Be a Budget Traveler, Not a Cheapskate
I think there should be a fine line between being a budget traveler and a cheapskate. There's really nothing wrong with having the chance to see the world with a limited budget. But it does not mean one should go to extreme lengths to live up to this budget traveling lifestyle, to the point of harassing locals and leaving a bad impression.
Trust me, I've seen this type. One can still be respectful without looking like a total cheapskate and whiny snowflake to others, because one thing is for sure, it is totally annoying. They might not understand the language in a country but they are for sure a big topic. Have you ever met a traveler who would rather walk for miles to save a couple of pennies for a bottle of water? When water is potable, I suggest one should just try to harden up their stomach and get used to what most people drink. Have you ever met a traveler who would rather hitchhike when the bus fare only costs $3? Have you ever met a traveler from a developed country who has the face to busk on the streets of Bangkok competing with the homeless buskers? Have you ever met a traveler who would ask for a free stay and ended up being such a pain in the back?
A couple of days ago, a good friend of mine brought her Couchsurfer guest to my place to have some afternoon tea. As we sat outside, the first thing the guy did when he found out that there's wifi is to make the most of the situation by calling his friends and chatting with them nonstop in front of us. I didn't mind this for sure, wifi connection is such an important thing for budget travelers. It was heavenly whenever there was wifi at my hosts' place back in the day. However, this guy was half-listening, talking to us while looking at his screen. Don't you find that a bit rude too? He didn't even have any idea where he was at that moment, apparently, the only thing he cared for was to take advantage of what he could get for free. I didn't want to create such a big fuss about it but as the conversation went on, I found out what a jerk he really was. He whined about many things because they are 'too expensive' for him, when compared to his country, the cost of these things are just peanuts. I just couldn't believe that my friend was hosting this guy.
I could have just let it go until my friend started complaining to me about his rude behavior in her place. My friend lives with her family and this guy's behavior had become really annoying eventually. But it is really hard to know the real person by just reading the profile and past positive references. Most of the time you get really nice and respectful travelers, but if you're unlucky you get this kind of entitled traveler. The worst thing he did to my friend was that he automatically assumed he could extend his stay and even left his stuff at her place. I couldn't make this thing totally acceptable anymore so I gave him a negative reference on Couchsurfing.
I don't care where you are from, you will hear what you need to hear from me. And if someone needs to be called out, I will not hesitate to do so. So I wrote the truth on his reference but instead of apologizing for his rude behavior, he just defended himself. I guess he is not a bad person, just totally unaware and full of shit. But I realize that it pays to have a 'good judgment' of people in order to protect yourselves from the users and abusers in this world.
The rise of cheapskate travelers is quite alarming actually. Some of them whine about the price of food when they don't really mind spending for a fancy latte and muffin in their own countries. The locals get paid $400 a month and they don't whine paying for stuff. Some travelers still have the nerve to haggle with the old lady selling fruits, why? Afraid of getting ripped off? But their system has been ripping them off all their lives, not to mention ripping the poor countries off so they can go back in the comfort of their homes. Have a think sometimes, hey!
People work hard everywhere in this world and one is not entitled to free things. But if you are treated nicely, then just be grateful. But know that it is not always going to be the same, things change constantly when you travel. Don't expect that another country is the same or that the people are the same. I really lose my patience whenever I hear some travelers who have the habit of comparing countries in terms of economy and how come these places are not adjusted to their travel budget (insert aggressive eye roll). Don't overstay your welcome. This saying is true and very applicable as you travel. Never use and abuse the kindness of people as they have had enough. Don't repeat the history through this ridiculous cheapskate traveler behavior. If you are about to travel the world with your limited budget, just make sure there's still some room for self-respect and dignity.
I think you will find that more often with a couchsurfer, because right off the bat, they are already trying to get something for nothing. If that is the mode of operation, it will likely apply to other aspects of their lifestyle / travel style.
I think the whole idea of couchsurfing is that you're supposed to be more integrated into the culture, and exchange a place to stay for stories/companionship, but I imagine lots of people use it as a free hotel. (I've never couchsurfed myself but had a few people stay over.)
