If you’re visiting a big city on almost any continent and are looking to stretch your budget, try to time your travels so that you will have all of Sunday there.

Most long-term travelers figure this out eventually, but I was reminded of this strategy again when I was in Bogota, Colombia this past weekend. As I’ve talked about before in Quito and Mexico City, a main avenue running through the city is blocked off to traffic, opening it up for anyone wanting to ride a bike in safety.

That’s just the start though. In many cities this is the most likely time for free outdoor concerts and cultural events. After all, it’s when you’re going to have the best chance of getting a crowd. Since many weekend visit tourists are gone by the afternoon, you’ll be mingling with locals more than foreigners too, which is always interesting.

Free museum days can vary a lot and I know in popular cities like NYC or Paris they will usually be on a certain weekday each month to keep the numbers down, but for many other countries it’s politically favorable to make the free day whenever the most families can visit. So when I visited the Gold Museum in Bogota a few days ago, the normal 3,000 peso ($1.75—still a bargain) entrance fee was waived.

Guidebooks will usually tell you this info, but double-check it online to be sure. This is a case where the official city tourism site is usually your best bet as it’s kept up to date and will link directly to the museum/attraction.

The one downside of all this is you may find places more crowded than usual, so time it earlier or later than the masses to avoid a crush. The flip side of that is you’ll get a real taste of who lives in a place, which can be enlightening.

Have fun!

If you’re a traveler headed to Vietnam, you’re in for a treat. This is not a country of natural superlatives unless you’re really into the food, but when it comes to value for your budget, it’s a dream.

These days Vietnam is on par with Thailand in some respects, cheaper in others. Overall, none of the prices are too outrageous so this one comes in squarely as one of the cheapest places to travel in the world. This is not some sad and downtrodden country anymore where a lot of people are struggling to get by though. It’s a thriving economy where motorbikes seem to sprout from the ground each time it rains. When you say “Everybody and his brother has one,” it’s really true. Nevertheless, you’ll find plenty of screaming bargains here and the budget hotels in Vietnam are some of the best for the price you’ll find anywhere in the world.

Our $57 Hanoi room, with full breakfast for three

Hotel and Hostel Prices in Vietnam

Ask people who have traveled for years where the best lodging values are and they’ll likely say Vietnam. Yes, there are plenty of countries with cheaper places to flop for the night, but what you get for your money here is impressive. Things a budget backpacker doesn’t usually get—like towels and a maid who will change the sheets—are common even at the bottom level. Note that the prices below nearly always include internet access and often a good breakfast.

Hostel bed: $6 – $10 (there aren’t many of these, especially outside big cities)
Cheap shared bath double room: $10 – $18
Basic double with private bath, A/C: $14 – $25
Mid-range 3* or 4* equivalent: $20 – $60
Best hotels in town: $75 – $200
Triples are often just a few dollars more than a double and lots of places have family-friendly rooms or suites.

Food & Drink Prices in Vietnam

Bia hoi! No that’s not a battle rallying cry. It’s the name of the cheap draft beer sold by the plastic pitcher on the street. Sometimes it comes out to as little as 30 cents a liter if you get the local price. But the bottled stuff is a bargain too.

There are supposedly 500 traditional Vietnamese dishes, generally variations of rice or noodles with vegetables, seafood, or meat, and a wide variety of soups. You usually use chopsticks and a spoon, often sitting on a small stool on a sidewalk. Vegetarian food is plentiful and cheaper, though it will usually have fish sauce used as a seasoning.

US 35 cents for a liter of beer

Ice cream cone: 30 – 75¢
Street stall dishes: 40¢ – $1.50
Cheap restaurant meals: 75¢ – $4
Nice restaurant meals in tourist places: $1 to $6, set menus with several courses $5 – $12.
You’d have to hit an international hotel or a restaurant catering to foreign business travelers to spend much more than $30 for two.

Sodas and coffee: 30 – 50¢
Fruit juice/shake: 40 – 80¢
Mineral water: 50¢ – $1 per liter-and-a-half
Two-liter pitcher of draft beer: 60¢ – $1
Large bottled beer in a restaurant: 50¢ – $1.25.
Name brand liquor cocktails: $2 (happy hour) – $5 (nice club)

Transportation Prices

Getting around in Vietnam can be a big chunk of your budget since this is such a long and skinny country. Go slowly and you’ll spend a lot less than someone trying to cover it top to bottom in two weeks.

