Almost every foreign trip is going to involve taking a taxi at some point. It’s also true that wherever you go, there’s a high chance that you’ll step out of at least one taxi knowing that you’ve paid too paid for the ride. Taxi drivers appear to have an exemption from the universal code of fair play and will try a variety of clever tricks to separate you from your cash.

During my recent trip to Brazil we took a taxi three times from downtown Salvador to our hotel, around 10km away. The fare was different each time, although never by enough to justify making a scene. On one occasion the driver flicked the meter to the night rate – it was 2pm. He apologised and blamed his fat fingers when I pointed it out, before taking a slightly longer route to make up the bonus he had lost. Another one blamed an invisible hold-up in the road ahead and took us on a scenic tour of the suburbs, clocking up a few extra reais.

It would be unfair to label all taxi drivers as petty crooks. The driver who took us to our hotel from the bus station in Belo Horizonte had to make an unscheduled detour, as the local football team had just won the league and the streets were blocked with mad celebrations. While the meter clocked up 12 reais, he only accepted 7. My Portuguese is not to the standard where I could make out his explanation but I’d like to think it wasn’t just his poor eyesight in the dark cab that meant we got a cheap ride.

By and large, a trip of any length is almost always punctuated by an encounter with a less than scrupulous taxi driver (here‘s an embarrassing incident from Istanbul I wrote about earlier). As visitors to another country we are more often than not seen as naive, unaware of local pricing and easy sources of a little extra income.

It’s an inevitable part of travelling and those who can’t face it might as well stay at home.

Sure, we can largely avoid using taxis – I do whenever possible, by walking or taking the bus. But in certain parts of the world, much of Latin America for example, taxis are the safest way for anyone, especially a 6ft-tall gringo, to get around at night.

None of us like being ripped off and anger is understandable, but in the cold light of day we rarely lose more than what we’d consider as small change. I look back ruefully at the time we took a taxi in Aleppo on our Syrian trip in 2009. I gave the taxi driver a bit of an earful before handing over the $3 he demanded for what should have been a $1 fare. I’m certainly not proud of arguing to hold on to those extra $2.

Of course it’s wise to be aware in advance of what the fare should be and to make sure the driver is using the meter properly if not agreeing the rate before you set off. But if you end up paying a few extra dollars for your ride – a tourist tax if you like – it’s worth trying to keep the situation in perspective and not letting a bad mood spoil your trip.

(There we have it – yet another post in which I offer advice that I should follow myself on my next trip)

Taxi drivers and the inevitable ‘tourist tax’ is a post from: 501 Places

Visit almost any city in the world these days and you’ll have the option of buying a card that grants you free or discounted access to the city’s major attractions. Public transport is often included too and most offer savings at selected restaurants and shops. So is it wise to take advantage of these deals or are they just a sneaky way for the local tourism businesses to make you spend more money?

How Much?

Here are just a selection of cards – I’ve chosen these pretty much at random but they do show the huge difference in price from one city to the next. All prices listed are for a 48 hour adult pass (most have 24 and 72 hour options too) that includes public transport unless stated.

London Pass – £79  (£61 without public transport option)

Berlin Pass – £55

New York Pass  – £84 (does not include public transport)

Innsbruck Card – £31

Lisboa card -£25

Krakow Tourist card – £12

See Sydney Attractions Pass – £122

Budapest card – £28

What makes a good deal?

I should say from the outset that I’ve never actually bought any of these cards, although I have used three of them (Krakow, Lisbon and Innsbruck) courtesy of the local or national tourist offices.

Whether a city pass constitutes good value for money depends of course on how you plan to visit each city. Would you for example willingly spend over $130 per head visiting various attractions in New York over a couple of days? I know I wouldn’t – I would much rather wander the streets of the city and enjoy the atmosphere, take in the views and perhaps indulge in one or two attractions per day. But then I would think very differently about entering a £2 museum in Poland to visiting a £30 one in Sydney.

