Top 10 countries for 2010 named by Lonely Planet -- and they're cheap

Lonely Planet, the popular Australia-based guide book company for budget travelers, has named the "best places to go around the world right now" in its Best in Travel book series, and there are some surprising entries on the list. The good news is that most of them are inexpensive to visit, at least once you get there.

The list is not numbered, there is no definition of what "best" means, but we can assume that these are the places where you would want to live and travel because they're off the radar of mass tourism at the moment. The list was also complied in 2009, before the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf and the Greek financial crises.

Here are Lonely Planet's 10 best places to go in alphabetical order, along with their reasons why each one made the honors. I also update this list in light of big events that have occurred in the past six months.