Long bus trip (Hanoi to Hue): $8 – $15
Sleeper train same distance: $18 – $65
3-hour train trip (Danang to Hue): $3 – $5
Hop on/off bus Saigon to Hanoi or opposite: $50
Flight Saigon to Hanoi or opposite: $100 on Jetstar
Flight Saigon to Danang: $55 – $75
City taxi rides: 50¢ – $4
Airport taxi rides: $5 – $20
City bus rides: 15¢

Other Vietnam Traveler Prices

3-day tour of Halong Bay or Sapa: $60 – $90
Day tour of group sightseeing, A/C van: $8 – $10
Admission charges: 15¢ to $1.50 most, occasionally $4 (rare, like Hue royal tombs)
Cultural performances: $1.50 – $5
Manicure or pedicure: $1
Hour of internet access: $1 or less
SIM card for your mobile phone: $5

You may have noticed the photo of my book, The World’s Cheapest Destinations, got switched out a while back in that picture to your right. It was a bit of a tease since the new version has been trickling out to different online retailers at different times, but now it’s out almost everywhere. This popular guide to the cheapest places to travel in the world is now in its 4th edition.

Prices fluctuate but don’t fundamentally change all that much in a span of three or four years unless there’s really high inflation (as in current Argentina), so if you have the 3rd edition it is still a good guide to how countries compare in terms of costs. If you have the 1st edition though, you might want to just put it in the recycling bin—I released that one a decade ago!

As I mentioned in this recent post on what has changed in the cheapest places to travel, I have made a few country changes. Turkey and Argentina are still great values for mid-range travelers, but are not the good deal they used to be for backpackers. To take their place, Cambodia’s infrastructure improvements enabled it to move from “honorable mention” to its own full-blown chapter and Slovakia replaces Turkey in Europe.

That means Asia gained a country and Latin America lost one, which wasn’t my intention, but unless people suddenly start finding a reason to visit Paraguay or Chavez gets replaced by a reform-minded president in Venezuela, I think the status is not going to change there. Apart from Chile and Brazil, the mainland Americas south of the U.S. are a great value, but Asia just has more bargain-basement destinations than anywhere else.

Get Your Copy!

So where can you get this book? It’s not yet online at Fishpond for Australia and New Zealand, but it should appear there in a week or two. Meanwhile, get it almost everywhere else 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.

Early Reviews

Want to know what a few other bloggers, editors, and book authors have to say? Here’s a random sampling of a few advance reviews.

“This is the book that anyone planning a vacation should read because it’s exactly what travelers who circle the globe all year long already know: it can be really cheap to travel, you just have to know where.”
- Christine Gilbert, editor of almostfearless.com

“As dollars get ever tighter, this book becomes all the more precious. But what’s most brilliant about it is that Leffel really doesn’t just think “cheap” – he thinks “smart.” As valuable a travel book as you’ll find today, in ways too numerous to even count, no matter what your budget.”
- Chris Epting, author of Led Zeppelin Crashed Here and Marilyn Monroe Dyed Here

“It’s no fluke that the world’s cheapest destinations are often also the most amazing to visit. This valuable guide inadvertently attests that money can’t buy happiness by recommending countries where the locals smile without it.”
– Bruce Northam, author of The Directions to Happiness: A 125-Country Quest for Life Lessons

“Warning: this book is hazardous to your ability to stay in one place. With your copy of The World’s Cheapest Destinations in hand, you can see the world while leaving your savings account untouched.”
- Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup

Buy this before you buy a plane ticket–it’s the best first investment for a budget traveler. Leffel provides real numbers and practical money-saving tips, and he wisely weighs the appeal of a country as well. As a result, The World’s Cheapest Destinations are places you really want to go.
- Zora O’Neill, author of The Rough Guide to Cancun & The Yucatan and Moon New Mexico

The World’s Cheapest Destinations is an entertaining read sharing the secrets that long-term travelers and backpackers have known for years. No room for excuses now, this book you’ll give the tools and information you need to travel the world in comfort on a budget. It’s an excellent resource for planning and researching your next vacation destination or around-the-world trip and is something that we’ll be using regularly for reference whenever we do our own travel planning.
- Deb and Dave, editors of ThePlanetD.com

“Tim Leffel has long been a guru of balancing the practicalities of cheap travel with a keen sense of judgement about the aesthetic value offered by varied countries around the world. In this newly researched and expanded edition, Tim’s easy conversational style turns the book into a page-turner, leaving you hungry to set off on the many paths he opens up to the traveler’s imagination.”
- Gregory Hubbs, editor-in-chief, TransitionsAbroad.com

“Tim is writing from the voice of a ‘Real Traveler,’ a person that has actually traveled the world for three years and lived in other countries for extended periods. This allows him to have the insight into what is the essential information needed.” – Andy Graham 15 years of Perpetual Travel and 90 countries – HoboTraveler.com

Where do you go in Vietnam to see all the tribes in one place? The somewhat inconveniently located (but worth the trip) Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi.