I've also often heard anecdotes that people who get things for free tend to be more demanding than people who pay for them! I don't know why this is. But I imagine that might hold true for couchsufers as well.
It is not actually trying to get something for nothing all the time, there are many things you can do in exchange, cook your dish, language exchange, help out etc. At least there are people who have the sensitivity to do those things. But yeah, it is hard to be a host.
And sometimes you run across diabolic travelers like me! I smoke all your weed, eat all your Cheetos, donuts, and M&M's while drowning myself in your finest 12-year-old scotch talking long distance to my 666 thousand legions of buddies! All this awesomeness is hard o resist but the icing on the cake so to speak is having my own personal maid as a host:D
Unless we are friends of course lol.
In truth, I'm a perfect little angel when I stay in other peoples homes:)
That is a great article! Everyone should read it. Lots of lesson to take for not just traveler, for almost everyone. Just few people I have known who cares about their behavior when the topic is about or related to money. Thanks for sharing. Upvoted, followed and resteemed happily. Hugs from Spain.
Thanks for dropping by!
Poverty is an attitude. So is wealth. I know wealthy people who think they don't have enough to live a good life and I've met people with no shoes who smile and sing whenever they have the chance.
I don't have a problem with the budget traveler who would rather walk a couple of miles to get a free drink of water rather than buy some because it's convenient. In some ways I respect them more and it's been my personal experience that the more difficult route is often the more enjoyable.
I've mentioned to you before that in most third-world countries, if someone is a traveler of any sort they are an elite to the locals who work all day and often go to sleep hungry because they didn't make enough money that day to buy food. If someone is hitching around the world with $500 in their pocket they already have amassed more money at one time than that poor person ever will in their entire life. Of course they are going to try to get as much out of the traveler as they can in any sort of negotiation. Why wouldn't they? One can't fault them for that.
It's been my experience that in some countries if one doesn't negotiate, one loses the respect of the person they are negotiating with. Paying full price is an insult since the trader would never pay what they are asking the tourist to pay even if they could. It shows that not only is the traveler wealthy, he has no discrimination nor does he need to be careful with his money. He's throwing his wealth in their face.
I've bargained hard for items to the point where we are splitting hairs over the price and it gets so ridiculous that we both begin to laugh. I've made some good friends that way and will always bring a customer their way whenever I can.
This attitude was the basis for the term "Ugly American," back in the 40's and 50's when tourism got going. Now it's ugly Brit, German, Norwegian, Chinaman, Jap, Korean and especially Canadian, Austrailian and American, basically any ignorant elite with enough money to travel to places where poor people struggle to survive. That is why the locals in resort cities often hate tourists, even though they derive their livelihood from them. It's the arrogance and stupidity of the tourist who feels he is being taken advantage of by the locals when he is the one driving prices up beyond what the locals can afford.
In my youth I traveled on a shoestring, staying in flop houses and often simply finding a sheltering bush under which to unroll my sleeping bag. I hitched or traveled on 2nd class buses. But I realized very early on that I was an elite and I learned to accept that. While I never abused that privilege, I also stood up for myself in any negotiations and didn't berate the individual who tried to get what he could from me. That was his right and I honored it.
The opulence of the first world has turned out a whole new crop of young elites, trust fund kids and twenty-something adolescents overflowing with undeserved self-esteem and privilege who trammel the globe as tourists disguised as travelers. They are often abrasive and abusive and above-all-else, whiny. Hopefully, travel will open their eyes as it did mine and they will mature into individuals who realize that the world is not just their oyster. While they blithely gorge, with their silver spoons, the fruits of the planet, perhaps they'll realize, like you have that, others are barely surviving and, like you, will develop some maturity.
Good post.
Haggling requires some judgment and sensitivity. And even though it is hard for these travelers - empathy is also needed. I don't think I have the nerve to haggle with poor people selling stuff on the street for a living. These travelers don't even haggle when they shop in their fancy shopping places back in their home countries. It has been annoying for such a long time that it already makes my blood boil whenever I see this type of traveler near me.
