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October 07,2018 | 1957 2

My travel secrets / Travel Hacks

Travelling on a budget…. with limited time and making the most of it

Introduction

I started this blog for one reason and one reason only. To show people that it really is possible to travel according to your own terms, even if you think you don’t have much time or money. These are things that you only perceive as barriers but really aren’t. Managing to travel and not letting our real lives get in the way is called travelling smart. I was a medical student, 6 years of studying at university with frequent exams and no long holidays except for summer (more about my story and how Honza and I met here).

Now I’m a doctor working doctor hours… and the question I get posed to me most often is, how do I do it? How do I manage to travel so much?

Student, doctor, receptionist, lawyer, unemployed even.. no matter how broke you are. Or how busy you are… you can still see the world. Having been to 23 countries while at med school for 6 years, I’m living proof of that.

So here goes…. I’m sharing with you the travel hacks that I use in my own life. Dont take these travel secrets too lightly, they are powerful!

My foolproof tips

Be willing to go anywhere

Of course, you have your bucket list of places to go and some may be higher on the list than others. But if you are willing to go anywhere, and accept the fact that you will eventually get to go to the places higher up on your list at some point. Then it becomes very easy to travel. The complicated thing when it comes to efficient budget travelling is having fixed dates and a fixed place that you want to go to.
If you are flexible with where you want to go, you could use websites like Azair which show you the cheapest places to go within a range of dates from multiple airports as well!

Find long weekends

If you don’t have much time, your best bet is to work with the time you’ve got. If there’s a public holiday on a Friday or Monday, that’s brilliant. If not, if a holiday falls on Thursday or Tuesday, you could always find a way to take a day off.

I once travelled during the Easter holidays. I had a 10-day trip and only had to take 4 days off. How? It’s quite logical if you think about it, 2 weekends, Good Friday and Easter Monday which were public holidays, leaving on 4 working days between them. It’s called amplifying your holidays. Don’t just see the Easter weekend as a 4-day long weekend. See it for what it could be, a 10 day holiday to a great destination!

Us in Lisbon

Know when to buy

If you are planning a trip 2 or 3 months in advance, you could definitely stand to wait and watch how prices fluctuate for at least a week or two. Skyscanner and other websites as well have a good function which lets you follow how prices change. I would buy intercontinental and long-haul flights sufficiently in advance. If you know what the average prices are, it’s easy to make a quick decision and buy them as soon as the prices fall low enough when you can probably gauge that it won’t fall lower.

For inter-Europe flights, I’ve found that the rule of “the earlier the better” also applies, but not so strictly. There are many random promos and deals by budget airlines quite regularly. Find pages online and on Facebook which inform you when good deals pop up for flights leaving from your region. Some good pages for the Czech Republic and surrounding countries are Facebook pages like Akcni Letenky and Honzovy letenky.

Also, for inter-Europe travel. Definitely, don’t disregard buses. For cities ranging between 4 – 12 hours drive away from you, buses remain the cheapest possible option. Although sometimes there are some crazy flight deals as well. (I once saw Prague – Berlin for 10 euros)

But for example, between Prague and Vienna (4-hour journey), bus tickets are for around 15 euros usually. Who can say no to that?

Plan

It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? You’re going on a trip. Of course, you need to plan. But, I don’t just mean planning your accommodation, flight tickets etc.

Honza in Vienna 🙂

Predownload a map of the place of where you’re going. Bookmark the sights you want to see, places you want to go, address of your accommodation etc. I’m not asking you to plan every single second of your time. I never do. It takes the fun and spontaneity out of travelling if you follow a set plan.

However, when you visually see your bookmarks on the map (I use Google maps for this – and download the region I need offline after I’ve bookmarked my places), it makes it easier to plan your time. I end up dividing the city/country / wherever I am, into parts and exploring my bookmarks in a circle “ish” so that I also cover the whole area.

Be willing to sleep anywhere

This is only a point for budget travelers. If you’re only short on time and money isn’t an issue. Live like a king when on holiday! And please tag us in your pictures from great hotels. We can’t afford that life yet 😀

For budget travelers like us. My favourite option when I was a student was Couchsurfing. Even before I met Honza and I was travelling alone and with friends, Couchsurfing was great because of the fact that you could meet great people from those places, you get to stay for free and you also get to know some travel tips and things about the places that you are in. Which you ordinarily won’t find out if you are only around other tourists. It’s always great to get a locals perspective.

If you haven’t heard of Couchsurfing before, check out their website here. Here you can look at profiles of people willing to host travellers coming to their city. Read reviews from other travellers about them. Message them, say who you are, when you’re coming and why you would like to stay with them! Please don’t use it as free accommodation. When you use CS, your hosts really do want to get to know you, so do interact with them a bit. It is also an untold custom to take a small gift for them, something small like a typical snack or drink from your country.

Other favourite options of mine are AirBnB (where people open their homes to you like in CS, but you pay. So this you can use as a hotel, you aren’t obliged to interact with your host) or youth hostels. Or in the summer, in places that permit it, camping!

Be careful where you eat/go shopping

Fish dishes that we found in Vienna for 7 euros each

I can’t say this enough. Travelling isn’t expensive if you know how to do it. Don’t eat at a restaurant right next to a tourist attraction, or in the heart of a city. It’s obviously going to be overpriced and targetting tourists. Look at reviews and check the menus of restaurants before you go there. Some people have asked me if I ever eat at restaurants when I’m travelling on a budget, and I do. I’ve tried all the typical food of places I’ve been to. I just research it beforehand.

Before our trip to Vienna (blog will be out soon), everyone told us that Vienna is super overpriced. We found that it actually wasn’t. We read some travel guides and blogs that said the cheapest Weiner schnitzel they had was for 17 euros with a side dish. We found it for 11 euros, just around the corner from the St Stephen’s cathedral (which is the absolute heart of the tourist area) in a hidden street.

When things are legitimately overpriced for the ordinary traveller, like in Switzerland. Buy food from supermarkets which are never that expensive and make your own picnic outside. Salads, bread, cheese, fruits, and yogurts were my best friends in Switzerland.

Walk!

Walking is super nice when your travelling. Not just because it reduces your costs but because its the best way to take in the sights and truly see the place that you’re in. There’s no better way to soak in the atmosphere and vibe of a city.

However, transport passes are necessary for larger cities and if you would take public transport to get to and from your accommodation daily, you do end up using minimally 2 one way tickets each day. Take a look if a city has a 24 hour / 72-hour passes/ whatever suits your stay (most cities do).

Work!

Wait, what? I thought this was a holiday blog. Work? Yes, you read right. Its, of course, a point for the budget travelers, not the money having and time-challenged traveller. I had a few friends who worked for 2 weeks in Australia as people holding up signs that there’s construction ahead. With what they got paid for that, they managed to travel for 6 months (yup, your eyes are still not deceiving you, I did mean 6 months) in Asia! So don’t be afraid to pick up some small jobs if your travelling for longer and if your VISA / legal status in the country allows it.

And that’s it!

If something else comes into my mind. There will be a travel secrets part 2 post out of you. Or we will continue to keep you updated on our travels and how we do it on our Instagram page and Facebook (links up there)

And where do my stats stand now, you ask? I’ve been to 26 countries now and maybe over 50 cities. I only started travelling when I moved to Prague. The 6 year anniversary of which was exactly 2 days ago. So for 5.8 years of this time, I was a med student. And now I work as a doctor. If I managed it, so can you! Honza has also caught my travel bug and we are planning many more adventures together which we will definitely keep you informed on.