No Internet?

As some of you astute readers may have noticed, all my blog entries from my 10 day trip to Ethiopia all were posted at the same time. This is because internet was crap the whole time I was there. Apparently the national telecom company has changed and that combined with the rainy season wiping out electricity every afternoon meant that connections were hard to come by.

Sometimes I find the lack of internet when I travel relaxing. It's an 'ignorance is bliss' sort of thing with regard to work. Can't be stressed out about stuff I don't know is happening.

However, in this particular case it got a bit sticky-- namely when I went to go pay for my hotel.

Now it never occurred to me before, but you can't pay with credit cards when there is no internet... no way to validate the card. And of course this paying-of-hotel-bills tends to fall at the end of a trip when all your cash is spent. The receptionist suggested I take money from the ATM to pay but I'm not sure she realized 1) I don't keep over a thousand dollars in my personal checking 2) The highest amount you are allowed to take out of an Ethiopian ATM is the equivalent of $200- and that's after you click the "other amount" button because the given options only go up to $100.

It was about noon at the hotel which meant it was 5am in New York so getting money wired from my office was not going to happen. I started wondering if they had a room full of dishes I could wash before my flight and we could call it even?

Thankfully, the manager thought to go the bank and have me take out a cash advance against my credit card which apparently you can do with no internet. So I got a giant, embarrassing stack of small bills from the bank to pay the hotel, and an enormous service fee to pay when I got home...