Travelfish newsletter Issue 347 : Cash & credit + travelling Thailand through the decades + Happy snaps from Medan
Hi all,
This week’s newsletter is coming at you from Medan in North Sumatra and all I can say is nowhere does humidity like Sumatra—also Medan is awesome, I love it. Apologies for the lack of a newsletter last week, I was unwell and it fell through the cracks.
Meeting the locals for Kopi Aceh in Medan. Photo: Unnamed coffee dude.
This week we’ve got a soapbox about cash and credit and an interview with a Travelfish member who has been travelling to Thailand for many many years.
Good travels,
Stuart, Sam and the Travelfish crew
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Soapbox
Cash rules
Years ago, I was travelling with a friend in Mexico and we were camping on a beach near Cabo San Lucas. We’d stashed all our gear in a cave and sure enough later in the day when we were out, some scoundrels relieved us of almost everything. My companion was left with just a camping stove, sleeping bag and copy of the Unbearable Lightness of Being—“what more do I need?” I remember him musing.
A double dose of artery hardening at Bihun Bebek Asie. Photo: Stuart McDonald
Of course we did need more, like passports and money and later, scrounging at a local cafe, two older American hippies berated us for relying on credit cards and TQs. "Cash is best" they told us.
Fast forward 27 years. The other day I landed in Kuala Lumpur and when I discovered my ATM card didn't work, I thought of those two hippies way back when. Of course it was Easter Friday so banks were closed and my repeated calls to by Indonesian bank didn't really get me anywhere. It turned out my Indonesian bank blocks by default debit cards for use in Malaysia and I needed to go through a roughly 76 thousand step process to unblock mine. After getting cut off twice half way through the process I gave up and decided to try and just rely on my credit card as I only had about $50 in cash on me and was ostensibly in KL for five days.
Friends have often championed to me the rise of the cashless economy, where everything is just a tap of plastic away, but, well budget travel in KL isn't quite there yet. Sign for this here, pin number there, waiting while other people fiddle with their phone to sort out paying for a coffee ... I found myself wishing for the days when a phone was just a phone.
At Rumah Tjong A Fie: Don’t mention the vampire. Photo: Stuart McDonald
But more than anything else, at the end of the day, I had no idea how much money I had actually spent. Traditionally I get the equivalent of $100 or so out of an ATM and just spend that, knowing it should last me somewhere between two and four days depending on where I am and what I am doing, but after two days in KL I really had no idea how much I had spent. None.
Once the tap/sign/fumbling is all sorted out I get the convenience concept of cashless, but the more general keeping track of what I am spending is well concerning and gives me significant pause in running any faster towards a cashless travel life.
Give me a pocket full of change and colourful notes—each telling a story of the country I am—over a piece of plastic.
And yes, I am calling BNI today.
Good travels
Stuart
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Talking Travel
Every week we publish a Q&A, this week we’re talking to Jennifer (not her real name as she'd prefer to stay anonymous) a Travelfish member who has been travelling to Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, since the mid 80s. We spoke by phone recently.
Hi Jennifer, tell us a little about yourself and your travels to Southeast Asia.
Hi Mr Travelfish! I'm a European gal who first arrived in Bangkok in 1986 a naive and know nothing 20-something year old. I had a stopover in Bangkok on the way to Australia, went from the airport to Soi Ngam Dupli (which was then more the backpacker area than Khao San) and never made my onwards flight to Australia. In fact I am yet to get to Australia! I fell in love with the country in no time at all and adore the people, especially the men—naughty but I love them so much. Later in the 1990s I travelled a bit in Malaysia and Indonesia, but for me Thailand developed into what has become an annual pilgrimage for the last twenty five years.
1986 huh. I reckon quite a few Travelfish readers were not even born then, without descending into a "you should have been here yesterday" vortex, what is one thing that you would say was different then (from a traveller perspective).
