Steampunk Fashion: Destinations

Destinations

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A bit over a year ago I wrote this post on building splurge money into your shoestring travel budget . Sometimes you have to throw that $40 a day budget out the window. While I’m a big advocate for going to cheap destinations where you can get a lot more for your money, even in those places you have to drop some serious dough sometimes if you want to get the full experience.

I got an e-mail last week from someone who was flabbergasted at how expensive lodging was in Cusco and the Sacred Valley. But he was going in July, the peak of the peak season, and going to the most popular spots in Peru. I gave him some advice on shaving costs here and there by staying in some towns that wouldn’t be so mobbed, but there’s only so much you can do. It’s the same story in Ko Pha Ngan, Agra, Bali, or Pokhara if you come at the very peak. That may be a good time to be there weather-wise or event-wise, but understand that the laws of economics still apply.

There are other cases though where you are paying a lot because the place or experience just plain costs a lot. Because of a writing assignment, I just took my second trip to the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. If you search around on the web, you can find articles on how to “do the Galapagos on the cheap,” but really it’s all relative. You have to spend a few hundred dollars to fly out there in the first place, you’ll pay $110 in fees after arrival into a conservation fund, and then virtually everything on Santa Cruz Island is going to be twice the price as the mainland while you’re lining up a tour.

Once you do get some kind of bargained-down tour, it’s still going to cost you north of $150 a day per person most likely to just take short jaunts to see the nearby islands. That’s cheaper than going with a well-known tour company where people are happy to pay $500 to $800 per night, but it’s not exactly shoestring travel territory. That’s because of a lot of good regulations that are in place to keep the environment from getting degraded. Guides must be trained and licensed, plus only around 100 ships are authorized to ply these waters with passengers.

Captains also have to be licensed and must undergo training on, among other things, how and where they can dock and send passengers to shore. They don’t really have a say in their itinerary. For good reasons, you can’t just hire a fishing boat captain in the harbor and say, “Show me some boobies!”

That guide you’ll get at the low end will be the kind of guy who can’t get hired by any of the real tour operators paying a good salary to real naturalists. After he struck out with all of them or got fired because of a string of guest complaints, he has ended up with you. It’s a pretty safe bet he won’t be able to lead you to the hard-to-spot creatures like this owl who hunts in the daytime. He probably won’t be able to explain why this bird is so strange and how it got that way.

I’m using this fragile Galapagos ecosystem as an example, but all around the world there are spots like this where governments have in purposely put hurdles in your way for a good cause. If you want to go to Bhutan, be prepared to pay $300+ per day. There’s no budget tour to Antarctica. Visiting Petra is really going to cost you , so suck it up and overpay. If you want to go deep into the jungle almost anywhere, be it the Amazon, Borneo , or Sumatra , you’re probably going to have to pony up some cash to do it right.

If nothing else, this is all a good reminder than you don’t have to cram everything in on your first trip around the world. You can do that river cruise down the Danube or the Amazon later when grandma is paying for it. You can do that tour up the coast of Brazil when you’ve got a good job later and are making the big bucks. You can go scuba diving on the barrier reef of Australia when you go there as a vacationer rather than a backpacker.

Traveling on a budget means understanding that you can’t do it all, whenever you want, wherever you want. You’ve still got a thousand things to pick from. Save the most expensive ones for later instead of trying to do them half-assed on a limited budget. Even with climate change and economic growth going full-tilt, those experiences should still be waiting for you…

Changes in The World’s Cheapest Destinations

Stepping inside here will cost you dearly.

Every few years I put out a new edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations book. Number three came out in 2009 and for the most part is still pretty accurate in terms of prices, but I’m looking at making some roster changes for edition number four in 2012.

Bye-bye Turkey

I was hesitant to include Turkey in this last edition because both the exchange rate and prices had gotten steadily worse. But then their currency took a dive in 2008 and half that equation got better. I’m going to have to drop the country this time though for sure. As Lara Dunston noted in this great GranTourismo post on g rocery prices where they stayed over the course of a year , “We were astounded at how expensive Istanbul has become.”

What will replace it in Europe? Probably Poland—it depends on what I find out in the course of first-person research. For Krakow, Lara said, “We never expected it would turn out to be the cheapest destination on our trip.”

Save it for a vacation/holiday

Leaving Out Morocco

Morocco is still a terrific value for the mid-range traveler on vacation, especially if you’re booking a package tour from Europe that includes airfare. For long-term travelers on a budget however, especially backpackers, it’s no longer the great deal it was five or ten years ago. It has simply gotten too popular with Europeans, who have flooded the main tourist cities and driven up prices—which are now often quoted in euros.

What will replace it? Probably Syria, but again I need to get some feet on the ground for price checks and see if the former trickle of western visitors has gotten any larger.

