Continued from the previous post

Foreign exchange for purchases from overseas and payments due in US Dollars, GB Pounds or Euro takes at least a week to get, you must have a really good reason for wanting the money and be able to prove exactly where it will be going.

To renew my US Passport, which requires a Bank Check (or as it's known here, a "Banque Cheque") for $50.00 made out to the US Embassy in Mauritius. If you think getting such a thing is a cake walk, you'd be wrong.

There is a bit of help specifically for travelers, however. Within three or four days of your trip, you're allowed to request foreign exchange from your bank. You must present your tickets and passports at your bank, having enough in your account to cover, of course, fill out some paperwork relating to your trip, then, if you're really lucky and no one has goofed up, a couple of days later you will be allocated $400 US (or the equivalent in Euro, depending on what the bank has on hand) per adult traveling. Children get between $100 and $300, depending on age.

Mark applied for our travel money yesterday and I should be able to pick it up on Monday. We fly on Tuesday. We're hoping for $1500 US ... that's just over S$ 2300 Sing dollars.

There will be five of us, as my assistant is accompanying, and we'll be staying 8 nights in a hotel, eating all meals out, doing routine doctor visits and some very necessary shopping. When we do the math, that gives us US $37.50 per person per day in a city that's about as expensive as New York and London.

Not even a backpacker can live for 8 days in Singapore on less than $40, much less a family with kids. It just can't be done. And with medical check-ups and shopping? No way.

Thankfully, my family is not forced to rely 100% on Seychelles rupees, and we have accounts outside the country, so for us there is access to credit cards and ATMs for cash that has a recognized value of more than Monopoly money in the real world. Anyone who can, does, but aside from ex-pats the super-rich and a few people with business abroad, most of the folks here do not.

Their options?

1 ) Stay home.

2) Go somewhere cheap enough that $40 per day will get them by. (Mauritius is a favorite destination because of this, and because it's only two hours away.)

3) Exchange whatever can be exchanged on the black market over the course of time so there's enough to pay expenses while abroad. (This is an expensive proposition, as it's twice as much to convert rupees this way ... and illegal.)

So, next time you're getting ready to travel outside the country, remember us here as you cavalierly collect your travelers checks and shuffle your credit cards while deciding which you'll take. It's really not so easy in other parts of the world.