We traveled on about $6,000 USD each, much less than we intended. We stayed at hostels in the west and guest houses in the east. In rich countries we mostly bought groceries at markets and in poor countries we ate at restaurants. In rich countries we spent $60 a day, each, including plane and train fare. In poor countries we averaged $13 a day, each. In rich countries you worry about transport, shelter, and food in that order. In poor countries transport and housing is a negligible part of your budget; it costs less than most meals.

Urban travel is best done with nothing more than a book bag (2000 in^3). When you show up in a strange city with no sleep and you find the fleabag hostel you booked is unacceptable, its much more likely that you’ll carry a small bag back down the stairs to another pad. Also imagine riding on a small public bus with your bag, jumping between moving boats, or clinging to the back of a speeding moped. You never need to check your luggage if you have a small bag, which saves time and gives you peace of mind. Maneuverability = fun.
One change of clothes and some toiletries are all you need. Bring a week’s worth of socks and underwear. Maybe some warm stuff if you go to a cold place that is also expensive. We carried a computer with us which would be superfluous for most people. There are net terminals and CD burning shacks for your camera in every country from Cambodia to Canada.
If you don’t manage to get your pack down to this level the first time you head out (we did not), you’ll bump into a couple of the double-o elite travelers in the more remote corners of the world and learn quickly.

Europe and Japan are must sees for Americans. They enlighten you to what is possible. They are more expensive than the States, particularly with the sinking dollar. If you’re on a budget, try Indochina. The food in the North of Thailand is unbeatable. Laos is as gorgeous as a Chinese painting. The north of Vietnam is a wonder of the world. The Khmers are super cool and you’ll be very glad you went.

The less money you’re able to spend the better time you’ll have almost anywhere. Although its great for getting you out of a jam, money has a really bad insulating quality to it. If I traveled rich, the only thing I’d change is more private rooms at hostels and I’d buy actual sleeper train tickets. Hotels are pointless, expensive and lonely. You’ll just leave them at night and spend money because you’re so bored. “Youth” hostels are usually very welcoming to older travelers. Avoid Hosteling International’s establishments, they are sterile. Do treat yourself to restaurants once in a while. If you’re buying local traditional cuisine, you won’t end up paying that much anyway.

The farther you get from English signs and menus the cooler the people you’ll meet will be –travelers and locals alike– and the more fun you’ll have. Backpacker’s ghettos are often the cheapest places to stay. Avoid them if you can, get out of there first thing in the morning to tour if you can’t. They’re awful places and draw uninspired travelers who can’t think outside their Lonely Planet.

We got our best tickets through STA. Flights to Asia in 2004 from the East Coast of the USA are under $600 because people are scared they’re going to get SARS, Chicken flu, or West Nile while they probably have a better chance of winning the lottery.

We made it to San Francisco. We’re staying in a flophouse that calls itself a hostel south of Market Street. Residents here are not really travelers as much as they are just people avoiding the street. Everyone’s nice, but pretty out of sorts. Our room intersects several unsecured 802.11 networks, which makes looking for jobs cheap and easy.

Most days we get up, make coffee, find more of our food stolen, check for new jobs, check on Dan, have breakfast and learn more than we want to about the trials and tribulations of our hostel-mates: ex Penthouse Pets and their kids, narcoleptic taxi drivers, severe ADHD cases, people looking for work and the owners who insist religion is the solution to most problems. For many of the residents it might help. Then we explore the city on foot.

Readjusting to the States was a little jarring. Three dimensional faces took a moment or two to get used to, they look a little grotesque at first. The power we have to ask anyone anything and understand the answer still hasn’t sunk in. American greeting customs still baffle me.

Its dirty. All the building are grey boxes. All the cars are trucks. The trains don’t go very far. Chain stores drive things down to the lowest acceptable denominator. Everyone’s fat. People wear corporate ads on their T-shirts without irony. Xenophobic militarism. There are a lot of homeless. The income disparity here is amazing. It doesn’t look like the richest country on the planet. The only place we traveled to with comparable extremes of wealth was Bangkok.

On the plus side, there is an unequaled diversity of people and languages on the street. You can say (almost) anything you want and despite the Patriot Act you can still tell cops when to piss off. You really can’t do that anywhere else. There’s also a rumored class mobility.

To be fair, we didn’t get outside the showcase cites of Europe all that much. First time and all; gotta see the churches and castles. I hear some European cities are dealing with sprawl problems. Hugging medieval cores like we did, we only caught glimpses of it from the air. The rest of Britain is likely to be less pretty. I know France puts a lot of national money into making Paris the unearthly place that it is. Japan and Italy sure seemed nice, though.

Tokyo is very spread out with four or five downtowns. Buildings ripple with animated neon and humongous video advertisements. Twisty weird architectural creations jump out and vie for your attention as you pass them on the train, but there’s rarely enough in one place for a skyline. In parts of O Daiba you can’t see the ground through the web of footbridges, aerial building to building tunnels, trains, and highways. Think Metropolis.

Where we stayed was quite a contrast from all that. Tokyo’s fairly expensive, so our hotel in Ueno was the cheapest place we could find in a poor part of town next to a soup kitchen. The joint was spotless. Absolutely immaculate. Important fact: In Japan, the ghetto is clean.

Shinkjuku has big business and the totalitarian looking metropolitan government buildings on one side of the tracks and the bright lights of a fading red light district on the other. Japanese drug laws are fairly liberal so there’s all kinds of weird fungus and colored powders for sale on the streets. The rattling pachinko parlors and throbbing strip joints are succumbing to Big Retail kinda like Times Square.

Everything new, cute, glowing and popular can be found in Shibuya. Fashion and toys predominate. It was a fun place to window shop, but for tourism, Love Hotel Hill took the cake. There’s a little hill in Shibuya covered with hourly rate fantasy hotels. They look like little castles, mosques and spaceships. You can rent a room for a quick tryst in whatever theme you like: Underwater Adventure, Sultan’s Harem, Dungeon, Outer Space, Hello Kitty, High School Classroom, you name it. They even offer concealed parking and –as should go without saying now– its all very clean.

We tried to capture some interesting stuff in photos, but not a single giant penis destroyed even so much as a city block while we were there. Maybe next time. Out of money and a little travel weary, we fluttered off to San Francisco. Perhaps to settle down for a bit…