Good and bad city passes

In most cases the cards are only worth buying if you are determined to cram in as many museums and attractions as you possibly can during the card’s validity. If your itinerary in a city involves moving rapidly from one museum to the next then perhaps a city pass will be worth buying. But those who tend to walk a lot, admire the architecture, enjoy the parks or just leave their plans open for surprising discoveries will rarely get value from a tourist card.

The Innsbruck Card is a notable exception, with almost the entire cost of a 24 hour card covered if you take a ride on the Nordkettenbahnen cable railway. Similarly in Krakow it’s quiet easy to rack up 60zl (£12) worth of admission fees over a couple of days, even though entrance charges are generally very cheap.

Some cards appear to be a good deal but actually offer only discounted admission to many places rather than free. The Budapest card is a case in point,  with relatively few free attractions included in the card but plenty of discounts instead. I found this one to be particularly poor value for money.

Surprise discoveries

One surprising benefit of a city pass is that once you have one you’ll probably feel obliged to get your money’s worth out of it. As a result you’ll pop briefly into museums that you probably wouldn’t dream of visiting otherwise. So while you might look at your guidebook, work out where you want to go and decide a card isn’t a good deal, the very fact that you have a card might trigger you into visiting some oddball museums that no-one’s heard of but that prove to be one of your unexpected highlights.

What cards have you found to be good value, and which offer the worst value for money?

Does a city pass or tourist card offer value for money? is a post from: 501 Places

In the grand scale of things this is a pretty trivial matter, but it’s one that still causes a headache for many travellers at the end of a trip. You’re about to leave a country and your stash of local currency has dwindled down to a few grubby notes and a pocketful of heavy but worthless coins. How do you manage your travel money so that you leave the country with nothing more than a token few cents to add to your foreign coin collection?

Short changed

The failure to have the right money at the point of departure has led to more than one awkward moment for us. On a recent early morning flight from Reykjavik we had around 230 krone left – not enough it turns out even for the cheapest food option at the departure lounge cafe. The kind cashier, who had almost certainly woke up at 4am to begin her shift, waved us through cheerily with our cheese sandwich and overlooked our cash shortage.

Similarly the Albanian man taking our money on the shared taxi into Montenegro shouted at us a couple of times (I had foolishly saved exactly the right money for the bus according to the Lonely Planet guide, but had not accounted for inflation), and when he saw my empty pocket just muttered a few choice Albanian phrases (for which the LP guide was again of no use) and moved on.

Flash the cash

Other times I’ve turned up at the airport or railway station with too much money. It’s never a concern with US dollars or Euros as I know they will be used again before long. But when it’s a million Lao kip or a few hundred Uruguayan pesos it makes sense to spend them there and then.

Usually this surplus of cash occurs as a result of playing it safe when I’m unsure of the price of an airport transfer or the cost of departure tax. Rules and taxes change and it’s always a risk to spend your last cents/zloty/kwacha before arriving at the border.

So it’s quite understandable to have 20 dollars worth of money to blow while waiting to get on a plane/train. If travelling straight home it’s easy to buy a surprise gift that looks as though it involved a lot more thought and effort than it really did. I can testify that Tokyo airport is great for buying Japanese handicrafts in the £10 to £15 price range. If you’re hungry you can even revel in buying over-priced drinks and snacks without a second thought – in fact shelling out 98 hrivny is preferable to 75, as the problem of what to do with that last banknote is instantly solved.

Anorak

Until the world adopts a single currency (not in my lifetime) the problem of managing the last bits of money in a country will not go away. The charity boxes found at some airports are one way to tackle this issue but are rarely found. So for the time being I guess I’ll keep on buying rubbish gifts and overpriced sandwiches. Most importantly I’ll continue to build my collection of random coins and, from the times when I’ve been particularly careless, banknotes.

Travel money – spending the last of your foreign currency is a post from: 501 Places

If you’re planning a rail trip in Europe you’ll probably need to decide whether it’s worth buying a rail pass or getting individual tickets as you go. Choosing the wrong option can leave you heavily out of pocket.

While arranging a recent trip from Rimini in Italy back to London it soon became clear that getting a rail pass was not a financially sensible option. However it was only when I dug a little deeper into the details that I discovered just how poor value an InterRail pass is these days.

