Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Cheap Travel Destinations for Escaping the Cold

I don’t know about where you live, but it is already way too cold where I am. I escaped to Florida last week to visit some relatives, but the endless strip malls and boring housing developments dulled the uplifting effect of the sun and palm trees.

For those who long for a little excitement and verve with their warm weather getaway, here’s an article I got quoted in a few times for Forbes: Affordable Places to Escape the Cold.

Overall, there are two strategies presented. Mine is to head to a cheap country where the weather is warm (or downright hot) all the time: Panama, Honduras, the less crowded beaches of Mexico. As noted in Traveler’s Tool Kit: Mexico and Central America, this region is easy to get to, flights aren’t too outrageous, and there’s no jet lag. Once you land, your dollars go far no matter what’s happening in the international currency markets. You could add Guatemala and Nicaragua to that list as well.

The other strategy put forth by some other experts in the article is a contrarian travel plan: take advantage of a slump in business to score a good deal. Right now, that means Hawaii, Orlando, and Vegas. Those destinations are set up to host a bazillion visitors at a time, so when business drops by 10 or 20 percent, you’re talking thousands of empty rooms and restaurant rooms to fill. Panic sets in and sweet deals abound. At this point you should be able to get a free extra night thrown in, spa treatments, meal credits, whatever you want to go after—and a discount on top. Airfares are coming back down too all over.

If you still have money and a job this winter, you’re back in the driver’s seat again. Don’t pay list price for travel. There are plenty of deals waiting to be plucked.

(Good God—it just started snowing outside my window. Come on, I live in the South! Take your Great Lakes cold front back up north where it belongs!)

Calculated Risk

Many people don’t travel because they’re scared. They’re scared of the great unknown. Of places that are unfamiliar, filled with people that take some effort to understand. They’re scared of pickpockets, of muggers, of bombs, of rifle-toting madmen.

Unfortunately, staying home won’t eliminate those risks.

The news coming from Mumbai is horrible, it’s shocking, and it makes most anyone with a pulse a bit afraid. That’s the whole purpose of “terrorism”: to inspire terror.

Most Muslim terrorists want to eliminate progress and turn back the clock to a time when women knew their place or were stoned if they didn’t. To a time when tribal desert leaders with the right lineage made all the rules and religious men held all the power. A time when progress was measured by the number of camels in a herd. So they don’t want to see the effects of free thought, free movement, or anything else that complicates their narrow views. They target the heretics and if hundreds of people get killed in the crossfire, too bad. They’re branded as fanatics, but when there are this many fanatics thinking murder is okay, how do you prevent it without drastic profiling?

Also, how do you decide where to live, or where to travel? You can’t just avoid places where “the bad people live.” Targets shift and are random. If it’s not the Muslim terrorists getting you in Morocco, England, Spain, Bali, New York, or Mumbai, it may be a disturbed college student with a gun in Finland or a crazy churchgoer in America deciding to take out a congregation. It may be a gang war gone amok in St. Louis or drug cartel shootout in Mexico. Watch your local news each night for a week and you’ll have plenty to add to this list.

India’s tourism will drop through the floor for a while, then it will come back. Just as it has come back in England, Spain, Egypt, and Bali. Because thankfully, the terrorists never win a lasting victory. Those decadent tourists and business travelers just delay their trip or travel elsewhere. There’s temporary pain—and a lot of senseless loss of life—but in the end nothing really gets accomplished unless they get a thrill out of seeing more security guards and seeing us take off our shoes at the airport. Most of us will keep traveling.

We’ll look at the odds, take a calculated risk, and see that going abroad isn’t really more risky than driving to work each day, working at Wal-mart, living near a river or ocean, or living near a forest in California.

P.S. - According to this New York Times story, Americans and Brits were not targeted in the attacks as was widely reported in the news. Far more Indians died than foreigners and it appears that the attackers were pure cold-blooded killers, shooting the elderly and children as well. Is there a separate level of Hell for these types?

Traveling with Tykes Resources

A while back I reviewed The Rough Guide to Travel with Babies and Young Children. A new one by author Shelly Rivoli goes even deeper. Travels with Baby is subtitled “The ultimate guide for planning trips with babies, toddlers, and preschool-age children.

As someone who got his daughter a passport when she was three, I’m all for taking the little one on trips. It can be a royal pain though. The less they weigh, the more stuff you have to take along. It can seem daunting to go from someone who packs light to a parent trying to get through security with a stroller and three extra bags of bottles and diapers. This book helps you navigate all that, with chapters on every possible situation and means of transit. There are sections on trips by plane, train, and automobile, as well as cruise ship and RV. While the Rough Guides book was aimed more at intrepid adventurers who may be traveling for weeks or months, Travels with Baby paints with a wider brush, with info for every type of vacationer.

This exhaustive guide even lays out the various airline fees and cruise ship offerings for child care, which means it’s going to get out of date sooner rather than later. Hopefully it will get regular updates as the years go by.

Most of it is more timeless though, with information on health, safety, comfort, and how to pack well with a child along. If you’re a new parent or are looking for a gift for one, this book will be a worthwhile investment. See more about it at the Travels with Baby website.