Not as cheery in Buenos Aires

Iffy Cheap Destinations

A few countries I’ve highlighted have gotten more iffy, but the main one I’m keeping an eye on is Argentina. Inflation has been quite bad there due to some inept government policies. Plus their decision to slap a reciprocal visa fee onto visitors arriving by air means a couple could pay more than $262 extra before they even step out of the airport. (Related post: Argentina says screw you to foreign visitors .)

I was a little worried about Hungary, but prices seem to be staying in check there due to economic problems there and in Europe in general. Thailand has gotten more expensive as the baht has risen in value, but it’s still a great deal, especially come lunch time.

What have you found in your travels? Any surprises to the upside or downside with your travel budget?

How much are you influenced by what other people think—even if they don’t know what they’re talking about?

Witness these examples from Seth Godin’s blog :

Texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk. It doesn’t feel that way, of course, but will you respect the data and stop, cold turkey?

The data shows that the vast majority of wine drinkers can’t tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $100 bottle. Will that keep you from buying the fancy wine? How much is the placebo effect worth?

The data shows that famous colleges underperform many cheaper, friendlier, smaller colleges. How much is your neighbor’s envy worth?

You can easily apply this logic to where you travel (cheap places sound scarier, but usually aren’t), how you travel (ignoring the one-upmanship of visiting more places instead of really getting to know an area in depth), or where you stay (foresaking the guidebook everyone else is using).

Heck, even the act of traveling for more than a week puts you in a distinct minority, but it’s a minority that is far healthier and better adjusted. The data proves it —but most people ignore that.

Colombia is far safer than it used to be, so I’m flying down there at the end of this week to check things out for an article. People are looking at me funny when I tell them where I’m going, but I trust the data more than their old assumptions. After all, if I were worried about being robbed, I’d avoid the pickpocket-heavy places tourists cheerfully flock to in droves, like Rome and Barcelona .

SARS has taken its toll on tourism, with in-denial China being hit hard, and many other Asian countries not far behind. Cathay Pacific, one of the world’s best airlines, may ground its entire fleet for a month.

Vietnam has shown, however, that the virus can be contained, and trips to Toronto haven’t been cancelled in droves. (One airline was even offering free flights there from New York if you booked last week.)

Gerald N. Grob, author of The Deadly Truth, the History of Disease in America noted in an NPR interview that the media’s apparent tendency to blow things out of proportion is a natural outcome of their role. They are constantly looking for the new, the novel, the surprising. When 100 people a day die in car wrecks each day, or several times that many die from heart disease, that’s not news. But when someone contracts some bizarre disease that nobody had heard of before, it makes the front page.

Likewise, the World Health Organization won’t tell you to stay out of downtown Detroit because of shootings or to stay out of Bangkok because of horrendous pollution, but they will tell you to stay out of Toronto because a few people have contracted SARS. Just remember that the number of people who have died worldwide from SARS is equal to the number that die in four average days of car wrecks in the US alone. Park the car and pack your bags…

When it comes to travel, do you run with the herd? If so, are you out in front, jumping into action, or does the momentum just carry you away?

Right now the travel herd is strong and mighty, but it’s grazing in the fields, not running anywhere at all. On the news we see ambulances carrying people dropping dead from SARS. There are vague threats of terrorism. War in the Middle East. And if you’re American, we’re told, everyone now hates you. Almost nobody is even fllying out of their home town, much less flying across the world.

Maybe the herd is right, or maybe they’re just feeling the same way they did about shark attacks, the ebola virus, and anthrax. Remember those? It’s all about putting risk in perspective, however, and as an American living in a country where the prison population just hit two million, I’ve gotta say this isn’t exactly Disneyland where we are. When your time has come to die, it’ll probably be from a car wreck, heart disease, or cancer. Those are even odds. Being killed overseas would be a million to one long shot. (Unless you’re George Bush that is.)

There’s an ample reward this time for not following the herd. The bonus is some of the best bargains in history. Governments are slashing admission charges, foreign airlines are practically paying you to come over, and hotels are offering deals meant just to keep the lights on. You’ll have bargaining power no matter what you’re buying.

If you watch that herd grazing and decide to go hiking instead, you’ll be calling all the shots and living large in quite peaceful surroundings. Your ticket is waiting…

If you want to stand on the corner with a megaphone and say the world is coming to an end, 2012 might be the time to do it without looking quite so crazy.

A long time ago, the Maya astronomers devised a very accurate calendar that was superior to any other on the planet at that time. Chiseled into rock was a calendar that began in what we know as August 11, 3114 B.C. At the end of it was the date we know as December 21, 2012.

So many have interpreted that to mean the end of the world, as foreseen by this advanced civilization, is coming next year. “Hogwash” is the collective response from the Maya descendants and scholars who have studied the culture. It’s just simply the end of the long count calendar, the equivalent of December 31 on the one hanging on your wall. You toss out the old one and start over. It’s just that the Maya people sort of faded into the pueblos (and got killed off by smallpox from Europe) when their cities went into decline. No more astronomers keeping records, so no follow-up calendar.

