A frequent traveller tells how to get the most from your holidays - great food, local colour and authentic experiences - without spending a lot.

I've got two words for you: es campur.

That's Indonesian for, 'mixed ice.' This wonderful concoction of shaved ice, coconut, pineapple, jackfruit, sweet jellies, avocado and condensed milk may be the strangest, most delicious delicacy I've ever ingested and I owe it to one of my most sacred travel principles: Try it - pretty much whatever 'it' is. This has included riding an elephant in Thailand, taking a toke of the local tobacco from a hookah in Istanbul, eating snake in China, turning off the highway to visit the Corn Palace in South Dakota, USA, and taking a break from a Balinese bike ride to approach a roadside stand and taste a spoonful - and then a bowlful - of es campur.

There are, of course, exceptions: skydiving has, so far, been beyond me. Some things are too dangerous or unappealing. I won't eat dog, no matter what the local custom. Nor will I fire, or even touch, a gun, even at a supervised firing range for nothing. (This has actually come up.)

'Try it' is only the most general of the essential principles I've learned in my years on the road and it's one of the most important things you can take on a trip. Here are five more specific tips that can quickly elevate even the most novice independent traveller to the savvy heights of a seasoned globetrotter.

1. Eat the Food on the Train
   In many countries, food sellers will climb aboard a train during a station stop and quickly walk down the aisles announcing their delicacies. I've had some of the most scrumptious, inexpensive meals of my travels this way.

   At dinnertime on a trip from Bombay to Goa, an old woman climbed aboard and sold me three vegetable samosas, still warm from the fryer, potatoes tender and steamy, for a few pennies. In the morning, stewards on the train prepared hot chai - sweet, spicy milk tea - and served it in clear glasses. At a stop another old woman appeared selling a breakfast pastry, a rice-pancake with dhal inside, wrapped in parchment. Standing in the open air at the end of the car as the train began chugging south again, sipping the chai and eating the pastry, I felt wonderful - the sun dancing, the world a place of surprise treats lavished on the open heart. I've never had a finer breakfast.

   And no, I did not get sick later. I have never once been ill in India. Perhaps thanks to...

   Subrule a: Look at the Person Selling You Food
   I didn't invent this rule, but I have found it to be infallible. You can assume the waiter or the guy running the kiosk eats the same tasty grub they are selling you. If they look healthy and clean, the food they're selling is probably fine. Keep in mind that one of the biggest issues with food contamination is the local water and lack of refrigeration, so cooked hot local dishes are better than European-style salads anyway.

   

   2. Buswise, Don't Listen to The Guy Who Runs the 'Tourist Information' Desk - There's Almost Always More Than One Bus Company Going Where You Want To Go
   In most countries there are competing bus companies with overlapping routes. Sometimes, tour operators don't believe you are willing to travel on the buses that the local people use, so they'll only tell you about the once-a-day (or once-a-week) luxury motor coaches plying the route to your destination. (See Subrule b)

   Other tourist 'information' guides get kickbacks from a bus company whenever they refer a customer so they won't tell you about competitors.

   You can avoid this arrangement by getting yourself to the closest long-distance bus station in town. Competing companies will have windows with schedules and prices (the lowest possible) listed. Chances are, there's a bus leaving soon for your destination, and even if there isn't, there's probably a great cheap restaurant near the station where you can wait. I had a delicious flan near Mexico City's south station once while waiting for a bus to Acapulco. Bus drivers like to eat well. It's one of the solaces of the job.

   Subrule b: Unless You're Addicted to Freezing Air-Con, Windows That Won't Open, Meeting Only People From Where You're From, and Insipid, Uninformed Tour Guides, Avoid Luxury Motor Coaches Everywhere, Always
   This one's kind of self-explanatory.

   3. Pay for the Guided Tour at the Entrance
   It's tempting, if you're travelling on a tight budget, never to pay extra for a guided tour of anything. Admission prices to prime attractions can be steep enough. But outside almost every major tourist attraction, you'll find locals willing to act as unofficial guides. For a smaller-than-official fee, they will walk you through, pointing out the stuff you don't want to miss and then, when it's over, leave you alone.