That's easy, back then you actually needed a guidebook. Travel was harder and less comfortable and certainly slower. There was no Agoda or Booking.com and no Tripadvisor (or Travelfish—or, in fact internet!) and really the only source of information were other travellers, locals and touts. These were the days when you would meet another traveller upcountry somewhere and you would sit in a cafe (if you could find one!) and copy reams from each others notebooks (mobile phones and laptops didn't exist) on contacts and where to stay and so on. I'm sure I still have some of my old notebooks back in Paris somewhere—it would be interesting to reread them now. So aside from other travellers, the guidebooks were extremely useful.
It was a different era and some of the people I met back then I am still in touch with today. I like that and I feel very lucky to have travelled in the region at that time—the late 80s early 90s was a magical time for me I think.
Where did you used to go?
Even then it was pretty standard stuff. Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Ko Samui were all places I would go regularly until the mid 90s when tourism to the country really started to increase and the country started to change quickly, and not always for the better. People need to understand that in the early 1990s you could stay on some of the best beaches of Ko Samui for almost nothing. The scene was still very hippy back then, yes there were a lot of drugs (not my thing) but even aside from that it was a just a very different set of people to today. More long-term travellers who today are essentially priced out of the more mainstream destinations as they are trying to stretch their money so far. Who wants to go to a beautiful beach if the only way you can do it is to stay in a concrete cinderblock a twenty minute walk from the sand? No thank you, I'd rather go elsewhere.
But you still go to Thailand (we met there last year!) so if it is not Samui, where is it.
I am for the quieter islands, I recall you calling them second and third tier islands (correct!) which I think is a good descriptor. Ko Jum, Ko Phayam and Ko Libong all on the west coast are still, I think very fine and friendly destinations, though it is wise to avoid high season even in these places now. You also need to understand that for example Ko Phayam, I have been going there every year for a week or so for the last twenty years and I have made good friends there (both locals and tourists) and so the visit, while still partly about the destination, is also about the people and the relationships I have developed with them.
Relationships? With these naughty Thai men you mention?!
Ha cheeky, yes I love the Thais but I have had my heart broken many times. I think often cross cultural relationships are hard, and especially in the early years, when I spoke almost no Thai, I really had no idea what I was doing. Learning a language, any language, teaches you far more than just the words—it gives you an insight into how others think and why they do and say what they do, and most importantly, what they really mean when they say ... no I am not going into the details here!
So was this why you decided to learn Thai properly and how did you do it?
A man from Ranong smashed my heart into little pieces and after that I decided I would never be in that situation again. A returned to France broke and broken and did a six month Thai language course at a local college (this was in the early 90s), then I returned to Thailand and I did two three month courses, one in Bangkok and one in Chiang Mai. Through these I learned to read and write—in my opinion learning through transliteration is the wrong way to learn the language and you are better served to learn the script first—it makes for a slower start, but later you learn far faster. Once I could read it, I started reading books for children and so on and by the end of the tuition in Chiang Mai I felt I had enough to work with. Since then I have occasionally hired tutors for conversation, but mostly just learned through doing. I would not say I was fluent to a native speaker level, but when Thais say my Thai is very good, I tend to believe them rather than think they are just being polite.
Over the years Thailand has changed a lot. You mention Samui for example, how has this affected where you go?
Places change but they are often still the same—you just need to look harder sometimes. It is easy, and I think lazy—something which, with respect, you are on occasion—to say a place is destroyed and not worth going to anymore. It isn't like the people who have lived there for generations have up and moved—they are still all there, getting on with stuff, just as their parents and grandparents did. Do I still go to Pai? Yes. The attraction for me there was always just getting a bicycle and riding and riding and riding and you can do that just as well as you could two decades ago. Chiang Mai still has tonnes of excellent local eateries that do not have hordes of tourists in them. I mean of course in some spots the towns (or islands—Ko Lipe for example) are unrecognisable, but you only know that if you were there twenty years ago. How did you look twenty years ago?
