[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] The Amazing Race 14, Episode 4 (and more on credit cards)

[Edward Hasbrouck]

It's not just Amex: I've uncovered more credit card companies trying to 
impose new terms to require cardholders to "consent" to robocalls 
broadcasting their personal information to anyone who answers at any phone 
number they have ever used to call their bank or card issuer, including 
cell phones, hotel phones, pay phones, borrowed phones, etc.  Other banks 
doing this include FIA Card Services (formerly "MBNA", now a division of 
the Bank of America, which issues the cards through Charles Schwab Bank 
that I previously recommended ), and GE Money Bank (not well known in its 
own name, but which issues Paypal credit cards, among others).

I'm continuing to follow the story.  Check the terms of all your credit 
cards, and please let me know if you find any others with terms like this.

"Say it ain't so, Chuck Schwab":
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001645.html

=====

ICANN meets in Mexico, but continues to ignore me:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001642.html

Background to my attempts to report on ICANN:
http://hasbrouck.org/icann/

=====

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001647.html

The Amazing Race 14, Episode 4:
Bran (Romania) - Moscow (Russia) - Krasnoyarsk (Russia)

Sometimes you find yourself -- most often because it's on the way to 
somewhere else -- in a place where there are no tourists and there is 
nothing particularly "touristic" to do. Like, say, Krasnoyarsk.

Unlike most travel agents, I've actually sold a few tickets to 
Krasnoyarsk, back in the days when I worked for a travel agency 
specializing in that part of the world. Until Aeroflot discontinued all 
its trans-Pacific services, you used to be able to get there from the USA 
via Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. But that's no longer possible 
without even multiple connections, and this week all the teams in The 
Amazing Race 14 were all required to fly through Moscow. Michael and Mark 
got to Krasnoyarsk without enough money left to pay their taxi, presumably 
because they had been fleeced by the Moscow taxi mafia for the cost of the 
transfer between airports in Moscow, as has happened several times in 
previous seasons of "The Amazing Race". I've often defended Aeroflot, but 
Sheremetyevo Airport really has no competition for the title of the 
world's most deservedly unpopular airport.

Why Krasnoyarsk? Pacific Environment (IMHO the most bang for your donation 
buck of any environmental organization in the USA, through their 
underwriting of indigenous grassroots activists at local wages in 
preference to higher-paid expats) had some of their Russia Program staff 
based in Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk is also on the way to Tuva, which draws 
a steady trickle of visits from foreign friends .

Direct flights from Moscow to the Tuvan capital, Kyzyl, have been an 
infrequent and on-again, off-again affair, while there are more consistent 
local flights from Krasnoyarsk. The railway toward Tuva branches off from 
the trans-Siberian main line at Krasnoyarsk, and I've been told by clients 
that the ride from Krasnoyarsk to Kyzyl through the Altai Mountains by 
road and rail via Abakan is extremely scenic.

But Tuvan throat-singing is too difficult for a beginner to be a fair 
challenge for contestants on The Amazing Race . I can't remember a tourist 
ever asking me to send them to Krasnoyarsk for its own sake. And I haven't 
heard of any reason you would particularly want to go there as a tourist, 
either -- other than perhaps the dam and hydroelectric generator station 
visited by the racers, if you are interested in engineering and 
infrastructure tourism.

So let's leave the racers asleep in Siberia, resting from their labor 
stacking cords of firewood, and consider where they've been until now in 
this season of the race: western Europe, western Europe, European Russia, 
and finally now Asiatic Russia.

Normally, I'd be griping about why the racers were spending so much time 
in Europe or Russia. Not this year. If you've been thinking about going to 
Europe, but you've been putting it off purely on account of price, now's 
the time to get up and go.

The Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds -- central and eastern Europe and 
most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- are still generally cheaper 
than Western Europe or the rest of the First World. But the price 
difference is less right now than it has been in many, many years.

