Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations

Cheap Destinations Still Cheap…Mostly

This is the fateful day when the final edit of The World’s Cheapest Destinations - 3rd Edition goes from my hard drive to the printing queue. One day later I’ll spot a typo I’m sure…

This time out, I didn’t change out any of the countries. I was close to yanking Turkey two months ago, but then their currency took a dive and things got more reasonable again. (See my interview with Tom Brosnihan on the subject.)

The other tick up in price comes via Argentina, where high inflation, increased tourism, and short-sighted goverment policies have all conspired to drive up prices. There’s a plan in place to start charging Americans, Brits, and Canadians over $100 to enter the country come January. (Actually $134 for Americans, from what I hear.) Next year tourism will drop for the first time in five years and the government will say, “Huh? How did that happen?” Then they’ll blame it on the recession in America.

I left the Czech Republic in the honorable mentions, but honestly if you get out of Prague and spend time in smaller towns instead, it’s actually as cheap or cheaper than Hungary or Romania. Plus the beer is better. (Bulgaria is still the real bargain though.)

Otherwise, while prices spiked earlier this year everywhere because of rises in food and energy prices, for the moment that pressure is off. The dollar has risen in value, which has wiped out many of the increases. For now anyway.

Where would I go right now if money were the prime consideration? Well, India and Thailand are going to be hurting for visitors for a while, so there are your opportunistic options.

But for a long multi-country trip, I would get the cheapest flight to anywhere in Central America and bum around there for a while. Then I would make my way down to Ecuador, maybe spending some time in reemerging Colombia since it’s on the way. I’d kick back in Ecuador for as long as my money held out, which would be quite a while (as long as I didn’t go to the Galapagos).