After 4 months of travel we finally experienced one thing that all travellers fear, a financial crisis. When I say crisis, what I mean is no access to our money. Zero. Natta. Zilch. Smack dab in the middle of Indonesia with 2 kids and no cash. This post will explain what happened and how we pulled out of it.
The Story
We had just arrived in Indonesia in the bustling city of Yogyakarta. We spent 2 good days around the city experiencing the culture, eating the food and enjoying ourselves. We had a private car take us to Borobudur and Prambanan, and were just about finished up with everything we wanted to do while we were here. We had booked a train to take us across Central Java to Surabaya. The train was planned to leave at 6:45am the next morning.
We walked into a supermarket to pick up a few things the kids could drink that we could take back to our hotel for the night. As I walked in the supermarket doors on the left, I noticed an ATM machine that takes Visa. I knew we were going to be in travel the next morning and I always prefer to travel with a lot of cash. So, I told Haley to wait up while I walk over and use the machine to get some funds. I opened up my wallet, and to my surprise my debit card was not in there. I thought maybe it was in the room.
We left the supermarket and arrived back at the hotel. I checked around on the dresser in the room where I sometimes will lay loose things from my pocket like change, paper, small bills, etc. The card wasn’t there, either. Never mind, surely, I left it in some pants pockets or in a side pocket of the day pack. It was already midnight and we had travel in a few hours so I’ll just use my backup card. We always carry multiple cards, linked to multiple accounts in the event something like this happens. I open up the secondary wallet that Haley sometimes carries and to my surprise, the secondary debit card is missing as well. At that point I knew we had an issue.
BOTH cards missing, from separate wallets? To me this is a sign of hotel theft but we won’t get into that. I’ll save possession security in hotels and hostels for another post. Clearly, I’ve made some mistakes in that category… but you learn as you go!
Call the Bank
I bank with Chase. The first thing I did was to call them. I didn’t quite want to cancel my cards just yet. (I wanted to go through every inch of every bag first) Chase has an amazing policy for fraud so cancelling the card is not my number 1 top priority. Depending on who you bank with, you may want to do this above everything else. Know the policies. I did want to see what my options were for a replacement. Chase bank will not ship a replacement debit card just anywhere I found out. The representative I spoke with mentioned Indonesia was a “High Risk” country and no way would they ship a card out to me while here. In some cases, your bank may ship a card wherever you want it, but it’s still risky. You would obviously only want to ship this to a place you could trust to receive it and handle it with care.
Short Term Cash
It’s important to have living money. Money to eat on, money for the accommodation, etc. I guess you can call this an “Emergency Fund”. Cold hard cash tucked away in a secret location that doesn’t get used unless a time like arises and it’s needed. Going forward, I will have the emergency fund, but of course I did not have it now. But you learn as you go.
It was my 6-year-old that came to the rescue. She is always roaming around with cash on hand. She opened her wallet, and had an equivalent of about $40 USD all in different currencies. This is her money that she generally does what she wants with. Today, she was generous enough to loan it to the family cause. So $40USD isn’t much but it’s enough to get by for a few days in Indonesia, one of the cheapest countries in the world where $1 will get you a decent meal and $.50 will get you a taxi across the city. But clearly this wouldn’t last us too long. I knew I had borrowed a little bit of time but needed to get a plan in place quickly.
A Mid-Term Solution
I had taken a few ‘pre-travel’ safety precautions over the summer before leaving and I’m glad I did. One thing I did was to leave my Mom one of my check books with endorsed checks. If I had to do it over again, I would have given her power of attorney before leaving. I’ll make sure to do this next time we travel. But she did have access to my funds and that was a good thing. My plan was for her to write a check out to herself from my account, cash it, and then wire me the money via Western Union. I suppose this wouldn’t work if you were in a super remote location, but most major cities have Western Union. Yogyakarta, Indonesia had quite a few of them. It was a matter of me choosing one that was close to my hotel.
Another thought that crossed my mind was to send the money via PayPal to a fellow traveller and have them withdraw the money from their account and give it to me. If I were still in Kuala Lumpur or Penang, I would have done that. We stayed in those cities for an extended period of time and I met several traveller who would have gladly helped us out with that. This would have definitely been a cheaper option as Western Union fees are brutal. However, we had just arrived in Yogyakarta, only being here a few days, and we were actually staying in Guesthouse that was more like a Hotel than a hostel. There weren’t any other travellers staying here, and it wasn’t set up very well to meet other people. So, we didn’t have anyone to help.
