The satisfaction of travelling on a shoestring budget

WHENEVER anyone asks me why I still travel on a shoestring at the ripe old age of 38, I usually tell them about the time I learned how to play the bagpipes in Havana.

Granted, I could probably relate a more typical story about the joys of budget travel; but when I mention learning the bagpipes in Cuba it sounds like I'm going to tell a joke, and people like jokes.

The thing is, there's no punch line. My encounter with Cuban bagpipers wasn't memorable for its mere quirkiness, it was memorable because it illustrates how travelling on the cheap can offer you windows into a culture that go beyond the caricatured stereotype of what a place is supposed to be like.

The travel caricature of Havana, of course, is an elegantly aged vision of cigars and classic cars, sun and salsa, communist slogans and café con leche. To actualise this vision, many upscale tourists head for the US$120-a-night Hotel Nacional, a classic, mafia-era facility that features US$8 mojitos and a lovely terrace looking out over the Maleco{aac}n and the Straits of Florida. Unfortunately, most Cubans don't have access to the Hotel Nacional, and, as is the case with luxury hotels in many parts of the world, it tends to create a travel experience based more on the idea of how the city should be than how the city is.

I spent my nights in Cuba just up the street from the Hotel Nacional, shelling out just US$15 a night to sleep at a casa particulare homestay in Havana's leafy Vedado district. In the mornings I would have coffee with my host family and practise my Spanish; in the evenings we'd watch the state-run TV station, trying to spot bits of real news through the haze of official propaganda.

My host family cheerfully introduced me to various friends and neighbours, and within a few days my little social network had offered me access to underground poetry readings, pickup baseball games, and, on one fateful afternoon, a bagpipe performance at the Asturian Federation in central Havana.

Where I come from in the US, bagpipes are the pastime of earnest, middle-aged men with potbellies and Scottish surnames. In Havana, bagpipes are the passion of wicked-smart twenty-something Havana University graduates with a love of music as deep and soulful as anyone portrayed in The Buena Vista Social Club. When I befriended those hipster kids and began to learn how to play the gaita (an Asturian bagpipe with a single drone pipe), I discovered a side of Havana that was as authentically a part of Cuba as baseball and rumba. Like the tourists in the Hotel Nacional, I still had plenty of access to son, cigars and salsa, but I also got to see a side of Havana that revealed the complexity of the city and its subcultures.

And shoestring travel is not just for long trips. Last summer, I travelled to the Czech Republic with my parents. We could have easily splurged on expensive hotels and guided tours during our time in Prague, but instead we bought a three-day tram-pass and checked into a hostel in the city's suburban Vinohrady district. Eventhough my parents are in their 60s, the youthful backpackers staying at the hostel treated them as one of their own, and offered travel advice on a variety of topics.

We ended up spending three days exploring the city on foot and by public transport. We stumbled across standard sights like Stare Mesto and the Charles bridge, of course, but we also happened upon children's school-jazz performances and a Czech Corvette-club rally. When we stopped into a random pub and used improvised hand signals to order Plzensky Prazdroj and knedliky, we felt as if we were the very first outsiders to discover the joys of Czech beer and dumplings.

If it sounds to you like I'm an ageing backpacker who never quite grew out of his shoestring ways, you'd be exactly right. In many ways, my travel sensibilities have grown out of a journey I took 10 years ago, when I quit my job as an English teacher and took a journey across Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I probably had enough money saved up to invest in a three-month trip.

As it turned out, I learned ways to stretch my travel budget into a life-enriching 30-month sojourn, and in all those months of travel, my day-to-day costs were significantly cheaper than day-to-day life would have cost me back in the US. The secret to my extraordinary thrift was neither secret nor extraordinary: like many generations of backpackers and shoestring travellers before me, I was able to make my modest savings last by slowing down and forgoing a few comforts as I travelled.

Instead of luxury hotels, I slept in clean, basic hotels, hostels and guesthouses. Instead of dining at fancy restaurants, I ate food from street vendors and local cafeterias. Occasionally, I travelled on foot, slept out under the stars, and dined for free at the stubborn insistence of local hosts. In what eventually amounted to over two years of travel, my lodging averaged out to just under US$5 a night, my meals cost well under US$1 a plate, and my total expenses rarely exceeded US$1,000 a month.

Instead of investing my travel budget in luxuries and amenities, I invested it in more travel time, and it never failed to pay off in amazing experiences.

Perhaps my favourite budget destination in the world is Bangkok. The city may be chaotic, traffic-snarled and incomprehensible, but it never fails to amaze me. My favourite place to crash is the Atlanta Hotel, a curious little US$15-a-night gem (complete with a courtyard swimming pool and an art-deco lobby) off on Sukhumvit Road.

Sukhumvit Road could pass for a westernised strip of air-conditioned shopping malls and office buildings, but the area wears its globalisation in a distinctively Thai way. Sure, there are McDonalds and Starbuck franchises, but there are also street vendors serving paad thai, fresh pineapple and grilled scorpion on a stick for pennies a serving.

Ultimately, the charm of budget travel has always been less about saving money than making the most of my time on the road. Freed from a rigid, expense-laden itinerary, I'm more likely to be spontaneous, embrace serendipity and enjoy each moment of my journey.

This notion of spending less and experiencing more holds true regardless of economic conditions, but in a time of global recession it makes even more urgent sense, not just for holidays, but for life in general.

The Observer