Cheap-Packing Across South East Asia

“Let’s cheap pack”. I was surprised at the suggestion. Backpacking is a commonly used term, but cheap-packing. Taking backpacking to its extreme by cutting down on all avoidable costs yet manage to fulfill a relatively luxurious international trip. So, I decided to take a chance and move ahead with a no-frills trip spread across three countries and twenty days and in prime tourist season.

We planned a visit to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in the month of February and March of this year and cover a distance of more than 4000 km through some of the most exciting lands across South East Asia. An unconventional tour yet one that promised loads of experiences worth a lifetime.

The start to our cheap-packing adventure was relatively simple. We planned to largely visit Cambodia and Vietnam. However, air tickets for either of these countries was astronomical and would have ruined our budget before it started. So, we decided to book a bargain flight to Bangkok saving about 20000 rupees as compared to a similar flight to Phnom Penh. We also decided on booking at hostels throughout our journey with the promise not to budge from our decision unless hostels were not available at all.

The idea to land at Bangkok early in the morning proved to be perfectly timed as we spent the entire day looking around the city along the Chao Priya River, largely using the efficient ferry system that connects long stretches of the town. Food was cheap and at 80 rupees per person, we were able to fill our stomach and head to our hostel near the main railway station. Another point to be noted here was that Air Asia flights land at the Don Muang Airport which is connected by a highly efficient local train network, so instead of paying 1000 rupees for the taxi, we managed to pay around 88 rupees to reach our hostel.

Having seen the local sights of Bangkok, we left for Cambodia next morning on a 100 rupees train ride from Bangkok to Aranyaprateth through some beautiful countryside, reaching the border at ease, speeding through the visa counters and entering a visually impoverished nation in a matter of minutes, spending nothing on bribes, without responding to touts and finding ourselves safely in the country of our dreams, Cambodia.

A bit of advice for a traveler while crossing any tourist hotspot, is to always walk ahead, not looking on the left or right and walking past the hordes of tourists as well as accompanying touts. Rates of everything from tickets to hotel rooms falls drastically within 100 metres of crossing over. That is what we did and in the process, we paid 10 dollars for a cab ride to Siam Reap (gateway to Angkor Wat) that would usually cost 25-30 dollars for two people. Cheap-packing in practice it was.

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While at Siam Reap, we were among the thousands of people from across the world who converge on Angkor Wat, a symbol as potent for the tourism of Cambodia as the Taj Mahal is for India. For once, paying 20 dollars per person to see the temple complex did not seem to be a pinch on our pockets. It was a dream since childhood to visit these ancient temples and was worth the long wait for we had a glorious day seeing all the sights of the massive complex. As we were unencumbered by the need to attend to a schedule as we had not booked any package, we could see several smaller sites, rest whenever we want under the shade of a giant temple somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Another cheap-packing wisdom shone through for we realized while walking around that there are no free water vendors anywhere in South-East Asia. We had seen mineral water being sold at higher prices everywhere including at Bangkok and felt it wise to carry a lot of water while traveling to avoid being dehydrated.

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Moving on from Angkor Wat, we took a bus to Phnom Penh soaking in the sights of the flat landscape filled with innumerable ponds and reached our destination by afternoon. We stayed at a wondrous hostel aptly named Aura thematic, located right behind the Royal Palace that was suited for a long walk through the old city. Phnom Penh has much to offer to a visitor, much of it in the form of a reminder of the cruelty of man. As history books leapt from their pages, we were able to absorb the atrocities committed by the Pol Pot regime during his term in the late seventies. The scars of those days have visually vanished but one can still find remnants of the genocide in the form of the Killing Fields at ChoengEk. The memorial is about 15 kms from the city and we took a shared motorcycle to the site. It was more surreal than a scene out of the movies for the fields are presently located in a quiet residential neighbourhood and no figment of imagination can lend fodder to the thought that thousands were killed here not long back. We came back sooner than we wanted, not able to stomach the ways of man and his evil and even gave the prison in the main city a miss.