The Route

View Rail Trip across Europe in a larger map

Breakdown of Rail Costs

Leg 1 Rimini to Bologna

Price paid – €9 (advanced online booking)
Price if bought at station immediately before departure – €9.20

Leg 2 Bologna to Venice

Price paid – €9 (advanced booking)
Price available at station – €10.75

Leg 3 Venice to Verona

Price paid – €9 (advanced booking)
Price available at station – €7.40 (for a slightly slower train)

Leg 4 Verona to Innsbruck

Price paid – €38.40 (no discount for advanced booking)

Leg 5 Innsbruck to Vaduz (Liechtenstein)

Price paid – €9 (advanced booking)
Price available at station – €30.90

Leg 6 Buchs to St Gallen
Paid at station – CHF 19.80 (€16.50)

Leg 7 St Gallen to Rorschach
Paid at station – CHF 4.60 (€3.80)

Leg 8 Rorschach to Lindau (ferry across Lake Constance)
Paid in local tourist office – CHF 17 (€14) (it is quite a bit cheaper to pay on ship in Euros)

Leg 9 Lindau to Schwangau
Bavaria ticket bought at station – €26 covers two people for travel anywhere in Bavaria on train or bus for the day. Cost for one person – €22; for three people €30; for four, €34. Astonishingly good value, especially if travelling in a group.

Leg 10 Schwangau to Nordlingen
Bavaria ticket – €26 for two of us

Leg 11 Nordlingen to Rudesheim
Price paid – €24.50 (advanced booking)
Price at station – €61

Leg 12 Rudesheim to Luxembourg
Price paid – €19 (advanced booking)
Price at station – €45.40

Leg 13 Luxembourg to Arlon
Price at station – €10

Leg 14 Arlon to Brussels
Price paid – £6.50 (€8) as a supplement to my Eurostar ticket, to allow me to travel from any station in Belgium to Brussels within 24 hours of departure of Eurostar.
Price at station from Arlon to Brussels – €20.

Leg 15 Brussels to London by Eurostar
I paid £45 for this leg, but have left it out of the comparisons as it is a ticket that almost all travellers will book in advance and even those with an InterRail pass will need to reserve and pay for.

Summary of costs

I paid a total of €188.20 (£150) to get from Rimini to Brussels.

If I had booked nothing in advance I would have paid €293.35 (£235) for all train and ferry tickets for the same journey.

If I had bought an InterRail pass to do this trip I would have paid €381 (or £320) for a pass that would allow me 10 days travel within a 22 day period (the cheapest of several options).

In addition I would have had to buy my Eurostar ticket, pay reservation fees of €10 each for two of the Italian trains (I could avoid these by waiting for a slower train) and would still have paid the ferry ticket to cross Lake Constance.

So an InterRail pass would have cost me over €200 more than I actually spent.

More surprisingly, I would have saved over €100 if I had just turned up at each station and bought my tickets immediately before departure, compared with buying an InterRail pass. Even someone under 26, who enjoys a hefty discount for their rail pass, would only just cover the cost of their pass when compared to walk-on fares.

So What?

I love rail travel and am a big fan of the idea of rail passes. Some of my fondest teenage memories involve me travelling with my InterRail pass and exploring the far-flung corners of Europe. But the costs now appear to have risen to a prohibitive level.

I recognise that my itinerary is only one example (I have done a breakdown of a Lisbon to London trip last year and found a similar result) and that there are some routes where the pass might be a better option. But these are, I suspect, few and far between.

I hope there will be many more European rail trips for me. Train travel is without doubt the best way to see the many highlights and the unsung surprises that our wonderful continent is blessed with. But with the high cost of a rail pass and the additional supplements on one side, and the fabulous deals such as the Bavaria Ticket and the €9 advanced fares on the other, I can’t see myself splashing out on an InterRail pass anytime soon.

Europe by train: why a rail pass doesn’t make sense is a post from: 501 Places

Photos from another lifetime - me in a hostel in 1987

In my recent post on the subject of travel experts, several folks left excellent comments making the point that while many can claim an expertise in one specific aspect of travel it’s impossible to be an expert in every travel-related matter. If I had to list the areas of travel in which I know absolutely nothing, I have little hesitation in putting the world of hostels right at the top of my list.

