Hidden costs of travel

When I planned my trip around the world I did my best to budget for the trip. Talking to friends, travel guides and the internet allowed me to check out the costs of flights, accomodation, food and then I added an extra allowance for trips and luxuries and figured out how much I thought I would spend, but my experience travelling has taught me that these were all pie in the sky prices are are not to be counted upon.

One of the big pulls of visiting further afield places is the lure of the inexpensive costs of foreign countries, and knowing that countries in the Orient, Africa and South America are considered by western standards to be poor tricked me into thinking that it therefore follows that it should be cheap to travel there, but this has rarely been the case.

True it is cheaper than travelling through countries like Australia, the USA or central Europe but cheaper does not mean cheap, and I have decided to jot down a few of the many reasons why this is not always the case.

Pre-travel costs. Ignoring all the private costs that people have to pay to keep their normal lives going on back in their own home town ( ie, rent still needs to be paid whether you are home or not and not everyone gets paid holiday, kennel fees for domestic pets, etc. ) there are often a slew of small little costs that creep into the mix before you even step food outside your own doorstep such as visa's, travel inocculations, travel guides, power adapters, mosquito repellent, travel insurance and foreign travellers cheques.

Few people are neighbours of airports and thus getting to an airport, and on the return leg getting back from the airport also is a small but above zero cost.

Arriving by flights. Almost without exception the cheapest flights to a country require either a rediculous arrival time, a stop over in different city or arrival in an airport so far away from anything that you want to visit that it will cost extra to get from this far flung airport to the city centre.

Then you have to include the travel agency fee, flight tax, airport departure tax, possible business of first class upgrades, onboard food or drinks surcharge, fuel surcharge and headset surcharge, some of these being optional and others not.

Once you reach your chosen city, by whatever means of travel you chose, you still have to get from the point of arrival to your hostel or hostel which can mean either a privately rented car ( plus yet more insurance and petrol ), public transport or a private taxi.

Not every city has a decent public transport system, with even fewer having decent evening / night time schedules, and the unless you are lucky enough to have arrived at an airport or train station that has its own fixed fare taxi rate to reach your accomodation you wil often have to haggle with a local taxi driver who'se ability to speak or understand English often evaporates the moment you sit down.

Metered taxi drivers are notorious for taking a longer route than necessary or getting themselves stuck in traffic to rack up the fare and I have even heard of some taxis charging an airport carpark surcharge or highway toll surcharge.

Bargaining for a fixed fare is often even more expensive as you have you have no idea exactly how far away your destination is thus how much is a fair price and on more than one occasion I have been screwed over by not fully understanding the exchage rate and ending up paying an arm and a leg for a ten minute ride. My worse personal experience was paying over £80 for a fifteen minute taxi ride to a hotel from an airport and then it ended up being the wrong hotel.

As a bit of side advice, more often than not taxi drivers in foreign cities are not to be trusted and it is best if you dont even try to talk to them as they will often try to first befriend you and then either convince you to change hotels to one their friend owns ( to receive a commission ), take a detour to their friends shop or talk you into using them to visit a place of interest with them that wil be much more than if you just picked up a different taxi from outside your accomodation especially if they know that you are an easy touch and have already been fleeced on the fare.

Hotels or hostels are the next place where costs both upfront and hidden rack up. As few people want to visit a place during their rainy season, most hotels and hostels know this and have a high season increment.

The cheaper hostels and guest houses are often extremely hard to reach as few taxi drivers will admit to knowing where they are and more than a few are very badly sign posted so you can end up going round and round in circles trying to find them.

Generally the cheaper places will also be the ones furthest from the things that you want to visit and so even if you save a buck or two on the room you end up paying way more getting to and from each day by taxi, and further out also often means off the edge of the crappy tourist map that you managed to pick up someplace.

Forgetting inclusive resorts / hotels, I have found that the price you see is rarely the price you end up paying. Single person supplements for rooms have been the bain of my hostel and guest house experience and I have had to pay double or treble for a two or three bed room on more than one occasion.

Without being able to speak the local language and have an intimate knowledge of every last cheap b&b means that you end up staying in the ones you know about or find while wandering around, which are rarely the cheapest available.

Then come the in room extras. Wanting a room that is not next to a power generator a noisy elevator or at the top of the a long flight of steps increases the price, as do most of the following :- air conditioning / fan ( sometimes a must if you actually want to get any sleep ), bed sheets, towel, tv, refrigerator, locker, wifi access or private bathroom.

