Typically moving at least once a year through a series of cheap guesthouses and small apartments with basic furnishings, they are often unable to work or to experience more than fleeting human contact.
To do this, use cheaper classes of trains or buses, spend less time in big cities where your money doesn't go as far, eat from street stalls and stay in backpacker accommodation like dormitories, hostels or cheap guesthouses, which abound particularly in south-west China.
Much of the eastern and southern coasts already have the trappings of a laidback surfer town — makeshift beer bars, street food vendors selling fried fish, and cheap guesthouses with blue painted walls — that are so appealing to people who prefer to watch surfing than wax up a board.
However, if you are staying in hostels or cheap guesthouses then a sleeping bag becomes much closer to a necessity.
Cheaper guesthouses are scattered in the countryside.
For cheap, suburban guesthouses, try SmoothHound.
That is changing with, as well as the Tree House, a few cheap, atmospheric guesthouses, such as Phuengnang Homestay (+66 2461 38101, phuengnanghome.com, doubles from about £20).
If you want to try the same, stay at the cheapest backpackers' guesthouses in Cairo and you might be approached by film scouts looking for extras, or ask around at the guesthouses.
Find a cheap hostel or guesthouse to stay.
For a free, or cheaper stay in Tigre, try guesthouse La Casona del Rio.
