Turkey decides that seven zeroes don’t fit on money very easily and West Africa trades in tatters for crisp new bills.

News about banknotes wouldn’t seem to warrant much excitement, but anyone who has traveled around much knows that the currency can have a major impact on your visit.

My money memories are varied and often frustrating. When I taught English in South Korea I got paid in cash once a month. The biggest bill was only worth about nine dollars, so if I went out after work on payday without going home first, I had to do it with a giant stack of bills jammed in my coat or my pants. (Thankfully it’s a safe country.) When I was in Laos, nobody changed more than $100 at a time because the biggest bill was only worth 50 cents. You literally had to bring a bag with you to carry it. And everyone who has been to India conducts an ongoing fight with shopkeepers over tattered bills and a lack of change. The only way to get around it is to use the bad bills for tips–you literally have to give them away.

One of the oddest experiences was Turkey, however. When I lived there, virtually everyone headed to the exchange booth on payday to change their Turkish Liras for hard currency. Inflation was so bad that if you waited, you money would soon be worth less. On one occasion my wife and I decided to walk past the exchange booth and hit the post office first. By the time we got back to the booth–15 minutes later–the exchange rate had gotten worse already.

At the time, in the mid-90s, one US dollar was worth about 40,000 Turkish Lira. The million lira note was just getting into circulation. Over the years, as inflation has continued, it has gotten far worse. A few months ago, that million-lira note wasn’t even worth a buck. But everyone can now kiss those zeros goodbye: one NEW Turkish lira is now worth 75 US cents, or about half a euro. You’ll no longer be an instant millionaire when you enter the country, but a normal calculator actually works again to figure out exchange rates.

Meanwhile, seven West African nations have updated their currency for the first time since 1992. Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Burkino Faso, Benin, and Togo have shared a currency the past 12 years, but the governments never got their act together to issue new notes. So the old bills had gotten tattered beyond recognition and, as you can imagine, more than a bit dirty. But in January they finished phasing out $1.3 billion in old West African francs and issued new ones. For now anyway, it’s all crispness and the smell of new money.

What do Chinatown buses, independent hotels, and back street restaurants have in common?

Well, once upon a time, I was fortunate enough to see a speaker/author named Roger Von Oech talk about creativity. He has published some neat books and even a pack of cards that help you break your brain out of its complacency and make it come up with those coveted “aha!” moments. Fittingly, the books are called A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. They’ve both been out for a long time, but are pretty timeless.

One of his rules that is especially applicable to travel is, “Look for the 2nd right answer.”

In travel, the first “right answer” is what everyone does. Go to Europe in the summer, stay at the Sheraton, take a taxi everywhere, eat where all the other tourists eat. But if you want to really get more bang for your buck and have a more meaningful travel experience, you need to continually look for the second right answer. Because doing it another way isn’t wrong, it’s just different. Most people shy away from what’s different, which is why you can make out like a bandit if you don’t.

I was reminded of this today when I saw a mainstream US newspaper article about the Chinatown buses that travel between New York City and other cities in the northeast. Backpackers coming from other countries have known about these for years. The buses are nothing fancy, but they can get you from New York to Boston for less than $20. Fast. You can bet that most people living in New York City don’t know about them, much less travelers coming to the city from elsewhere. Lots of companies would rather you didn’t know about them: Greyhound, Amtrak, and Hertz for a start.

The big mega-chain hotels also like it when you just go for the obvious. That’s why they bombard you with ads and try to buy your loyalty with frequent stay points. It’s why their results are highlighted first on the online booking sites–they’ve bought the real estate. But in international cities, you can usually find a much better value by choosing an independent hotel. It’ll often be half the price, be in a better location (for tourists anyway), and have less of a cookie-cutter feel. It takes more work to find the second right answer, but it’s rewarding.

Tourist restaurants also want you to take the easy route. They’re invariably more expensive and almost always more bland than their less famous competitors down the street. But they perpetuate their crowds (and their margins) by partnering with hotels, partnering with tour bus groups, and making sure they’re wooing all the right guidebook writers and article writers. After a while, the places are institutions and they make it into every mention of the area. Going there becomes the obvious answer, but not the best answer.

Next time you’re taking a trip, look for the second right answer each time you make a decision about where to stay, where to eat, and how to get around. Heck, do it before you even decide where to go. Try Panama instead of Costa Rica. Budapest instead of London, Morocco instead of Spain. It won’t be the obvious choice, but it will probably be the right one.

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We can all dig into our pockets to contribute money to relief efforts in the tsunami-wrecked regions, but in the longer term the best thing we can do is, simply, go there.

- Tony Wheeler

I’ve spent the last two blog entries talking about tsunami aid, so I promise to give it a rest for a while after this. But a large number of the cheapest places to travel are in the affected region, so for anyone who is or will be a budget traveler, these people deserve our help.

But apart from sending money, what can you do?

Anyone who has traveled a lot knows that Lonely Planet is the premier guidebook series for those who are not on the tour bus circuit. So it’s probably no surprise that their web site contains lots of advice on next steps after this tragedy.