The cheapness attitude has its limits and one should know when it is not appropriate to demand and haggle. Flaunting the white privilege is enough but they have no idea since they don't really get the perspective of locals. Blame the white domination and media for that.
Haggling does take some skill and the approach to it is all important. Westerners are used to fixed prices where you grab something off a shelf and take it to the checkout counter. Haggling is like trading SBDs for Steem in the coin market. You don't pay the ask price but you place a bid somewhere below it.
Street hagglers (unless they are children selling Chicklets) always ask more than what they are willing to accept, double in some cases. For me, haggling is part of the cultural immersion I seek when I travel. I have no desire to spend a couple grand to stay at the Marriot, eat in the Marriot restaurant, swim in the Marriot pool or lie on the beach in front of the hotel. I'd rather stay home.
Certainly if one approachs merchants with anger and accuse them of "ripping you off" then one is presenting an ugly face that becomes how locals view tourists. Those few bad apples spoil it for the rest of us and why I almost always avoid tourist magnets and go where tourists seldom go where the locals are far more friendly.
I am no fan of Western culture, but I urge you to examine the "white privilege" meme and recognize it for what it is, a racist brainworm inserted into your skull to foster racial tension, a divide and conquer technique to keep the masses fighting amongst themselves instead of rising up against their oppressors.
I've met plenty of ugly Japanese, East Indian, Arab and even Mexican tourists, on my travels. What you are really referring to is "wealth privilege." People who have money think they are better than people who don't and therefore deserve more respect, even if that money was handed to them on a silver platter. Snowflakes and gen-xers are by far the worst today, but I've met plenty of baby-boomers that also need a spanking and to be sent to their rooms. It's rapidly becoming "Chinese privilege" anyway.
It is not just a meme, people are in denial of the 'white privilege' because the truth will piss them off and their hardships might mean nothing to others. People have survived because of their lack of guilt and empathy. They live by denying the reality, denying that racial inequality does not exist, especially if they have the racial advantage. And by making other people feel bad so they feel better about themselves. And most people have survived by accepting the harsh truth. And one thing is for sure, I'm not going to deny the existence of 'white privilege', it is real and it is happening. Do you still want me to renumerate some examples based on other people's perspective? I'm not going to deny the reality and no strangers online, not even people in real life could ever convince me to deny the truth. Nobody can tell me how to think. The divide has existed for a long time and as I get older, I surely understand very well the intense hatred, violence and lack of trust everywhere. And of course, they won't tell you 'those things'. I'd rather accept the inconvenient truth than fall for their psychopathic tactics. I'd rather know the reality than fall for what the deniers instill in other people's minds (for the deniers' own benefit). People have been made to be gullible so other people can live off them. The deniers taught people how to be weak. I guess you got to be someone else for you to understand that. Like what do we know about oppression and injustice anyway? What do we know about being other people? We only have opinion but no clue. If true freedom requires bloodbath and further divide, so be it. I don't care. I'd probably join the war if I have to lol. Gosh, that's how bad it is you have no idea. Whether you like it or not, I found out that as I traveled, the majority of population (non white) think like me. What they didn't tell you!
I also urge you to examine and understand other people's perspective and what brought them to think that way. Instead of giving unsolicited advice, self-righteous and superior perspective. Or as if you understand their hardships very well. Even if it's really hard for you because you have no idea what it's like or what people have gone through for centuries. Comparing your hardships to theirs is nothing, please. I don't know why some people keep on doing that on my posts as if the hardships are comparable and the same (I've already unfollowed some simply because I have no time and patience to prove my point to those who don't get it). But I totally understand that it is due to the white perspective domination here on Steemit, sigh. But understanding is all one can do instead of being defensive and in denial.
Didn't mean to push any buttons. Sorry. I guess meme wasn't the proper term. I'm not in denial of so called "white" privilege. That phenomenon, the attitude that those in control should continue to be in control at the expense of everyone else is definitely alive and well in the world. I just think that continuing to insist that it is entirely racial creates hatred against innocent people who don't support that agenda at all.
