Money Matters

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 456th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine. With this issue, we have been publishing ITN for a full 38 years!

ITN was the first public forum where international travelers could candidly share notes. Before this magazine came along, there were no travel publications that talked about anything other than rosy sunsets and smiling waiters. ITN continues to tell it like it is.

(Second of two parts)

The custom of tipping for various services varies from one country to the next. In this column last month, I listed the gratuities that are expected in the European countries. This month I provide guidelines on leaving gratuities in other parts of the world.

The information in this list has been culled from my experience, the Internet (including http://wikitravel.org/en/Tipping, www.lonelyplanet.com and www.tripadvisor.com) and more.

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 454th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine, the original international travelers’ forum.

The December issue is out, meaning the holidays are coming and it’s time to order ITN gift subscriptions for your traveling friends. Call 800/486-4968 and tell us when you want the gift cards to go out. Or visit our website and click on “Subscribe” and “Send a gift,” then select a subscription length.

(First of two parts)

The guide had been fantastic on our visit to Guilin, China, in October 2000. She had done a perfect job explaining everything in excellent English while a constant smile lit up her face. Although the girl seemed young for a guide, my wife, Flory, and I were so impressed that we decided to give her extra money, even though tipping is not customary in China. Subsequently, the girl became upset and refused to take the offered gratuity.

A note about the subscriber’s letter “Took New Bills to SE Asia” (Aug. ’13, pg. 50) — for years, I have been getting newer currency before I travel, and I’ve found that the bills do not have to be brand new and never used. They just should be clean, with no marks, not wrinkled or folded, and no older than about Series 2009, or five years from the year you are traveling. I ask my small-town bank a week in advance and get the currency easily.

On a small-group tour of Southern Africa in May ’13 that we booked with Africa 2000 Tours (Knysna, South Africa), a wonderful company and a frequent advertiser in ITN, I learned a few lessons about precautions to take while traveling.

I had read that you could buy a Starbucks card loaded with a minimum amount of money and then add to it any money left over in the currency of the country that you were leaving. 

Well, perhaps this works in Europe, but during three weeks in Asia in April ’13 (traveling on a cruise that visited Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Japan) we tried to do this in Shanghai and Hong Kong and were never successful. 

In one case, we needed to add a minimum of $50, and in all the other cases they did not even know what we were talking about.

A month before the trip that my wife, Pnina, and I took to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in January-February ’13, I contacted my local bank and asked them to start saving me new, never-used bills in denominations of $5, $10 and $20. I’d read in ITN about the problems travelers had with even slightly marked or folded bills being rejected (June ’12, pg. 44).

For visitors to India, Yes Bank and the Indian Ministry of Tourism have launched the Incredible India Travel Card, a prepaid travel card denominated in rupees.

The card can be preloaded with up to INR50,000, which can be withdrawn as cash at ATMs countrywide. The card can be used for purchases anywhere in India that takes MasterCard (but, if lost, is not tied to any credit card account). It is available at Yes Bank branches, money changers and participating hotels and travel agencies.

by Yvonne Horn; Contributing Editor