   I visited the Basilica of Born Jesus in Old Goa recently. I'd hired my own inexpensive taxi to get there and spent as much time as I wanted strolling through the historic Portuguese colonial buildings on my own. But when it came time to visit the most famous site in Old Goa, the Basilica, I said 'yes' to one of the local men standing outside the church doors offering un-official guide services. He was asking about 50p for the 20-minute tour. At the end I gave him one pound for it. (See Subrule c)

   He told me how the stone floor was cut, where the wood for the pews came from, and about the annual Old Goa festival. He led me to the gold-and-glass casket on a high altar where the last mortal remains of the famous Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier are kept. He used a laser pointer to show me how you can look into the casket and see Xavier's actual body. Maybe it's grim that a centuries-old corpse is on view, but it's nice to have a friendly guide who, if you tell him it's grim, will laugh with you and say, 'Yes, many people say that. A strange religion.'

   Subrule c: In Struggling Countries, Remember How Much a Little of Your Money Can Mean to a Local
   Thirty lempira can seem like a lot of money when wadded up in your pocket in Honduras. But it's actually only worth 50p. In London, it buys you a newspaper. In Tegucigalpa it buys a family dinner for a week.

   4. For Restaurant Recommendations, Drop the Guidebook and Follow Your Nose
   Guidebooks are better at recommending hotels than restaurants. After all, restaurants change often; a cook gets fired and everything's different from the day the travel writer visited.

   When I made my first trip to Paris during a summer break from college, many of the inexpensive restaurants noted in the respected Let's Go! guide were no longer in existence. I wanted to meet other travellers after days of exploring the city solo, but time after time, I met shuttered restaurants instead. One day at Shakespeare and Co. books, I met a French student who told me there are cafeterias that are subsidised by the government for students. All you need is an international student card to get in. By that point, after a week in Paris, I'd taken to eating the only things I could afford: baguettes and apples. The student led me to the cafeteria, where a whole meal of decent French food cost about the same as what I'd been paying for a baguette.

   A few years later in Rome, I was having the same problem with Lonely Planet: Italy. So I just started walking and eventually noticed a wonderful aroma of garlic coming from a place in the artsy Trastevere neighborhood. It was called Ciak! It cost more than that student cafeteria in Paris, but after my travelling companion and I had drunk some Chianti and some of the fabulous meats grilled Tuscan-style, we were so happy that we strolled out and splurged on gelato for dessert.

   Subrule d: It's Okay to Eat Ice Cream More Than Once a Day
   Get over your at-home guilt. If you're travelling, you're walking a lot and burning calories. Ice-cream eaten at these times won't make you fat. It will only make you happy.

   5. Get Off the Horse - Not Every Travel Activity that Seems Cool Turns Out To Be And It's No Shame to Give Up Halfway
   For the last two kilometres, there is no road to the crest of Mt Bromo in Java. The Land Rovers disgorge passengers at the end of the road just before dawn and leave them to walk up an expanse of cooled black lava to catch the sunrise over the caldera. There are also local ranch hands at the end of the car road, offering horses for the last leg of the journey.

   Crossing a lava field by horse. It sounds cool. So I paid the small fee and mounted for the 20-minute ride.

   Within five minutes, I was suffering. The horses are small and bony there, the saddles tiny. The horses were more suited for slight-of-build Indonesians than for hefty Occidentals. I had to squeeze my thighs around the poor beast to hold on and my legs burned and ached and chafed. I gave up and walked the rest of the way, leading the horse. But I watched other travellers - blonde-haired Germans with overhanging guts and six-foot-five Norwegians - stay on their suffering mounts the whole way, pelvic bones grinding painfully on hardened horse spine. But the Indonesian cowboys had promised a sunrise trip to the volcano by horse and by god these tourists were going to have it. The next day their genitals and bums would feel like burned sate meat. Amusing, but I was happy to have learned a lesson, which was: sometimes, if something really sucks, acknowledge reality and get off the horse.

   Subrule e: Sunrises at Volcanoes Are Nice
   It's also nice to be on mountaintops at other times, too, when there aren't other people around and you can feel alone at the top of the world with yourself or with your best pal. The important thing is to create the right trip for you, with or without the Germans, the horses and the sunrise climb. That said, it often pays to be a part of the organised outing. The sunrise at Bromo was fantastic. We rubbed our rear ends and stared at the beams of dawn.