Country Counting

I’m Terry and I love to travel.

What do you do when your holiday implodes?

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I knew from the very first communication with the travel agent in California, that things would not go smoothly.

Emails weren’t answered quickly. Messages were cryptic and poorly written. Price quotations changed.

But there were few other companies that handled French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname so I committed. I paid for a week with my niece, Kelly, and we scheduled the trip.

We had planned a year in advance, so we had plenty of time for all the formalities – or so we thought!

Then we were told we needed a visa to go to Suriname – just a month before our trip. No problem? Except we were on another trip which needed a passport and weren’t able to send our passports to the travel agent until two weeks before our trip to the Guyanas. They told us there would be no problem. Two days before our trip, we still had not received our passports. They assured me I would get the passports “today.” That day, our road was being paved, so my darling husband sat in his car at the end of our street, patiently waiting all day for the Federal Express truck to arrive. It never came.

The next day, the passports arrived – two hours before I needed to be at the airport.

Strike one.

After meeting up with Kelly in Miami, we got a phone call from the travel agent. There were “strikes” in French Guiana and we would have to spend the night in Guadeloupe and arrive in French Guiana a day late.

(Par for the course, our travel agent never explained what the “strikes” were. We found out by searching news sites on the web. The people of French Guiana were blocking roads and stopping airport traffic in their efforts to get the French government to help the country with more social programs and overall assistance.)

OK, we thought. We can deal. Air France said they would cover our meals and hotel and bussed us to a hotel on a beautiful piece of coastline. When we saw the room, our hearts dropped. A dump. When we asked to get lunch, we were told by a surly desk clerk that lunch was over and we had to wait until dinner at seven. A sympathetic bartender gave us a mini cup of peanuts to tide us over until dinner.

Dinner was a dried up piece of fish and lots of starches – not what we had hoped for. But as my Mom used to say, “it filled the stomach.”

Of course we had to get up at 4:45 am to get to the airport in time for our flight to French Guiana. Not a morning person, I was not happy.

On arriving in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, our trusty travel agent lived up to our expectations. No driver to pick us up.

Strike two.

There were a total of eight passengers on our flight from Guadeloupe to French Guiana!

I went to the information desk at the airport and asked if they knew anyone who could drive us to our hotel – an hour away in Kourou. Luckily we found a driver and for the tidy sum of $240, he drove us to our hotel, where fortunately we had reservations.

But all our other activities had not been scheduled.

Strike three.

We were through with the travel agent and solicited the help of the hotel’s wonderful manager, who helped us schedule our activities and even found us a driver to take us two hours to the Suriname border, to make the crossing by river in a rickety boat that was held together with duct tape and a wish and a promise.

Our driver, who spoke no English, just French, crossed the river with us and found a driver to take us to Paramaribo, Suriname, another two-hour drive.

Kaieteur Falls in Guyana is the longest vertical drop falls in the world!

In Paramaribo, hearing nothing further from our trusty travel agent, Kelly figured out restaurants and a walking tour of the city. We hired a car to drive us to the airport for our flight to Guyana and from there had a wonderful visit.

After all these frustrations, what did we learn?

  1. If you have a bad feeling about a travel agent, run as fast as you can. Even if you have to plan the trip on your own, you’ll be better off than worrying about him and how you will deal with him when you get home and want your money back.
  2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Everyone we asked, was helpful and kind and we wound up doing quite well on our own.
  3. Be sure you pay for any tours with a reputable credit card. Luckily, I paid through American Express and have disputed the travel agent charge. I am hopeful, I will get my money back.
  4. When you are sent to a hotel you didn’t select, don’t be afraid to inspect the room and leave if it isn’t up to your standards. We should have done that when we got to the Guadeloupe hotel. I would have gladly paid for any place else!
  5. Use every recourse you have. This particular travel agent used the Traveler’s Century Club mailing list. I copied the president of the club on my letter detailing all the travel agent’s failings.
  6. Document every expense in case you need to battle further with the travel company.
  7. Hire a visa expeditor to get your visa if there is a tight timeframe for acquiring your visa.
  8. Remember, every trip is an adventure. The bad things that happen make the best stories after you get home.

