Round The World Ticket

If you are like most RTW travelers, you are/will be staying in the cheapest beds you can put up with for most of your trip. This is true for both hostel and hotel people and this shoestring strategy can be as enjoyable as it is necessary for long-term travelers. Staying in cheap places can make for some great stories and it’s the best way to preserve your funds to keep your trip alive.

But just as nearly everything else does, this gets pretty old after a while. You are going to want to treat yourself to something at least a bit nicer every once in a while, just to keep your sanity. This is one of those things that you can play by ear as you go, but a little advanced planning can help make a mini-splurge only a minor extra expense, so you can afford to do them more often.

The key is to plan your mini-splurge for a cheap area where your extra few dollars will go a long way. Obviously in a big city like Paris or Seoul a 3-star hotel will cost a small fortune, but in a small town well outside these large cities you can afford a lot more for a lot less. Better yet, if you wait until you get to a REALLY cheap country like Thailand, India, or Vietnam, you can splurge for only a few extra dollars per night.

For example, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, it’s pretty easy to find a hotel room for 1 or 2 people for around US$5 per night (and even less in rural India). It can be tempting to book yourself into a hotel like this, partly for novelty’s sake, and chances are the place will be fine. But after you’ve spent the last month or more in dorm beds or hotel rooms only twice the size of the small bed they contain, you can really use a bit of luxury.

In Chiang Mai you can get a room in a place that calls itself a resort for only around US$12-15 per night for 1 or 2 people. On one hand, it’s three times the price of the basic room in a place next door, but on the other hand you can get a king size bed, a TV, and a balcony with a view for 24 hours by spending the price of a pint of beer in Stockholm more than the minimum.

It can also be nice to combine this mini-splurge with one of your vacations from your vacation, where you take a break from sightseeing altogether. Doing it this way you can spend 3 days and nights in relative luxury and still spend less per night than a dorm bed in most cities. Use breaks like this to hit the reset button on your sightseeing muscles. Instead of 3 days in Chiang Mai, make it 5 or 6, and spend 2 or 3 days just hanging around the hotel room, reading books, getting drunk, meditating, or whatever makes you happy.

One small word of warning though, you have to choose these places carefully. International hotel chains like Hilton, Marriott, and Radisson tend to charge similar prices no matter where they are located. In other words, you won’t find a room in a Hilton for US$12 anywhere in the world, but there might be a place almost as nice just next door that is locally-owned and is that cheap.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under RTW Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.