Tourism bureaus know a good marketing hook when they see it though and this one is a gift from the gods. Some hotels around famous ruins are already sold out for the fateful time next December and all kinds of tourism companies are selling Maya Apocalypse tours. Where will you be when the world ends?

Hey, if it gets more people to visit some of these archaeological sites—especially the lesser-known ones—and prods people to learn more about what the Americas were like before Columbus landed, then I’m all for it. Besides, Honduras and Guatemala are both in The World’s Cheapest Destinations and Mexico is a bargain too, so visiting these places won’t set you back like going to Roman ruins or Stonehenge.

A great guide for the whole shebang is this new Maya 2012 book from Moon. It’s written by great guidebook author Joshua Berman and has lots of guest sidebars from other experts for specific places. A shade over 100 pages, it’s a nice little guide you can carry in a daypack without adding much weight and it’s short enough to read cover-to-cover as a trip planner to see what sounds the most interesting. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of background info on the calendar and the Maya people.

Broken down into sections on Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize, it maps out where all the sites are and give some info on what you will find there. Sure, it’s got Tikal, Chichen Itza, and Copan, but also those with few visitors like Bonampak, Ek Balaam, and Xunantunich (say that one fast five times).

Here’s the best part: in the U.S. this book is $7.99 paperback, $2.99 as an e-book. A steal!

Get the Maya 2012 book at Amazon (including for Kindle), Barnes & Noble (including for Nook), or Amazon Canada .

Get more info at this Moon Maya 2012 page.

Transitions Abroad is one of the best resources on the web—if not the best—for independent, curious travelers who want to do more than sit on a beach for a week and then come back home. They’ve been putting out a series of e-zines that collect articles about a certain continent in one place.

The new one is a South America e-zine , and it’s a gold mine. My rundown on budget travel in South America is pretty darn comprehensive, if I may say so myself, but it’s just the start. Where else will you see a survival guide to South American mega-cities or articles on what it’s really like to live in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, or Brazil?

Also up are reviews of relevant books and music, plus some tips for women traveling through the region alone. (As always, us guys apparently don’t need any advice on how to cope…) Check it all out here .

Over at Perceptive Travel, we’re running a photo contest that can win you a box set of all 10 of the new Citiescape guides from Lonely Planet.

These are some very cool little books, filled with knockout photos, that will give you a really good flavor of the destination. If somebody had given me these before my first round-the-world trip, I think I would have had to quit my job sooner and leave two months early. Quite enticing.

So if you’ve got a great digital photo from one of the featured cities in Asia, go enter the photo contest . We don’t exactly get millions of visitors a day, so your odds are pretty good. Consolation prizes to the second and third place winners and all three winners get some fleeting fame and bragging rights. You don’t give up any rights or sign over any permission besides posting on Perceptive Travel.

Photo must be from one of the ten Asian cities pictured at the top of the contest page. Deadline is the end of February.

A panel of esteemed judges put me in the top-5 for the “Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog,” over at the Travvies Awards. So if you think I occasionally spew out some useful info here, muchas gracias for logging in a vote for the Cheapest Destinations Blog.

I’m in good company though, with two of the best frequent flyer info blogs around, SmarterTravel’s blog, and Wendy Perrin from Conde Nast Traveler. With the Conde Nast empire’s ability to out ballot-stuff little ole me a hundred times over, my money would be on that one, with me being the very dark horse in this race. She’s the one editor at that magazine that seems to understand most of its readers aren’t really bathing in money though (just wishing they were), so I won’t feel bad if she wins. At least I now get to put that cool little graphic in over on the right of this column.

There are some really good ones in every category, including some cool travel photography blogs I’d never seen before. And I have to give a shout out to Leif Pettersen’s Killing Batteries since he’s got a Romania story in the upcoming issue of Perceptive Travel. Anyway, go check it out at Upgrade Travel Better.

Bottled water costs 1,000 times what tap water does and is far less regulated. Thanks to “manufactured demand,” this booming industry sells a fantasy to suckers, putting filtered tap water in plastic bottles and charging 1,000 times the price. Most of these single-use bottles are wrecking our land and oceans worse every day. Here’s the story of bottled water, in video.

There are easy solutions to this problem, one person at a time.

1) Put a filter on your tap if you don’t like the taste.

2) Put that water in a reusable water bottle when you leave the house.

3) Use a water fountain. Kids do it every day and…they don’t get sick!

4) Travel with a Steripen or other filter and a reusable water bottle if the water supply is iffy.

5) Lead by example. Don’t pop open a new landfill entry just because someone hands one to you.

Otherwise, see the 5 Gyres site to find out where all those bottles you drank from and discarded are now floating in the ocean.