Certainly, the white races are responsible for it. White barbarians had pretty much conquered Western Europe by the end of the 13th century. They then established trade routes, built ships and proceeded to conquer the rest of the world, destroying local cultures to instill and enforce their own and their adopted Semitic cult of Catholicism. Whites certainly believed themselves to be superior in every way and also believed that heathens were animals one could slaughter with the blessings of God. The world was pretty much conquered by the whites by the end of the 19th century via opium wars, technological superiority and genocide. The 21st century is just the mop-up stage in world conquest.
No question that so called "white" privilege was instigated by the white races either, but I don't know if you've noticed yet, but the white race is a dying out race and yet the phenomenon you refer to as "white" privilege is still expanding to every corner of the globe. It's has become cultural, political and economic and it's racial overtones are dying out.
Let me give you another example. Right now I live in an area that has several large American Indian reservations. The inhabitants refer to themselves as Indians and the whites around them consider them Indians. They have casinos, get government assistance and special rights. But the thing is that the last full blooded Kumeyaay died out in the 1930s. Most of these "Indians" don't even have a full-blooded grandparent and have surnames names like Wieschadel and Gomez. They're a mixed-race people and not Indians at all but they have so-called Indian privilege.
Up in Canada it's the same thing. "First Nations" people, who are all of mixed race have ancestral rights to fish, require no licenses, can use gill nets, have no limits and fish whenever and wherever they please. They quite often snag salmon and then go sell them in town for beer money. The the non-Indian people have to pay fees, are severely restricted in not only the way they catch fish but when and how many they are allowed. Canada brutally oppressed the natives up until quite recently, but now proudly proclaims any absence of racial discrimination, but seems to ignore this bit of racial favoritism. That's why I pay no attention to those racist laws. I'm a native too.
I don't wish to argue whether the aboriginals of Turtle Island should be compensated for the pain inflicted upon them by their conquerors. I think the conquerors should give it all back, but that's fuel for a different discussion.
I've already stated that I know I'm an elite, that I can travel the world when most of the world is struggling to survive. The average street person in the US is far better off than most in the third world. I share your indignation at their plight and their slavery to a system they have no way of changing peacefully. I'm with you on that. I also know that nothing in my life could compare with the suffering of the poor in third-world countries. I was lucky to be born inside the homeland of the empire. Had I been born 14 miles south, I would be a Mexican. There is no comparison.
My only concern is that you examine the racist overtone of the term white privilege and realize it is every bit as harmful as Hitler's insistence that Jews were responsible for all the problems in the world. It's a loaded term used to instill racial hatred, even self-loathing if you are white and use it. The very people you wish to depose are the ones who thought that term up. It's not an innocent term. The true elites of the world employ word smiths to further their divide and conquer agenda. They are the ones who have changed "global warming" to "climate change" and "pro-abortion" to "pro choice." (and please don't think that I'm trying to promote or deride either of those two ideas, I'm simply using them as examples that powerful forces never cease the quest to control people's minds through wording and memes.)
There are places that I cannot go because the people there look at my skin color and want to kill me. I've been threatened and I've been chased and fortunately I've always managed to escape. They don't know me. They make an incorrect assumption based on their idea of history, on conjecture, and then link that to the way I look. I never want to promote that sort of thing.
I'm not trying to get you to change your mind, either. I think our opinions about the world are pretty close. I just want you to think about the power of the written word and realize that you might be innocently promoting something that you are totally against simply by using the wrong wording. I think we're both trying to open minds here.
I will freely use 'white privilege' term when I see it 'appropriate' or to make people in real life aware. This is the right term that just says it all. Just as I see every day how people freely use other terms to refer to the 'majority' of people. And everyone's fine with it. The environment just conditioned the white people that they are prone to not getting hurt. But it is not true. Or I'll just use the term to just shock those who are visiting who think we know nothing about them. Make them get off their uppity high horses from time to time or something. Recognize their BS. Well as they say 'know thy enemy'.
