Before we came here, we knew that we needed pristine dollars to exchange into Myanmar Kyats, as the currency is not available for exchange outside of the country. But until we got here, we didn't realise quite how pristine that should be. We also knew that there would be no access to money from ATM's or banks and that virtually nowhere took credit cards. So we thought we had really over estimated what we would need and would have plenty spare for the niceties of life and take a thousand or so dollars each back home. How wrong we were. A couple of days into Yangon, we realise that we may have miscalculated. Coffees and why why and drinks in Yangon's trendy cafes had used up more than our calculated going rate and we suddenly realised that if we were to have somewhere to stay and something to eat each day, we had to stick to a budget, a new experience for all. And now we had to plan ahead to know if we could afford a flight or whether it would have to be an eighteen hour bus ride. How strange to have no access to money other than flying back to Bangkok and back in again, but actually, we couldn't do that either as our visas are single entry only... So sticking to a budget seemed the only option... Need I say it promised to be a steep learning curve!
It has been quite a laugh checking out restaurant menus and deciding to eat back at the Kumadura hotel in Bagan as the food (as well as being really good...) is half the price of the local posh Thai. And so funny seeing Ant making sure he hid any leftover bottles of free hotel water so they would be replaced, and of course, making use of the old secret water to spice up a cheap lime soda.... Finally, we felt like real backpackers!
Part of the problem is that prices are much higher than we expected, but reading the small print in the Lonely Planet tells us that inflation is running at 25% a year, pity we didn't see that earlier.... And secondly, some of our dollars that we thought were fine were not, they wouldn't take them. They have to be virtually brand new, so fold them in you wallet and you're stuffed. It brings a new meaning to money laundering as we would have washed and ironed them if we could! David even braved hours in the painfully slow internet office here, typing in one letter at a time to see if his bank could fly or even parachute in some new dollars to us but the computer (or perhaps the sanctions....), says no! But here in Bagan, we have found a couple of dodgy money changers who will take slighly less than perfect dollars, for a lower rate of course.... And we also discover they take other currencies, so have been scraping our wallets for every stray Pound, Euro and Thai Baht note we can find... strangely, it's only dollars that have to be in perfect condition, other currencies can have been crumpled in your purse or pocket for months. Every little bit helps as they say in the Tesco's ad... The excitement of Gill finding a few thousand Indonesian Rupiahs and a few hundred Indian Rupees lurking in her purse soon waned as we discovered they were worth next to nothing.... But it's not just us. Every Westerner you talk to has the same issue, they are running out of posh new dollars and so running out of money. Such a pity as it means that even though you want to spend and help out the local economy by buying local goods, i.e. non government enterprises, (and there were some fine examples of this, especially beautiful laquerware), you can't, an example of sanctions crippling those people who really need your help most.
We have also luckily found a hotel in Mandalay that takes credit cards, for a huge surcharge of course, but it frees up a few more cash dollars for other things. So now the rule is it doesn't matter what the hotel costs, as long as we can pay by heavily surcharged credit card, we will book it - not quite the lesson on budgeting that we should be learning....
But having said that, booking ahead and finding out if indeed they do take cards is a challenge in itself. After the surprisingly available but slow and inefficient wifi we found in lots of places in Yangon, we have now come to the end of the information superhighway. Here in Bagan, the speed on the hotel internet (no wifi here....) is slower than that of the old dial up so your free 30 minutes each day is eaten up by getting connected to hotmail and then speed reading anything that looks important and no chance of actually replying...
Our cash situation developed into a textbook example of the way the British economy is working (or not...) at the moment. We were suffering an extreme liquidity crisis. We had been downgraded to junk status and were desperate for a bit of quantitative easing. Thankfully, Gill, representing the SMF (Soapdodgers' Monetary Fund) in Myanmar came forth with a debt restructuring package. Quantitative easing was made available via the sterling and Thai bahts that she found in her bag. These were quickly converted into kyats. New lines of credit were also made available courtesy of the Hotel by the Red Canal, albeit at a punitive rate of a 27% markup. Nevertheless, market confidence was restored, we were solvent again, and reverted to our profligate ways as if the crisis had never happened. Perhaps the Eurozone could learn a lesson from us......
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