Plenty of places I have been too have asked for either leaving a credit card, passport or cash as a key deposit, and I hate having to wait hours or pay extra to arrive outside of standard office hours. The cheapest places rarely have internet access so you cannot book in advance, except by phone, and will be fully booked if you just turn up and try to check in, or only have one room left which will be their delux room that is double ore treble their standard room rate.

Food and drink is the last of the big unexpected hikes that you are likely to face

I will not argue wherever you can find people you will also come across a dingy market stall or street corner vendor that will sell you a plate / bowl of something nondescript and often unidentifyable that passes for life sustaining food, but while it is certainly adventurous to try to local gourmet delights, my general advice is to avoid such places unless you have a cast iron stomuch or enjoy having diarrhea.

Similarly it is often wise to avoid drinking directly from cans, using ice cubes or eating fresh salad that has been washed in local water that is usually not as pure as your body is expecting.

So once you recover from your first bought of "trying the local delicacies" your choices are slim, either stick to something your body is used to, like McDonalds or Wendy's, risk even more food poisoning or eating in places that are a little more upmarket and thus more expensive than where many of the locals eat.

Visits to special sites of interest or city tours can be done a number of ways, booked in advance through an agency, by hiring a taxi or tuk tuk for a day or just getting a map and going it alone but in the end they all seem to cost more than they should and each have problems.

Travel agencies are usually expensive and often mean waking up early to then spend ages waiting around to form up into big groups with other travellers where you are then taken to a carefully selected number of places at specific times, often via comission based shops, markets or restaurants, and listen to some tour guide who will tell you plenty of useless information and skip over the bits that you most want to know all about.

Hiring a private taxi or tuk tuk for the day can be as expensive as an organised tour if you want a driver that speaks your language and has a god knowledge of the sites of interest.

Cheaper drivers either dont speak the language or have little or nothing to say about where you are visiting and often they either make stuff up or remain mute when questioned, and few are able to say if the place will be open on the day that you arrive or how much the entrance fee will be if any.

I have noticed that outside of Europe there are often special discounts on entrance fees for locals, sometimes even no charge at all or just a fraction of what a tourist is forced to pay, and without a guide often you have to queue up for longer and then even once you are in you then have to find your own way around and maybe miss some of the sites relevant or important features.

Doing it totally on your own is the cheapest option is almost always cheapest but the one more open to frustration and dissapointment. Although some places have taxis or tuk tuks everywhere and all offering a fair price, other places only have taxis in a few places or have those who deliberaretly raise their prices knowing that almost all of their passengers will be rich tourists willing to pay over the odds.

Wandering around trying to find my way to or from someplace guided by a map that is out of date, geographically inaccurate and without street names that make any sense have left me at my wits end on more than one occasion and at times to escape from the pouring rain or scorching heat I have ended up jumping into the first taxi that I came across, regardless of price, to either find a way back to civilization and familiar streets.

Finally there is the worldwide trick / habit, of not actually having any price labels on produce and thus a travellers local knowledge and bargaining skills are put to test on a regular basis.

Everything from a postcard, bottle of water, taxi fare, entrance fee, black market item increase to asking ( bribing ) the police / government officials to do their job faster than an ice-age eternity often involve having to negotiate with a local who has the clear advantages of not only knowing the cost price but knowing where the balance between supply and demand actually rests and thus can set their price from a fair fraction markup to as much as their greed feels they can extort from the hapless of unfortunate visitor.

There is no better teacher than experience for educating a person on exactly how best to haggle, but looking poor, speaking the local lingo, asking around ( from a neutral person ) for what the going rate, hiding your desire / desperation and never accepting their first offer no matter how reasonable it may seem are all good starting points.

Also don't be fooled by their appearance as they are paying the same game as you and no doubt will be looking much poorer than they actually are. If you are finding it hard to believe, just think about how a girl who works in a restaurant or street stall during the day transforms when its nighttime and she is out with her friends or hitting the nightclubs / pickup joints.

The same woman who seemed poor, dirty and wearing cheap clothes one minute suddenly looks like a thousand bucks when decked out in fancy clothes, shoes, hair done up and makeup the next.

The golden rule to remember is that no matter how friendly a person appears, or who referred them, no one goes into business to lose money and a person will never sell an item or service less than it costs them to offer so they will always be looking to make a profit, and of course the bigger the profit the better for them.

I could go on, but I think you have got the point. All in all, travel can be a wonderful and mind expanding experience but it is never as cheap as it should be and you would be wise to ensure that any budget is both well researched and never the full extend of how much you can afford to pay, merely an approximate guideline on how you plan to proceed with enough in reserve to pay for those unexpecting hidden costs that hit you from left field.