I was wondering the same thing. I was in Las Vegas a month ago. A value lunch or breakfast $25.00, dinner $35.00. Go a little upscale and dinner will cost $60.00-$75.00.

it seems almost everyone talks about las vegas, nevada....

does anyone know or has been to a place which is much less expensive but offers much more exciting avenues for travelers than lv....?

reno is the name.... and within its 60 miles redius,

there is a world renown lake tahoe where in the winter you can sky till your heart's content....

and during the summer months which normally run from june to october, you can climb or hike up its most breathtaking mountains.... and
you can also water ski in crystal clear water all day long, if you wish....

and the air is absolutely fresh mountain air.... and the drinking water is also mountain cool....

and it contains no radio isotopes which might cause serious illness like some other places....

take a look at the attached pix and tell me--how much more superior reno is over las vegas.... lol

and reno is only about 7,000 feet above sea level (?).... lol

yes, si, oui

generally, it will be cheaper. they always have special packages for tourists, particularly overseas tourists....

if you stay in reno and then drive to lake tahoe which takes about 45 minutes, your expenses will be greatly reduced.

yes, i skiied in tahoe for about 10 yrs and lived in reno....

where else on earth can you have the all-you-can-eat gourmet food, chinese, japanese, european and american cuisine for 15 usd .... lol

and sea food and lobster on friday and saturday nights.... at 25 usd.... lol

while you are in reno.... go to harrah's at center of town and go and ask for miss lily.... she is the best and most pleasant supervisor.... she can comp you till you roll over.... lol

I don't want to go to Reno mate.

Plan ahead, and LV can be very cheap. During the week, you can get rooms at a major strip hotel for $40-60/night. Stay some place like Circus Circus, and they'll have rooms in the $30 range.

There's good buffets for $10-15 for dinner. And if you go off strip you can find some for even less than that, not to mention steak and eggs for $6. Drinks are free as long as you're playing (And penny slots can make $10 last a long time).

If you like to gamble you'll be comped rooms/food pretty easily, and discounts can be found for the big shows.

Airfare to LV tends to be dirt cheap, with lots of flights to/from.

Don't take the Taxi to your hotel, use a shuttle bus ($7).

Las Vegas is a lot like Bangkok, if you want to pay a lot and live like a big roller you can, but there's plenty of bargains for those who don't need the best.


Sounds like the life of a backpacker. I have been to Las Vegas twice and felt like a damned fool both times giving all my money to the Mafia. Americans are familiar with Hot Cakes & Sausages from McDonald's. In LV if you want more than one syrup it will cost you an extra 10 cents! I have stayed at the Mirage & the MGM and for days played and walked through the casinos. I saw ONE Person Win! One person! In the Mirage there were 5 restaurants. The menus are on the wall outside the restaurants. Not one meal cheaper than $30! Sure you can get a taxi and go to the so-called "cheap" old town and get a buffet for $20. But the food is terrible. It has no taste. The spices used are salt & pepper. The noise is unbelievable. The sidewalks are jammed with hundreds if not thousands of people shoulder to shoulder. If you want to get nothing and give your money to the gangsters that run the place, go ahead be a fool! I still feel like a fool for taking my wife there for our 25th wedding anniversary. After we got home she said she would rather go anywhere other than Mexico. We could have gone to beautiful places like Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., etc. But, no we went to that rip off of rip offs Las Vegas!
If you are fool enough, give it a try and see if you agree with the above poster. Hang on to your wallet! Oh, yeah, if you want to go to one of the "shows" get ready to shell out close to $100 each for a ticket. If you want to get in the hotels pools, you can't even turn around. I wonder how filthy that water is. My wife wouldn't even get in it.

Oops.
Another 'nail in the coffin' for the 'glass-half-empty' brigade.
They must be grinding their teeth in chagrin at this point.
Perhaps this nation will NOT slide downwards past Burma and Korea as they had predicted with monotonous regularity over the last 12 months.
What about the drunk Aussie sheila who stole the bar mat? That was meant to have a devastating long term impact on how all foreigners, white and black, fat and skinny, chose to view Thailand.
No?

Haven't been to LOS for quite a while so can't comment, but, other post on other topics would suggest that it is still very reasonable.

South Africa? LP is kidding surely. Cousin of mine just returned from 4 weeks seeing old friends. She lived there for 28 years. Rape capital of the world (good value?).

It's STILL a "time bomb so what's new", to quote from today's email (value?).

South Korea? They eat dog there. Good value? Who gives a shoot.

Mexico? Super dodgy household electrics. Who gives a shoot?

Iceland? So the ladies are friendlier, are they, than in times past? Cold, barren. Who gives a ........?

India? OMG. Never been there, but how could it be other than filthy and smelly and chockers with child exploitation? Value? Who gives a ........?

London? Don't know how ordinary tourists manage there frankly. A friend recently returned with 'horrific' stories of the cost of a coffee, piece of cake etcetera. Great place if you like the cold winters (some don't mind I'm told).


Where else? Who gives a ........

Don't forget that "we" see Thailand differently from the regular tourists. I can see why Tom, Dick and Henriette like Thailand: temples, oriental food, tropical beaches, bamboo bungalows, loads of sunshine and generally friendly people. To people who've been living in Thailand things might be slightly different. But your average tourist doesn't give a toss about being ripped-off. hel_l, they wouldn't be able to tell if they were. The Euro gives you around 50 Baht; to European tourists this simply means a cheap holiday (where a beer is about the same price as it is at home). Infrastructure/transportation is reasonably well organized, so what's there to complain about? Two weeks later they're back home with shiploads of photographs and good memories.

Cheaper in Thailand:

-Accommodation - Is kinda true now, but I expect it to return to overpriced levels within 2 years.
-Public transport - Other than taxies, public transportation is completely overpriced here, take the BTS or
MRT, for the places they go to and the inconvenence of transfers, I could name 50 other cities with better
value mass transit systems.

-Eating out - True
-Most groceries (apart from imported western items) - Not true, on average, most groceries are more than in the US,
(I don't know about Europe), milk for example is a staple and more expensive
-Health care (apart from NHS) - True
-Fuel - Not True, same as other countries such as the US
-Insurance - True
-All kind of taxes - None sense take singapore for example, tax is cheaper, and the quality of life is far better

?!?!?!

I once got stuck in Koh Kong for a night on the way to Sihanoukville. There was almost nothing there, except for hotels and beer bars (this was in 2002 I think). My impression was that the whole town's business model was based on tourists getting trapped for the night because they missed the one boat to Sihanoukville. At the time, the Thai-Cambodia Bridge hadn't been completed yet and the only way to Sihanoukville was by boat. The border crossing from Thailand opened at 8am, and you had about 30 minutes to get through and try to catch the boat, which required a taxi or moto ride to a pier some distance away. Maybe the first few people caught it; the rest of us stayed the night in Koh Kong. I have a hard time believing that this narrow window was a coincidence.

It was cheap though.

Apparently it has been been built up a bit since then (and perhaps there was more to it than I knew at the time). Admittedly, since I had no intention of staying there, I didn't do any reading on the place in advance. The staff at the hotel were helpful, but my Khmer was minimal, and their English not much better. I ended up taking a somewhat sketchy motorcycle tour to a "water fall" for the afternoon, and finishing up the evening at a beer bar with my moto driver and his friends (whose food and drinks of course I ended up paying for, although the total bill was quite reasonable).

Has anyone here been to Koh Kong in recent years?