Traveling tips (Hostel)

Hotels are a bit tricky. I'm a big fan of Hostel World.com they show many different hostels with different prices plus, they have ratings with revues from past customers which gives you a good idea of what awaits you. There's hihostel.com for which you need a member's card most of the time. Just check for a couple of details : the amount of people in your room, mixed rooms or seperate, location (downtown is nice but near a night club or a busy street is not so nice!), kitchen available, breakfast included (or not), laundry, air conditioning or heat, lockers, curfues, etc.
If your 2 travelling together, check for private rooms, sometimes they're just a bit more (5-10$/each) and also check for hotel rooms as they could end up being the same price than 2 beds in a dorm room.

Traveling tips (Air)

Try one of those cheap airline cies (Low Cost Airlines), they don't give good inflight services and you might need to bring your lunch but you can get good prices. The other trick is to go thru one of those travel websites like expedia.ca, search for your flight and look at the airline company for the cheapest flight then, go to the airline's website to book your ticket it'll be cheaper. What you can also do, is look at the list of flights and pic the connection that comes up the most often and seperate your flight.
Example : I wanted a flight from Montreal to Sydney the cheapest flights I could find were around 1500$ all included. I went on expedia.ca searched for flights from Montreal to Los Angeles and then look at flights from Los Angeles to Sydney the price came up to around 900$ then, I went tru the websites of the airlines that we deserving those flights and the total end price : 789,5$.