Sometimes editor types joke about the “three I’s of travel” that grace so many magazine covers: Italy, Ireland, and India. They’re photogenic, look exotic, and have nice luxury hotels with ad money to spend. You’ll rarely find a travel magazine that goes a whole 12 months without one of the three on a cover.

In the current issue of Perceptive Travel, we subbed in Iceland for Ireland. (Don’t worry, you can still find the latter plenty of places on our blog .) Iceland is also photogenic, can look exotic, and has some nice hotels. As usual though, we don’t tick off places you’ve already seen a hundred times before. We like to take the road less traveled. In this case we’re literally on the road with Luke Armstrong as he tries to learn how to drive a stick shift on the fly. In a van. Going across Iceland in the “crazy season.” See Learning to Drive a Dinosaur in Iceland .

We also have a story about Italy, but toss out your expectations because Debi Goodwin is not going to check anything off your bucket list. This place was on hers though: the Italian marble quarries of Carrara .

We had a story in the past on how the “Incredible India” portrayed in ads and glossy travel stories is like an alternate universe to the Slumdog Millionaire reality that non-luxury travelers see every day. Being sheltered from the grinding poverty is next to impossible if you go for a walk though, as Jim Johnston finds out in Hunger and Privilege: Dinner in Old Delhi .

As always we run down some world music worth listening to , from a globalFEST compilation to classical music with a Turkish twinge, through the ears of Laurence Mitchell.

Susan Griffith reviews three new travel books : one from a legend, one from a shipping industry reporter, and one from…well, you decide.

Need some new travel shoes?

We give away something cool to one of our loyal Perceptive Travel readers each month and last time Jack P. from Florida scored a nice $139 daypack from Granite Gear. In April we’re setting someone from the USA up with a nice $90 pair summer travel shoes: the H2O Escape Bungee Sneaker from Sperry Topsiders.

To win, you could follow PT on Facebook and pay close attention. The better bet is to sign up for the monthly e-mail newsletter .

It took until the end of week six of my move to Mexico before it happened, but whatever hit me is making up for lost time. Fever, aches, and all the bathroom byproducts that come with it.

The annoying thing is, I haven’t eaten outside my apartment since Monday, so I wasn’t done in by yummy market food, fresh juice on the street, or any of the other things the Purell-wielding crowd avoids at all costs. It was just time for my number to come up. So links to some good advice from others today.

Chris Gillebeau interviews a woman who chucked her law job and became an unconventional backpacker traveling solo . Lots of good “things to be aware of” in there.

Speaking of women on the road alone, you might want to skip the new Julia Roberts fantasy and check out this story from Bruce Northam: Eat, Pray, Love, and be Cautious . (I don’t normally like to link to the Huffington Post since they pay their writers $0 despite all their success, but this is a good one.)

In There Must Be Some Misunderstanding , Alison Stein notes that your first impression in a foreign country often can’t be trusted. Give it some time before passing judgment.

Nomadic Matt notes that for someone who has been on the road for years, this non-nomadic life is the toughest thing to get used to. A guest post on his blog gives advice on traveling as a vegetarian .

Here’s a good post from Almost Fearless on Volunteering Around the World .

Kara Williams just returned from a trade show where gear companies show off what’s coming out next spring. Get a sneak peek here of cool travel gear for 2011 .

Will Romania be a new hotspot? I read a few weeks ago that Time Out Bucharest is now on the stands, which is a sure sign that hipsters and intrepid travelers are going there and sticking around a while. Now comes this report , which says that Romania is the 4th fastest-growing country in the world in terms of tourism demand. That’s starting from a very low base, I’m sure, so a dramatic rise is not so difficult, but it’s still noteworthy.

Flickr photo by zsoolt

Romania is actually replacing the Czech Republic in my next edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations . The latter has gotten a lot more expensive with the EU-alignment and the scads of moneyed vacationers popping in for a short time in Prague, so Romania is the next value frontier. (Joining Turkey, Bulgaria, and Hungary in the Europe section).

I have to admit I liked Bucharest a lot when I was there, even though I was there against my will. I naively thought that despite only spending $350 for a flight from India to New York I would be home in time for my welcome back clubbing plans. Four days later I got to New York, after a mandatory vacation for three days with no luggage. My flight was on Tarom Airlines–’nuff said.

I always figured that my favorable impression was influenced by the fact I had arrived there at just the point I was ready to strangle the whole population of India. Bucharest seemed downright efficient and super-civilized, the travel equivalent of a deep breath and a sigh. The architecture was interesting (what hadn’t been flattened during communism that is), the streets were clean, the subway worked, and the beer was good. I was a happy camper.

Of course the real payoff is in beautiful Transylvania, where I hope to get to before word gets out and it becomes completely overrun. If you’re heading to Europe sometime soon, put it on your list and beat the crowds.

Oh, and if you want to see what governments and tourism boards talk about in their branding meetings–read the report in the link above. It’s no accident that some destinations are better than others at pulling in the crowds. Give a good budget to the MBAs and the advertising execs and who knows what kind of rabbit will come out of the hat.