It’s almost 25 years since I’ve travelled as a hard-core penny-saving backpacker where every drachma (remember those?) spent on a bed for the night was a frivolous extravagance. A hostel was a necessary interlude between nights spent on trains and was mainly indulged in to take advantage of a much-needed shower.

Once I entered the world of work and was able to afford luxuries such as bathrooms and personal privacy on my travels, I never looked back. Barring an occasional unavoidable overnight stay in some remote backwater, I shared a room with my wife and no-one else and we opted for at least a basic level of comfort.

Until now.

This week I’ll be staying in three Polish hostels. I’ll be in the country to research a few stories and as I’m responsible for organising my own arrangements, every zloty counts. It’s simple economics: I’ll make a modest sum from the commissions around the trip so need to spend an even smaller amount for the exercise to be financially profitable. Those fancy bathroom-boasting hotels are out of the question. My self-imposed budget for three nights accommodation is a mere £35.

So in a throw-back to my teenage years I’ll be once again sharing my sleeping quarters and washing facilities with strangers. I must admit I’m quite looking forward to it. On the one hand I know I’m likely to meet more people than I normally do on my travels. I may even have a beer or two with the odd stranger, although I am likely to be the same age as their parents. On the other hand I’ll probably be more conscious than ever of the nuisance of a nightly trudge or two down the corridor to the toilet (that’s me, not the kids). I hope I can get away with not having to sleep in a top bunk.

I’m utterly rubbish at this budget travel business and I have no doubt I’ll behave like a complete budget travel novice to all I encounter this week. That’s probably no bad thing, as the young guns who I bump into can teach me a thing or two about the culture and etiquette of hostel dwelling. Perhaps the experience will induce flashbacks to nights spent in youth hostels in the 1980s, trying to sleep while listening to people snoring (or worse).

I might enjoy it, but I have no doubt that however I describe the experience to my wife on my return home, she won’t be asking me to book us into dorms on our next trip together.

Travel Austerity: hostels and hanging out with the cool kids is a post from: 501 Places

Next month we will exchanging our hard-earned pounds for Japanese yen and I will be once again cursing my lack of hindsight. Almost exactly four years ago we would have got 250 yen to the pound; we will be lucky now to get much over 120. Japan, already known as an expensive country, has doubled in price to UK visitors purely as a result of the strength of the yen and the corresponding weakness of the British pound.

The days of the strong pound are not far behind us yet it already seems like something of a golden age. A pound could buy US$2, 1.6 Euros, or 2.5 Swiss Francs. A little further back in 2001 we changed our pounds for 2.8 Australian dollars, while at 3.5 NZ$ to the pound we didn’t need to watch our budget too closely in New Zealand.  But should exchange rates affect our travel plans? Should we choose where we go based solely on whether we feel we’re getting a good rate for our pound or dollar?

The first thing to bear in mind is that how a currency has performed in the past is no indicator of how it might behave in the future. If the pound rises to $1.80 in the next six months we can no more suggest it will come back to $1.60 than say it will keep moving to reach $2.00 again. It is where it is because the international money market believe this is a fair rate on this day. Future events, the interpretation of those events and general sentiment of foreign exchange traders will determine what happens next.

So how should this affect our travel plans? We might look at visiting Australia now and see that a pint of beer is now more than £5 a pint, double its price only a few years back, while a modest hotel room that was under £30 is now a whopping £60. Should we put Australia off for a couple of years to let the prices come back to a more sensible level? Or do we go now before beer reaches £10 and a motel on the outskirts of Melbourne costs the same as a London 5 star hotel?

Ultimately as we cannot predict exchange rates we can’t expect to know the future trend of prices that we as visitors will pay in any particular country. Visiting Japan is too much of a draw to us to wait around just in case the pound makes a comeback at some time in the future.

