You know you're a cheap-as backpacker when...

Your bed of choice is more appropriate for a five-year-old at a slumber party (a bunk bed in a room with nine other backpackers).

"Clean" becomes a relative state viewed as idealistic.

You start hoarding toilet paper as you find it for free in the hostels.

At each airport you conduct a rigorous testing of lotions, makeup and perfume so you can feel pretty for the first time in weeks.

You continue to use broken sunglasses.

$10 a night for one room between two people is over budget.

You eat just two times a day so you can have a beer with dinner.

Your biggest decision of the day is what cool thing to see and what kind of beer to have with your $3 dinner.

Noises from the bunk above waking you in the middle of the night have surpassed surprise and become expected.

You evaluate whether or not items like hair conditioner, sunscreen, and deodorant are a "luxury."

You keep the 'fish food' for breakfast the next day (four slices of bread).

You choose to walk one hour in hot sun to save $1.20 of cab fare.

A comfortable mattress is cause for tears of joy.

Clothing that is torn, stained, or otherwise mangled with holes is nothing more than happy evidence of your adventures, worn with pride.

Cockroaches are part of everyday life.

Rice is for dinner, lunch and sometimes breakfast. Occasionally you get the luxury of pig lung or oxtail.

You run from the tour bus, elbows flying, to find the good cheap hostel room ahead of the other backpackers, none of whom have reservations.

Everything you're wearing has already been worn at least twice without a washing.

You attempt to read a book in German because that's all you could find at the last two book exchanges.


More to come as the adventure continues!

Note from the author:
This is mostly a joke, but sometimes things got rough and much of this was reality at one point or another.