TRAVEL | MONEY
When Your Only Way To Get Cash Doesn’t Work After Arriving In a Foreign Country
Worst travel nightmares coming true.
I‘ll tell you the story of why we only have one way to get cash these days. First, our credit cards started expiring one by one. I was happy about that because I didn’t want to use them anyways. Let’s just say that I have had a lifelong battle with credit, and it’s been proven to me time and time again that we obviously don’t get along. I am happier without them. Enough said.
Then Chris’ debit card died.
When we were in Uganda and I was going into the neighboring town to get money out so that we could buy food for the village, there was a time when I needed more than my daily withdrawal allowance could accommodate, so I transferred money into Chris’ account and took his card to take money out of his account as well.
However, in my state of stress and panic, I got the last 2 numbers of his pin number reversed. Unfortunately, I repeated the process three times, which froze his card and it is now unusable.
You may think that I was foolish for doing it three times. But the truth is that the ATMs in Uganda were often unreliable and sometimes the transaction just wouldn’t work. When this happened, I would simply put my card back in, repeat the same process, and the money would come out fine.
Yes, it was always a stressful situation.
So, when I had Chris’ card that day, I assumed that this is what was happening, and kept punching in the wrong pin, oblivious to what the real problem was.
CRAP!
Of course, he phoned our bank back in Canada to let them know what happened and begged them to let him reset the pin over the phone. But NOPE, no siree. He has to go into a bank branch to do it in person. It is the only way.
Okay, moving on.
Arriving in Europe we decided that we were going to sign up for a Revolut card. Revolut is an online banking system that allows you to transfer money from your bank into their money system (something like Paypal) and they will even send you a debit card. You can use the debit card at terminals in restaurants and shops like you would a Visa card, and you can even use it at ATMs. (Fees apply.)
Seeing that this was pretty much our only option to have a secondary source of getting money, we started looking into it in Bulgaria. However, we were never in one spot for very long and didn’t have plans to stay anywhere for a long period. In the end, we did stay at the YO HO Hostel for 5 weeks, but that wasn’t the initial plan. In the beginning, we thought we would just be there for 2 weeks.
Would that have been enough time to get the card set up and have it mailed to us? Maybe.
Of course, in retrospect, and having been there for 5 weeks, we absolutely could have. But that isn’t how the cookie crumbled.
Fast forward to arriving in Turkey.
Our bus got in at 9:00 pm on Friday night and we immediately caught a taxi to take us to our host's house. Once inside the car, I told the driver to please take us to an ATM as we needed to take out some local currency.
I should note that we had just used the card in Bulgaria 3 days before.
Turkey has numerous spots in the main areas of the cities where they have a bunch of stand-alone ATMs lined up from many different types of banks. When one doesn’t work, which sometimes happens, you simply move to the next one and try.
That night I tried 8 different ATMs and none would give me cash. Some simply spit my card out almost the minute I put it in, and others would allow me to go through the whole process of punching in my pin and thinking that I was getting money before they would let me down.
So now, here we were in a taxi that requires money, and we had none. It was a little awkward, I will admit. But over the course of these 5 years of travel, I have learned to roll with the punches and instead of panicking, I am constantly in problem-solving mode.
It was now getting late and the taxi fare was inching up. It didn’t seem like my card was going to work that night so I asked the driver to call our host with the phone number that I had. I told him the situation and asked if he could pay the cab fare and if we could pay him back when we got the money.
Thankfully he was okay to do so.
We didn’t know it then but he is a veterinarian that works at the Turkey/Bulgaria border that inspects the animals and animal products that come through the border. So thankfully he isn’t short of money, which really saved us that night.
Of course, the first thing I did upon entering his apartment was to call my bank in Canada to see what was going on. Sadly, the lady I spoke to didn’t have any answers for me other than to say that my chip is possibly wearing out and they will need to re-issue me a card. I told her that I was in Turkey and she let out an audible gasp.
She was not convinced that the card wouldn’t work, so told me to just try again.
When we were in Zambia, we also had a similar thing happen. However, back then we had other options of cards. But when I called the bank to see what was up, the man told me that the chip was likely dirty and I should rub a coin on it to clean it. I thought that sounded crazy but lo and behold, it worked!
So, I did the same thing this time. Not wanting to make any emergency phone calls until I was sure that the card didn’t work, I told our host that we were going to walk to the nearest ATM to try again. Being that it was then after 10:00 pm, he told us that he would drive us instead. Of course, I then felt terrible for making him leave his apartment for this silly reason.
He drove us to the closest selection of ATMs and I tried another 2 machines again. No dice.