“Why did you leave me all these pesos instead of dollars?”

Getting ready to travel somewhere for a few weeks or months of independent travel? If you want a great value, put these countries on your short list:

Argentina

India

Indonesia

Mexico

Why these? Not because of their “friendly locals,” “charming towns” or “pristine beaches,” yada yada yada. And not because they’re a hot destination this year . You should go if you like to get a lot more for you money there than you did in the past. If you like traveling well while spending less than you do just existing at home, a plunging exchange rate is a surefire ticket to savings.

Most travelers approach exchange rates backwards. They don’t even think about them until they get to where they’re going, then fret about how everything is more expensive than they expected. It makes a lot more sense to see where your timing will be right and go there. Heck, even if you’re going somewhere expensive this makes sense: the pain of Canada, Japan, or Australia stings about 10% less right now than it did a year or two ago.

Argentina’s Pain, Your Gain

I took Argentina out of the last edition of The World’s Cheapest Destinations because high inflation, high import duties, and a slew of nutty economic policies were making it an unfriendly place for tourists. You’ll still face a hefty visa cost before you even exit the airport if you’re American and there’s still a crazy small limit on how much you can take out of an ATM each day. If you arrive with U.S. dollar wads in your pocket though, you are going to tango your way across the land in much better shape than even just a few weeks ago.

That’s because the peso has plunged badly for a whole host of reasons and the government’s injection of $115 million to buy up pesos isn’t helping much. Here’s how Reuters put it:

“The local currency weakened on the black market to 12.15 pesos per U.S. dollar, while the official exchange rate was unchanged at 8 per dollar in thin trading. Last week, the official peso slid nearly 20 percent as investors scrambled to make sense of the new currency regime.”

India’s Rupee in Decline

Two years ago this month, a dollar got you 50 Indian rupees. Today it gets you 62. That’s a 24% increase in what you get for your money. And you could already get a lot.

The government is intervening to try to keep this figure from falling further, mostly by raising interest rates. Who knows how well that will hold or not. But if you’re already planning on going there, happy days are ahead. (If you were going to Nepal, you’ll also get more for your money there, in what’s already probably the cheapest destination in the world. As the Indian rupee goes, so does Nepal’s currency.)

Let me take you to Indonesia

Two years ago a buck got you 9,000 rupiah. Today that same greenback will get you around 12,000. For those of you who flunked math class, that’s a 1/3 increase in your purchasing power. Maybe not in a chic Bali resort priced in dollars, but you weren’t planning on doing that anyway, right?

Indonesia was already one of the world’s best bargains, especially as soon as you leave Bali and head anywhere else. Yes, the country is getting wealthier and the middle class is rising fast—thus the horrible traffic jams in Jakarta—but if you stroll in with an ATM card linked to a bank account in a country that uses the US dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, euro, or yen, you’ll be feeling flush. Head to Sumatra and you can check out for months on a couple grand.

Unfortunately, the flight price is going to kill you for any of these if you’re coming from the USA or Canada, so it’s better if you’re already on the move and can get there from somewhere closer. At this time of year it’s hard to find a flight to any of the three for under $1,000, so sometimes you’re better off with a package deal that includes hotels.

Which leads us to the backyard choice:

Mexico, Mexico!

I guess I moved back to Mexico at a good time. The exchange rate hasn’t dipped below 12 to the dollar since I got here this past summer and it just hit a new high of 13.3 when I took money out of the ATM yesterday. That means my “What you can get for a buck or less” list keeps expanding. Here’s a partial list

Two kilos of oranges or bananas, a large beer in a store, 12 ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice, a kilo of fresh tortillas, 2+ local bus rides, a few street tacos, a bootleg DVD, an ice cream cone or fresh fruit popsicle, a tamale, four breakfast buns, four sandwich rolls, y mucho mas,

A cheap meal of the day lunch in the market here is 30 pesos, which is now less than $2.50. A taxi from one side of Guanajuato to the other is less than $3. The average museum admission is $2 or less. As I always say though, those are prices in the real Mexico, not Cancun or Los Cabos.

Check flight prices here and go!

Usually when travelers post photos from Vietnam, they’ve got all kinds of shots of motorbikes loaded down with people and goods. You can see a few of those here in this Vietnam scooter story and I’ve got plenty more I might dribble out later. But here are a few other fun ones I wanted to share.

This first one is also of a motorbike, but this one is doubling as a place for a nap. In the middle of the sidewalk. Next to a really busy street. This guy has both amazing balance and an impressive ability to shut out noise. I would surely crack my skull if I did manage to fall asleep amidst that cacophony.

Next up, this is still a communist country, in politics anyway. Hotels and internet cafes typically have to use a proxy server or some other workaround for you to get onto Facebook or Twitter and access some sites with non-official news about the country. So you still see propaganda billboards around the country and odd sayings here and there, like this one on a straw container near Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house in Hanoi. What’s doubly odd about it is the illustration: a fat pizza guy who is definitely not from Asia.

