Affordable Travel in Tough Economic Times

By Lee | June 10th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

If you’re an American who travels abroad you certainly know how diminished the value of the US Dollar has become. Additionally, you have noticed that increases in fuel costs have made airlines raise fares along with many other little annoying costs as well. However, there are some places that you can still go where you can get a decent bang for your buck. Europe, however, is not among them.

As the price of fuel is at an all time high, realize that the cost of airfare to Europe is higher than ever and as bad as we have it here in the US with gas-it is twice as expensive there at over $8.00 a gallon, so forget about hiring a car. Also, with the Euro at such a high exchange rate to the dollar; hotels, food and everything else you can imagine is way more expensive than it used to be. So what should the frugal and intrepid traveler do-go elsewhere!

My advice to Americans is always to look at Latin America. There are so many amazing places to go in South and Central America and not just in tourist meccas like Costa Rica, Belize and Brazil. Think about places like Tikal in Guatemala; the Bay Islands in Honduras; Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia; and the Atacama Desert in Chile. There is so much to do in Latin America and the prices are very affordable-even the airfares and remember to try to use your miles because you can get to South America for as little as 35,000 miles.

The other place to check out is Southeast Asia. I know the airfare will be more but you can use as little as 60,000 miles to get to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur, etc. and then it’s really cheap from there. You can fly around using Air Asia and some other Asian discount airlines and see some seriously awesome things. Eating is dirt cheap out there and the food is fantastic and of course the beaches are to die for.

The reason I am writing this today is because I am getting a lot of emails from readers asking where they can go that’s affordable and cool. Well Latin America and Southeast Asia are the places to go and yes they are safe-which is always the next question. Try something new and I promise you’ll be happy you did.