We slinked back to his apartment and I made the dreaded phone call to my parents. A 46-year-old women needing her parent's help.
Did I feel stupid? Yes. Did I feel incompetent? Yes.
But mostly I felt the worst about admitting that we only have one way to access cash. It’s not my finest moment, I will admit that. But circumstances have just played out the way they have, and there we were.
They agreed to send money through Western Union in what was their afternoon back in Canada. I thanked them and slept soundly knowing that we would be able to get cash the following day.
However, I woke up to a panicked e-mail from my Dad telling me that all of the Western Union offices in their town had closed down and the closest one was a 40-minute drive away which they wouldn’t be willing to do until the following day.
So, here we were. Our host had left for the day due to other commitments and Chris and I were simply stuck in the apartment by ourselves. We wanted to walk to the ATMs to try them again, just in case, but he hadn’t left us a key and if we left we wouldn’t be able to get back in.
By 3:00 I finally messaged our host and asked if we could eat a few of his eggs. He wrote back immediately and said: OF COURSE! Help yourselves to anything in the kitchen.
As an interesting side note to all of this, I started reading The Man Who Quit Money when we left Varna on the bus. I found it very odd that I would be reading such a profound book when we also didn’t have money. What are the chances?
Maybe the Universe was trying to challenge us a little bit.
Not wanting to make my parents drive to the next town, I messaged other friends in Canada offering to e-transfer them the money if they were willing to send it through Western Union. Thankfully one was able to, but it was now Saturday evening our time, and we wouldn’t be able to get the money until Sunday. Or so we thought.
When our host came home that evening, he told us that the Western Union shops are all closed on Sunday because they are attached to banks. DOH! This meant spending another day sitting in his apartment without money. We were also only supposed to stay until Sunday, initially, so I sheepishly asked him if it was okay for us to stay another night so we could go get our money from Western Union on Monday.
Of course, he said yes. He really is very kind and we are so thankful we ended up with him and not at a hotel. We might have really been in trouble.
On Sunday afternoon he told us he was heading out to the market to buy supplies for dinner. I asked if we could go along with him and possibly stop at the ATMs again, just in case.
This time I vigorously rubbed a coin across the chip, feeling like I had nothing to loose.
He pulled up to the same bank of ATMs that we had gone to on Friday night. The AK Bank ATM was the one that we used the last time we were in Turkey, so I felt confident that if one was to work with our bank, it would be that one.
Well, almost immediately after I shoved the card in, it spit it back out. It wanted nothing to do with me.
I was not deterred. Next to that one was the other one that I had tried on Friday night. I walked up to it and noticed just past it, and set back a bit, was a third ATM. I hadn’t tried that one on Friday because I hadn’t noticed it.
I immediately went to it instead. The minute I put my card in, my name popped up on the screen and the machine welcomed me to enter my pin #.
‘Well this is a good sign,’ I thought. If the machine could figure out my name, surely it can access my account to give me money.
I held my breath, punched in the details and waited. Within moments the familiar whir of the wheels started up as my money was getting counted to be dispensed.
I can tell you WITH AUTHORITY that that sound has become one of my favourite sounds in the world these days!
I pulled out the money and ran back the couple meters to the car waving it in the air. If I didn’t have it in my hand, I might have done a cartwheel! I grinned ear to ear and jumped into the backseat of the car.
“YAYYYYYYYYYY!” I sang.
On Monday we made our way to Western Union to finally get the transfer that had also been sent. It was a bit of a task finding the office since we learned that they are no longer in the banks and are in stand-alone shops only. It turns out that we could have gotten that money on Sunday as well.
I also told the man that he needs to get listed on Googlemaps so that people can find him easier.
We had already asked our host if he was okay with us staying one more night, and again, he was happy to have us. As thanks for his amazing hospitality, we shopped for dinner ingredients that day and made him dinner for when he returned home from work that evening.
Like I said earlier, we were so lucky to have been staying with him and not at some random hotel. I honestly can’t imagine how the scenario would have played out had that been the case.
Once again, some way, somehow, the Universe took care of us, and we are thankful. But we will not take that for granted either. We know that we need to solve this problem so that we never have to face the same scenario again (and I don’t want to stress my parents out like that again), so I will certainly get my crap together while we are in Turkey.
This travel life brings many ups and downs and there are always challenges and problems to solve. But we have both certainly learned to do that these past few years, and it doesn’t seem like much can rattle us anymore.
It isn’t all pretty, or glamorous, but we love it and don’t want it any other way.
Thanks for reading my embarrassing tale. Please don’t judge me too harshly. We are doing our best out here:)
xo Jill
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