Miracles of Modern Banking
When we first travelled internationally, over twenty years ago, one of the most important tasks prior to departing involved deciding on and acquiring the appropriate amount of money (or American Express Travelers Cheques...remember those?).
Welcome to 2016!
We absolutely did not need U.S. dollars in Indonesia. The ATMs sprung up like mushrooms all over the cities and small towns. The exchange rate is about IDR 13,000 to $1. Imagine our delight when we withdrew IDR 1.2 million and still had tens of millions of Rupiah left in our bank account, so we're basically Indonesian millionaires. It was amusing reading The Jakarta Post every morning and seeing articles in the business section quoting government budgets and spending in quadrillions.
In contrast to many of the other Asian countries we visited, as well as several South American and European countries, Indonesians strongly preferred us to pay them in Rupiah. In fact, often when we offered to pay in U.S. dollars, they politely asked us to pay in Rupiah, in one case preferring to wait for payment later when we could find an ATM.
Prices definitely are cheaper in Indonesia, but truth be told, we spent most of our time in areas, and at hotels, where there pricing was set for well-to-do foreign travelers. And although we arbitraged the pricing on a number of occasions, we let convenience trump frugality in the first part of our trip.
One major example of pricing arbitrage is transportation. One of the luxuries we enjoy when arriving to an unfamiliar country is arranging transport from the airport to the hotel (we feel like foreign celebrities when an individual with a sign greets us after customs and immigration). Our transport from the airport to the hotel in Jakarata (an hour and a half) was quoted as IDR 850,000 (about $80). There was a mix-up and our email-confirmed request never got booked, so we arranged with the same company right outside of immigration for IDR 650,000 (Whoa! What a bargain!). Guess what...we took a taxi back to their airport from the hotel and it was IDR 250,000 (oops).
This level of pricing disparity rewards those who spend the time seeking out various sources, online and off, for advice and connections to reasonably-priced goods and services. We enjoyed learning from Giorgia, Mariah and Kayla all the ways they fully experienced Bali for good prices (in fact, they were the ones that found the Mount Batur excursion at a seventh of the price that our hotel was going to charge...granted, the hotel package was nice, but not that nice).
