Category Archives: Tips

Auschwitz, Birkenau, and curry – and a TIP or two

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A strange combination, but that’s how the day went.

Again, we slept later than was originally planned before our group gathered (the same as yesterday but the ranks swollen with the two Danish girls, the Swedish lass who’d arrived overnight and a German girl and Aussie girl who were travel together). We walked to the bus station and forked over our 7zl each for the 90-minute ride to Auschwitz.

TIP – don’t buy your bus ticket from the Tourist Information. They charge 20zl return, whereas the bus is only 7zl each way.

TIP – don’t get a tour guide at Auschwitz. They’re good, but you will see more if you get a guide book for a couple of Zloty and walk yourself around. Much cheaper and better value for money.

What can I say about Auschwitz? Well, it was the largest extermination camp in the Nazi “regime” during the war. Jews (and other dissidents) were ferried there under the pretence that they were being relocated to a new area. Around 80% of those who arrived were killed within hours; gassed then cremated, their ashes scattered in rivers.

The others – those reckoned as being fit enough to work – were put to forced labour and made to live in the most horrific conditions. Up to 15 people on a bunk designed for one, with three layers. Those below would be covered in the mess from people above as dysentery was rife.

Punishments were frequent and cruel, experiments and torture carried out on prisoners on a regular basis. And the sheer scale of the operation simple mind-numbing. The view from the guard house at Birkenau (Auschwitz B-camp) shows buildings as far as the eye can see, or at least their remains.

Some of the exhibits are really harrowing. The 2 tonnes of human hair. The countless thousands of shoes and suitcases. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the huge collection of childrens’ clothing.

So in all an educational but depressing day. But like so many other similar places I’ve been, it does drive home how damn lucky we are to live how we do today. And that we shouldn’t forget the past – we should learn from it. So if you find any Holocaust deniers, give them a clip round the ear and force them to see sense so we can prevent this kind of horror in the future.

Away from all that, we returned to Krakow and arranged to have dinner at a recommended Indian restaurant with some Geordie girls I got talking to. Unfortunately, with everyone on different schedules, people wanting to shower, some wanting to eat sooner and so forth, our large group ended up whittling down to myself, Tommi and Michael.

Well, it was everyone else’s loss. The food was superb and very reasonably priced. So if you’re in Krakow and you want an amazing curry: Bombaj Tandoori is the place to go. Michael and I had a madras and a vindaloo respectively (“as hot as you can make it”) while Tommi settled on a more mild tikka masala. All were top notch. And the waitress was a cutie, to boot.

We were supposed to meet the girls in town later, but they didn’t show – I assume Laura was navigating… Instead we went back to the hostel and – for a change – drank beer before going to bed.

Tip – Entering and leaving Jordan

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Note that there is a visa fee and a departure tax for Jordan. Both are payable in cash, and I think the departure fee only in Jordanian Dinars.

The one-month on-arrival visa is 10JD, while the departure tax (land and air) is 5JD. I paid my visa fee in Dirham I had left over from Dubai and I’m fairly sure they accept US Dollars as well. This is handy as there are no cash facilities around the immigration area, so if you don’t have the money on you then you’re screwed.

When leaving, ensure your passport is stamped and you pay the fees. The whole procedure I went through was really badly organised and I almost missed my bus when the driver realised that the staff in immigration hadn’t sorted my passport out. Again, there are no cash facilities at the King Hussein / Allenby Bridge location, so ensure you have enough on you before you arrive.

These details are for British passport holders, because I am one. Always check your own details shortly before travel.

Tip – Some up-to-date info on Cambodia

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Much as I do like the Lonely Planet books on the whole, they do get a little out of date especially in countries developing as quickly as Cambodia. Prices change, infrastructures improve, new things appear. Very briefly, though – and relevant up to the date posted – here are some things that might be useful to anyone visiting in the near future.

The entry visa-on-arrival at Siem Reap (and I assume Phnomh Penh) International Airport is $20 for UK citizens (and most others, I believe) and payment has to be in US Dollars. A single passport photo is required. You get 30 days by default. Conveniently, an ATM is available before you reach the visa counter so you can withdraw the cash should you need it. Ensure you have a full page in your passport for the visa and space for the accompanying stamps. One girl I met on the plane had to pay an extra $10 (she haggled down from $20!) for the immigration officer to paste the Cambodian visa over the Chinese one in her US passport. Note that the last handful of pages in the US passport are not supposed to be used for visas, so the guy was within his rights (although a Laos border official had gone ahead and used one of the pages regardless and for no fee).

You can also organise a visa in advance in most surrounding countries, or even online, though this incurs a $5 handling fee and the only thing you’ll save is a bit of time. You’ll also have to email them a suitable passport photo so it all seemed a little fiddly to me. My experience at the airport was one of fairly good efficiency.

International departure tax from the airports is $25, again payable in Dollars.

Internet access if widespread with Wi-Fi even making an appearance in some areas. It’s usually free for users of bars or cafes, though I’m sure some guest houses and hotels also have it. Standard internet cafes are all over the place and vary in price from $0.50 to $1.50 an hour in my experience. The connection speed also varies from shop to shop.

ATMs are common and accept various well-known cards. I’ve used two different ones so far, both take Visa, both dispense US Dollars and neither charged me a fee. I have been told that some ATMs dispense Riel, but in honesty dollars are better. The best way to get Riel is to spend dollars and get them as change. The official exchange rate at a bank is around 3990 Riel to the dollar, but every single shop or individual I have dealt with has rounded this up to 4000 to make calculations nice and simple.

There are many charitable foundations in Cambodia, though I’m sure some of the ones you’ll see are – unfortunately – dodgy. I hope these are in the minority. Check out any before you devote time or money to them. The worthwhile ones are all well worth any of your efforts and dollars. As with any country like this, don’t hand out cash to beggars. If you want to help, donate to a charity. If the people are genuine, they can get help from there.

Tip – Travelling internet security

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I’ve just encountered this issue for the second time so I thought it would make sense to pop something on here. If you’re traveling with some kind of USB key or card reader (maybe for your digital camera or to transfer documents to/from a laptop) get one with a write-protect tab on it.

All too often, cybercafe machines will get loaded with viruses. The one I’m sat on now tried to write to my key as soon as I plugged it in. I’ve put the same key – unprotected – into another machine in the past and been surprised to find a very small “version” of Internet Explorer on there when I got it back to my laptop. Surprise, surprise – when I scanned it it was indeed a virus.

As I type, I’m scanning the hard drive of this machine and every single .exe file (1916 of them so far) has the Worm/VB.BFF virus attached. I can’t get any information on this from anywhere, even AVG’s pages and they’re the vendors of the antivirus I’m scanning with.

The aforementiond AVG is a good product and one I use on my own laptop. It was already installed and up to date on this PC, but obviously nobody’s set it up to check files as soon as they’re brought down off the internet, nor to run a full scan at a set time of day. So there’s another lesson – just because the machine you’re sat at has antivirus on, don’t assume it’s safe.

Tip – ATMs in Laos

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This has been touched on a couple of times, but another one I’ve discovered is that the machines in Laos (well, the one in Vientiane that takes foreign ATM cards) charge 20,000 Kip ($2) per withdrawal. This is in addition to any charges your own bank levies.

The single ATM in Vang Vieng will only work with MasterCard and I have been told that the one in Luang Prabang will only accept one of the more obscure card “brands” (i.e. not Visa or MasterCard).