This next photo is from the excellent Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. Inside are all kinds of exhibits on the hill tribes and other groups prevalent in the country, with costumes, video, and more. Outside are rebuilt houses and buildings typical of certain areas. This one’s got something to do with fertility.

Gibberish t-shirts are not unique to Asia (see some from Bulgaria here ), but a lot of them are manufactured here, often designed by people who have no working knowledge of the language they are using. The words are just a design element. We saw a dozen hilarious shirts in the riverside night market of Hue, one having the word “pimple” repeated about 50 times and another with a cat pictured but the words saying, “Time file so fast in busy daily life.” This one shows up the best as a photo though.

I believe she needs to quit her job and go to Hawaii. Or something like that.

Next post we’ll return to useful and practical cheap travel info. Until I feel the need to post that photo of what you can’t do in a Bangkok cab…

When has a developing country’s historic town passed the point of pretty gentrification and become, well, “spoiled”?

When local real estate prices make your home city seem like a bargain?

When there’s a jewelry store on every block?

When the tourists and expats outnumber the locals in the center of town?

When there’s a “Berlin Bar” on one side of the street and a “Dublin Pub” right across from it?

When you can throw a baseball from the city’s best-known monument and hit a Starbucks sign?

When none of the people working in the middle of town can afford to eat at any nearby restaurant?

Or is it when two guys are working on their laptops on a park bench—in the Plaza Principal—in Mexico?

I can think of a few places in Mexico that hit a few of these points, like Playa del Carmen or central Puerto Vallarta. But I’ve just spent a few days in a town that is “all of the above.” If the thought of that makes you shiver, then you will probably not want to put San Miguel de Allende on your must-visit list.

Yes, it’s an undeniably beautiful place, with pretty street signs on movie-set-perfect cobblestoned streets. Almost none of the buildings need a paint job. The largest city park is cleanest one I’ve ever seen in Latin America. You can find pretty much any kind of food you want and the upscale inns are oozing with enough aesthetic charm to make the most jaded interior designer giddy. Even a reluctant shopper like me could spend a fortune in this town and come away with stuff I would love forever.

But jeez, the place feels kind of creepy. Something is off, like it’s been perfectly presented to meet the needs of 60-something travelers looking for just a tinge of the exotic among the familiar. (The main hair color here among the foreigners is gray. #2 would be “dye-job.”)

San Miguel de Allende is a photographer’s dream, but I feel sorta like I did when I was in the Nepal or Africa sections of Disney World . A stylized version of the real thing, with all the messy parts removed. If you’re here and you see some character disappear into an underground tunnel and then see an identical character come out to take his place for photos, then if I were you I would run for the hills…

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SORRY KIDS – This giveaway has ended. Tune in again when the next one rolls out.

No, that’s not a gotcha headline courtesy of Buzzfeed. One fortunate person will indeed get $500 worth of travel clothing for a $10 donation to Passports with Purpose.

On top of that, this person will now hold onto the rest of their money and other valuables while traveling because it’s all from Clothing Arts, the makers of Pickpocket Proof Pants!

I’ve been a big fan of this clothing from the start. I did a whole week in Nicaragua with one pair of their pants and have worn their pants and shirts anytime I’m traveling to an area where there’s a risk of getting pickpocketed. We reviewed just about everything they’ve put out over at Practical Travel Gear .

It’s almost impossible for would-be thieves to get into your pockets when you’ve sticking up the built-in obstacles these provide. Just check out their stories from users , which is now up to 19 sticky-fingered attempts foiled.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5ChTTW49Rc?rel=0]

So how do you get in on this action? Simple: just donate $10 to this year’s Passports with Purpose campaign. After years of doing great work around the world thanks to travelers like you, this year’s program will bring e-readers and books to five libraries in western Kenya. Shipping thousands of physical books to African libraries is not an easy thing, but give a kid access to an e-reader and he’s got a whole library in his hands. This program also gives them access via a phone, which opens it up to more children when the e-readers are all checked out.

The goal, in conjunction with WorldReader, is to get 50 e-readers placed in five different libraries, all stocked up with something most of these kids have never had much access to: books.

As travelers we support local businesses and help improve lives by putting our money in the hands of local small business owners. Projects like libraries are not something we can impact through commerce, however. Just as past Passports with Purpose projects I participated in helped build a school, aid family farmers, and fund adult literacy programs, this year’s will accomplish something local governments don’t have the funds or the will to implement.

To bid on a $500 shopping spree at Clothing Arts—open to anyone in the world with a post office nearby— go to this page . Poke around and you’ll find lots of other cool stuff to bid on as well, like luggage from Eagle Creek, clothing from ExOfficio, more gift certificates, and hotel stays. Even if you come up empty, you’ve donated to a good cause where 100% of the money earned is going toward the end goal.

