A tight budget forces you to travel close to the ground, meeting and communicating with the people, not relying on service with a purchased smile. Never sacrifice sleep, nutrition, safety, or cleanliness in the name of budget. Simply enjoy the local-style alternatives to expensive hotels and restaurants.

Extroverts have more fun. If you trip is low on magic moments, kick yourself and make things happen. If you don't enjoy a place, maybe you don't know enough about it. Seek the truth. Recognize tourist traps. Give a people the benefit of your open mind. See things as different but not better or worse. Any culture has much to share.

Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. Travel, like the world, is a series of hills and valleys. If something's not to your liking, change your liking. Travel is addicting. It can make you a happier American, as well as a citizen of the world. Our Earth is home to nearly six billion equally important people. It's humbling to travel and find that people don't envy Americans. They like us, but with all due respect, they wouldn't trade passports.

Globe-trotting destroys ethnocentricity. It helps you understand and appreciate different cultures. Travel changes people. It broadens perspectives and teaches new ways to measure quality of life. Many travelers toss aside their hometown blinders. Their prized souvenirs are the strands of different cultures they decide to knit into their own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop. And Back Door Travelers are weaving the ultimate tapestry.

Reflect and act. By providing you with a new perspective, travel can teach as much about the culture you're a part of as the one you're visiting. Flirt with some new thinking. Ponder such up-and-coming notions as sustainable affluence, responsible consumpting, controlling nature by obeying her, simplicity, and the global village. Is America's religion materialism? What can Europe teach us about quality of life? Does the wealth, power and freedom it takes to be a world traveler come with responsibilities? As Thomas Jefferson said, "Travel can make one wiser but less happy." Are you wiser? If so, how will you use, share, and build upon your new broadened perspective back home?