Phnom Penh was tough for the soul and we decided to head out to Sihaounakville, located on the southern coast. It struck me now that our main expense during this trip will be on transport especially while in Cambodia and the reasons were apparent. As a nation recovering from the ills of the Pol Pot regime and subsequent invasion by Vietnam, most Cambodians seem more comfortable with the dollar as they were wary of their own national currency. And as most tourists were westerners, we realized that rates were being randomly quoted in dollars for even the smallest purchase. As Indians, we suffered the fate of getting clubbed alongside westerners and our cheap travel plans badly affected for we had to shell out loads of money on transportation. We dealt with the unexpected cost outage by focusing on cheaper travel to Sihaunoville and managed to reach the coast comfortably. We stayed at the Last Point, a small resort on an island off the coast and had a great two days doing nothing and also to recharge our batteries after intense travels over the last few days.

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Our travels in Cambodia were coming to an end and we decided to head out to Vietnam and see for ourselves the mysteries that await us in that ancient land. As we were travelling on land, we had pre-arranged for our visas as Vietnam does not entertain visa on arrival. Somehow, we managed to pack one night at a charming riverside resort lovingly called Samon’s Village paying 6 dollars for a tree house. The stay left us wondering on the quality of well designed stay options back home, where we pay through the nose yet find it difficult to find quality stays. For us, just being there by the riverside was an experience for us and it relaxed us sufficiently to prepare for the long Vietnamese sojourn ahead.

Vietnam, the name evokes images of mysteries, of mist covered slopes, of striking blue oceans, of an independent proud nation and of course, the Vietnam War. Anybody with a slight interest in modern history surely has Vietnam in his views for it was here that one of the greatest wars of the 20th Century took place. Personally for me, it was a childhood fascination with an overdose of Hollywood movies and enough books that always attracted me towards that beautiful country. And being a backpacker’s paradise, travel in this beautiful country was bound to be exciting as well as cheap.

For starters, we took a long bus ride to the capital of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City and settled in the Saigon Charming Hostel in the main backpacker’s district. Most South East Asian cities have prominent backpacking areas that are usually located close to the main sights and sounds and Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City was no exception. I could just take a walk in any direction and treat myself to the well kept boulevards, the parks and of course the history. Like a schoolboy eager for his next field trip, I was at the gates of the world famous War Remnants Museum that documents that crisis of the Vietnam War before it opened and spent a good part of the morning there. Also on the list was the legendary Presidential Palace which was witness to North Vietnamese tanks gate crashing the Southern Vietnamese party and ultimately unifying the country. Having to see these sights and also a famous statue of the leader, Ho Chi Minh himself was an immensely satisfying experience.

The day passed and we longingly said good bye to this amazing cauldron of humanity where millions scurried around in their mopeds and made road crossing in Bangalore appear a cakewalk as compared to this crazily vibrant city. We proceeded to take the train to Hoi An in the central part of Vietnam.

We had saved enough money in Vietnam so far as the food was cheap and entry fees to local sites were much cheaper as compared to Cambodia. We also decided to take the train for the simple reason that the Vietnamese Railway is considered to be a legend in international long distance train travel and at more than 1800 km from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, we were prepared to travel the entire distance. The train itself was simple enough, only slightly cleaner than our Indian ones but the stations en-route seemed to leap out of some dickensian novel, small, idyllic and non-descript. Were we walking into an earlier era. The train journey till Hoi An took us past the central highlands with mist floating across most valleys and the trademark Vietnamese scene of a small boy riding a buffalo omnipresent. Food was cheap on the train and we always had the option of ordering among-st a choice of noodles that were ferried around by smartly dressed executives of the train system. The train journey, albeit tough for our spines, was still the perfect way seeing the country by mingling with the locals. By the time we landed at Danang, we were given a handsome good-bye by the remaining passengers who were happy perhaps at seeing tourists willing to travel in the local style and not stay in some cocoon of their imagination where interacting with locals was forbidden.