See more at Passports with Purpose .

1) I have years of personal family photos stored on Kodak Gallery (once Ofoto), but add up the megabytes and they wouldn’t fill a $4.99 memory stick from Big Lots. So why is the company sending me an extortion e-mail saying “Spend $19.99 with us by the end of the month or we’ll delete all your pictures”? Didn’t they get the memo that data storage is almost free now? Apparently getting $20 from me now is more important than losing me permanently to Shutterfly, Snapfish, or any other similar service with less onerous policies. After all, I still have all the photos backed up on my own portable hard drive, ready to be uploaded elsewhere when I want prints. So even if I pay it, I’ll be pissed off at them for life.

Funny enough, I was just reading the book What Would Google Do? and saw this: “When I think of pictures today, the first brand that comes to my mind is Flickr. Others think of Google’s Picasa. I also think of my Nokia camera phone. Who now thinks of Kodak?”

2) Perhaps it’s not just an American trait to be too tied to your possessions. Most of the slum dwellers in the Baja Peninsula of Mexico refused to leave their shantytowns this week even though hurricane-force winds were about to hit and the stream running by the tin shacks would become a river. Why? They’re afraid of looting. Hey, I know it’s hard to lose your stuff, especially when you don’t have much, but you can’t watch TV from a coffin amigos!

3) Since U.S. airlines are now making most of their profits on extra fees grudgingly paid by passengers with checked luggage, they’re now seeing how much further they can push it.

* For US Airways, fees are now $20 online, $25 at the airport for the first bag.
* Continental just raised its international bag fees, to $45 online or $50 at the airport for the second bag.
* Virgin America is getting in on the act too: each bag checked will cost $20 for travel starting September 10.
* Southwest just added on a $10 fee to its menu, but it’s not really annoying because it’s one many busy people will gladly pay. Add ten bucks when you book your ticket and you are automatically in the A boarding list no matter when you check in, online or off. Otherwise, they’re still fee-free unless you’re carrying a pet.

4) I’m still tired of seeing Italy listed on the cover of every travel magazine and I’m getting even more tired of bloggers and lazy travel editors who make every post/article some kind of list in a blatant attempt to grab more click-throughs. Look at these two screen shots from sites that will remain nameless to protect the guilty and tell me, when do we hit the overload point? I fear it’ll only get worse: I found out last week that one of the biggest blog networks—part of a Fortune 500 company—even pays their writers extra for making their posts into lists.

Yeah I know, this post itself is a list too. But that’s why you clicked on it, isn’t it? Must… fight… trained… chimp… reactions.

Good thing 1 – For a while this week the Kindle version of The World’s Cheapest Destinations was the #1 travel reference book, beating the pants off whatever the established New York book publishing industry is pushing right now. Having a #1 Kindle book in a specific category is probably right up there with being the #1 bathing suit salesman in Greenland (and just as profitable), but I’ll take it. If you were one of the purchasers, muchas gracias!

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Good thing 2 – Speaking of Amazon, right now they are selling 50 digital albums for $5 each. Legal MP3s that you can use as you will. There’s some garbage in there yes, but also some classics from the Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, Shawn Colvin, and Soul Asylum. Plus some cool quirky stuff like Willie & the Wheel (Willie Nelson/Asleeep at the Wheel) and Saharan blues band Tinariwen —one of my favorite albums we’ve covered in Perceptive Travel’s world music reviews. Fill in your collection for cheap.

If you want to grow an airline quickly, don’t aim for the high-end traveler. Apparently the fast growth track is at the bottom of the spending scale.

I came across this story on the world’s fastest-growing airlines in a magazine I write for regularly. It’s from January, but it turns out that this list has been little changed since 2012. There are several aspects that stick out in here that are key things to keep in mind if you’re traveling around the world on a budget.

1) At least a few of these are companies you probably haven’t ever heard about.

2) Many of them don’t come up in a typical flight search online via Expedia , Priceline , Vayama , or Google Flights for that matter. You need to search them directly.

3) Some of them really suck and everyone hates them, yet they’re still growing like mad. So we are collectively saying we care about service and amenities, but giving our money to the very worst-rated airlines anyway.

Assume with all of these airlines the listed great deals come with a pile of add-on fees. If you travel light and aren’t picky about your seat, however, they can be cheaper than a bus or train. Here’s who keeps expanding—so they’re hopefully not going under or cutting back—and why you should have them on your radar.

Vueling

Based in Spain (aren’t they still in a recession?), in just over a decade this company has gone from flying two planes to being a major player. “The airline announced 31 new routes for the 2015 summer schedule for a total of 140 destinations across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. And the airline plans for as many as 120 new planes to join its fleet between 2015 and 2020.” Within and out of Europe, put Vueling.com on your search list. Standout deal: Barcelona to London for less than 43 euros.

