My guide to cheap travel

My guide to cheap travel

In the last few years, I have visited twenty two countries, a lot of them when I was still a student with not a lot of money. And because I love to travel and explore new places, I would like to encourage more people to do so.

And since a lot of people I know are afraid to travel because they think travel is incredibly expensive, I decided to write a blog post about how can you travel the cheapest way possible. I will only describe the methods I have personally tried and I know they are reliable. There are of course more ways, so you can do your own research, and hopefully your next trip will be a little cheaper, thanks to this blog post.

Since I am living in the United States of America at the moment, I will focus on United States in this blog post only, because transportation varies from country to country, but some of the rules I am describing in this post, apply to other countries as well.

Bus, air and train travel

If you like the idea of sitting on a bus for over twenty hours, while keeping in mind the fact that there is free Wi-Fi on board, then taking a trip with a bus company, called Greyhound might be a perfect thing for you. Do not get too excited about the free Wi-Fi though, because YouTube and any other video streaming services do not work because they want to keep the connection at a reasonable speed.

Greyhound is a bus company that connects most major cities in the United states. It can be incredibly cheap if you are flexible with your dates, but it can take forever to reach your destination. And you will possibly have to change buses a few times on the way there.

What do I like about Greyhound? As I have already mentioned, the main positive thing about Greyhound is the low price and variety of different routes. Also, Greyhound buses depart from bigger cities several times a day, and some of them are the so - called express buses with fewer stops on the way, which means you will reach your destination much faster.

Greyhound is cheap enough even without any discount. But, if you sign up for their e-mail club, you will get ten percent off your first booking. If you join their rewards program, you can also collect points and redeem them for discounts or, if you have a lot of them, a free trip!

One of the things I really do not like about Greyhound, is the air conditioning on the buses. Everybody warned me about it before my first Greyhound trip, and I thought to myself: ‘Oh, it cannot be that bad, I will just bring an extra sweater. ’ But it was worse than just bad. My teeth were clattering and I had a terrible headache.

A lot of people around me were also complaining, so we decided to talk to the driver and he said the air conditioning on their buses only has one setting - the uncomfortably cold one. And he said he would rather drive the bus that is too cold than too hot. Therefore, my extra sweater did not help at all, and it was cold enough to put on every piece of clothing that I brought with me, including dirty clothes. It did not really help because those were mostly summer clothes, and I still had ten hours to go.

Another thing that I do not like is that even if you are taking an overnight trip, you cannot stay on the bus the whole time. Every few hours, the drivers change and they are refuelling the bus, so you have to get off the bus. And I noticed that those bus stations are usually situated in shady parts of town.

But you should be fine as long as you are staying inside the bus station and not wandering around. Those overnight stops usually last an hour, and I hated it because I was sleeping before the stop, then I was of course wide awake when I got back on the bus. But Greyhound is cheap enough to not complain too much about it.

The worst thing about Greyhound is probably their almost non - existent customer service. Before my first trip, I wanted to make sure that I really have to change the bus three times because on my ticket, it said four, and when I was booking the ticket, it said three. I decided to call their customer service centre first, but nobody was answering the phone and I tried multiple times. So I decided to try their live chat. The first person just disconnected in the middle of the chat, and the second person gave me a completely different information than the person before her.

There are other bus companies, such as FlixBus and MegaBus, but I have not used them. At least not yet. Mostly because Greyhound has departures closer to me than any of the other two.

The most famous train company in the United States of America is called Amtrak. It is cheap, but ‘famous’ for its frequent delays. But it has some pretty cool deals and travel options. Oh, and panoramic windows. For example, one of them will take you from Chicago to San Francisco in a little less than fifty hours. Another one will take you along the Californian coastline, all the way up to Oregon.

But how about the prices? The cheapest price I was able to find for the route between Chicago and San Francisco, was one hundred and twenty dollars. It is way cheaper than a flight and you will see more, but the journey will last two days.

Amtrak also offers what I like to call ‘all you can travel’ pass. And you basically pay almost five hundred dollars for two weeks of unlimited train travel, which is a pretty good deal if you are planning to do a lot of travelling during these two weeks. Well, but let’s be honest, you will spend most of that journey on the train.

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I love train travel. It is just such a different experience. And with Amtrak's trains that offer panoramic windows, the experience just could not be better. Believe me, you will forget about the pain of sitting in a train seat for a day straight when you will be admiring the landscape, passing by the train windows.