Ok, lets move on from how I looked 20 years ago. Advice for the first time traveller to Thailand please!
A phrasebook. Put yourself in a position where you have to speak the language. It will be the only way to learn and every mistake is a lesson. English is so widely spoken now (compared to then) so it can be easy to not bother, but you should bother. Looks squarely at you kind sir.
Safety travelling as a woman in Thailand
Yes, this remains an issue. As I mentioned Thai men can be quite naughty and once you speak the language you will understand the utterly atrocious things they'll say to your face assuming you cannot speak the language—I have humiliated many a sexist pig on this count. But verbal harassment aside, I think everyone, men and women alike should take care late at night and in isolated areas. Always watch your drink. I had a drink spiked once in Krabi many years ago and was lucky to be in company of others who took me back to the guesthouse (and then to hospital, but that is another story). But also, do not assume that the white guy in the bar is safer than the local—I have heard some horrible stories regarding foreigners as well.
Last question, one food every one must try
I'm going to be lame and say a coconut. Nothing feels like home like sitting down on a red plastic chair and swallowing that first mouthful of fresh chilled coconut water. Bliss.
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Ten things worth reading
Long ears, tattoos, fading traditions
“In the 1980s, when she moved to the village where she now lives, Pelukud and her classmates were ordered by the village leader to cut off their long ears. The chief insisted that the long ears of the Dayak Kenyah tribe were part of a primitive heritage they had leave behind to enter the modern age.”
How a picturesque fishing town became smothered in trash
“Mayor Hakim doesn’t just want a quick beach clean-up so much as a complete change in attitude and culture.” Indeed.
Ho Chi Minh city’s hidden gems
“Many Vietnamese are proud that we now have skyscrapers, but generally Saigonese are more comfortable in unassuming places. That’s why there are more stories and characters to be found in the side streets and back alleys,” says Dang Duong, a local tourism and heritage expert, who, like some 70% of the local population, was born after the country reunified.
At Singapore’s Changi Airport, a new jewel shines
“But the Jewel is an airport mall on steroids.”
The scam of fake orphanages in Cambodia
“Nearly all of his earnings go to his mother. His parents, after all, are not dead -- and they don't even live that far away. But his mother, who was abandoned by his father, needs the boy's monthly income, so he has been living in the orphanage for the last two years.”
Chinese tourists win, poor Cambodians lose with US$4 billion Hong Kong-backed casino in Phnom Penh
Indonesia’s Indian community
“If they stay in Medan, they open their own businesses to get around the problem of struggling to find work elsewhere. And they work in jobs that benefit and serve their community in turn. They open Indian restaurants or set up shops next door selling ingredients for Indian dishes.” Sampled the food in this part of Medan yesterday—terrific!
Bangkok Noi canal: Beginner's route
“This walk gives you an introductory look at the historic area surrounding the mouth of Bangkok Noi, one of the Thai capital's most important waterways.”
Joko Widodo claims re-election victory
“Widodo, after meeting with parties in his coalition, told reporters the leaders of Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and other countries had congratulated him on securing a second term.” The other guy yet to read the memo it seems.
Thailand, Cambodia ready to relaunch rail link
“The Thai and Cambodian leaders will open a new bridge linking Ban Nong Ian in Aranyaprathet and Stung Bot in Cambodia's Banteay Meanchey province before travelling to open the train line.”
Something to read
The Glass Palace
“Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace is a classic epic novel, spanning generations and countries as it casts a brilliant light on Burmese, Indian and Malayan history, with Burma its focal point.”
Travel shot
Medan’s backstreets are littered with a hodge podge or architectural styles. Photo: Stuart McDonald
Till next time
That’s it from us for now. As usual, enjoy the site’s new additions and drop us a line if there’s something in particular you’d like us to cover in Southeast Asia.
Travel light!
Stuart, Sam & the Travelfish team
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