Category Archives: Travel Expenses

Banking in Zim-Zam

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If you’re planning a trip to Zimbabwe – okay, not that many people plan to go to Zim, lets start over – if you’re planning a trip to Victoria Falls and flying in, guess what, you’re going to Zimbabwe. The land of 7000 percent inflation, and the land where the government officially denies that there’s an issue with inflation. You say, “What? This is too abstract, can you give me an example of what it’s like there Dave?”. Yes I can:

When we were there one US dollar will get you 140,000 Zimbabwe Dollars on the street. The street observes the market reality of the countries inflation issues. If you go into a bank (which has to observe the governments “Official” rate to stay in business) and change the same dollar it will get you 250 Zimbabwe Dollars – that’s a lot less. So, no one uses banks, even locals. Also, no one uses the ATM (again official rates), or uses credit cards (guess why? official rates).

In terms of what you use that dollar for: Seven thousand percent inflation mean that if you are lucky enough to find a store or restaurant that can provision itself, prices will be written in pencil and changed every week. For example – a loaf of bread will cost 500,000 Zim dollars this week, but will cost 1.1 million Zim next week. Do you see where we’re going with this?

Therefore, you need to come here with all of the hard currency – Dollars, Euros, Rand – you plan to use. Or if you’re near a border you can cross over and use an ATM, or change Travellers checks. Of course carrying a lot of cash in the third world is never fun, but you wanted to see the Falls right?

So begins our story: Reading about the difficulties people here have we pulled out a lot of cash in Hong Kong and changed it into Travellers Checks, we pulled out more Rand than we needed at the airport in Johannesburg and we planned to use the ATM just over the border in Zambia. Now, apparently pulling out the daily maximum from three different countries on two continents with a four day span throws up a red flag to the security folks at the bank. When we dipped our debit card into the ATM in Livingston, Zambia it got locked down. No cash for you.

This was kind of a problem, because we still need to pay for a Safari we were planning to leave on the next day.

Why did this happen? Well, again, we were pulling out cash from different parts of the world, which got someones attention, but we had been diligent before we left called our banks and told them about our travel and named every country we planned to bank in. Zimbabwe was not one of them for the reasons we’ve already been over, so it shouldn’t have been a problem right?. Well, for whatever reason the ATM’s in Livingston , Zambia show up as being in Zimbabwe for Bank of America, and no amount of telling them otherwise was going to help.

We were locked out of our account and it was a pain in the neck to get it unlocked.

Bank of America has switched to a 800 number system exclusively, trouble is calling a US 800 number from Zimbabwe won’t work. So I ended up calling Bank of America offices (which have a real number) in the states and asking them to transfer me to their debit card division. First huddle cleared. Next, the phone we were using didn’t have touch tone dialing and all of BofA’s systems are automated. It took several calls, but I finally got through to “Ted”, explaining to him that he was my lifeline, and if I lost him, I lost all hope in BofA.

He was great, he treated me as if I were a caller to a suicide hot line: “David, I’m going to put you on hold for a moment. But I want you to understand it’s because I’m going to connect you with the person that can help you, and explain your situation to them. This will take a minute or two, but I am not going to disconnect until you are on the phone with them. Do you understand?”

Within minutes we had the hold on our card removed and were back in business.

Showdown at Qantas Office – Beijing

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So part of the attraction of our Round the World ticket is it’s flexibility. Once you’ve identified you’re destinations and flight dates you can change your dates at will. So if you get some where and love it you can stay longer, or if you get somewhere and hate it you can jet out, and for a fee you can change your destinations entirely. This flexibility is one of the reasons we went with the OneWorld Alliance ticket.

Of course, when you’re planning things you plan them in a perfect world. Reality sometimes sets in when you try to actually use this flexibility. First off, it’s free to change your dates using the OneWorld Explorer ticket. This is true, unless you bought your ticket from Qantas. Qantas charges a 25 dollar fee each time you change your dates. This applies to us even though we bought our tickets through American Airlines. What to know why? We bought our tickets at the American Airlines desk in Auckland. And the American Airlines desk in Auckland is just that, a desk in a Qantas office, therefore everything gets printed on Qantas stock and we get to pay extra for services that should be free. Kind of annoying, but what are you going to do?

We’ve made date changes to our tickets twice already, and each time they went swimmingly. So when we decided we wanted to make both date and destination changes in Beijing we weren’t expecting any problems. There were problems.

First off, we wanted to make destination changes in part because two new airlines have joined the alliance: Royal Jordanian and MALÉV, the national carrier of Hungary. Adding these two add a lot of options for flights to the Mid-East and Central/Eastern Europe. We were pretty excited about the possibilities, so we headed down to the Qantas office in Beijing.

Note to any Qantas ticket holders thinking about going into the Beijing office – they have no idea what they’re doing. Stay away! Stay away! Stay away!