Long-Term Plan
So, we had the money to get us by for a few days. Mom was sending a sizable chunk of my money that would probably last us a month. If not, we could always repeat the process and her send more. But that isn’t really sustainable. We needed a debit card. We need it to make hotel bookings and flight arrangements, and use it for any larger purchases. I also really didn’t want to pay Western Union fees any more either. A few options came to mind after some thought. We could open up an account with a large Asian bank and transfer our funds to it. There are many perks to traveling in Asia and being a member of an Asian bank. I thought hard about this, but overall our SE Asia trip was coming to a close soon and then the account would be worthless.
Another option was flying to Singapore. Chase bank has a branch located in Singapore. I’m not 100% sure this option would work because I did not explore it thoroughly. Cheapest roundtrip for 1 adult to Singapore from Air Asia at the time was $150, not to mention taxi fees I would pay in Singapore and Indonesia to get to and from the airport and the bank. This would have cost over $200 and while maybe the most secure option, just didn’t seem viable.
The best thing I could come up with was to have the card sent to my home address, and then have Mom again come to the rescue by sending the package from our house to one of our upcoming Asian destinations.
This is so risky for so many reasons. We were going to be in Indonesia for 30 days and then heading back to Kuala Lumpur to stay at a guesthouse we recently spent over 3 weeks in. We came to the know the owner and the staff very well, and they are all extremely nice and accommodating people. I felt pretty comfortable sending the package there and it being in safe hands until I arrive. After all, this was better than the alternative of sending it to a random hotel that we hadn’t checked into yet in Indonesia.
The Outcome?
Not sure yet, the plan is in motion and I’ll update this post as more happens. It all seems to be going smooth so far! Fingers crossed!
Our Best Advice
- Always travel with multiple cards, in multiple places. We had two cards from two accounts and still ended up in the situation, but we were really unfortunate. What we could have done better? Kept one of the cards outside of the wallet and in a secret location. Hidden pouch in a backpack, etc. Better yet, keep at least one card on your person at all times.
- Have a few safeguards set up before you leave. Patting myself on the back for leaving Mom the check book. Also make sure you have a few methods set up for online transfer. Chase offers a “QuickPay” service and of course there is PayPal. I highly recommend you get a PayPal.
- Plan for these things to happen before they do. If it were to happen, what would you do? Giving someone at home power of attorney is a really risky thing to do, unless you have someone trustworthy enough. We are lucky enough to have so many members of our family would take that responsibility on if we called on them to do so, so in the future that may be something we do.
- See the previous point. Are you going to be in a country your bank will not ship a replacement debit card to? If so, maybe you should calculate up how much you are going to need and just go straight to the ATM, withdrawal the money, and keep that card put up.
- Always have backup cash stowed away. At least enough to live on for a week would be my advice. If not, perhaps you can take out a 3rd debit card that is prepaid and not linked to any account. Just a card with some cash on it that you can use when you need. Overkill? Maybe. But I promise it’s better than being stranded without any money at all.
Update #1
Mom has cashed my check and sent money via Western Union. Western Union only asked for the city and country of my location. There was no issue sending the money to Indonesia. Mom withdrew $500 from my account, and Western Union charged $25 to send the money.
I had a taxi driver take me to the closest Western Union near my hotel in Yogyakarta. It was inside of a convenience store called “Indomart”. The lady behind the counter asked how much I was receiving, and I told her. It was 7 million Indonesian Rupiahs. She laughed in my face. Needless to say, that was WAY more than she had in cash behind the counter to give me.
So, I went to the taxi and we went to another Western Union. Same deal. The whole store was laughing at me. It appeared not a single convenience store / Western Union in Yogyakarta kept that much money ($475 USD) behind the counter at any given time. I was starting to think I was out of luck after about 6 or 7 stops when a lady finally told me to try a post office in the downtown district of Malioboro. She was right, it was the one place that had a Western Union and they were able to provide me with the funds. She handed me 6.5 million Rupiahs in a bag. I felt like I was in the mafia for a few minutes as I quickly walked back to my taxi with a bag full of cash.
Midway back to the hotel I started doing the math. She only gave me 6.5 Million. I looked on the receipt and it showed $475. But the conversion rate should have been closer to 15K / $1 rather than 13K / $1. The Western Union had given me an AWFUL exchange rate. It ended up costing me an additional $50. So, the total fee to transfer $500 was almost $75. Wow!!! Major hit!! Working with a fellow traveller to use the PayPal method described above would have been much more efficient, but again I wasn’t really in that position. Be aware that Western Union should be one of the last resorts for receiving money and is quite possibly the most expensive.
I’m working on getting another card and I’ll update more when I have more details.
About the Author
Stephen Fairchild is a traveling web developer and father of two with a beautiful girlfriend. He takes his children on wild adventures by day and works on high impact marketing and web projects at night. His goal is to take his children to as many countries as possible before they graduate high school.