The best way to reduce the cost of your travels and have new experiences is to volunteer and offer a few hours of work in exchange of food and accommodation. There are some websites where you can find these opportunities such as Worldpackers, Workaway, WOOOF, Helpx and so on.
How to volunteer in exchange of accommodation?
In this article I explain how to use Workaway, that has 25k hosts in 155 countries, telling a bit about my experiences around the world that include farming, construction, housekeeping and teaching.
How to start?
You register your self in the website paying 29.00 USD for an individual account and 38.00 USD for a couple account. Accounts are valid for one year enabling you to contact any of the hosts on the host list.
How does it works?
After you register yourself and complete a profile with your skills you are free to browse opportunities around the world and contact hosts. You start choosing a continent, country, than region. There are a lot of jobs in farms, guesthouses and au pair positions, but workaway also includes unique experiences such as working on a sailing boat. You normally work 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, most of the time a bit less.
Hosts generally prefer long term guests between 1 month and 3 months but there are plenty of places where you can also work for a week or 2. To get a workaway job you just need to find the one that suits you the most, look at the conditions and message the host telling the dates you are available. After that you wait for an answer and confirmation.
Register yourself here in workaway
Why should you use it?
When you think about traveling, there are basically 3 main expenses: accommodation, food and transportation. Working in exchange of room and board allows you to cut 2 main travel costs.
My first experience with workaway was in Sagaing, Myanmar where I was teaching english for a week in a buddhist center while learning about the Burmese culture.
I had my own private room and meals together with 300 monks. After that, when I went to Japan, I volunteered in a guesthouse in Kyoto as a housekeeper. I had a bed in a shared room with other travellers and access to the kitchen to cook my own meals. I did that for one week, considering that the cheapest accommodation rate per night in Japan was over 25 USD. Meanwhile I could explorer the city of Kyoto.
In the Philippines I was a Typoon response volunteer, working with reconstruction of houses. This project was leaded by a big volunteering organisation called Allhands and they use workaway as a channel to get the volunteers. I stayed there for 2 weeks and was a very rewarding experience.
In my first 2 weeks in New Zealand I worked in a farm taking care of goats, hedgehogs, chickens, ducks and over 200 birds, mostly parrots and cockatiels. That was a gorgeous experience.
The hosts were treating us like family, in addition we had our own private room with a comfortable bed, all meals included and I learned so much about birds.
I also did a Workaway in Tonga, a small island in the Pacific as an eco resort helper and sailed the Caribbean on a cheap, helping the captain in exchange of free accommodation and transport. You can find this type of opportunity in the website findacrew and volunteer in exchange of accommodation.