Creative ways to save money while travelling

I don’t know why, but we've had the strangest sleeping patterns since arriving in Thailand. Last night for example, we were both really tired at about 5pm and decided we'd have “a short nap” before heading out to the markets to grab some dinner. Fast forward 10 hours and I wake up to complete blackness – it was 2.59am!

Oh man, I missed dinner :(

I couldn't get back to sleep because I was so nervous about going to my very first Thai language class this morning.
"Are you sleeping?" I asked J.
No reply. He obviously didn't hear me.
"I saaiid, are you sleeping?!".
I gave him a nudge. Gosh I can be so annoying.

We (I) decided to get up. As I got ready, I noticed that I have quite the collection of hotel toiletries and that's when I got the idea for this post:

My creative (& possibly slightly dishonest) tips to save money while travelling.

NB: If you’re looking for intelligent tips, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I’m not going to rehash the usual ones like ‘travel in the low season’ (you can bet there’s a good reason no one else is going, folks) or ‘get off the beaten road’ (that’s where tourists get kidnapped, and western toilets become squat ones).

Let's get into it:

1. If you stay in any nice hotels – collect all the toiletries every time they make up the room. I haven’t had to buy a single bottle of shampoo yet!

And that's only HALF my stash.
I've also kept stuff I don't even use (shower caps, loafers, shaving gel...) in case I ever change my mind

2. Don’t dress expensive-looking, especially in countries where bargaining is the norm. They’ll think you’re loaded and it will be almost impossible to get a fair price on anything.

3. A certain coffee chain in the US had membership cards where you got a free cup of coffee each time you activated one of their cards. As a bonus, if your birthday was coming up they'd give you a free pastry!

I got a card for each of my multiple personalities, and what do you know - they all had birthdays in February!

4. Free breakfasts = jackpot! Go early, stuff yourself until you think you're going to die, then stuff yourself some more! You'll be so full you won't need to buy any more food. Worked for us when we were staying in Goa. We’d only eat breakfast and that was it. Warning - you may not be able to move for a few hours after eating.

5. Here's a serious one! Learn the numbers in the language of the place you’re going so that you can hear if the seller is giving you the same price they’re giving locals.

So that's it folks. Useless info as always. That's my speciality.