Márk's Travel Blog

Travel Advice Series

In this series you can learn about the most useful travel tips and tricks that will make your trip easy like a breeze!

Travel Advice #1: One trip, multiple cities in multiple countries

As I mentioned in my flight hack series, visiting multiple cities in one trip can save you serious money as its nearly always cheaper than visiting those two cities separately, and sometimes it can even be cheaper than visiting just one of those cities. Plus,  it is more fun, and more exploring, especially if they lay in different sides of a national border, which usually means: another culture, cuisine, people and a whole other experience.

In this post I collected cities in different countries for you that I have visited together and saved some serious money with it. There are obviously many more, these are just the ones I did, and prices also reflect what I have paid. I did most of these in recent years, so its shouldn’t be much more expensive, but always check before you go. Also, these are just convenient, cheap and fast options, avoiding flights.

• 2.5h train (£8) or 3h bus (£7)

• 1h train (£3) or 1.5h bus (£4)

• 2.5h train (£7) or 3.5h bus (£11)

• 2h train (£14)

• 3.5h train (£15)

• 30min train (£5)

• 4h bus (£8) or 4h train (£15)

• 4h bus (£8)

• 3h ship (£13)

• 2h bus (£4) or 2h train (£6)

• 3.5h bus (£14)

• 3h bus (£5) with 1 change in Elbasan

• 1h train (£4) or 1h bus (£5)

• 1h metro (£4)

• 3.5h high-speed train (£25)

• 1h boat (£12)

• 1h high-speed train (£7)

• 2.5h ferry (£18)

• 2.5h bus (£13)

I obviously did much more multi-city trips, but those were with flights and let’s be honest, hopping on a 2-3 hour train or bus ride from one city center to another is much more convenient, even if you can fly for ridiculously low prices at budget airlines.

I hope this post helps you explore more places on a budget and let me know in the comments if you have any other similar multi-city recommendations that you have done.

Travel Advice #2: Buy Strategically

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The biggest costs when travelling abroad are usually transport and accommodation. Other, more minor costs are for example attraction tickets, food or souvenirs. However, some places require you to buy or have many other things to complete your trip. These items/services are often vaccinations, SIM cards, currency exchange, special gear (eg. for diving, mountain climbing, safari, etc.) or other special accessories/clothes. The reality is that the price of these items or services can significantly differ in different countries, so it is always recommended to do a minimal research about where to acquire these things.

For example, I saved £25 just by buying my SIM card in Singapore instead of the UK for my Southeast Asia trip. I also saved £260 by getting my vaccinations for £60 in Hungary instead of getting the same vaccination package for £320 in the UK. When I went to Georgia (a country where you must have local cash), I tried to exchange the local currency in the UK, but due to its rarity the few places that had it charged 20-30%+ commissions, but I found out in 2 minutes that you can exchange the same amount after landing in the country for just £1 commission, right at the airport.

I have dozens of stories like these where I saved massive amounts of money just by looking around. What I want to highlight here is if you want to have a truly budget trip, you just have to do at least a bit of research about everything. But if you are like me, you can actually enjoy researching about these things and it also builds up your excitement ahead of the trip.