Ditch the tourism super­high­ways and leave the asphalt behind.

As we’re cur­rently back­pack­ing through South­east Asia for a few weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to work on a col­lab­o­ra­tive post for the first time. We’ve both been to tourist traps like Paris, and far-flung places like rural Poland, and we have found there are sev­eral ways you can avoid the crowds, see the best and least-trodden attrac­tions, and also get by on the cheap in pretty much any coun­try out there.  This post will be the first in a series of self-directed travel guides.

Why You Should Blaze Your Own Trail Abroad

There’s a rea­son every­one should see the Eif­fel Tower, the Colos­seum, and Lon­don Museum — they’re all gor­geous, and most peo­ple can appre­ci­ate these beau­ti­ful sights. And there’s noth­ing wrong with want­ing to see these for your­self, in fact we encour­age it.

How­ever, along with pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions come a vari­ety of annoy­ances, frus­tra­tions, and even dan­gers. Here’s just a few:

1. The big­ger the attrac­tion, the higher the price, even if that attrac­tion isn”t really worth it (Here’s look­ing at you, Prague).
2. The big­ger attrac­tion, the big­ger the crowds of often obnox­ious tourists, ubiq­ui­tous pho­to­shoots, and the asso­ci­ated chaos.
3. Nat­u­rally, the more tourists, the more savvy the pick­pock­ets that will be patrolling them, look­ing to nab money, per­sonal elec­tron­ics, and even pass­ports. In some places a cov­eted pass­port is worth far more than your Visa credit line.
4. Tourist des­ti­na­tions have been prepped for tourists, mean­ing you’ll almost com­pletely miss out on the for­eign fla­vor, and will have next to no inter­ac­tions with locals that aren’t there for a busi­ness trans­ac­tion (Just try and get a good French meal under the Eif­fel Tower if you have any doubts).

Start Broad — Choose Your Country

Con­sider your travel expe­ri­ence before you choose a des­ti­na­tion. If this is your first trip abroad, it would be smart not to start off with a  coun­try that’s set up to help a new­bie trav­eler. Sea­soned des­ti­na­tions also have good roads, read­ily avail­able Inter­net, and plenty of English-speaking tourism offices.

Some good first choices might be one of the big draws in Europe, such as France, Ger­many or Italy, or even Japan, the U.S., or Aus­tralia.  These coun­tries or no strangers to tourism but still have plenty to dis­cover and vibrant local cul­ture to soak up.

If you’ve already done the neatly-packaged, more pop­u­lar itin­er­aries and are look­ing for some­thing a lit­tle more adven­tur­ous, con­sider one of the new­com­ers to the tourism mar­ket. Croa­tia went through years of civil strife in the 80’s and 90’s, but now offers all of the ameni­ties of its neigh­bor Italy, with more spa­cious beaches, untouched islands, and much lower prices. Despite its often stunted path to devel­op­ment, Peru offers reli­able trans­porta­tion, the unfor­get­table spec­ta­cle that is Machu Pic­chu, and enough English-speakers in the big­ger towns to make com­mu­ni­ca­tion nearly hassle-free. And for North Amer­i­cans, it’s increas­ingly afford­able, what with the cost of  round-trip ticket from New York hov­er­ing around $400, a lit­tle less than what you’d pay for a sand­wich in London.

Go Even Fur­ther — Take out Your Machete and Cut Your Own Path

We set­tled on Viet­nam and Cam­bo­dia for our trip because we wanted to forge a lit­tle fur­ther into the unknown and expand our com­fort zone. Though not see­ing another Amer­i­can for a while was some­thing we’d both expe­ri­enced before (def­i­nitely Nick dur­ing his Peace Corps days), we’ve seen here the degrees of sep­a­ra­tion are even fur­ther, as very few here speak Eng­lish, and you can bet that it’s easy for South­east Asians to pick us out of a crowd — “Hey! Look at the two white guys!.”

But even with­out the com­forts of more sto­ried locales, Viet­nam and Cam­bo­dia are def­i­nitely nav­i­ga­ble with a lit­tle extra effort. Even those who don’t speak Eng­lish are prac­ti­cally falling over them­selves to help out, and you’d sur­prised at how easy it is to com­mu­ni­cate what you need with­out hav­ing a com­mon language.

The rewards far out­weigh has­sles. In Viet­nam for exam­ple, we’ve had incred­i­ble, fresh meals every­where we’ve gone, and nei­ther of us have yet paid over $10. We’re cur­rently pay­ing $12/night each for our own hotel rooms with air con­di­tion­ing, hot water, and iced cof­fee that should make Starbuck’s ner­vous. The coun­try has its rea­sons to at least be wary of Amer­i­cans, given our trou­bled past, but we’ve been wel­comed whole-heartedly, with sol­diers on the street cor­ner eager to offer to give us direc­tions. We’ve even run into groups of chil­dren sev­eral times who excit­edly chased our bikes, shout­ing “Hello! How are you?” There are few places you’ll feel like that much of a rock star.

From per­sonal expe­ri­ence, we can say that you shouldn’t over­look the devel­op­ing world. Coun­tries like Brazil, Tan­za­nia, and Bosnia are not to be missed, as they have a lim­ited amount of tourism pro­por­tional to the stun­ning of beauty of the attrac­tions they offer, and you can if noth­ing else get by on the cheap.

Find the Adven­ture Wher­ever You Go

Even if you’re headed to Vienna or Flo­rence, you can still find ways to get a more authen­tic expe­ri­ence apart for the tours. Once you’ve seen the sights your tour book rec­om­mends, start going to some of the ones it tells your are unin­ter­est­ing. To cite a per­sonal exam­ple, when Nick lived in Ukraine, the clos­est city, Rivne, was described in Lonely Planet Ukraine as “a great place for a bath­room break between Lviv and Kiev.” Unbe­knownst to the book’s author, the sec­ond largest monastery in the coun­try is less than an hour away, and is one of the country’s must unfor­get­table sights — cer­tainly worth more of a men­tion than as a quo­tid­ian rest stop. “Experts” try and sell you their own knowl­edge as facts, and often their jus­ti­fied, but don’t let the tours or guide books keep you from find­ing your own memories.