If you feel that it will increase awareness, I'm all for it. However, it seems to me that the term will have little effect on those who exhibit white privilege while instilling racial hatred in underprivileged non-whites. It's your call. Let me know how it goes.
So easy for you to be idealistic, reminds me of my youth. I wonder how you'd be like when you have this feeling. But you're lucky you never have to experience it. Here's for you.
Yeah, I saw some travelers from some European countries in Asia and they were so miserly. ..I mean the cost of living in Europe is way higher than in Asia so if they can afford to be a schengen resident, they certainly can afford to treval asia ...but they always consider locals as rip offs..
E.g. cost of a whole day healthy meal in my contry is around 10$, and they still consider it as if they are being ripped off.they never mind paying 50$ for a coffee and a muffin when sitting in a 5 star hotel like Pearl Continental. ..
No offence to anybody!!!I am not speaking of all tourists, some are actually really nice and generous. .
Yeah, some travelers do it everywhere actually. But I think they should just know when it is not appropriate to haggle and complain.
Not sure if I can agree with this though. Being a European resident doesn't mean that we pay $50 for a coffee and a muffin. I still live at home and I saved up for a year to travel through Asia and NZ, but it's not enough to cover my entire trip and hence am on a budget.
I sometimes get the feeling that it is assumed that Europeans traveling through Asia are rich. I wish they were, lol. I'd won't be sleeping in hostels then!
Though I still am lazy and have some basic 'requirements'. I like to have a local sim, a nice bed, not live on the cheapest snacks on the block. And hell no I am not walking 2 hours - I will just take an Uber. I do not couchsurf and rather sit in hostels or a hotel room for similar costs. When I haggle (eh Tuktuks in Bangkok), I compare to other local prices and know I'd probably pay more than the local, but things are how they are. I rather eat streetfood rather at restaurants, cause it saves me (right now in Malaysia) 15 RM for a dish. And I can eat a lot extra if I have a spare 15RM.
Well if not rich, just better opportunities in life. The white privilege. :)
Yeah we are speaking in relative terms here...
e.g. living standards in Europe are far higher than in Asia...e.g. Per capita income of the European countries is yet way higher than Asian...(when I speak of Asia I mean south Asia, not the Arabs or Japs)
@sjennon again I declare that I meant no disrespect...
And you are right that most Europeans tourist are perceived as rich here, for obvious reasons..
I don't even know how one is even enjoying their travels when they live as such. I mean a person needs some kind of comfort right?
I am traveling for the experience, and I don't want to spend half a day walking to save on a bottle of water - it's simply not worth my time or energy lol.
It was an interesting read for sure. Really puts things in perspective and I am happy to say that I don't identify with a cheapskate, hehe
I agree!
It sounds like this guy had pretty poor manners. Manners make the man, so they say...
Whether you're traveling, or visiting a friend, or dining in a restaurant, how you conduct yourself says a lot about yourself. I find rude, demanding, or otherwise obnoxious people to simply possess poor manners. Some level of self-awareness is necessary to possess manners, and it can go a long way towards maintaining, improving, or otherwise alienating your friends, acquaintances, or simply those in proximity to you.
Sorry you had to endure this callous person, particularly in your own home. That is the worst.
Oh, no worries. I told my friends not to bring anyone to my place unless I get to meet them outside or see their profiles first. It saves me a lot of disappointment.
i feel this post on many levels. its is understandable to want to find good deals for sure...and honestly travel aint cheap anymore....but rude fucks can get fucked. the reality is that the market price forms around the market...so you want cheaper...go to some place not developed, live in a hut and eat what the locals eat. show up in a place serving western food with flush toilets...well....suck it up... you want your comforts...pay the the price. want to really travel and adapt and embed in local culture...you will find you budget travel then.
but always respect...first and foremost...wherever you are.
In some places, you get what you paid for. And rude people, always ask for more. If it's free, don't complain anymore.
Wow, I'm sad to hear this is an actual thing that happens.
I couldn't believe that it happens too.
Totally agree! One should aspire to be the fashionably budget traveler :) better yet, work as a digital nomad - earn money while traveling and support the local communities in the process by spending some money!
True that!