It’s not even Spring yet, but you have to set your clock forward an hour on Sunday if you live in most of the USA. This early start (and late finish in Autumn) is a remnant from the G.W. Bush era. It was pushed as an energy saver (hasn’t worked), but was almost surely lobbied through by the golf and tourism industries. To the detriment of parents with school-aged kids everywhere…

But this post is not a rant. Just a collection of useful and entertaining stuff to read over the weekend in case it’s not warm enough to be outside enjoying life where you live.

If you want to get somewhere else on the cheap, Budget Travel has a great rundown on the six best budget bus lines in the United States. These serve a defined area of population centers, so think New York to Boston, not Kansas City to Boise.

Here’s another reason to be annoyed with cruise ships: not one of the lines thought of as American companies pays a cent in U.S. corporate taxes.

I’ve written before about the dangers of being cheap to the point of ridiculous when traveling and BootsnAll generated a hot debate on the subject with this article on cheap vs. budget travel. I like the elegant follow-up on the Vagabonding blog though, from a long-term traveler who gets by on $10 a day by going slower and integrating more with the locals.

Barbara at Hole in the Doughnut has a good rundown on Cusco, Peru at different budget levels, including a $10 a night hotel and two vegetarian restaurants. More importantly, there’s current information on Machu Picchu and Peru Rail that’s probably more reliable than what most guidebooks have in them right now. There have been some changes at both in how/why you get advance tickets.

Want to know what it’s like to climb a volcano in Sumatra, Indonesia? You can see the story and photos on the Vagabonding Life blog by following that link. I actually did this hike many years ago and it’s not a very hard one—so a good place to do your first one to see if you like the experience.

Here’s an article I did for ExpertFlyer on places where the dollar exchange rate is constant.

Should a cough drop be lecturing you to suck it up and quit your whining just because you’re sick? Halls apparently thinks so with the motivational text on their wrappers.

[Photo from the Vagabonding Life blog]

If you saw the photo above without the headline, you’d naturally think it was taken in Thailand, right?

If someone told you this next one was from the same place, you might be willing to bet some money on it.

Not so fast. That’s not the Mekong River or Chao Phraya River past the trees. It’s the Hillsborough River in Florida. If you hopped on a boat and floated downstream, you’d soon end up in Tampa Bay.

Last year I wrote a post called Stuck at home? Go exploring there. It was about how even when you’re not traveling because of work or budget reasons, you can still get a dose of the exotic via ethnic neighborhoods or restaurants in your home town.

Four  months from now my family and I will be taking a very long series of flights to end up in Thailand. This trip to Wat Tampa (really called Wat Mongkolratanaram) took just 20 minutes in a car. This Buddhist temple is the real deal, with Thai writing all over the place, shoes off before entering, and lots of gold-covered statues everywhere. This congregation doesn’t keep to itself though. Every Sunday they have a massive Thai brunch where hundreds of outsiders come to chow down on a wide variety of dishes.

Some are familiar things you’re used to seeing in restaurants: green curry, Pad Thai, basil chicken, etc. Here though you can get a heaping mound of rice and two dishes for just $5 though. Spring rolls are a buck, sticky rice desserts are $1.50. You can get big bowls of Thai soup, chicken satay, herby Thai pork sausages, and other goodies.

As you can see from the photos, presentation is not the top concern here. This is an operation meant to feed a very large number of people, so you go in expecting something like you would get on the streets of Bangkok or in a Chiang Mai market, not pretty plates with carved fruit pieces and flower garnishes. (You can buy orchids in the small market here though, along with Thai cooking ingredients like fresh ginger and lemongrass.)

That was fine with me since I love Thai street food and can’t wait to plow my way through the sois again. And while the prices at Wat Tampa can’t compare to those in Thailand itself, the three of us chowed down to the point of being stuffed for under $25. And we had leftovers to bring home.

Is there something like this in your city? Probably so if you look around. Maybe a Greek festival, an Indian Hindu temple, a Hmong street market, or just a hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian restaurant serving workers, not Zagat-wielding restaurant hoppers. Go exploring the world without hopping on a plane.

If you’re going to be in Tampa and are looking for something different to do, this is one offbeat Florida destination that has nothing to do with alligators, theme parks, beaches, or kitsch. For more info go to Wat Tampa’s English site.

Kansas City's historic train station

I like this article from Travel & Leisure on the best cities in the USA for affordable getaways. OK, so they quoted me in it a few times, so of course I’m inclined to like it, but I think many of their recommendations (taken from reader input) are solid.

I especially like that they noticed how pedestrian-friendliness and hotels that don’t charge for Wi-Fi make  a big difference in price perception. Goodbye Dallas sprawl, hello compact Portland—both Portlands actually.

Kansas City came in at #1, which I won’t argue with; I profiled it on this blog many years ago in a post on Middle America bargains. It’s a Southwest market, so flights are usually reasonable, and hotels average $100 a night. Plus their downtown has gone from dead to hopping in less than a decade.

Salt Lake City came in at #2 and it is a bargain 50 weeks a year. Hotel prices are a different story though when the Outdoor Retailer convention comes to town.

My former home of Nashville came in at #3, which I was happy to see. Prices are reasonable and you can walk everywhere if you stay downtown—including to the football and hockey stadiums. The Saints took the next two spots: San Juan and San Antonio.

You can follow that link at the top to go through the slideshow. Or see the rest of the list here, plotted on a map and broken down by factors like shopping and romance.

