‘How to Travel the World on $50 a Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter’
Perigee, $15
Forget the fancy tours, the five-star hotels, the wallet-robbing meals, the mind-boggling airline tickets. Matt Kepnes, the prophet of budget travel and the author of this revised, updated and expanded edition, is here to tell you that travel doesn’t need to be that expensive. As someone who has lived the travel life on $50 a day “or less,” he insists that anyone can travel cheaply if they know the “secrets to saving money on the road.”
Travel is affordable, Kepnes says, primarily because budget options exist for travel at all levels — tours, accommodations, food and even flights. “They just aren’t advertised,” he notes. “Cheap” might have bad connotations, but Kepnes points out that traveling cheaply doesn’t mean starving yourself or living like “a pauper.” It’s more like doing as the locals do.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers specific ways to lower your expenses before leaving your front door, ranging from setting up bank accounts that actually earn you money or free airline miles. In Part 2, Kepnes gives advice on how to save money while on the road, and Part 3 features savings in specific world destinations, including Australia, Central America, China, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, South America and Southeast Asia. Each chapter includes typical costs, various ways to save money, things to do and numerous resources.
Perhaps the biggest fear regarding travel is going beyond one’s comfort zone; for many that means the fear of travel. The reasons for not going range from the economic (“I can’t afford my trip”) to the existential (“I don’t want to be alone”). Kepnes offers his own mantras: “You are just as capable as everyone else”; “you will make friends”; “the world isn’t as dangerous as the media says”; and “you are never too old.”
Kepnes offers general tidbits on how to save for your trip, gives advice on what to do with bills and mail while away and suggests ways to save money on food and beverages. He also discusses hospitality exchanges, house-sitting and apartment rentals, among many other topics.
“You don’t need to be rich to travel — you just need to travel smart,” he says.
‘Chronicles of Old Los Angeles: Exploring the Devilish History of the City of the Angels’
Museyon Guides, $19.95
Author James Roman begins at the beginning. Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to set eyes on what would become Los Angeles, staking a claim for Spain in 1542 and calling it Bay of Smokes: The first thing he noticed was smoke emanating from Native American campfires of their village, which the indigenous people called Yang-na. Roman covers a lot of territory here. He examines the culture clashes between the Latino, Anglo, Chinese and Native American populations as California sought statehood; looks at how Water Superintendent William Mulholland diverted water from the Owens Valley to thirsty LA (as so famously depicted in “Chinatown”); laments Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination at the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel; and discusses LA’s daring architecture, the birth of the movie industry and the city’s celebrity-studded graveyards.
Many chapters end with an “In the Movies” paragraph, describing sites mentioned in the chapter that have appeared in films. In addition, Roman features short sidebars on unique aspects of Los Angeles history, like when the tobacco heir Abbot Kinney bought a 1 1/2-mile stretch of soggy marshland in 1891 and turned it into Venice, a California version of its Italian equivalent, complete with canals and gondoliers and a hotel modeled after the Doge’s Palace.
As always with Museyon Guides, the book features beautiful paintings and archival photographs. It concludes with six driving and walking tours. The Hollywood driving tour is especially fascinating, with stops at several Hollywood studios and the Hollywood sign, before ending in the residential neighborhoods of Windsor Square and Larchmont Village.
