Travelers' Intercom

When traveling, I have always depended upon getting funds in the local currency by using my ATM card, a debit Visa card with a local credit union.

In Brugge, Belgium, in March ’10, I tried, unsuccessfully, to withdraw funds with my card. I tried several banks’ machines, but the machines would not even read the card; I got the message “Unable to access card information” and the card was returned to me.

I went into one of the banks and was told that they couldn’t help me because my card did not have a computer chip.

The only bank ATM that did accept my card was KBC Bank...

In July-August ’03, my friend Carol and I traveled in Uganda and Ethiopia with arrangements we had found on the Internet and booked by e-mail. Making the arrangements was a real pleasure, especially remembering the difficulties of arranging travel to Africa even a few years ago using slow mail and poor phone/fax connections.

This came about because we were going to be in Ethiopia on a medical tour for two weeks in August anyway, so we decided to do some additional traveling on our own. When we looked into air arrangements, we found that we could fly Ethiopian Airlines from Newark to...

Regarding the payment of bills while traveling (Dec. ’10, pg. 12), my husband, Foster, and I have for 10 years been clients of Paytrust. For the sum of $10.95 per month, we are currently having about 15 bills regularly paid by them.

You can direct Paytrust to 1) “pay $XX on the XXth of each month to so-and-so” (good for mortgages, car payments, etc), 2) indicate that when “this bill is received, pay total amount” (or the minimum or whatever you choose) “so many days before due date” (we find this useful for utilities, insurance premiums, etc.) or 3) “wait until we give you payment...