Arriving in Burma was a little shocking. It wasn’t the culture shock that you might expect since we had both travelled in many developing countries and already witnessed most of the things that come along with poverty and unhygenic conditions. What was shocking was when we opened our travel wallets to discover that all of our money was missing.
First of all, you need to know a little about how money works in Burma. They use American dollars, and the bills must be in absolutely pristine condition – not even slight folds or creases were acceptable, the bills had to be perfect like you would expect from a bank that had just received a fresh new batch from the federal reserve. And secondly, there are absolutely no bank machines for foreigners to withdraw money, so you must arrive to the country with every single dollar that you plan on needing for your time there.
We had brought American bills with us when we flew for South East Asia, and we kept them safe from damage by keeping them in a ziplock bag which was stored flat in our money pouches that we wore under our clothing.
We’re not sure of exactly how our money went missing, but somehow in the few days in Thailand before flying to Yangon, our money disappeared. Every last dollar of mine was missing, but luckily the thoughtful crooks decided to leave Manja a few small bills, perhaps as a decoy so that upon a quick glance it would appear that her money was still there in her money belt. So in total, we had about $50 between us for our planned 25 day trip to Burma. Needless to say, we were in some shock, and quite undecided about how to proceed with our trip.
Since we couldn’t just go to a bank machine and withdraw the money we would need, we had to come up with another plan, and before even leaving the airport we considered just flying back to Bangkok and cutting our losses on our attempt at travelling in Burma. After some discussion, we decided we would take a taxi into town and find an inexpensive place to sleep for the night while we cleared our heads and came up with a better plan.
In the taxi while heading for the centre of Yangon I was rifling through my things trying to remember if I had taken my money out of my secure spot and put it somewhere else for safe keeping. I just couldn’t imagine how or when my stack of crisp American bills could have been taken from me. I nearly broke down when I pulled on the drawstring of my little day pack and made a big tear in the fabric that forms the enclosure for the drawstring. All the stress seemed unbearable and nothing was going right. It was one of the lowest moments in my travelling history and felt as though I had physically been punched in the stomach.
After being dropped in the street near the hotel we were told is the cheapest in town, we managed to get a room and settled down for the night in our musty smelling, blazing hot, $10/night, concrete box of a hotel room which was sadly lacking a window or any means of getting some fresh air. It did cool off since it surprisingly had a/c, so we eventually managed to fall asleep.
In the morning, we talked over our situation and decided to find an embassy that could help us. We discovered that there was no Canadian embassy (but apparently there is one now), and also no British embassy (our second thought since we’re a commonwealth country), but the Australian embassy was prepared to assist Canadians travelling in Burma.
This is where it gets fun. The Australian embassy in Yangon contacted the Australian embassy in Bangkok, who then contacted the main Canadian embassy in Ottawa. They arranged to have $1000 Canadian dollars charged to my credit card, which was converted to Thai baht in the Australian embassy in Bangkok, and then wired to Yangon where it was converted into US dollars, and then they tacked on an $80 USD fee for their services. Being nailed with unfavourable exchange rates twice before having the money in our hands, we finally ended up with around $800 USD for the two of us to travel in Burma for 25 days. That’s way less than half the amount we had originally intended, and a lot less than the amount needed to have a comfortable trip here, so needless to say, we were on a tight budget.
In the end, we were very lucky that the Australian embassy was there to help us out, or our stay in Burma might have been much worse. So, we’re sending a big THANK-YOU to Australia. You guys are awesome!
Side note: At this point in time, the US dollar and the Canadian dollar were very near parity, or even favouring the Canadian dollar a little bit. So a $120 dollar loss ($200 minus the $80 fee) in the two conversions represented pretty terrible exchange rates for us, but we had no choice.