How to travel for less then $100 a month

Unless you plan to sell your organs, or have a sustainable income while travelling, learning to travel cheap is a valuable skill that can help you extend your travel for far longer then you imagined.

The magic keyword here is volunteering. I volunteered in a hostel in South Taiwan for a month, spending less then $70, volunteering 20 hours per week and spending my free time surfing, and hitchhiking my way through Taiwan. See my articles “Top 5 tips for hitchhiking in Taiwan” and “Top 3 hitchhiking experiences in Taiwan“.

As you might imagine, you save allot of money when you don’t have to pay for accommodation. But it doesn’t stop there, as many volunteering jobs come with extra perks. For example, my hostel provided free surfboards, bicycles, all sorts of discounts on food and drinks, and some lunchmoney for every day you volunteer. Read more about volunteering in “Travel cheap, volunteer your way through the world“.

To gain a better understanding of your expected spending, please consider this expense chart from my favourite money tracker, Money Lover.

Generated using money tracking application, Money Lover.

This chart displays spendings from my month of volunteering in Taiwan. After deducting lunchmoney, expenses came down to $67. Here’s a breakdown of my spendings:

• Food, 86%: – $113
• Travel, 9%: – $11
• Medicine, 5%: – $8 

Does this mean volunteering is all you need to do? Of course not. You also need to be quick on your feet and explore your local surroundings to find the best cheap eats and develop a general mindset for sustainable travel.

Final note: If you pride yourself on consuming the most alcohol every night you won’t be able to reproduce these numbers, but there is plenty of room for fun and ample opportunity to apply this style of travel to fit your needs.

 

Top 5 tips for hitchhiking in Taiwan

The road stretched out, leaving the city, and into the country side. The stores around me were busy, it was around 12 PM that I found my self on the side of the road holding a sign where my hostel owner had written “Kaohsiung” on it in Chinese. A town a 130 KM away, I would get there by hitchhiking, and it took me a mere 4 hours.

Before Taiwan I had never hitchhiked in my life and the very thought of it made my stomach turn. But my fears melted away like snow on a sunny day. Let me tell you why, in my top 5 tips for hitchhiking. These tips will help you make your way around Taiwan, and can be applied to almost every country.

• Don’t be afraid, some one will take you

The exact words my hostel manager said where “Some one will take you.“, and it’s true. If you follow these tips, then you are guaranteed to get picked up.

• Pick a spot where cars have room to pull over, or frequently stop

Pick a road that drivers are likely to take when driving to your destination. Do some research, and find it before you head out. Extra points if you find a spot on your selected road near a place where people tend to stop, like parking lots, traffic lights, gas stations or convenience stores.

• Look like someone you would pick up

Look friendly and smile, would you pick up a grouch? I wouldn’t and neither would you. I sometimes carry my travel guitar just to improve the likeability factor.

• A sign is not mandatory, but it helps

A sign can be anything, as long as it conveys your message. I generally go for a simple cardboard sign the size of a A3 paper with my destination in the local language. If you don’t know how to write it, ask someone to do it for you.

Bonus tip: Far away destinations can scare of drivers, consider writing just the word “north”, “south”, “west” or “east”.

• Learn the correct hitchhiking gesture, have patience and be humble

In Taiwan, the general gesture of stretching your arm in front of you, and pointing your thumb upwards, is all you need. Not all cultures recognise this gesture, so research in advance. Now that we have that covered, lets talk about attitude.

Sometimes it’s the first car that passes, other times it takes a while. This is in my opinion the hardest to master while hitchhiking. Learn to accept rejection and keep smiling. On of the best things for me personally, was to hitchhike with a friend, so you can share the rejection. You’ll usually end up laughing it off.

Whats your favorite way to hitchhike? Lets us know in the comment section!