Big Cheap Places

But, as long as you're here, we have to put in a few enthusiastic words for some of our favorite places. We're not going to give the full, objective treatment of the country and its attractions. Instead, we'll talk about our personal experiences, and our friend's experiences, and what it's like travelling in these countries.

We're skewed a little towards Mexico and Central America, because - guess why - they're cheap! What makes them especially cheap for us is that we're in the US, and they're close. And these places are different enough from the US to fully qualify as potentially full-scale mind-blowing travel experiences.

SE Asia is also a favorite of ours, and one of us was just there a few weeks ago (late winter 98). There's a very nice, easy, backpacker route through this region, so that even though you'll never learn Thai you can still get around and get stuff done without too much hassle. But within spitting distance of this safe tourist route is an equally safe but completely mesmerizing world apart. Sculptured rice terraces, beautiful, calm people, beautiful beaches, and spectacular temples and ruins, make this part of the world endless fascinating.

Eastern Europe is supposed to be tremendous right now, but we haven't been. (What can we say, we're warm weather nuts!) So we won't describe it in this section, but we've put some good links to sites covering Eastern Europe in the links section. If we have any would-be contributors out there, contact us at bigcheapworld@pipeline.com.

All our friends who've been to Turkey love it to death. People love Morocco, too, although that can be a more challenging travel experience. And we just got back from Cuba, and we can tell you we had the time of our lives - highly recommended, for a variety of reasons.