Many people choose their holiday destination based on their desire for something not country specific (usually sun, sea and sand). If these are the main factors that determine where you go then exchange rates will have a bearing; perhaps making Turkey attractive when the Euro is strong and Greece when it is weak. But for those dream trips to Australia, South Africa or Japan, it’s not worth changing your plans for the sake of the exchange rate; otherwise you might be forever waiting for something to happen in the money markets.

Foreign exchange rates: should they influence our travel plans? is a post from: 501 Places

Later this month we will be travelling overland from Lisbon back to London. From the point where we reach the Spanish city of Merida, a little east of the Portuguese border, our journey will be made exclusively by train.

Seeing that we will be crossing two large countries and spending three days making lengthy train journeys in each, my initial reaction was to look into getting a rail pass. Being a veteran of three InterRail journeys in my teenage years I found the idea of getting another rail pass a very tempting one, if driven mainly by my own nostalgia. So I started to do my research and it didn’t take long for me to find that the numbers simply didn’t stack up.

The options for buying rail passes now are far better than they once were. Rather than just a flat fee for a month you can now choose to pay for a set number of days of travel within a given time period (for example 5 days within a month), so that you only pay for travel days and not for those times when you’re actually visiting wherever it is that you’ve bothered to come all that way to see.

Our trip is simple – 3 days across Spain (Merida-Cuidad Real-Zaragoza-Girona) and 3 across France (Spanish border-Montpellier-Nice-Paris) with a Eurostar back to London.

The cost of a one country rail pass to include 3 days of travel is £155 (£106 for those lucky enough to have celebrated less than 26 birthdays). So for us we would buy one for France and one for Spain. In addition we would need to book reservations on some of the trains – these would cost €36 in Spain and €5.50 in France, and £57 for the Eurostar to London – a total of £404 each.

I have chosen to book these tickets using the Renfe and SNCF websites and my total tickets costs (per person) for Spain are €138 while for France, including the Eurostar, the total is €131. A total of €269, or £238. I have booked in advance only those journeys where I could secure a good discounted fare. Where there is little difference between the walk-up fare and the web fare I’ve left it for us to book on the day.

So £238 for self-booking against £404 for using the InterRail pass system (£306 had I been a few years younger). I was quite surprised to find this difference particularly as, when I had been a young InterRailer there was no question that I was getting outstanding value on my investment in a one-month pass.

A pass does give the user several benefits – the main one is the flexibility of being able to get on any train and to change your plans at short notice. We have an itinerary that has several fixed points within, meaning that we could sacrifice this flexibility for the cost savings we are making.

But this little bit of research has left me wandering: for a person aged between 26 and 60, can a rail pass ever be a financially better option? Is it likely that you would travel so much in 3 days in one country that you would run up over £155 in fares? The only scenario that I can imagine it would pay is if you would otherwise do no planning or pre-booking and you just paid the walk-up rate for a few of the most expensive high-speed trains.

Have you bought a full-fare InterRail and got value for your money? If so, it would be great to see a travel itinerary that made these rail passes prove to be a good purchase.

Europe Rail Pass: value for money? is a post from: 501 Places

Have you ever stood outside a world famous monument or historic site and questioned whether you can justify spending the money on the entrance ticket? The chances are that you’ve only thought about it briefly before accepting your lot and paying up for the once-in-a-lifetime experience. After all, you’re not likely to return to that part of the world so this will be your only chance to see whatever it is you’ve come to see.

Yet the admission prices of the world’s best known sites vary widely and seem to bear little correlation to anything other than the opportunism of the local tourism authorities. Consider for example the costs of accessing the 7 Wonders of the World.

Admission Fees for 7 Wonders of the World

The list below shows the admission price in British Pounds (converted at today’s rates) for an adult foreigner. It is worth noting that some of these sites offer discounted rates to domestic citizens, children and students.

Christ Redeemer Statue: Free if you walk up, £13.50 if you take the return tram ride to/from the base of the statue.