 

If seeing the pyramids of Egypt is on your bucket list, now is the time to go!

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Five-star hotels for under $200, taxi rides for $3 and metro fares for six cents. Egypt is cheap, fun and the people are friendly.

My niece, Kelly, and I just returned from a week in Egypt and I gotta say — Egypt is on sale and it is safe and easy to get around. Here is what you need to know.

First, look for cheap airline tickets. Kelly and I got ours for free with our frequent flyer miles, but she originally found a Delta fare for $600 from Atlanta to Cairo. So getting there is a deal if you watch the airlines carefully.

I’ve learned that when traveling to a poorer country, I like to stay in a nice hotel to escape the craziness of the city. I found a rate at the Ritz Carlton for $150 per night – which was a steal! Use your government rate, AAA or senior rate and you can find a bargain. The people at the Ritz were kind, helpful and friendly. Food at a 5-star hotel is usually expensive – but not the case at the Ritz. We ate breakfast for free (included in the above rate) and lunch with drinks and dessert ran $25 for both of us. All was served in a beautiful setting overlooking the Nile River. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Getting around was an even better bargain. It cost 20 to 30 Egyptian pounds to go just about anywhere in the city ($2 US). The most we paid for a taxi was $9 to get to the airport. And when we decided to ride the metro from the old city back to our hotel, it was a staggering 6 cents apiece. Yes, that is cents, not dollars. It was quite an experience to ride the metro and only when we got off did Kelly tell me they had women only cars. I would have loved to ride again and get in the women only car – just to people watch!

We walked a good bit, too. From our hotel it was an easy walk to see the Nile at night. We were never harassed or bothered and we were two obviously foreign women alone in the city. Never a problem.

If you are going to take taxis, be sure to have your bellman tell the taxi driver where you are going and have a map with you to point to locations you want to visit – or better yet, have your concierge write out your destinations in Arabic, so there is no confusion. If worse comes to worse, there is generally a person around who speaks English and can tell your driver where you want to go.

We spent a day seeing the pyramids and had a fabulous time. We hired a guide through the concierge at the hotel and requested a woman. (We always request women and have found them to be more in tune to social and women’s issues and better guides – except the one we had in Beirut – but that’s another story for another time.) We paid $140 for the day with a guide, driver and car. We paid our guide about $3 for the two of us to ride a camel to the pyramid overlook and it was well worth it. Our camel guide took pictures of us atop our camels with the pyramids in the background. Priceless.

For museums, see Kelly’s blog about all the museums we found. They were great and it was fun to find them, too! My favorite part of our museum trek was getting caught behind fences near one museum and being rescued by two workers – who drove us around the fences and to the museum entrance – all without them speaking English. Kelly gave me one of her “are you sure about this AT?” looks, but I knew they were well-intentioned, and off we went!

Get that schedule out and plan your trip. You’ll have a great time, you don’t have to be in a group to be safe and this trip will not break the bank. So go already!

Of the 125 I’ve visited, here are my three favorite countries

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I’ve been to 125 countries so far and a good friend recently asked me, “what are your top countries?” So, here you go. These are my favorites — so far!

Cambodia. There aren’t many places in the world where you can still visit inexpensively, stay in wonderful historic hotels and meet people who are kind, joyful and friendly. This is Cambodia. I’ve been there four times and each time, I came away in awe of the people. When you consider all they have been through (think Khmer Rouge) and the suffering they have experienced, it is unbelievable that they have kept their welcoming and kind spirit.

What do you do there? In Siem Reap, tour Angkor Wat. Hire a cyclo driver to get you around. Go out for a morning tour. Wear good walking shoes. Come back to your hotel for lunch, take a rest and then go out in the afternoon for another tour. You can easily spend 2-3 days exploring the ruins and you can still get close to everything, with very little roped off or off limits. Food is delicious. We love the Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, a historic hotel that has lovely rooms, a beautiful bar and several restaurants. Spend time roaming the streets and buy some of the beautiful crafts (scarfs, clothing, linens, pottery, lacquerware).

