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I have spent an almost full year of my life, at 22, backpacking around in 6 countries. I have done this by keeping a part-time job (paying around 1k per month) for the last 1.5 years of my degree and saving my student loan money for travelling. Overall the whole thing cost me less than 10.000 euros. Stayed mostly at mid-cheap range hostels but also shared a house with some other backpackers and occasional Airbnb when the circumstances were favorable :). When things got too expensive I volunteered and hitchhiked until figuring out a path to less expensive places. I dated a ton of other backpackers and local girls, learned the language to quite a decent degree, and had the time of my life. All it took was 10k, and I wasn't even being too frugal. I met a TON of people doing similar things.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me why every time someone mentions traveling around the world, there is this discussion of how difficult it is to spend some time in a $5k GDP per capita country as a $40k per year earning independent young Western guy? It is really, really, not unless if I am missing something fundamental here.
Its easy so long as you exist outside of the tourist ecosystem, which is verrrrrry hard for most people. Particularly we are talking about sub 100 IQ High school C students who don't have any foreign language skills, and will be very slow picking it up while there.
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