Travel Tips from an Expert Vagabond

There is an interesting post of 30 top budget travel tips Matthew Karsten, the expert vagabond, has learned in his three years of overseas travel (http://expertvagabond.com.)

This Matthew is not to be confused with another one, www.nomadicmatt.com, who also is a long-term traveller. (At first, I thought it was the same person under a different name, but no.) This Matthew was a photographer in Miami until three years ago when he took off for a year of travelling around the world.

He enjoyed it so much that that one year turned into three, and he is still going, in search of adventure. He says he spends $1,000 to $1,500 per month, and is able to make some money while travelling.

There are too many tips to list here, but they include things such as not taking yourself too seriously. Any traveller in a foreign country is likely to do things the locals consider weird, so don't take it personally if they laugh at you, laugh right along with them. I imagine sometimes this could be easier said than done, but it's good advice.

Also, stash cash in various places on your person and in your luggage, so that even if you suffer a robbery or your ATM card stops working because of a blackout, you will always have some of the ready. Matthew doesn't mention currency, but I assume he means U.S. dollars, still the most widely accepted currency worldwide.

It might also be a good idea to travel with some concealed gold or precious jewels. I remember reading that the Romanov women, during the Revoloution, sewed jewels into their corsets. Not sure that would work today, what with airport X-rays and such, and the fact that few people wear corsets. It didn't help them, either, but some Russians who fled at that time were able to survive because they smuggled out jewelry. Vladimir Nabokov's family was one of them.