Back in Buenos Aires

whats hidden?















one of the campsite...

for the past 4 days since we left Brazil, we had been traveling along Rio Uraguay for 4 days and been camping. the last campsite before B.A. was about 200km away. we were waken up by the care taker at 6am, sunday. he told us to evacuate immideatly because the water along the river is flooding... near to the campsite.

look! i told you! it's clean shaved!

one of the widest street in the world.







dancing artist.

TANGO!!!

we have reached B.A. again for administrative works.

1) the clip of Hope Too's chain had worn off.

a)the chain had not been replace since day one. only the front spocket (16) had been replaced in Germany. I heard some unusual noise from the chain. suspect a screw of something had dropped and cause something to be lose and had cause the clip rubbing against it thus had it worned off.

b) brake going soft. dont know why and now its still not rectified.

2) preparing finance for trip regarding $$$....

we uses traveler's cheque for part of our fund. it is in US$. at dec2008 we bought US$1.00 with SGD$1.48. after that the market of US$ had gone down so we never use. today it rose up to S$1.51 and we made a US$1000.00 change! earning right???

in paper, yes.

our American Express travelers cheque has HSBC printed on it. all the bank in the world DO NOT accept it. when they see hsbc, all the bank ask you to go HSBC to encash the money. when we bought the Travelers cheque from HSBC singapore, they had already charged me 1% commission. they told me:

go to any bank in the world and you can encash.

today, we went a big HSBC in B.A. and they say they are going to charge 1% commission and 20% on something which we dont understand. they refer us to go to an American Express branch to change.

we went to amex. yes... they are more professional. they did not charge any commission on us and the rate is good.

in brazil, we went to hsbc and it was a mess. they required alot of linking to the network.... check this and that and gave us lousy rate.

in turkey, hsbc could not connect to network. so we cannot change.

in iran... no bank accept travelers cheque.

in pakistan... good. we changed twice at hsbc but they need to see our previous transection recipt.

in thailand, thats the only non-hsbc bank that accept our TC. it was 'bank of ayuttaya'.

now there's something called travelers card. i think its better. work like ATM.

in general, my advice is: forget about the old fashion way of buying travelers cheque. 2 debit cards would be sufficient! VISA and MASTERS. even American Express Credit card is not reconized in all the countries we visited.

if you really need one, do not buy one with any bank`s name on it, just american express. also get a recipt of the purchase showing your name on it, proofing MrXXX had bought cheque number XXX.

Our DBS master debit card dont work very well in our trip.

Thumbs up for Citibank Visa electrons. recommanded!

we will be going to Chile tomorrow. will need 3 days hard riding to the border. enjoy Chile (not chilli) for 12 days and ride back to Argentina for a biker's meeting on 6-8 december in Viedma.

please rotate your monitor.

tango tango...