Great Wall of China (Badaling): £4.30

Chitchen Itza: £8.70

Taj Mahal: £10.50

Colosseum: £11.90

Machu Picchu: £28

Petra: £44 (£79 if visiting on a day trip to Jordan); a three day pass is £53

As a further comparison, admission fees to other very popular sites of note include:

Angkor Wat: £12.50

Alhambra: £10.50

Stonehenge: £6.90

Neuschwanstein Castle: £10.50

This is not intended as a definitive list of the world’s most unmissable attractions, but it does illustrate how the prices vary so greatly between the different places. There is not even a correlation between the cost of living (or touring) in a country and the price of its no.1 tourist attractions.

Premium priced Petra

And so to Petra. Without doubt a worthy inclusion in the 7 Wonders list as anyone who has been fortunate to visit can confirm. The walk along the Siq is punctuated with curious carvings and friezes, all the while building up to that climax: the first sighting of the Treasury. Most visitors will have seen the building in the famous Indiana Jones scene, but the initial view invariably leaves them momentarily staring in awe (before reaching for the camera and reeling off several hundred pictures). The rest of the huge site offers many more impressive experiences and is worthy of at least two and possibly three days in order to see it comprehensively.

Yet the admission fee set by the Petra park authorities is so far in excess of the other sites that it deserves some scrutiny. Is it because the site is so large? It is not as large as Angkor Wat and yet a three day pass there will cost a mere £25.

Is it because of the unique nature of the site? Each of the other places listed above can claim to be equally unique. Petra is special, but so is Angkor Wat, the Mayan sites of Central America, the Taj Mahal, etc etc.

Taken for a ride

Defending the steep fees, Visit Jordan argued (via their Twitter feed) that the fee to Petra is justified as it includes a horse ride and a map. The map is free at almost any site, while the decision to make the horse ride a compulsory purchase seems to be little more than a collusion with the horse owners that in my view is deeply damaging to the tourist experience. The horses we saw on the trail in 2009 looked less than healthy, and at the entrance to the Siq we witnessed tourists arguing with the horse owners about the tip that was expected from them for the short ride for which they already had paid 7JD (£6). Is that the image that Jordan Tourism wants to promote? Can we realistically expect this hassle to change with the new fee structure?

Putting these points aside, many people have no interest in taking a horse when the easy 15 minute walk is a preferable option. By denying this choice to tourists are the Petra Park authorities cynically exploiting the fact that people will pay whatever they’re told to pay having travelled so far to reach Petra?

‘The funds are going to improve the service to future visitors’ is another defence. But why should today’s visitors pay such a high price for those coming in five or ten year’s time? And what evidence or accountability will there be in how these extra funds are actually channelled to improve the visitor experience? The visitor experience was hardly great in 2009 (thank goodness that Petra is so impressive that it does itself justice) and the fees were already high then. What hope now for the visitors of 2013 to see some benefits of the recent price hike?

Each of places listed above is a special site and worthy of being listed as one of the world’s wonders. But despite the unforgettable experiences they offer (maybe because of them) they should not be priced beyond the reach of the ordinary traveller. I would be interested to hear from others if they think Petra, with its new pricing, is still within that reach.

Special thanks for this post to Matthew Teller for providing some useful insights into the relationship between Petra authorities and tourism; and to Matthew and Matt Long for providing the inspiration to write this post following a discussion on Twitter. All photos are my own.

Entrance fees to the 7 Wonders of the World: how much is too much? is a post from: 501 Places

Money exchange

Having ready access to cash is an endless concern for almost every traveller. Those who use the dollar or euro as their home currency can splash their own cash in other select corners of the world, but even they are not immune from making sure they have access to their cash while travelling.

Here are a few observations I’ve noticed that I thought I’d share. Feel free to disagree or share how you manage your cash while on the road.

Using ATMs is not expensive

If you enter a post office or a bank in the UK you’ll quite likely see posters warning you of the huge cost of using ATMs overseas and why you should get your cash from them instead. You would be excused for being led to believe that you might be paying double for your money in a Spanish or American cashpoint.

I frequently travel without local currency and rely on an ATM or exchange booth at the arrival lounge of the airport to get a small amount for a bus/taxi. I always have a small stock of USD and Euros at home, and I’ve yet to get into trouble in a place where  I couldn’t get local money at the airport or where taxi drivers wouldn’t take my $ or €.