Lion Air

Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, this airline has been buying planes like a rapper buys sneakers, purchasing 178 of them from Boeing in the last round. Their slogan is kind of odd—“We make people fly.” You’re forcing us to board? The clunky website will give you flashbacks to the year 2000 also. But if you can ignore the Indonesian carriers’ collectively bad aviation safety record, the price is certainly right. Standout deal: Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur for US$33.

IndiGo

In less than a decade, IndiGo has become India’s largest domestic carrier. It’s also a rarity in that country for being…profitable. And arriving on time. It also has an attractive website that works. Standout deal: Delhi to Mumbai for $35. (If you haven’t heard enough horrible India travel stories, let me tell you about our 36-hour 2nd class train ride on this route for probably not much less than that flight.)

Spirit Airlines

I’ve never heard one person say anything nice about this airline. They talk about flying on it the way people talk about how much they enjoyed going to the dentist for a filling. “It may be the most complained-about U.S. carrier, but it is also the fastest-growing, which indicates price frequently wins out over service. ” And there you have it. Our version of RyanAir keeps expanding because people keep buying tickets. If you can suck it up, they can get you to Colombia and Nicaragua for cheap. Standout deal: Chicago to Ft. Lauderdale for $58 plus luggage (even carry-ons require a fee).

Pegasus Airlines

The local counterpart to Turkish Air—which itself flies to more countries than any other airline— Pegasus Airlines now serves 89 destinations in 39 countries. That’s on top of the big domestic network, which can save you a lot of time away from traffic in every-more-clogged Turkey. Their lowest “Essentials” package includes 15kg of luggage. Standout deal: Istanbul to Bodrum for 20 euros.

Norwegian Air Shuttle

This company looked at the lousy service to price ratio in the U.S. and going across the Atlantic and said, “We can do better.” After all, it wouldn’t take much effort to outperform the likes of Delta, American, United, and British Air. Passengers have been flocking to the better service for a better price at Norwegian Air . The company is now expanding to more U.S. markets and even from there to the Caribbean. They’re crazy cheap within Europe, like Riga to Stockholm for €26 or Budapest to London for €80. Standout deal: Oslo to Los Angeles for 300 euros round trip!

Traveling in the summer can be a real pain in the rear: huge crowds, whining kids, strollers in your way everywhere, jammed “scenic” highways, packed national parks, and on and on. And if you’ve been to Europe in the summer the past few years you know it’s a real zoo in the big draw cities.

This year is going to be different. High unemployment and a plummeting stock market have a way of putting a damper on people moving around. Judging by all the “how to travel for cheap this summer” inquiries I’m getting from reporters, those who are going on vacation are more likely to be doing it close to home or will be seriously watching the budget. Here are the reasons this is going to be a much more pleasant travel summer than it has been in quite a while.

1) Airfares are low again. I’m routinely seeing round-trip flights to Europe for under $500, sometimes way under. Unfortunately those advertised rates rarely include the rugby scrum pile-on of fees, taxes and rapacious fuel charges you’ll get socked with, so click through a few screens to find the real price. I’m also seeing flights to Asia and Australia for three digits. Yesterday I saw a $425 flight from Miami to Lima inclusive of all taxes and fees–in the peak June travel period.

2) Deals and more deals at hotels. There are so many hotel specials out there right now that it’s rare to see a hotel NOT running some kind of “stay 2 nights, get one free” kind of thing. Priceline and Hotwire are brimming with choices these days since hardly any hotels are full. The big convention cities are running at historic low occupancy levels, which means deals in places like Orlando, Vegas, and San Francisco. Granted there’s not as much fluctuation at cheapo guesthouses and hostels, but you do have more bargaining power now and you’re less likely to be turned away from your first choice upon arrival.

3) Vacation home rental owners are cutting deals. In a normal year, many vacation home rentals in popular places are all booked up for the summer. Not this year. Many of these owners are freaking out and are slashing prices to get open weeks booked.

4) Restaurants want your business. One of the first things people do when cutting back on expenses is eat out less. That means more specials at restaurants and you seldom have to worry about finding an open table.

5) Gas is relatively cheap. All over the globe, gas/petrol is half the price it was a year ago. That means less money to fill up your tank for a road trip, but also fewer fuel surcharges on buses and trains.

6) The amusement parks are scared. If you’ve got a family, keep an eye out for deals at amusement parks and other family attractions this summer. Six Flags and Disney are scared &%@^less that this could be a historically bad summer, so they’re throwing out lots of discounts to lure in families on the fence. (As I’ve pointed out before though, your best bet is still a non-chain regional amusement park.)

7) Popular places won’t be as crowded. Unless the economy suddenly picks up bigtime in the next month, it should be less crowded this summer at the cafes of paris, on the ziplines of Costa Rica, on the pyramids of Tikal, and by the geysers of Yellowstone. Take advantage of it.

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