Here, at Danang, we were again witness to one of the tricks of cheap-packing. The taxi rates to Hoi An were astronomical at the railway station and we followed the Lonely Planet guide to the main junction and found ourselves a bus to Hoi An. We had to walk merely an extra hundred metres and were able to save about 10 dollars cumulatively. Joys of cheap-packing.

Hoi An is an ancient quarter, which appears to be stylishly redesigned to cater to the crowds of tourists thronging every lane.
The tourists’s curiosity is insatiable and Hoi An with its centuries old mansions, incessant sales pitching by locals and inventively hung lamps at every door lures visitors from every country. The town is so intensely aligned to meet the needs of the tourist that at certain junctures, appeared unreal, almost as if the Disney World has imported itself to the these lands.

We moved to the imperial city of Hue on the following day and treated ourselves to some fine Indian dining. After almost 15 days on the roads, we found a couple of these Ganesh chain of restaurants at Hue, which unsurprisingly was filled with old British couples and hardly any Indians. We were hungry for desi food and did not mind splurging a bit for Indian restaurants which tend to be more expensive than the rest. But the taste of home food, though slightly europeanized was manna for the soul.

Hue can be covered in less than a day for the Imperial City is located close to the town with various palaces and temples situated within the complex. We took a cycle from downtown Hue and spent a good part of the morning seeing other sites in the town and finally entering the Imperial Palace around mid-morning. As cheap-packers, we realize the need of spending our mid-mornings in shade as roaming in the sun can be a surly experience. Spending time in shaded areas saves money, the need to buy additional drinking water and food and of course, avoiding tiring oneself unnecessarily. Hue with its scores of palaces and derelict residential quarters was perfect setting for us as we found a 200 year old wooden building with sparrows for company and treated ourselves to some well-deserved book reading.

The 3 hour break enthused us and we managed to see the rest of the city in a jiffy, head over to the Indian restaurant for a quick early dinner and head out to the railway station for the second and final part of our train odyssey to Hanoi.

Hanoi was cold, chaotic, and chilly and had an Indian hostel, aptly called Zostel right in the middle of the back-packing district, we tucked ourselves into this thoughtfully designed place and met several solo Indian backpackers from various parts of the country. At Hanoi, we had to wrap ourselves in our meager winter clothing and brace for the cold walks across the town. Street food was cheap and everywhere we went, the festive crowd was entertaining to watch, mopeds ran wild, thousands seated silently gobbling down food, beer cheaper than water and street shows at every corner. Hanoi presented a picture that was colorful and stuck to our minds as a city worth revisiting preferably on our next trip to Laos.

It was cold on the next morning as well and we had almost reached the end of our 20 day tour. It called for a celebration and what better cause than a visit to the famous UNESCO world heritage site at Halong Bay. That is what we did and managed to fit in an entire day of floating on a wooden tub through the ancient waters overlooked by huge limestone formations. Words ceased to come as the beauty of this site, see only in movies or in some exotic sounding website, came alive that morning. We were enthralled and at 18 dollars per person, this was the cheapest one could attempt at seeing these wondrous sites.

Our trip had almost come to an end and we were prepared to take a flight back home. It was time to count our dollars, dongs and rupees and amazingly found that we had spent hardly 45000 Indian rupees on stay and travel and an additional 35,000 Indian rupees for tickets and visas, thereby spending in total an amount of Rs. 80,000 for a 20 day trip. As a back-packing trip, this is as cheap as it could get for two people traveling over 20 days and at the same time, not compromising on the basic requirement of clean stay and safe travel. We could manage this largely due to careful and lengthy planning, including scouring websites for discounted rates, booking at dormitories, eating hygienic yet cheap street food, carefully selecting which historical site to visit and which to avoid, walking an extra mile to see less famous but equally enchanting sites, storing water for emergencies with a zeal that could match a castaway in the Sahara’s and finally, reducing costs on transportation by opting for the cheapest option available instead of choosing the easiest as that would be the obvious choice for any travel wary tourist. Finally, every rupee saved means a new trip is just down the road.