Tag Archives: Travel

The Big Mac Index

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So I have to tell you, from a exchange rate perspective, 2007 has not been a great year to travel outside the United States. Well, at least not if you have American Dollars to change (thank you George W. Bush). The exchange rates of most of the currencies we changed for was usually worse when we left than when we arrived, it sucked.

If you are as determined as we were to get out there and see the world, and the Dollar hasn’t yet recovered, here are a few things to consider:

  • Stay Away from Western Europe – The Dollar to the Euro sucks. The Pound? Even worse. You will spend more money than you expect to here.
  • Go to Countries with Good Exchange Rates – We spent about as much in a week in the United Kingdom as we did in two months in India without trying. You read that right – one week, two months.
  • Get Out of the Big Cities – In our experience we spent about half as much in the country as we did in the cities. It may seem like there’s less to do, but there is a LOT less to spend money on.
  • Buy Less Before You Leave – Ever heard of buying at the top? That’s what you’re doing ever time you buy something in the States. Example – We bought a months worth of anti-malarial medication in the states. Each pill cost about ten dollars a piece. That gave us enough to get “in country” and find some more, or cheap. The very first pharmacy we went to in Delhi sold the exact same malarial meds for about a dollar a pill – we saved nine dollars on every pill by getting the rest in India. That’s Med’s but the same goes for hiking shoes, quick dry clothes, etc.
  • Avoid Whitey – When you do get out on the road, don’t go to Starbucks. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, and very expensive. In fact, when you’re out, ask locals where to eat. If you follow Lonely Planet all the time you’re going to get “Tourist Food” all the time. It’s cheaper, more fun and usually better quality to eat where the locals do.

US Dollar Exchange Rates

CurrencyValue on
Arrival		Arrival DateValue at
Departure		Departure
Date		Up/Down
New Zealand Dollar1.42Jan. 051.44Feb. 15+ 0.02
Australian Dollar1.27Feb. 161.27Mar. 13+/-
Indian Rupie44.21Mar. 1441.29May 13- 2.92
Chinese (PRC) Yuan7.69May 187.57Jul 23- 0.12
Mongolian Tugrik1164.00Jun 261163.78Jul 14- 0.22
Hong Kong Dollar7.82May 147.82Jul 26+/-
South African Rand6.94Jul 277.25Aug 29+ 0.31
Zimbabwean Dollar134,000Jul 28360,000Aug 3+ 226,000
Zambian Dollar4006.40Jul 304000.21Jul 31- 6.19
Botswana Pula6.35Aug 26.32Aug 3- 0.03
Namibian Dollar7.56Aug 167.38Aug 26- 0.18
British Pound0.4983Aug 300.4966Sep 6- 0.0017
Jordanian Dinar0.7138Sep 60.7134Sep 12- 0.0004
Turkish New Lira1.294Sep 121.267Sep 17- 0.027

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.

Things to Do in Beijing

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I have to admit – we probably shouldn’t even do an entry on Beijing until we go back there next month. Our three nights and two days there on this leg were mainly occupied with chores: picking up tickets from the travel agency, finding a camera shop to repair our busted equipment, trying to make a few changes to our airline tickets and doing laundry. Not exactly blog-worth material, I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading right here.

Beijing is – surprise – a huge city. And everything happening there right now revolves around making sure that the facilities for the Olympics next year are done way ahead of time. The Chinese don’t want another “Athens” happening on their watch. There are billboards around making sure no one forgets it either – one counts down the days until the games begin. There are reports on the news promoting how many stadiums are done, how many days ahead of schedule they are and so forth.

But still, most of this is material for a future blog entry when we actually do something in Beijing beyond our laundry. The only real drama this time around was what has become known between LeeAnne and I as “The Qantas Affair”.

We’re at a point in our trip where we are over half way done, and we’re ready to make a few tweaks to our itinerary. A few date changes and a few destination changes. After looking long and hard at Mauritius, we just can’t find a place to stay for a reasonable amount of money, so we’re going to ditch it and trade those flights for flights from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls. Also, we’re hoping to change our flight from Nairobi to London to a flight from Johannesburg to London, it’s just going to be a lot easier. That is, if we can get ‘er done.

QANTAS we are quickly learning stands for “Queer And Nasty Try Another Service”. Actually, that’s too harsh, we’ve used them to make ticket changes on this trip already and everything went fine, but the Beijing office is a cause for alarm.

The people behind the desk in Beijing have no experience with the One World ticket, didn’t know how to make any changes and apparently don’t know where Victoria Falls, Zambia, or Namibia are, much less what their airport codes are. By the time we left the office, I was actually glad to have nothing done and our paper tickets to Mauritius safely in our hands. First, do no harm.

So nothing may come from our visit to QANTAS in Beijing, but we still have opportunities to make changes in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Jo’Berg. We have to draw a high card in one of those cities. Wish us luck.