Travellers on Tour

Whenever I travel to the US – I am always amazed at the immigration declarations that you have to sign in order to enter the United States. They have questions like:

• Were you a member of the Nazi party between 1938 and 1945?
• Are you intent on commiting an act of terrorism on United States soil?

Realistically would anyone who was a Nazi or terrorist actually tick ‘yes’ ? What is the point of the questions – after capturing a terrorist would US law enforcers check to see if they had lied on their immigration forms??? Sometimes I wonder what government agencies are thinking when they write this stuff!

I have always wanted to tick yes to the first question to see what the immigration officers would say, but given the harsh deportation policy that some have experienced in the US I have yet to try.

If you have ever come across some funny immigration questions – or dared to answer one with a yes – leave a comment and let me know the outcome!

Often times when you are driving in East Africa there is a high chance that you will get pulled over by the police. More often than not it will not be for any reason – it will just be because the policeman wants a bribe. There are 3 ways of dealing with this:

• The first option is obvious pay the bribe (a few dollars) and drive off. It is not the most ethical thing to do – but many foreigners (wazungu) do it because it saves time.
• The second option is to call any potential bluff and say no and ask them to take you to the station – they will probably let you go (because they have no grounds for arresting you), but they will draw it out as long as possible to try and get that extra cash. (NB – this is just from my experience – if you get taken to the station and charged…unlucky!)
• The third way is my personal favourite that an ex-pat taught me when I was living there. The word they use for bribe is chai which means tea. You can use this to your advantage by pertending to be a dumb foreigner that has a very basic grasp of the language. The trick is to keep tea bags in your car and when they say “leta chai kidogo” (meaning ‘give me a little tea/bribe’) hand them a few tea bags with a disbelieving look on your face – and then drive off. In most cases it will confuse the policeman and you can drive off!

I just want to clarify that these are not guarenteed to work and I only recommend trying if you have not done anything illegal, and are yourself being illegally approached for a bribe!

If you have any good bribe stories I would love to hear them….

Having spent a bit of time in Australia – I really did enjoy the strength of the pound (sterling) over the aussie dollar – it made everything wonderfully cheap. No where else have I enjoyed it more than going out for a steak. If you have ever been out for a steak in Britain you will know you pay over the odds for a shaving of meat – Australia is blissfully the opposite of that.

For about the equivilant of 3 Mochas at Starbucks in Britain you can get a wonderful steak at Hogs Breath (www.hogsbreath.com.au). These steaks are slow cooked for 18 hours – and are incredably tender, I have not had a better steak anywhere on earth – I am a sucker for the hickory smoked rib! The service is great and the atmosphere is friendly, and the prices are not unreasonable.

There are locations all over Australia – Townsville, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth (one of my aims is to eat at all of them!), so wherever you are visiting in Australia there should be a restaurant (assuming you are not going too out of the way- like Broome!).
Well all this talk of steak has made me hungry – and unfortunately there are no hogs breath restaurants on our island – so I will have to make do with Outback Steak House (the closest thing to an Aussie restaurant that the Americans could manage!)

Now we all know that a bit of looking around on the internet can mean much cheaper travel. But sometimes it can be that little extra effort can save you some money.

At one point I was visiting Australia (Townsville) a couple of times a year, as I looked for flights I was shocked at how much the whole package cost to fly from London. The reason for this is that you have to fly from London (via singapore) to either Sydney or Brisbane and then catch an internal flight.  Because it was such a specialised route the only way you could do it was booking with Qantas which meant the price was quite high (cause they hit you up on the internal route). So what I did was book the flight to Brisbane with the cheapest airline and then book the internal flight with virgin blue who were incredably cheap (not to mention enjoyable) and so saved me about £150 ($300) on my ticket.

This trick does not just apply to Australia – it also applies to the US and in a greater sense to Europe. If you are wanted to travel around Europe (particularly back-packers) you can get great low cost flights from a number to airports to loads of destinations.
My wife and I have travelled from London to Sweden for a grand totoal of £28 ($50) including tax, with Ryanair, and we have also flown to Switzerland for about the same price with Easyjet.
So I thought I would compile a little list of low cost airlines – and their hubs so that you can get an idea of a how big these airlines are becoming, and in which places you can take advantage of great deals

• Easyjet                       www.easyjet.com         Based out of London Luton and fly to loads of places around Europe.
• Ryanair                       www.ryanair.com          Based out of London Stansted – flies around europe, very cheap but you pay extra for baggage.
• British Airways             www.ba.com                 Based out of London Heathrow – sometimes they have great deals online.
• virginblue                    www.virginblue.com.au  Based out of Brisbane Australia – great prices for flights around Australia and now have started flying to different Pacific Islands, the additional competition in the region has lowered prices.
• Frontier Airlines            www.frontierairlines.com  Based out of Denver, USA they offer cheap flights to 50 destinations in 3 countries (and they have live TV on their planes…for about $5)
• Tiger Airways              www.tigerairways.com   Based out of Singapore – great prices on flights round Asia and Australia – Singapore to Darwin can be as low as $25!
• Oasis Hong Kong        www.oasishongkong.com  Based out of Hong Kong – this is a great airline for flights to London! See my review of them here

Here are some of the many low cost ways to see the world – please leave a comment to add any others and let me know of your experience on them.

Out of all the countries that require you to have an entry visa, Egypt is one of the more unusual ones. When you come off the aeroplane you walk down a concourse and take a right turn, and there you will be faced by the immigration booths. Before you join the line waiting to officially enter Egypt you need to purchase two visa stamps (pictured here), they are basically decorated postage stamps. You buy these from little stores located before the immigration booths and they also exchange money – when I was there the stamps cost $50.

It is not obvious where you need to go to get the stamps when you arrive at the immigration hall – as it is not sign posted anywhere(maybe it is in Arabic – but mine is a wee bit rusty!). When we went there were several very frustrated tourists who had stood in line to get to the immigration booth only to be sent back to buy the stamps before joining the immigration line… Hopefully this post will save people from making the same mistake.

We went to Hong Kong this year for a work/holiday mixture. For a while we were not sure if we were going to be able to afford it, because some friends of ours had just flown out and it cost them £450 per ticket (about $900) and that was way over our budget.

Then I found www.oasishongkong.com, a new low cost airline that started in November 2006 with flights between London Gatwick and Hong Kong. I could not believe the prices they were offering – it cost us £75 ($150) one way per person. So for 2 adults and an infant we paid about £550 ($1100) in total for our tickets.

Some people are put off when the phrase ‘low cost airline’ is mentioned, but with Oasis the service was great – much better than some non-low cost airlines – especially ones that originate in the USA. We had to pay £15 each way to guarentee that we got bulk head seats so that we could have a basinette for our daughter – but that was not big deal. Food, and basic drinks (tea, coffee, water and juice) are free, but if you want harder beverages you have to pay. But given that both flights are red-eye flights a couple of drinks of water are really all you need.

Oasis Hong Kong also offer in flight entertainment with personal TV screens with several movie channels – and while they may not be the latest movies like on some airlines – there were a few recent ones that I had not seen.

The one negative point to Oasis Hong Kong is their booking system on their website.  When you book the flight you have the option of booking seats and meals – but the problem is the website makes it feel like you must book the seats and meals,  when in reality it is just a optional thing. You do have to pay extra if you book meals – because they are specialty meals where as if you don’t book a meal you get a standard one.

Oasis have launched another route in June this year- Vancouver to Hong Kong and they have several planned other routes in Europe and North America.  the latest news is at www.oasishongkong.com.