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If you want to make your trip a successful one - follow the local inhabitants

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Travel Articles >> Travel Advice

After you have lived some months abroad, an amazing thing happens to you: your expenses on residing start reduce. It seems that all this is magic, though nothing of such kind is happening in reality. Actually here is what happens: newcomers, except for those who possess necessary means for entertainments, learn to get by with smaller quantity of money, find a place where it is possible to have a nice snack for the reasonable price. Reduction of expenses happens practically without any effort.
Certainly, you do not become a "glad-hander" in the very first day of arrival to a new place, but you shouldn’t be an ignorant tourist with your purse widely open. It is quite an easy thing to learn to imitate local inhabitants – and the fight is already half won.
*Eat there where local residents eat.
The true tourists follow this rule since the first days of their journey. It is quite interesting, but many people spending the holidays abroad for many years, have never heard about it. Too many people spend their holidays, visiting the same restaurants which hundreds of tourists have visited. The problem is that in the majority of such institutions the price is overcharged as a rule.
Besides that, relying on their reputation, you will be offered something not of the highest quality. Due to these reasons the locals avoid similar institutions.
According to the research of the Department of Labor of the USA, the food and drinks combined "eat" the most part of the budget of the traveller, rather than something else. They make 25-28 % from the cost of the whole trip. So why then eat the same monotonous food which you can try at home as well? Your gustatory receptors are also on vacation, so let them have a rest too. As a result you will eat better food and in the same time save money.
Of course, you will have to make some quite detective work. You should tear the guidebook apart, forget about advertising in magazines and rely on more reliable sources. Ask the locals questions of the following kind: “If I wish to spend 50 dollars for a good supper for two somewhere nearby, where I should go?” - Or: “Where did you last time drive the family for a supper, devoted to a special event?” Walk about, ask about such places the employees of the hotel, preliminary having specified, that you would like to have dinner there where they would go as well, instead of being obliged to have dinner being surrounded by other tourists.
When the chief-cooks and writers are asked about the most memorable supper, in their stories seldom appear restaurants for tourists and popular snack bars, they will not tell you about networks of restaurants at the roadsides of the highways as well. Instead of it they will tell you about a small French bistro in one of the back streets of Paris, about the open kitchens in the street Chyang May where the traditional Thai kitchen is prepared, or about any southern ragged the café where the barbecue is served on plastic tables and where an air conditioner would never be present. These are those places which will add a special highlight to your trip.
* Forget about renting a car
If you go to other country or in the developed cities as New York, Chicago or San Francisco, forget your conception of transportation. You will spend less money and spend better time, if you refuse the idea of travelling by your own auto.
Local means of transportation are an excellent way to see the culture.
If you sit near the people living in the country where you have arrived, you become equal with them, you see what they see. Except for few places, such as Tokyo and London, public transport is a profitable business. You can travel whole day long by the underground in Washington or New York and you will spend less money than you would have spent for the car rent. Remember, the majority of people go by bus and if you join them, you can travel cheap and with comfort. You can buy the ticket for the two-storeyed bus from London to Glasgow from 6 up to 40 dollars depending on your plan. The trip by bus from one end of South Korea to another will cost you less than 35 dollars. The bus of the higher class with three rows of seats and space for legs under a seat in Mexico City will cost you only 6-8 dollars per an hour of travel
*Keep up
There are ways to learn about the prices even before you have started your way. Look through the local press on the Internet, once you can use it. You can also receive discounts for a museum visit in local travel agencies.
One may make a small experiment when gathering abroad, and tell all his/her friends and relatives, that he/she is leaving, for example, for Paris, and for sure it will appear so, that there lives someone's friend or relative.
Of course, it does not solve all problems, but if you follow the pieces of advice given above, your trip will hit your pocket much less.

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Article Submitted On: August 25, 2007