedule than the airport itself does. When I used to park off-site in Nashville (BNA), they would take you within 10 minutes even if nobody else needed a ride.

I usually use a site called Cheap Airport Parking because they’re on of my advertisers over at Perceptive Travel. Even if they weren’t they’re the second-largest consolidator of these off-site options, so it’s worth checking them out. Here are some sample rates available most days of the week.

MIA Embassy Suites – $5
LAX Premier Parking – $3.99
EWR (Newark) Premier Parking – $5.99
FLL (Ft. Lauderdale) Hilton – $6
TPA (Tampa) Memorial – $3.25
MCO (Orlando) – 3 parking lots are available under $3 per day.

They continuously ask customers to rate parking lots on 5 criteria: location, facility, wait times, shuttle experience and personnel attitude. Based on these ratings they calculate the overall quality score of a lot and sort parking lots based on this score to promote the best lots. Parking lots know about this algorithm and try to serve the customers better in order to be on top in the list and get more customers.

They don’t serve every market—nobody does—but you can usually Google “airport parking” or “off site parking” and the airport code/city to find the options if the market is not on the list of sites like this one. It doesn’t work everywhere, since some airports are too small or inconveniently placed, like the PIE one I have to use sometimes out of Clearwater/St. Pete, Florida.

Most of the small ones (not that one) have reasonably priced parking though. Where my father lives in Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, the overnight charge is $4 and you can walk from the lot with your wheelie suitcase to the entrance.

Each time I put out a new edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, I always try to find a way to get another African country in there and always come up short when I start digging into the research. So I only have Morocco and Egypt and always get some swipes from reviewers or blog readers for devoting so little space to Africa.

The problem is, that flack usually comes from people who have never tried to travel overland on a budget. Every time I interview someone who has spent weeks or months backpacking in Africa, they inevitably say some version of these two sentences. “Unless you sleep and eat like a local, you’re going to spend far more than you expected” and “for such poor countries, prices for travelers are really high.”

These two similar statements derive from a whole litany of reasons related to economics, infrastructure, and history. It doesn’t help that three of the last four years the $5 million Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa has gone to…nobody.

The one Africa traveler who hasn’t given me this usual negative litany is ultra-savvy budget traveler Andy Graham, better known as the Hobo Traveler. He’s been on the road non-stop for 14 years and has spent a fair chunk of that in Africa.

I caught up with him via Skype while he was hanging out in Lome, Togo, a faded bohemian French Colonial town on the Atlantic coast. He describes it as “like 1920s Paris, the cultural whorehouse of West Africa.”

We talked about the need to avoid the big tourist draws and agreed that you probably need a Western Europe sized budget if you’re going to the safari destinations of Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, or Namibia. Here’s my quote from him on the most popular destination though: “I have no desire to go to South Africa, partly because it’s got three times the cost of living of any other country on the continent and partly because it has the highest rate of crime and AIDS. Yet that’s where all the travelers go at some point.”

That still leaves 40-some countries out there though. Here are his opinionated tips for traveling the continent on a budget.

Know your mission and stick to the mission.
“The media has pummeled Africa with this perception that it is such a poor mess. So most of the white people here are missionaries, state-sponsored aid workers, or are working for non-governmental agencies. There aren’t a whole lot of real travelers. Most people seem to travel so they can have good memories they can explain to their friends. I tell people I’m going to Africa they say, Who are you trying to save?’

So the first question is, why are you coming? The average traveler hates Africa. He or she has a list of things to see and do. Most of Africa is not for that, it’s a place for a cultural trip, for learning about people, languages, customs. There are very few animals in Western Africa because they ate them all or poached them. The British saved them in Kenya and elsewhere for hunting preserves. Only a few spots have a lot of them. On most of the continent it’s about connecting with people—black people of course—-which is not why most people travel. ”

Don’t come for the same reasons you went to Peru or Egypt
“Don’t come to Africa to find things to brag about with your friends back home. If you’re looking to do that the whole time, your options are limited and you’ll spend a load of money no matter how frugally you try to do it.

Know what you’re here for and don’t come to be entertained—unless you’re a sex tourist. And don’t come to Africa just to hang out with other white people. Sitting around drinking with white people is quite expensive in Africa. A flashpacker coming to Africa is going to get killed money-wise. To sit around in a huddle drinking beer and going online to post photos on Facebook is going to cost you a fortune.