Who are all these people selling their Pounds, Euros, and Swiss Francs to 
buy U.S. Dollars, and why? I don't know. I'm a travel advisor, not an 
investment advisor or currency speculator. But look at these figures:

Most people don't follow relative exchange rate terns in multiple 
currencies. To make some crude comparisons easier for you, here's how much 
the same amount of local currency that would have cost you 1 U.S. Dollar 
(USD) nine months ago, near the trough of value for the USD last June, 
would cost you today, in rank order of how much these currencies have 
fallen:

RUB	$0.65	Russia
KRW	$0.66	South Korea
NZD	$0.66	New Zealand
AUD	$0.67	Australia
BRL	$0.68	Brazil
MXN	$0.68	Mexico
TRY	$0.70	Turkey
GBP	$0.72	United Kingdom
IDR	$0.76	Indonesia
ZAR	$0.76	South Africa
CLP	$0.78	Chile
CAD	$0.79	Canada
ILS	$0.79	Israel
EUR	$0.80	Euro
INR	$0.83	India
ARS	$0.84	Argentina
PEN	$0.85	Peru
TWD	$0.87	Taiwan
CHF	$0.89	Switzerland
PHP	$0.90	Philippines
THB	$0.92	Thailand
VND	$0.93	Vietnam
EGP	$0.94	Egypt
USD	$1.00	USA
CNY	$1.01	China
JPY	$1.08	Japan

What does this mean? (Again, these are the costs today of what would have 
cost US$1.00 nine months ago in June 2008, assuming that prices in local 
currency haven't changed.)

I don't think there has been such a sweeping and substantial decline of 
other currencies against the U.S. Dollar (USD) in at least 20 years. Most 
of these currencies are not only down substantially, but still declining 
against the USD.

Just about the only currency of a major tourist destination against which 
the USD has declined significantly is the Japanese Yen (JPY). This isn't 
the year to go to Japan. Consider China or South Korea instead if you want 
to visit that part of the world right now.

But currency fluctuations alone don't tell the whole story, depending on 
how expensive different destinations were in the first place.

Russia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Turkey -- "developing" countries 
that had become almost as expensive as the USA -- are now good values 
again. Not dirt cheap, but a bargain compared to the USA. Chile, South 
Africa, and Argentina are similar, although not to the same degree because 
their currencies haven't fallen nearly as much. The same goes for most of 
central and eastern Europe, although I haven't listed those currencies.

New Zealand, Australia, and Canada -- First World countries which had 
actually gotten somewhat more expensive than the USA -- are once again the 
relative bargains they have been for most of the last decade or two.

Indonesia -- one of the best values of all Third World destinations -- and 
to a lesser extent India, were already cheap and are now cheaper, at least 
if you don't demand First World physical infrastructure.

But the real standouts on this list are the places that were previously 
most expensive, where the same percentage fall in the value of the 
currency makes the most difference in absolute cost. That means first and 
foremost the United Kingdom, followed by the Euro and the rest of Western 
Europe. I haven't listed the other Western European currencies, but most 
of them would fall between the Pound and the Euro on this list.

There hasn't been a more affordable time for people from the USA to visit 
the UK in 20 years years. If you've been putting it off, go now. I'm 
planning my own trip to the UK next month, and i'll talk more in future 
articles about how and where to find the bargains.

The big travel bargain hidden by a stable exchange rate is still China. 
The Chinese government has kept the Yuan (CNY) level against the USD, but 
prices for tourist services in China, especially hotels, have plunged 
because of a combination of factors including over-building of hotels in 
anticipation of Olympic crowds, visa crackdowns that kept those crowds 
away, and the shock to the Chinese economy of cutbacks in exports as a 
result of economic problems in the USA and Europe. I don't know if there 
is anywhere else in the world where you get so much for US$50 per night in 
a hotel room even in the largest cities.

My crystal ball hasn't been working well lately, but I expect these 
general trends in value to hold through this summer.

Bon voyage!


----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(4th edition 2007)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
<http://www.practicalnomad.com>

Around-the-World and multi-stop international air tickets:
<http://hasbrouck.org/tickets/>