There are some great ones I think are missing, but like any survey, it’s only as good as the people voting. That’s why you still get a city like L.A. in there—the readers know it well. Most T&L readers have never set foot in some of the best bargains because they’re not big enough or talked about enough in glossy magazines: places like Lexington, Asheville, Chattanooga, Charlottesville, Boise, Ashland, or Madison. That’s okay though—you can have those bargains to yourself, no diamond-encrusted socialites in sight.

Time to check in with the travel news and blogosphere to bring home some timely news and tips for travelers on a budget.

I’m quoted in this article from Kiplinger Personal Finance: Your guide to bargain travel in 2012. (If you prefer, here’s just the airfare part of it at the Chicago Tribune instead.)

If you’re irked by resort fees tacked onto the room rate at hotels, here’s a piece on who has resort fees and who doesn’t in Las Vegas.

About.com’s Budget Travel site has a nice 10-part post on Travel Myths for Latin America.

And it’s always good for me to post another myth-busting article about crime in Mexico. As in you’re ten times more likely to be murdered in a drug-related crime in our nation’s capital than you are in Mexico City. The Yucatan is safer than Canada. And let’s not even bring up New Orleans…

Will Panama become a hot travel destination? The New York Times thinks so. I’m not so sure. I like Panama a lot, but their tourism promotion efforts are stuck in the past (“The interwhat?”) and they have a habit of spending their money on silly ad slogans. But the pieces are all there if they can get the word out.

How much does it cost to travel in Thailand? As Nomadic Matt found out when his vacationing friends joined up with him, that depends a whole lot on whether you’re a long-term traveler or you’re on vacation. When time is short, double your budget.

Want to take a trip to New York City on the cheap? How about free? No, it’s not a contest. Just pull up this Earthcam website and you can see the Statue of Liberty from its “torchcam” or see the lower Manhattan skyline from the island with the “harbor cam.”

The first time I visited Las Vegas I was in awe. It was actually before I had even traveled internationally, so I was blown away with what I could get for my money. Super-cheap meals, free drinks at the $2 bet casino tables, room prices too low to believe—it was cheapskate heaven.

I returned with my wife for New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium. We partied like it was 1999. And things were still quite a bargain.

Over the years, Vegas has become more and more upscale. Sure, there were always extravagant suites for the high rollers and always lots of millionaires cavorting around. But as the casino companies consolidated (three companies seem to run most of them in the city now) and MBA grads starting designing the new ones going up, the “inefficiencies” in the system evaporated. Restaurants are no longer loss leaders: they’re showpieces for celebrity chefs. You can get lost in the shopping malls adjoining some hotels. Table limits have risen at the strip hotels and you need a big bank to be in the game.

So is Vegas still a value?

Well it can be if you’re smart and patient. The first thing to realize is that we’re still in a recession and that the city has a tremendous number of rooms to fill. Because of that, midrange travelers can go nuts when it comes to hotel choices. You can often find a decent room on the strip for under $50, especially weekdays, and for under $125 you’ve got half the city to choose from. Watch those sneaky resort fees at the MGM hotels though. The Caesars/Bally’s ones don’t reach in your pocket twice and are a better bet if you’re not there on business.

You can find deals on any of the big booking sites, but if you go to SmarterVegas.com you can end up with some bonus action. Like if you book at the Venetian through them you get upgraded to a suite, get breakfast for two, and get a bunch of credits and discounts. Here’s my favorite cheapo deal: book two nights at Luxor for $38 each (plus the pesky resort fee) midweek and get two complimentary buffet meals at any MGM resort. You almost get your whole room rate back on that one.

Shows in Vegas are not cheap by any means, but if you need your Cirque de Soleil spectacle fix or want to see the Blue Man Group—great fun—there’s a day-of ticket discount place on the strip where you can get cheaper tickets for shows that aren’t sold out. Or arrange it in advance online and save 25-40%.

For big savings in Las Vegas though, you need to get off the strip. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a blackjack table with a minimum bet under $10 at a strip casino, even during the daytime, except for the Casino Royale and Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall around the corner (near Treasure Island, Venetian, and Mirage). And some of them have snuck in alternate rules that increase their odds. But step off a bit even a block and it can be a different story entirely. In general you also need to get off the strip to find full-pay video poker machines or high-odds allowances on line bets on craps. Again, apart from the Casino Royale on the latter.

Getting off the strip is easy for locals with a car, but for savvy gamblers without one it’s best to catch a public bus to downtown Las Vegas. ($7 for a 24-hour pass.) I like this area a lot more anyway if I have the time to get down there because the whole area is walkable and still has some of that old-timey feel to it. It’s less glitzy and more down-to-earth. No reality TV shows are making these bars famous. Plus the cool Fremont Street light show is free.

If you’re good at poker though, that can be the best bet on the strip for having fun without losing your shirt. Even at Mandalay Bay where I was staying for a conference there’s a Texas Hold-em tournament running several times a day with a $40-$50 buy-in depending on the time of day. They give you $3,000 in chips for the tournament so you feel for a while like you’re rich. I came in 5th out of 20 and so was out of the money, but I got two hours of enjoyment out of it and a few stiff drinks. Not much damage to the wallet and I knew my potential losses up front.

Last, this is a city that is awash in old-school coupons. Casinos still hand out lots of free bet coupons to lure you like a hit of crack and you could spend a whole week taking advantage of 2-for-1 meal deals, free drinks, discounted meals, or “buy a beer, get a shot” bar specials. Grab a stack of different ones, plow through them in your room, and then go on a cashing-in spree. Happy hunting!