Negotiate Hard for Everything
“Africa has a reputation for trying to rip off foreigners, especially West Africa. I had a much harder time before I learned to speak French. In Ghana and parts of East Africa they speak English and don’t’ make everything such a hassle, so it’s easier.

Whether we admit it or not, we white travelers have these preconceived notion of black people. We expect people to act a certain way and look for ways to support that expectation. But they’re mostly Just normal people trying to make a living. On one hand it’s so safe here in Tome you practically have to leave money on the table overnight to get physically robbed. But they’ll try to rob you blind in every transaction all day long because they’re used to white people being idiots. All these NGO and project workers have practically unlimited budgets. Lots of them will stay in the best hotels, drink beer every night, and go out to the best restaurants. So business owners become accustomed to charging ever white person five times as much as a local because they truly think we’re all rich and stupid with our money.

You have to keep money in perspective and prove you’re not an idiot. A guy tried to charge me $8 today for wire ties at a store. I told him ‘You’re crazy. You’re probably living on $2 a day, right?’

‘No,” he tells me, ‘Just $1 a day.’

Much of Africa earning that $1 to $2 a day. Treat $20 like it’s nothing and people will keep charging you accordingly.

It’s hard for us to look at a black person and say, ‘You’re f%cking ripping me off!’ We’re so conditioned to think that’s racist. We think we’re supposed to treat them with extra respect because their life sucks. But their life doesn’t suck. You’re not “dissing” them to argue or criticize. You have to argue constantly. It’s normal. If you don’t they think you’re another rich idiot working for Oxfam just to fill out the resume.

There’s no political correctness here. In the market people will yell, ‘Hey white guy! Hey fatso! Sexy blondie!’ Learn to talk like they do to get things done.”

Spend the time to get a good hotel deal.
“Anyone charging you $30 a night for a basic hotel room in most of Africa is ripping you off. The tourism industry here is probably the worst on the planet: they try to gouge every white person, assuming they’re all idiots. Many of them are idiots. Outside of big cities and resort areas, paying more than $10 or $15 a night for a basic hotel is absolutely getting ripped off. In

Arrive before noon to have time to find a hotel. Walk in and tell them how much you want to pay. You say $5, they say $30, eventually to your real budget. But you have to have a real budget and stick to it. Be willing to walk out and keep looking.

When I walk into a hotel, they always take me to the best room in the hotel. They can’t believe I don’t want that room, they’re aghast. They slowly work their way down until I’m leaving and they finally show me the $5 room. You have to assume anyone who takes you anywhere is taking you to the most expensive option. Continually refuse and stay on budget, on mission. A basic room with a bulb and bath starts at $5, a table adds a dollar, hot water adds a dollar, and each other thing keeps adding up. But I can go to the best hotel in town and use the pool for a dollar, so why do I need the hotel with a pool? You can rent a room here for a whole month for $50 if you work on it.

You also have to get over the stigma of the ‘chamber de passage.’ Probably 90% of the hotels in Africa are love hotels. There are just not enough traveling salesmen or domestic tourists to support many cheap hotels. So hotel customers are mostly NGO workers at the high end and locals getting some privacy on the low end. Every hotel I go into I assume someone’s going to bring in a girl and go at it next door. But at least there’s always a maid around. They’re private, comfortable, and cheap.

Also understand that nothing is ever cleaned like an American would clean it. It’s cleaner than India maybe, but not to the standards of say, Thailand or Vietnam. I’ll get the $8 or $10 room and pay the maid a few bucks to truly clean the bathroom. She’s thrilled and I get a room that’s up to the cleanliness level of one you’d get in Southeast Asia. Otherwise that would be $40 here. But we’re so used to convenience. ‘Why should I have to clean the sink? Or fix the toilet myself?’ Because you’re in a $5 room, that’s why. If you want convenience, get a $50 room.

One important point: traveling with someone else is far cheaper. The room price is the room price-one person pays the same as two. ”

Your guidebook is probably useless.
You won’t find most love hotels listed in your guidebook because the majority of Africa guidebook writers are current or former aid workers. Most of the hotels they recommend have parking because the writers are driving everywhere in a car. The cheaper love hotels people walk to. The outside space is just a shady tree people can sit under and drink a beer. ‘No parking’ means it’s for Africans and will be cheap.