United States of America have quite a few budget airlines that will lower the cost of your trip. You will have to sacrifice a few things, of course, but hey, why would anybody complain about cheap prices? My favourite airlines, but not because of comfort, because of cheap prices, are definitely Fronter, Southwest and Allegiant. Frontier has super uncomfortable seats, Allegiant fleet is really old and they apparently have a lot of emergency landings, and Southwest is just amazing.

Why? Because, first of all, you get not one, but two pieces of checked baggage for free! They will also let you change your flight free of charge. Oh, and let’s not forget their famous flight sales - I was able to fly from Ohio to Florida for 19. 99 one way thanks to that sale! And, as a bonus, their flight attendants are hilarious during the safety briefing. My favourite quote was definitely: ‘If this flight becomes a cruise, the seat cushion will serve as a flotation device. ’

Try not to fly Spirit - they have an extremely bad reputation for cancelling flights for no reason at all, so even if they are cheaper than other airlines, I do not want to sacrifice a day or two of waiting at the airport for the next flight to be scheduled.

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On this photo, you can see how many Spirit airlines flights got cancelled in a single day.

Renting a car

Renting a car in the United States can be a hassle if you are under 25, but it makes sense if you are travelling through the states that have bad public transport, want to get from A to B quickly but you still want to be able to stop whenever you feel like stopping, or just feel like doing a road trip.

My favourite rent a car company here is Enterprise. It is cheap, it is reliable, they have a lot of locations all over the country, and if join their rewards program, you will eventually be able to rent a car for free for a certain amount of time, depending on the amount of points you have. Most of their cars also have unlimited mileage, which is great if you are planning to cover bigger distances. They also have frequent discount on weekends, and they call that ‘weekend getaways’.

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Enterprise is one of the best car rental companies.

Turo is another way of renting a car on the cheap. In fact, it is cheaper than most ‘official’ car rental companies. Why? Simply because this is not a company who you will rent a car from, but individual people who make some extra money that way. The website is called Turo.

The catch is that most of the cars have limited mileage and if you drive more than agreed, you have to pay as much as one dollar per mile driven once you get over that limit. But I understand that - I would not want anyone to drive my own car farther than a state or two away from me. You also have to meet certain criteria to be able to rent with Turo, but it is definitely worth at least trying to sign up, even if your application will be rejected.

Accommodation

The five types of accommodation that I use most often during my travels, are the following: Couchsurfing, AirBnb, Hotels.com, booking.com and Workaway. I will briefly describe positive and negative aspects about each one.

First of all, Couchsurfing. This website allows you to stay with locals for free. Yes, for free. Sadly, some people view this site simply as a free hotel, but the spirit of Couchsurfing is more than that - it is about hanging out with locals, experiencing their culture, and in exchange sharing your travel stories or maybe cooking your hosts a meal from your home country.

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The best website for staying with locals... for free!

How does it work? You can either create a public trip on the Couchsurfing website, so potential hosts can contact you and offer you accommodation, or you can contact them and ask for a place to stay. After your stay, you are supposed to write your host a reference to tell other travellers about your experience. And this is why reading references before sending someone a request to stay is so important, especially for female travellers staying with male hosts.

The best site for booking private accommodation is definitely the infamous AirBnb, which sparked quite a lot of controversy in the past few years. The point of AirBnb is basically locals, renting out rooms (or even whole flats) for a really low price. And the price can get even lower, because if you refer your friends to AirBnb, you get some travel credit that you can use towards your next booking. Not bad, right?

The site that I just recently started using, is called Hotels.com. And why did I decide to try it? Because you get the tenth night free. Well, I have only booked five nights with Hotels.com so far, so I will let you know if a free night actually works.

My favourite site for booking hotels and hostels is definitely the Booking.com website. It displays hotels and hostels and they usually have pretty big discounts. And the best part? Cancellations are usually free!

And, last but not least, a little different type of accommodation, called Workaway. This is basically working in exchange for accommodation. For example, you help on a farm in Peru for a few hours a day and the farmer cooks you meals and lets you stay at the farm for free.

A short conclusion...

Travel can be as expensive as you make it. If you are willing to do some research, and, more important, if you are flexible with dates, you can save a fair amount of money, that you can put into savings for your next trip!

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