Some cities you visit because of the wealth of cultural attractions and interesting sites. Few people would put Hanoi in that category. It’s a great place to visit for a lot of other good reasons instead: a historic quarter good for strolling and photos near a pretty lake, French Colonial buildings in another area, great food, and bargain prices for nearly everything. It’s also a great hopping-off base for exploring the north.

Before we got to Vietnam, a friend who used to live there said if we had a child with us, this museum should be at the top of the list. My guidebook concurred, though when we visited, there were surprisingly few foreigners there, especially compared to how many were in the crazy long line in the 38C/100F heat to see embalmed Ho Chi Minh looking waxy in his tomb.

Family, couple, or single though, it’s worth paying a few bucks for a taxi ride to this part of town to see the beautifully presented items from the 54 ethnic groups living within the country’s borders. If you head up north toward Sapa you see people from the Tay, Hmong, or Yao groups, but most visitors encounter only a fraction of the ethnic diversity. It it would be hard to catch them wearing some of the outfits on display too since some are just brought out during festivals.

The inside displays are arranged by ethnicity, generally including what’s unique about that culture’s customs, apparel, or utensils. Musical instruments and farming implements make appearances and some displays replicate the living quarters of a family. A favorite of mine was a Mekong Delta fisherman’s bicycle loaded up with more than 200 fish traps and baskets. Other displays include backpacks made from reeds and bamboo, ritual dolls, and a willow-looking tree loaded with messages to the ancestors.

There’s a whole separate outdoor section that’s more hands-on and—good for the kids—involves some climbing. The house at the very top is a traditional longhouse copied from one in the central highlands. The steps can be pulled up at night. Another communal house modeled after that of the Bahnar people was built on site here by 42 villagers from the central highlands. It stands 19 meters high and requires a steep hike up notched logs to walk around inside.

In the interest of keeping my site from getting blocked by libraries, I’ll pass on posting another naughty photo of the Giarai people’s tomb, which is surrounded by sexually explicit carvings meant to be symbols of fertility. Here’s a corner that’s tame, follow this link for one that’s not.

Of course we went to see the water puppets show by the old quarter of Hanoi, but if you time it right, they sometimes run the shows here as well. This is how the water puppets were traditionally presented, with the puppeteers standing in the hut part (in the water) behind curtains, the puppets extending out on rods.

The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is one of the best screaming bargains I came across in my return to Southeast Asia this past summer. Admission is only $1.25 for adults and 25 cents for kids in the local currency. For more info, go to vme.org.vn. To get there, take a taxi to Nguyen Van Huyen Road, Cau Giay District. It’s about 10-20 minutes from most Hanoi hotels.

Note that another section is under construction that will cover ethnic groups in all of Southeast Asia, not just Vietnam. So by the time you visit, that may be open as well.

Much of the “traveler” vs. “tourist” division people have in their head really comes down to time and money. Do you have more time than money? You probably consider yourself a traveler and look down at those crazy tourists who blow so much money overspending on everything. If you don’t consider yourself a tourist but your budget is huge and you’re in a hurry, you’re going to be viewed as one, fair or not. But you may look at those shoestring backpackers as having no fun at all.

I’m not here to judge as I’ve been in both camps quite a lot. At times I’ve had all the time in the world. But last Saturday I drove to Orlando just for the day to take my birthday girl daughter and two of her friends to a water park. Like everyone else there, I was a tourist. No way around it. If there were any question about it, look what we paid to rent a locker—and we needed two of the big ones.

Since my wife, daughter, and I took advantage of cheap Southeast Asia this summer (see travel prices in Cambodia), we know a thing or two about what it costs a traveler with the time and means to get out of the USA or Europe. For that $20 we spent on two jammed-full lockers for five people, we could have eaten two good meals, taken 10 taxi rides, or gotten four one-hour massages. For what those lockers cost, one person can enter one of the great wonders of the world: Angkor Wat.

For what a beer costs at this park ($6.35 for a 16-ounce Yuengling—I passed), I could have gotten legless in Siem Reap with 12 drafts and a tip or six bottles. For what I spent on parking alone, you could get an air-conditioned hotel room with a private bath in Vietnam. See the post linked at the bottom for details, but when we went to a smaller water park in Mexico, parking was free and a locker was a dollar.

If you’ve been around the world, you’re used to traveler prices. If you only go on vacation for a week or two once a year, you’re used to tourist prices. That’s why most of your relatives think travel has to be expensive. It can be—especially if you’re headed to one of the 10 most popular foreign destinations for Americans—but not if you’re taking your time exploring The World’s Cheapest Destinations.

It’s not that one camp is smart and one is stupid though. They’re two different worlds that sometimes intersect in the town square. Many in one camp could never dream of being in the other, but both can be just as happy because the don’t even want to be on the other side.

Despite the hit to my wallet, I had a blast at that water park.

But…here’s what a simpler one costs in Merida, Mexico.