The LP and Rough Guides are both terrible. Many of the writers are completely clueless and have grilled me for hours to get the most basic information. They’re written for people driving a car and staying at hotels that can be reached by car.

Whatever you do don’t rely on TripAdvisor. That’s even worse.

Avoid the Clingons
“When you get off a plane or bus there will be a boy or young man following you around and speaking your language. Often you can spot them before you even get off because they’re the only people in Africa with dreadlocks. They’re aggressive touts pure and simple and I promise you none are ever there to do you a favor. If you’re a woman they’re probably looking for a sugar mama and if you’re a man they’re trying to soak you for whatever they can to be your ‘helper.’ ?

Planning is a waste of time in Africa.
“The more you plan, the more you’re going to screw up. Everything is going to go wrong. It’s much better to just wing it as you go. In any city under 150,000 people I take a taxi tour of the city and say ‘Show me the $10 hotels.’ He’ll take me to the most expensive places first of course no matter what I say. Finally he gets frustrated and takes me to the cheap ones. I’m going to have to invest an hour or two of work to save $10, but I’m going to stay there a week so that’s $70 for two hours of work.

Don’t travel more than 4 hours a day, do it in the morning so you arrive before noon. It’s tiresome and you can run into all sorts of problems. If things go wrong, you’ve got a cushion. An 8-hour trip can easily become 12. The torture of travel often comes from trying to do too much.

Start out in a cheap country like Ghana or Malawi to get your bearings and get over the culture shock. Then you’ll be ready to take on the tougher places.”

Don’t be a bum.
“Being a bum is accepting less than what you deserve in life. Stand your ground and be a king instead. Refuse to get in a vehicle that already has 25 people in it. Just wait for the next one. Someone will say, ‘There are no more cars today.’

‘Bullshit. You’re lying,’ I’ll reply.

Every single time a new empty car or bus shows up soon after.

If you’re not trying to race across vast distances in a hurry, you’ve got more leverage to wait, to negotiate. If you’re willing to walk out of the hotel because they won’t budge, you’ll get a room you like for the right price. Being in a hurry will cost you.

In Ethiopia you have to take a truck overland for more than a day to head out of this one spot. A guy wanted me to ride on the canvas roof of a cattle truck for 27 hours, with cattle horns below me. ‘I’d rather live in this city for the rest of my life than ride on top of that truck for 27 hours,’ I said. I waited around and got on a grain truck where we could sleep on top of the grain sacks. Backpackers go to Africa thinking they have to be a bum. I have back problems so I’ll pay someone a dollar to carry my bag. I require a nice room for $10. What I expect is what I get.”

Get out of the big cities.
“NGO and Peace Corp workers love big cities with their big offices, so there are lots of cafes and bars for white expatriates. That makes many people feel comfortable. But prices for everything are three times more than they’ll be once you get 50 miles out of town. So don’t come all this way just to hang out in Accra, Nairobi, or Dakar.

Budgets don’t get killed by one thing. They get killed by a lot of little things. And every little thing is more in the big cities.

If your mission is to hang around a city and socialize online with your friends back home, why leave home?”

Don’t eat every meal at restaurants.
“African food is generally kind of bland, meant to be filling and fattening. There are far more fat people here than you would expect. It’s hard to get vegetables when you eat out, so I always cook vegetables in the room from a market or store and buy fruit to eat. I used to use a hot plate. You can buy one for $5 a lot of times. But hotel owners don’t like you to use them. So now I use a cheap homemade alcohol cooker.

When looking for a restaurant, don’t eat where white people are. Then study the menu and figure out what you can eat on a budget. Or just tell them what you want and agree on a price. They’ll usually make it for you if they have the ingredients. ”

***

To see what Andy is up to right now, see the Hobo Traveler blog.

If I did include a country in the next edition, it would probably be Ghana or Malawi. This BootsnAll article on traveling in Malawi for $25 a day is encouraging, though it does say you need to sleep in dorm beds and eat what the locals eat. Fortunately eating what the local eat here does not mean bland gruel for three meals a day.