Turkey. It took me a while to make my way to Turkey, but I fell in love with this country the minute I arrived. Istanbul is geographically gorgeous – located in the most scenic spot with the Black Sea to the north and the Marmara Sea to the south. The monuments, mosques, churches and architecture are spectacular. But the shopping here is world class. I am going back in two months, simply to spend a day at the Grand Bazaar on my way home from Egypt. (I had a kidney stone attack while there two summers ago and missed my day of shopping. But that is a story for another blog.) Wonderful food, charming little hotels and lots of cobbled streets to explore. In the center of Turkey, Cappadocia is other-worldly. This region looks like the surface of the moon – covered with painted caves and fairy chimneys. It is a must-see area. We stayed in a cave hotel that was fabulous. I haven’t explored the rest of Turkey, but if you have the time, plan for 2-3 weeks there. You won’t regret it.

Vietnam. Ken and I went to Vietnam for the first time right after Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton made their first visit to Vietnam in 2000– the first visit of any president since the Vietnam War. We spent time in Hanoi and Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City as it is called now. In Hanoi, stay at the Metropole Hotel. Located close to the city center lake, it is a charming hotel with old and new sections. We’ve stayed in both and love them equally. The hotel has beautiful restaurants and friendly and helpful staff who can arrange tours and shopping expeditions to the many shops. Most of the people in Vietnam now are under 30, so the war is part of their history but not their personal experience.

Our first guide in Hanoi was a former Viet Cong soldier. When I asked him how he felt seeing all these Americans in his country after he had fought us, he was direct. “I was 17 when I went to war. My parents didn’t want me to go and I didn’t want to go. I welcome you with open arms,” he said. Who wouldn’t tear up at that?

 

How to deal with airline schedule changes

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Dealing with airline changes can be a nightmare. But on my last trip to Curacao for Thanksgiving, I found out a startling good bit of information.

Here’s what happened. Our original trip was scheduled from Gainesville to Miami on Monday with an overnight in Miami so we could meet up with a friend and have dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab (my favorite all-time restaurant). We would then fly to Curacao Tuesday morning and meet up with my family who arrived on Monday.

Somehow my niece didn’t get the information that we would be a day late and she booked a day trip to Bonaire on Monday. When we found out about that, she tried to change the Bonaire flight online to no avail. So I told her, don’t worry, if you can’t change it when you get there, I’ll just miss that portion of the trip or reschedule for another day.

The night before I was to leave, I went online to check-in for my flight and saw a link online labeled “change flight.” I had never noticed that before, so clicked on the link and found that the flight my family was taking out of Miami was available to me by changing to an earlier flight out of Gainesville – all at no charge.

So, I clicked away, rescheduled the trip, called my friend in Miami to cancel our dinner at Joe’s, cancelled the hotel in Miami and was able to get to Curacao in time to take the Bonaire flight with my family.

I’ve since checked with American Airlines and found you can change flights for no fee if one of the following criteria is met.

  • You have an unrestricted Economy Class (Y fare), Business or First Class tickets
  • You have American Airlines AAdvantage®Executive Platinum status and companions in the same record
  • You are an AirPass member (that’s the lifetime free airline ticket that was once sold for $250,000)
  • You are using First and Business Class award tickets
  • You are using MileSAAver & AAnytime award tickets
  • You have booked Choice Plus fares

In this case, I had booked my ticket withward miles, so I qualified for a same-day ticket charge at no cost.

For a $75 fee on flights between the 50 United States, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada, and the Caribbean, or $150 on flights between and connecting through New York JFK and London Heathrow, you can confirm an available seat on an earlier or later flight as long as the alternate flight:

  • Has the same origin and destination
  • Is for the same calendar day of departure
  • Is marketed and operated by American Airlines or American Eagle

You cannot change your itinerary to a city with multiple airports or to a different connecting city.

This is a tidbit of information that may come in handy, so remember to check that “same-day flight change” link when you are checking in for your flight. Delta and other airlines have similar same-day change programs with varying fees. Check online under “same-day ticket change and the name of the airline” and you may be able to make last-minute changes for free or a low fee. Happy flying.