As a little experiment on a recent trip to Spain, I checked the pound/euro currency rates at my disposal in St Albans before my departure:

Bank: £1 =€1.14

The Money Shop £1=€1.17

Post Office £1=€1.165

At Gatwick airport I was hardly tempted by a rate of £1=€1.10 and cannot understand for the life of me why there is any demand for these services. They must surely survive on the basis of a fear that there will be no money left at the place of arrival.

I withdrew €200 from the cashpoint when I arrived in Spain and was charged £172 by the bank including a cash handling fee; an overall rate of €1.16. Not quite as good as the best (better than those advertising to the contrary), but for a lot less hassle and no queuing I paid a negligible premium.

Dollars and Euros will never let you down

Travelling to countries outside of the eurozone where only a local currency is accepted the argument for getting cash locally is even stronger. I’ll use the local Money Shop to get a starting sum of euros or dollars if needed , as the rates they offer on these two currencies are usually competitive with local rates. But try getting a decent rate on the Croatian kuna at your local exchange office; certainly with the Thai bhat you’ll do far better to use an ATM or to take your pounds and change them as soon as you arrive at the airport in Bangkok than to collect your bhat in the UK.

I’ve used Croatia and Thailand as two examples where it’s better to change cash on arrival. A quick glance at the exchange boards in most destinations will tell you all you need to know. If you look at the spread on offer (the difference between the ‘buy’ and the ‘sell’ rate) it’s often no more than 1-2%. In other words they work on a low margin for each transaction and rely on volume of business. Contrast this with the UK where spreads are typically 10-12%, and up to 20% in tourist booths in London or at airports. No wonder they can advertise ‘no commission’; a misleading statement if ever there was one.

Look at the whole picture

Two of the biggest myths of exchanging currency are the importance of finding ‘commission free’ exchange and the rip-off fees charged by ATMs. But ultimately any charge can be absorbed or separated, disclosed or hidden. The only question should be this: how much will in cost me in my money, when all charges are included, to get x units of local currency? When I considered this question, I’ve found that getting my foreign currency before I leave the UK is very rarely worthwhile.

Getting cash while travelling: are ATMs really a rip-off? is a post from: 501 Places

Almost everyone has their own story of getting ripped off while travelling. Whether it was a dodgy waiter, a hotel that tried to charge too much or a driver that took you for a ride in more ways than one, however smart we think we are, people will get the better of us from time to time and relieve us of a few extra dollars.

When this does happen however, we can choose how we react. I won’t advocate to anyone that they should roll over and just accept it. There is a way where you can preserve your own dignity and that of the person with whom you have a dispute. One thing is certain though: it always helps to be sure of your facts before getting mad. To illustrate the point I’ll share an example of where I failed spectacularly in this regard.

My story of being ripped off involves the most common scammers in the world: taxi drivers. I was in Istanbul on a business trip in 2006 and jumped into a cab at the Galata Bridge, heading to the Intercontinental Hotel. The driver immediately used trick no.1: the broken meter. I didn’t worry as I knew the fare should be around 7 TL ($6). Besides it was pouring with rain and I didn’t fancy getting out of the dry car.

As we approached the hotel he executed trick no.2: ‘accidently’ missing the entrance to the hotel and its waiting doormen and stopping along the main road. So I was ready for an argument when he completed his scam asked me for 20 TL ($17). I laughed at him and said “no way!” A short discussion followed (he in Turkish, me in English) which got louder and more heated. I had already decided to give the guy 10 TL and walk, so I pulled a note from my wallet and thrust it at him.

This only got him more angry, and I in turn lost my temper, saying that he was getting extra from me just to get rid of him. I continued to push the note toward him, while he seemed far more offended than I felt was justified. And then I suddenly saw why: I had been waving a 1 TL note at him all this time! Sheepishly I apologised, fished out the 10 TL note, he took it with a grunt and I left the car quickly without looking back.

It was not unreasonable for me to argue my case when he inflated the price in this way. But I did learn that in a dispute it’s wise to be certain of your ground; otherwise you’ll find it very easy to dig yourself into a deep hole.

A guide to getting ripped off without losing your dignity is a post from: 501 Places