Amazon.com info for 'The World's Cheapest Destinations'

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Back to reviews and details of The World's Cheapest Destinations

Amazon.com reviews:

Rating: 5 Summary: awesome book
Comment I had plans on following this book's advice and they listed so many wonderful places to go but now I don't have the book as my sister threw it out after I had to abandon my home due to a domestic violence situation. I would recommend this book to anyone and will buy another one when my finances and situation is back in order to travel again.

Rating: 4 Summary: Had to buy it
Comment I go everywhere cheaply and this one was a great book for that. I found so many bargains.

Rating: 4 Summary: a good beginning... but not, I think, the whole story
Comment I liked this book and feel that I will benefit from it, but it doesn't seem to be the whole story. There would seem to be many other places in the world where your dollars stretch. But for a beginning look at the areas in the world where you can get more bang for your buck, this is a good book. I recommend it, but I am also going to keep looking for others, just to get a more balanced point of view and other recommendations.

Rating: 4 Summary: Useful Info For Travelling On The Cheap
Comment I am an avid traveller who is always seeking out interesting and affordable new places to visit. So I found this book to be highly informative.

Leffel includes 7 destinations each from Asia and Latin America, the 2 regions of greatest interest to me. He also includes 4 European countries and 3 from Africa and the Middle East. Some might complain that sub-Saharan Africa is left out. But overall Leffel has done a terrific job of picking out places where travel is relatively cheap and there is much to see and do.

Obviously, there is still a huge expense gap between super cheap India and the not so cheap Czech Republic, for instance. But Leffel does his best to provide a cost summary of each country for both mid-range and rock bottom budget travellers. Also I found his appendices section to provide some other helpful print and internet resources for travel.

It's important to keep in mind that this book only provides an introduction to each country listed and that a good guidebook by Lonely Planet, Moon or one of the other backpacker style guidebooks is still a necessity before actually setting off on your travels. But this book is great for helping a potential traveller figure out what country or countries to visit.

My only minor complaint is that I wish Leffel had made a list of the countries from cheapest to most expensive with an average daily budget for each one. Of course, this list would fluctuate over time depending on currency valuations and other economic factors. But still it would be fun and interesting to have as a basic guideline. Maybe next time Leffel can do have the "World's 50 Cheapest Destinations" as there are so many other great countries that can visited on the cheap. In any case, I consider this book highly recommended for adventurous budget travellers.

Rating: 4 Summary: General Overviews
Comment This small 113 page guide book discusses general aspects of several low price, low risk (they're not "on the US State Department's 'Warning List' due to a dangerous climate for travelers") destinations. A lot of the prices depend on your bargaining skills. The short chapters cover briefly topics such as accommodation, food & drink (including some vegetarian references), and transportation. As well as some other general tips. The countries include: in Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, India, & Nepal; in Africa & the Middle East: Morocco, Egypt, & Jordan; in Europe: Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, & the Czech Republic; in the Americas: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, & Venezuela. The appendices do include a listing of other travel resources, including a couple of websites. If you want a general overview of possible cheap destinations (don't expect a lot of information on sites that you can see) then you might want to give this book a look, but don't expect anything too in depth. This book might best be used to find a country that you may want to visit, you can then buy a more detailed guide book about the country. Although this book will give you a general budget for visiting the country of your choice. In the future you might also want to take into account that the book is from 2003, although because it is so general and the prices depend on bargaining this shouldn't matter too much.