Middle East - Anthony Ham [535]
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Internet Access
You’re never too far from an internet café in all major cities and larger towns across the Middle East. If you need to track one down and you’re not close to one of those listed in this book, your best bet is to ask your hotel reception or to head to the university district (if there is one) and ask around.
If you’re travelling with a laptop, wireless internet access is increasingly the norm in most top-end hotels as well as many in the midrange categories. It’s also getting easier to connect in upmarket cafés and restaurants. Expect the number of hotspots to have grown considerably by the time you arrive in the region.
Given its reputation for political censorship, there are surprisingly few websites that are blocked by governments in the region. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen. In Syria, for example, sites criticising the government are often blocked, while access is occasionally denied to Hotmail, Wikipedia and Amazon.com (although, strangely, Amazon.co.uk slips through the net).
MONEY
Details on each country’s currency, places to change money and advice on specific exchange rates are given in the Directory of the individual country chapters. Throughout this general section, we have quoted prices in US dollars (US$), as these rates are more likely to remain stable than local currencies (which may go up and down).
If we had to choose our preferred way of carrying our money to the Middle East, it would be a combination of withdrawing money from ATMs and carrying a supply of US dollar or euro cash.
See the Money section in the individual country chapters for more details.
ATMs
ATMs are now a way of life in most Middle Eastern countries and, with a few exceptions, it’s possible to survive on cash advances. This is certainly the case in Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Egypt, where ATMs are everywhere and they’re all linked to one of the international networks (eg MasterCard, Maestro, Cirrus, Visa, Visa Electron or GlobalAccess systems). Syria increasingly has similar ATMs, but they’ve yet to reach beyond the major towns (eg there was no ATM in Palmyra at the time of research) and most ATMs set a daily withdrawal limit of around US$50, making it more difficult to get by on this method alone. That will almost certainly change during the life of the book, but don’t turn up counting on it.
Another thing to consider is whether the convenience of withdrawing money as you go is outweighed by the bank fees you’ll be charged for doing so. It’s a good idea to check the transaction fees both with your own bank back home and, if possible, with the banks whose machines you’ll be using while you travel.
Cash
Although credit cards are increasingly accepted, cash remains king in the Middle East. And not just any cash. US dollars and, increasingly, euros are the currency of choice in most countries of the Middle East, and not just for changing money – many midrange and top-end hotels prefer their bills to be settled in either currency. If the prevalence of straight US$ transactions strikes you as odd in a region with such a strained relationship with the US, you’re not the only one. The graffiti we saw in the backstreets of the Old City in Damascus speaks for itself: ‘Every US dollar we deal with today is a bullet in the heart of an Arab citizen tomorrow.’
If your funds have run dry and you’ve no means of withdrawing money, Western Union (www.westernunion.com) has representatives in every country covered by this book.
The only danger in relying solely on travelling with cash is that if you lose it, it’s lost forever – insurance companies simply won’t believe that you had US$1000 in cash.
Credit Cards
Credit cards (especially Visa and MasterCard) are accepted by an ever-growing number of Middle Eastern hotels, top-end restaurants and handicraft shops, but the situation is still a long way from one where you could pay your way solely by flashing the