51–60 of 115 posts
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It's still kind of true since you basically need to either find a friend you trust to launder money for you, or use some sketchy online service with high fees to launder the money for you.
You're using a pejorative term rather wildly...you can also "launder" USD cash into RMB cash at the airport with high fees.
Given that the Chinese government actively promotes tourism, the number of hoops a foreigner has to jump through to pay for things where cash isn't accepted is quite ridiculous.
Setting up WeChat pay is a pretty minor problem as far as tourism is concerned. Aside from the fact that almost everyone does take cash (at least 3 months ago in Shanghai), it's only difficult if you don't know someone with RMB willing to do currency exchange.
The big problems all tourists face are directly due to government policies:
* Painful to get initial entry visa, especially if you don't live near a consulate.
* Setting up a VPN so you can even access basic services like your email.
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You hail the cab and ask them As noted above, you don't speak the language and both your foreign translation app and dictionary are in your now gone phone. then keep the meter running until you get a new phone That was funny. Thanks for that one. If you're that totally helpless in a foreign country without your phone, you probably should go with a friend or local. It's not the person who is helpless. It's being force…
Sorry, do you travel? At the end of the day, the phone isn't a single point of failure because the fail safe is just talking to people (I.e, the single point of failure is you, the traveler) Your scenario is contrived. Imagine a mystical time before phones - maybe it was your pocket translation dictionary that fell down the grate? You're out of luck in much the same way - unless you just go back inside and talk to th…
Yes. 27 countries so far. And I traveled to the ends of the earth in a time before cell phones even existed.
Imagine a mystical time before phones - maybe it was your pocket translation dictionary that fell down the grate? You're out of luck in much the same way - unless you just go back inside and talk to the restaurant and have them send a cab, or call the hotel, or find someone on the street to help you out.
If my pocket translator fell down the grate, I'd still be able to hail a cab, point to a location on my paper map, and pay with cash. I've done it in Thailand, Japan, and Turkey. Probably other places I don't remember.
The point made repeatedly upstream is that the phone is a single point of failure, and eliminating the cash option in favor of a smartphone is a seriously bad idea.
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What use is going to a phone store when you don't have any means of paying for a phone? Further, in many countries you can't buy a sim card without ID so if your ID was stored on your phone, you're screwed there too.
I made this point separately, but you can use the phone you're buying to pay for itself, just log into WeChat on it while in the shop. I hope you're carrying your passport in a foreign country.
Not possible everywhere. In some places, the hotel holds on to your passport.
I was getting funny looks from taxi drivers and waitresses, all of whom were disappointed that another primitive foreigner was forcing them to use cash. I simply don't like the thought that if I forget my phone, get my phone taken from me, drop my phone and it breaks, or run out of battery that I'll be stranded somewhere and unable to buy food, check in to a hotel, or even get home. Societies should move toward more…
Eventually, you'll be able to pay with your face and won't even need your phone in some places [1]. I wonder if they're taking and storing stereoscopic photos of my face when I go thru customs... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/biometrics-payment-china-s...
At Customs, probably not. At Immigration, absolutely.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/hart-homeland-security...
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Businesses can accept foreigner credit cards. But why would they, when foreigners are a tiny proportion of the population, and taking such cards probably costs them a fortune? This is true for every other country in the world, yet somehow it's done. China is the exception. Someone just told me that the Shanghai hotel I stayed in for several days last week costs foreigners double the Chinese rate. Undoubtedly, part of…
I totally accept your point about tourist vs. local prices. But when it comes to credit cards, China is truly different: They don't have Visa or MasterCard (or AmEx) in the country. They do have Union Pay, which is a special, China-only credit card. So businesses do often take credit cards. They just don't take non-Chinese credit cards. In this sense, they are different from other countries I've visited.
I used to give cash to local friends, but it was putting a strain on their (infinite) hospitality. I don't have a local bank account yet, although it is relatively straightforward to get one.
(Re: The ExpressVPN ad in the middle of the article.) Personally I avoid any VPN service that uses affiliate codes to grow. It shows they don't really care about privacy. Which, sadly, applies to most commercial VPN services.
In this specific case: ExpressVPN has been my default choice for 2 years% I travel a lot for work and maintain subscriptions to most top-tier VPNs, which I speed-check every few months. ExpressVPN hconsistently gives better speeds and latency across US, EU, and Asia-Pacific. No affiliate link but would recommend anyway.
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A good point. I made sure to have a power pack (i.e., big, external charging battery) with me — not so that I could talk on the phone, but so that I could pay for things and/or call a taxi with DiDi. Without a charge on my phone, I'd effectively be penniless and stranded. At least in China, they might be moving toward multiple and parallel services (i.e., WeChat and AliPay), but they're all based on phones. Which mea…
What would it take to establish a competitor to PayPal in the US?
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I totally accept your point about tourist vs. local prices. But when it comes to credit cards, China is truly different: They don't have Visa or MasterCard (or AmEx) in the country. They do have Union Pay, which is a special, China-only credit card. So businesses do often take credit cards. They just don't take non-Chinese credit cards. In this sense, they are different from other countries I've visited.
They do have Union Pay, which is a special, China-only credit card. Not China-only. Union Pay is widely accepted in the United States, and probably every other country. Even small gas stations in the middle of nowhere take Union Pay.