how to travel on a budget (as a wanted fugitive)
I will touch on budget travel philosophy and speak briefly about why I’m a wanted fugitive.
The world Time Travel Organization has a bunch of bullshit rules and regulations. I’m not paying my fines, so they’ll have to find me. I won’t get into the details, so as to not further incriminate myself, but certain docking policies must be adhered to when spending time in an era.
You can only store and park your machine in specific designated locations across the globe. Which means if I’m looking to go to India a few hundred years ago, there may not be a docking station within 500 miles. So I’d have to park my machine in the Ottoman Empire or something and join a caravan to get to India. That’s just completely unnecessary. I just go directly to where I want and store the machine in discrete locations, which is technically illegal.
This is just one of the unnecessary systematic ways the TTO waters down the time travel experience. I’ve broken a number of time laws and will get into that more as the blog advances.
Anyway, enough about my criminal backstory. Let’s get into some budget travel tips.
WALK
Get off your lazy ass! Get up and get out there! Kill two birds with one stone — free exercise and free transportation. Walking is a highly underrated form of exercise.
Also, walking is just the best way to explore a city. You run into crevices that you just wouldn’t in a car.
Buses and subways are usually cheap, though – it’s the Uber’s, hover-lifts and personal chariots that start to add up.
Fugitive or not, you will save money using the transportation of our ancestors.
LOWER YOUR STANDARDS
Most people who travel aren’t planning on being cooped up in their room all day. A hotel, hostel, or bungalow is just a resting place. You can drastically slash your budget if you opt for cheaper places to stay. You will get a bed and shower in almost every inexpensive hotel or hostel.
You’ll get used to showers with low water pressure, and occasionally a sleepless night due to operatic snoring. I’m telling you, just sacrifice your luxury hotel for a local second rate inn and you’ll free up cash to do tons of other things.
USE THE GROCERY STORES OR MARKETS
Eating at restaurants puts a huge dent in the pockets. And to be honest, if this point appalls you I think you’re in the wrong place. If you’re looking for budget travel tips, then most likely you’re not on a fine dining tour of Europe. You can get a taste of the culture from the markets, you don’t need a full course meal from a chef to get the culinary experience of the country.
DABBLE IN SMALL-SCALE CRIME
We’ve gone over the traditional budget travel hacks; now let’s get to the juicy stuff. As some of you know, I am a low-level time fugitive wanted by various world organizations. I have been known to do a crime or two.
SHOPLIFTING
The best way to save money on something is to not buy it. This strategy is high risk, high reward.
Once I was stuck, stranded in a foreign land with no way to earn money. I lost a key component of my time machine in a wager I put on a bare knuckle boxing match. The part was sold to a pawn shop at the edge of town.
I didn’t speak the language and couldn’t get a job. My travel guide in the city left the country for an emergency. I had no access to the local currency.
So I decided to just start stealing shit. I would take something and bring it to the pawn shop, trying to barter for my component. Sensing my desperation, the owner of the shop wouldn’t take my deal, forcing me back into the street. He was hoping I’d come back with a more valuable item. After three tries, he still wouldn’t take anything I was offering.
Finally, he held up a rare item. He wanted me to bring him another one.
The actual heist is a longer story for a different blog but I was able to narrowly secure it and get my component back.
Through becoming a bandit, I learned the value of bartering. That is the lesson of this budget tip: if you don’t have the money for something, acquire it by providing value in another way – through a service or an equal item of value.
CRIME FOR HIRE
Sometimes if you want work done, the best business decision is to outsource. Personally, I am not the most decorated criminal in the universe but in every city there is a talented collection of hungry law-bending artists. Instead of doing the work yourself, hire these freelancers. It is not free passive income, however. You still have to find ideal targets and recruit employees. And keep in mind, you’re not interviewing people for a job at Starbucks; you’re reaching out to criminals. So use the full scope of your powers of discernment to judge the characters of the people you hire.
Hiring a team of elite pickpockets may be a better and safer alternative to traditional, small-scale shoplifting. For one, you’re separating yourself from the actual act of the crime — although you are higher on the chain of command and there are more people involved which means there is a higher chance that you will get flipped on and ratted out to the authorities.
One of the most profitable ways to run a freelance mercenary team of elite pickpockets is to create dissent, confusion and paranoia among the ranks of your foot soldiers. That way, it will be easier to control and predict their actions. People acting out of fear are more easy to predict than an individual boasting a calm and rational mind. Logically sound, intelligent and stable creatures are far better at deception and counter play in the criminal world.
I once had an ancient Chinese 14-year-old partner in an underground gambling racket.
I thought that I was in complete control of the operation only to find out that this psychopathic genius of an adolescent had played me like an Adirondackian banjo and swindled me out of the entire share of my spoils. But that’s a story for another blog.
GETTING AWAY
This part is only recommended to time fugitives. Crimes are much easier to commit if you have a time machine.
If you have a time machine, you have an incredibly reliable getaway vehicle. Once you leave the current year, you are out of the jurisdiction of local authorities, who cannot physically chase you. And even local authorities in the future who may have access to time traveling technology will not take the risk of following you through time to capture and charge you with a small scale crime. Larger crimes are a different story. if you commit murder, or even in unique circumstances, commit atrocities or genocide in the name of power and greed in a primitive society in the past then you will be hunted ferociously by the time travel police organization.
Generally, it is safer to commit crimes in the past than it is in centuries after the 22nd. The TTO does have roaming agents throughout civilizations in human history but it is somewhat easy to dodge these time detectives if all you have on the books is a small child pickpocket ring and a couple counterfeit 5th century visas.
So, in terms of budget traveling, the tip is this: just don’t pay. Get away in your time machine.
Thank you for reading. See you in the future.
Elio
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