While we’re on the subject, here’s a blog post with pictures on flying across an ocean with toddlers. And another on figuring out the rules, considerations, and fares when flying with your little one at different ages.

If you’re a traveling parent, here are two good blogs to follow: Traveling Mamas and the Family Travel Logue.

What the &%#$?! Turkey Edition

Welcome to the first installment of what will probably be a multi-part series in these crazy times. Really, what the bajeezus is going on in Turkey? To clue us in, I invited the main authority on travel in Turkey, Tom Brosnihan. Back when I first set foot in Istanbul and lived there for a while teaching English, Tom was the Lonely Planet Turkey author for this country. See his full bio here, but I can say with full confidence that his Turkey Travel Planner site is the place you want to land if you are heading to this interesting destination in the near future.

I have covered Turkey in three editions of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, but this past summer people were telling me the country had gotten almost as expensive as Western Europe. What happened?
Turkey has a dynamic, booming economy and burgeoning, young—and shopping-happy—population. It’s perfect for investment. Capital from the worldwide money bubble flooded in, investments were made in all sorts of businesses, the government went easy on taxes (and ran up a huge deficit), and everybody had money in their pockets. The New Turkish Lira soared to unprecedented heights. (Many economically-savvy Turks knew it was highly overvalued, by the way.)

This followed Turkey’s ascension, during the past few years, into the ranks of the world’s top ten travel destinations (it’s about No. 7). For travelers, this means that there are lots of people—about 20 million by last count—competing for those hotel rooms, restaurant meals, airline flights, villas near the beach, and all other travel services. It was a seller’s market, so sellers raised prices, and overall a visit to Istanbul cost about the same as a visit to a major city in Europe or North America.

We Americans seem to be getting some relief now though as the currency has dropped by a third against the dollar. Why has the new Turkish lira dropped more than most other currencies, including the euro?
The worldwide capital bubble burst, starting with the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the USA. Much of the “excess” capital immediately flooded back out of Turkey to shore up the balance sheets of the lenders. Everybody bought dollars as a “safe haven” in troubled times.The Turkish Lira sank like a stone, losing more than 45% of its value in a matter of two months. Turkey returned to the ranks of the bargain travel destinations—at least for services priced in Turkish liras.

However, many of the major travel services in Turkey are priced in US dollars or euros, not in YTL. (Travel businesses learned a long time ago to mistrust the long-term solidity of the lira.) During the recent boom, these businesses actually suffered: although they took payment in strong currencies, they had to pay their expenses (overhead, rent, staff, equipment, loans, etc.) in overpriced Turkish liras, so their costs were extraordinarily high. Some good companies did a lot of business, but barely broke even.

With the fall in the value of the lira, Turkey should again be among the best values for travel worldwide. Services priced in liras will be inexpensive: restaurant meals; inexpensive hotels and hostels; bus, train and plane tickets; market goods, etc. Those offering goods and services priced in dollars or euros, such as moderate to expensive hotels, rental cars, tours, etc., can now afford to lower their prices, and they should.

OK, I’m on a backpacker budget and I want to spend three or four weeks traveling around Turkey. Besides avoiding July and August, what would you advise?
Actually, the busiest month for foreign visitors seems to be May these days. No surprise! It’s the best time to travel in Turkey: long sunny days, little rain, warming waters on the beaches, moderate air temperatures, and fewer Turkish-family tourists competing for travel services because schools are still in session. July and August are busy with Turkish tourists and Europeans. October is also busy with foreigners, though the days are shorter. Istanbul now has a 12-month tourism season. January and February can be dreary, but with a little luck, every other month can be a good one for visiting Turkey.

Travel advice? HAGGLE! If a price seems high to you, suggest a discount. All Turks are familiar with the concept (this is the home of the Grand Bazaar, after all). No need to go crazy with haggling, but because of current economic conditions, prices should go down. If they don’t, help them to go down by requesting a discount.

What’s the most worthwhile splurge?

Turkey has lots of spectacular adventures that cost laughably small amounts. You can cruise the Bosphorus in Istanbul for a full day for around US$12. You can take a comfortable overnight sleeper train from Istanbul to Ankara for US$30 per person, double.

But the most worthwhile splurge has to be a flight in a hot-air balloon over Cappadocia. It’s the most visually striking region for ballooning anywhere in the world. It is a splurge—it’s not cheap—but how many extraordinarily memorable experiences are there in life that you can actually buy?

Few. Very few.

The New “One-third” Currency Drop Club

Most investors have seen their retirement funds plummet by a third this year, but there’s a nice way to ease that pain: go traveling where your dollars have risen in value by an equal amount.

My latest Tripso column is a rundown on spots where the greenback is up by 30% or more this year and it’s a nice list. In some cases, we’re talking about countries that had gotten surprisingly expensive in relation to their intrinsic relative value (compared to say, most of Latin America or Southeast Asia) and have dropped back down to earth. In other cases it’s just an attractive travel destination suddenly on sale.

The number of countries joining this list is now in the double digits. Plenty more are down by a fourth. Read it all here: On your next vacation, head to a “one-third club” country to save money. Here’s the MSNBC version.

(Hint—the famous hot outdoor bathing pool pictured here is in one of the destinations.)