In Vancouver with Scummy Susan & Low-on-cashflow-Lee...

Running low on cash after 4 months of travel? Don’t want to blow it all on the simple things such as eating and drinking??? No worries - just follow these sure fire tips and you’ll be saving much needed dimes and quarters like there’s no tomorrow...

Breakfast Always use your ‘free breakie’ vouchers provided at the hostel. Always - even when you’ve been having ‘free muffin & coffee’ for the lsat 5 days in a row. DO NOT be sucked into the ‘upgrade to a full hot breakfast for just $2.75’ - as t2ppl x $2.75 = $6.50 to your breakie just like that. Conpletely unnecessary, besides, one can use the opportunity to try all types of muffins on offer - carrot, raisin & bran (my fave), blueberry (Row’s fave), banana & walnut... etc. etc.

When serving yourself to the ‘no-refill’ coffee station, ask for a take-away mug instead of an in-house mug, and then, casually ask to upgrade to the larger size explaining that you want to add some hot water when you get back to hostel... Slowly, and casually approach the coffee station - with your back turned to the waiting staff, grab 5 sachets of brown sugar, a couple of individual jam, peanut butter and honey servings, and pour yourself and extra BIGGIE mug of coffee. That, combined with the muffin will keep your belly happy all the way to lunchtime.

Pre-lunch Snacker Become aware of the ‘promotional corner’ in downtown Vancouver where you can find new product freebies being handed out between noon & 1pm. We were lucky to get some tasty fruit juices & on the last day, even scored some peanut smarties! (By the way, apart from the initial excitement of eating chocolate for the first time in months, these really weren’t that tasty. In fact, we ended up giving them to one of the homeless guys as we figured he would enjoy them more than us).

Lunch Ok, this was always our splurging meal, but we still found a way to save $$$. Each lunchtime we would go to the ‘salad loop’ - an awesome help yourself salad bar with awesome salads, raw vegies etc. While the meal would cost us about A$8 between the two of us, we just got one customer loyalty card between the two of us so would build up our stamps twice as quickly and thus score the $1 off meal twice as fast!Afternoon TeaIn need of a pick me up after spending yet another day at the internet cafe doing our CV’s, applying for jobs, trying to find a place to live and checking mail etc., we would head to Starbuciks. Again - while SB is not the cheapest coffee around, we had a strategy. We would order one extra big coffee between us, and just as I was walking off, I would casually ask for another cup. Upon sitting down I would divide the XL coffee into two, providing two regular sized extra hot lattes for the price of 1 XL - saving approximately $1.20 each time!! Nice one...

Din Dins Before going shopping for dinner, scan the “freebies” shelf at the hostel to see what is on offer.

- Base the evening’s meal on available free produce.

- If, as in our case, the fundamental free ingredient is Lord-knows-how-old-already-opened pasta sauce, open jar to to check surface mould. If present, it should be minimal, and you should be able to spoon the affected contects out within two scoops to ensure the sauce only scores 5 on the dodge-icterscale.

- Go shopping for cheapest loaf of bread available. You should be able to find one for 82c.- Buy smallest quantity of cheese possible. Unfortunately, this tends to be in the form of funky orange cheese slices. I have no idea why, but the Nth Americans LURV their processed fluro orange cheese. Still, at 30c a slice, its not cheap, but it does mean you can get the evening’s cheese quota for $1.80

- Return to hostel and make ‘deluxe dodgy tomato sauce on wholemeal with orange cheese’ toasties. More than two people can eat (and yes, that includes Rowan’s impressive appetite) all for just $2.62. PLUS you will have left over bread for a snack in the days to come... Also provides something to spread those jam, peanut butter & honey sachets that you have been accumulating on...

- An alternative to ‘cooking at home’ (or rather cooking in a hostgel kitchen that was even more dodgy and grubby than most) is to go to any of the 100 ‘pizza by the slice’ joints in downtown Vancouver. They are EVERYWHERE & they’re actually really tasty - and not crappy/processed/oily... In the words of the great Joel Harris, “This could actually be healthy!”. And at just 95c per jumbo slice they provide all the basic food groups! That’s dinner for two at just $1.90 - $4.75 (depending on hunger levels - I would sometimes have 2 and Row 3...).

And so, our week in Vancouver was spent largely doing our CV’s, applying for jobs while hanging out at the unemployment centre, and figuring out ways to save $. We did a lot of walking around and just freebie sightseeing but our focus was on making a plan for the next couple of months.

We fly out of Van before heading to the states next year so will hopefully get to see some more of the city then.