After two minutes in the office I knew the wisest thing was to get our tickets out of the hands of the Qantas rep who had them and get as far away as possible. When she told us she didn’t know that Namibia was in Africa we were concerned. When she thought Victoria Falls was in Europe we were very concerned. When she told us that a British Airways flight wasn’t part of the alliance, I just wanted to run away. We agreed on a “Face-Saving” maneuver – she would read up on the OneWorld alliance rules, and we would give her a list of changes we would like to make. We left relieved that nothing at all had been done.

Fast forward a couple of days. After “educating” herself she started to make the changes we had requested. We where notified by email. But instead of making all the changes she made just two. I immediately called the office and she told me that the changes she made would cost $150 each and for the rest of them I should “Probably go to Hong Kong office. Much bigger, more use to this.”

This really wasn’t the response we were looking for. So we headed back down to the Qantas office as soon as we could, and luckily got hold of someone who mostly knew what she was doing – even though she had to be “convinced” that Royal Jordanian was now a OneWorld partner and that “Yes, you can” book us on that airline. We got mostly all the changes we were looking for, and it only took the better part of three days. Three trips to the Qantas Beijing office and a couple of “double check” calls to the American Airlines Round the World ticket desk in the states (All of whom are extremely competent).

So the winners in our ticket change are Victoria Falls and Istanbul. The losers: Mauritius and Nairobi. Why: All the cheap accommodation in Mauritius (there is very little to begin with) was booked up and we didn’t feel like sleeping in the airport for a week. Nairobi lost out because we decided we didn’t want to trek overland in Africa for a month. So instead we’re flying into and out of Vic Falls and spending the better part of a week in Istanbul.

Some people have said to us that Qantas is really an acronym for Queer and Nasty Try Another Service. We do not believe this. The reps we’ve used in other Qantas offices have been terrific, and we’d love it if they worked in Beijing, but they don’t and the folks in that office aren’t really up to speed with OneWorld tickets. Too bad they’re having the Olympics here next year. If you absolutely have to use this office, my advice would be to have all of your details figured out before you go in (flight numbers, carrier codes, the works). You may have to dig in your heals on some points, but you’ll (probably) get the changes you need.

Mongolia Notes for Budget Travelers

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Mongolian Kid and Friend

Mongolian Kid and Friend

Mongolia is a bit different than the other countries we have visited thus far. There is only one real city, UB, and there is very little infrastructure to support public transport around the country. As we mentioned in Off We Ger if you want to get out into the countryside, which is really THE reason to come to Mongolia, then you need to a) join a tour; b) hire a jeep; or c) be completely raving madand take the local long distance buses. You could also fly, but since that wasn’t remotely within our budget (boohoo), I’ve left it out.

Tours run the gamut from budget backpackers piled into Russian vans that look like VW buses to the Golden Circle gang who get flown into luxury ger camps and driven around in shiny Landcruisers. (Yes, I’m a little envious.) Many travelers join together a group of 3-4 people and hire a jeep and driver. This can work out to be a pretty good deal since you choose your route and have freedom to stop whenever and wherever you choose. Since there were only two of us and we were not organized enough to find other people to share the costs of a jeep, we skipped option b. Our disorganization and adversity to tour groups ruled out option a as well.

So as you may have read, we went with Ger to Ger, an organization that supports sustainable tourism among nomadic herders. Good organization, good philosophy, a little loose on some details, but still a very good, authentic and low cost experience. That said, taking the bus to and fro was pure, sheer, total hell like no other. And yes, I had the bruises to prove it.

In terms of lodging, outside of UB, the main choices are basic hotels, ger camps (both luxury and budget) and camping. Mongolia is excellent for camping and it’s free. Just pitch your tent and snooze. Many ger camps seem to cater to foreigners offering less authentic experiences at tourist prices. And from what I’ve heard hotels range from grotty to decent. Not a lot of luxury in this category. Lucky for us, we stayed at what may be one of the nicest guesthouses outside of UB. This was mighty welcome after a week of no showers. AND they had a cafe with a vegetarian menu. Sadly we missed the veggie burger, but did have some tasty bakery treats for the bus ride.

Within UB, pretty much the same lodging choices exist except that there are loads of guesthouses and some nicer hotels. Our guesthouse was bare bones at best, but to be honest we didn’t mind since we were the only ones there most of the time. Plus the owner was a really great guy. As always, dorms are cheaper and most places have shared baths. We paid a pretty average $16 per night for a room with a double bed (and literally nothing else!).

Food is relatively inexpensive in UB and even cheaper in the countryside, though choices are more limited there. UB has a surprising plethora of western restaurants thanks to the number of NGOs and foreign aid agencies. Though the food was inexpensive by western standards, it was a little bit more than we had been paying in China and India. Still a bargain. If you visit UB, don’t miss the weird mix of flavors at Los Bandidos – Mongolia’s only Indian-Mexican restaurant. We went three times for the nachos.

Overall, Mongolia is pretty good for budget travel. The lack of infrastructure outside of the city prohibits it from being super cheap, but we managed pretty well on an average of about $50 a day including the trek, transport, food, lodging, etc.