I just wanted to add the work for food and shelter method, briefly touched by some people in the thread.
I was in Australia, and really angry with the high cost of everything and found out about WWOOFers (http://wwoofinternational.org/WWOOFers).
Since then I use it all the time!
Every case of people there is different and you might even ending up with a "real" job if that is what you look for.
Endless possibilities!