Tag Archives: USD

Damn that Dollar!

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England is great and London is possibly one of the greatest cities in the world. There are cool things to do, funky clothes to buy, good shows to see, and yummy food to eat (ethinic food of course). Too bad it costs so damn much to do any of it when you’re coming with US dollars.

It’s really simple to figure out the cost in dollars when preparing to make a purchase. Just multiply by two. Most things cost in British pounds about what you would pay in a major city in the U.S. The problem is that with the crap exchange rate, you basically pay double what you would at home for just about everything. Makes me sad. Even the Charity Shop thrift store is too pricey for us. Just taking the Tube, London’s Metro, a stop or two will set you back $4. Ouch. Lucky for us we enjoy walking.

For the most part we’ve gotten over it and are making the most of our time in the UK. Lots of museums are free, though we haven’t really spent any time in them, and there are interesting neighborhoods and markets to explore. We’ve put our precious quid (British slang for the pound) to good use for The Polyphonic Spree at the Astoria and of course the beloved Liverpool Football Club.

Football and music. Two things that clearly merit the expenditure. It is England after all!

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.

Olympic Fever – Beijing

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Thats A Big Wall

Thats A Big Wall

The truth about Beijing, if you’ve been in China a while, is you only need a few days to see the sights, then get out …unless you want to go shopping. Then you could be there a month.

Beijing is like many other major Chinese cites: big, crowded, noisy and polluted. After you’ve seen sights I’d advise you to get out or get shopping. The two biggest advantages Beijing has over other cities is it’s connected-ness to the rest of China by plane bus and rail, and it’s abundance of bargain shopping outlets. Also, I understand they are having the Olympics here next year.

After a day in Beijing it’s impossible to not know where the 2008 Olympics are being held. The whole city is working 24/7 on the preparations and “One World, One Dream” is pasted everywhere. It’s even pasted up on the Great Wall. After the Olympics are over everyone in Beijing should be entitled to a good sleep, it will be well deserved.

As for the sights and shopping, they will be here forever. We went to the “Big Four” – The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and IKEA.

But the first sight we took in was the smog, it was remarkable. We’d heard a lot about the pollution in China, but hadn’t really seen anything that bad in our first month and a half here. But on the train back from Mongolia we had a chance to check it out, and live in it for our first two days in Beijing. Now I understand – it’s very impressive. We were at one end of Tiananmen Square and could hardly see the opposite end.

Luckily for us a storm rolled through and cleared all the muck out of the air for us after a couple of days, leaving us with breathable air. Rumor has it the government is going to restrict personal automobile traffic in Beijing for a month next year to try and limit the smog during the games. Hope it helps.

So our visit to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City really was like a walk through the clouds – “Can you see it over there?” “What?” “Nevermind.” And sadly, we must report that the Starbucks in the Forbidden City has closed. We got there a week late.

More interesting was our visit to Beijings other “City”, it’s “Underground City“, constructed at the height of the Cold War when Mao was anticipating a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union any day. It’s pretty crazy (and much cooler than top-side Beijing in July). They tunneled out many miles and built factories, theaters, etc all underground. Now, you can pay 20 Yuan and get a tour of it.

Making up for a somewhat lackluster visit to the downtown sites we headed up to the Great Wall the following day. The Wall is pretty amazing and if you get there early enough you’ll miss the mad crowds. Also, did you know there is a slide from the top to the bottom? I had no idea! It’s a few hundred feet long and and looks like a lot of fun.

Our last stop was IKEA. We have no furniture needs, we just went to see one of the biggest IKEA’s in the world and eat cheap ice cream. Note – Alcohol is not regulated in China the same way it is in the States, so at the IKEA Cafe you can order a beer, wine (like LeeAnne did) or hard liquor. Sometimes you need that to shop here I guess.

IKEA was actually only the first stop on what was suppose to be a tour of the Beijing Olympic Stadium and Olympic Park. But we never got there – it had nothing to do with the wine. After our ice cream we determined the only way to get out to the park was by taxi – the Metro line there isn’t open yet – and we didn’t want to pay $30 in cab fare that day. It’s a decision I kind of regret as the stadium design is very impressive. It’s ultra-modern – the whole thing looks like a seven story high birds nest. But, it’s okay, I have a feeling it will be on TV some next summer.