First of all, as I’ve said before, the best long-term thing you can do to help is to GO. This year, next year, or later, your dollars or euros spent on real services performed by people on the ground will do more than any aid contribution in terms of helping people make a real living again. Lonely Planet has a thoughtful note from the publisher, a list of resources where you can find out what’s going on, as well as “Five Untouched Destinations That Would Love to See You.” Founder Tony Wheeler’s article, which first appeared in The Independent, gives some much-needed perspective to what is, for most people, a hazy jumble of geography.

If you want to physically go and help out, use your brain as well as your heart and do your homework. If you have special skills, put them to use in the right place. If you don’t, find out where you can do more than get in the way. This article, from USA Today, gives details on two organizations that are placing volunteers without asking a fortune in return.

One last note, from a traveler standpoint. Have you ever registered with your embassy when you traveled abroad? I’ll freely admit that the only time I ever did so was when I lived in Korea for a year. But if this disaster doesn’t change my behavior, I don’t know what will. I’m off to Peru and Mexico in the next few months and I think this time I’ll post my vitals. It’s easy to think nothing will ever happen, but then again…

Here’s info on how to do it online if you are American, inthis article. For other nationalities, check and see if online registration is an option. If not, take a few minutes to make a call or send a letter.

Much of the tsunami news has now predictably moved from shock, horror, and improvised ground coverage to the more familiar media territory: money. (And of course, in America at least, the heartwarming stories of survival against all odds, of selfless heroics. I can just picture some Fox or CNN producer going, “I don’t care what you have to do–find me a hero!”)

You can’t see or read anything about the tragedy now without it turning into a money story. If all the dollar figures of tsunami victim assistance in the news are making your head spin, it’s understandable. A million here, $350 million there, planes, boats, helicopters, “18 tons of medicine.” After a while you start thinking, “what difference is my drop-in-the-bucket 50 bucks going to make? Well, here’s a site where you can not only find out what’s going on, but you can find out where your money will really help the most. Check out The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog

You can find out how to donate to specific agencies on the ground in affected areas and what they’re going to do with the money. In many cases, you’ll skip several layers of bureacracy. Yes, the international aid agencies will warn you that corruption is rife in these countries and there’s a danger your money won’t get to its intended target, but so what. There’s also a verified and real risk with the huge international agencies that your money is going toward a fat salary for the head of the American Red Cross (rumored to be $450,000 in 2001) or a suite at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok for a VP from Oxfam. One’s called corruption, one’s called overhead, but neither siphon does much for the victims. (Lest you think I’m exaggerating about the hotel, next time you’re in a developing country, go to the nicest hotel in the capital city and look around. Notice how many of its guests are working for big NGOs. Take a look at the hotel’s rate card and then compare it to the average citizen’s annual wages in that country. It’s downright depressing.)

Call me crazy, but I have more faith in the delivery mechanisms of Adopt Sri Lanka or SurfAid International.

And I’ll say it again. If you REALLY want to help out Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Indian Ocean islands, travel there in ’05 or ’06 after the attention has died down and all the reporters have left. Spend real money on real commerce: local restaurant meals, local hotels, local cab drivers. That’s what’s going to get their economies back in motion and help people rebuild their lives. India’s government, however, says they don’t need anyone’s help and have refused donations, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether they really want you there or not.

There’s a reason some countries are some of “the world’s cheapest destinations.” They’re poor. So when a 9.0 earthquake hits Indonesia and a tsunami crashes into Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India, major devastation is a certainty.

I’ve spent at least a hundred nights sleeping in rickety bamboo huts on the beaches of Asia. They’re comfortable in that climate, they do the job, and they’re built from a material that grows like a weed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to wash them away. So anyone who has spent time in these affected areas watched the news with special horror. Families live in those bamboo huts. Whole villages washed away like a matchstick sculpture. Where there was something sturdier made of concrete, the water washed out underneath and it collapsed, often with people trapped inside.

A lot of the news in the US and Europe has focused on the tourists. We can all relate to the horror of sitting on a beach one minute and being sucked out to sea the next. Some 2,500 people from Sweden have died, close to the number of Americans who died in the World Trade Center bombing. In a much smaller country.

But the foreign deaths pale next to the ever-climbing numbers from the local population. There are estimates that the death toll could hit 100,000 in Indonesia alone. People who already had next to nothing have lost that little bit, along with loved ones, extended families, and often the only breadwinner or the family business.

So what can you do?
Take some fraction of what you just spent on holiday presents and send money where it is needed. Once the situation is stabilized, give again–either directly or by spending your vacation money in those countries where they need it. Thailand and Malaysia have two coasts. Indonesia has a thousand islands. Parts of the Maldives will be okay. Go there and make an economic impact.

You can find a comprehensive list of charity links at Transitions Abroad’s web site here.

I personally like the idea of this listing on Wikipedia: it has links to individual charities in the countries that are affected. So you can donate directly to the agency closest to the problem, avoiding layers of bureacracy. There are two in Indonisa, two in Sri Lanka, and many in India.

I also have great admiration for CARE, having seen the practical and useful work they have done in many developing countries, without trying to invest in grand projects that only grab headlines. And of course Doctors Without Borders could especially use help right now, as water-borne diseases could rapidly increase the number of deaths if doctors and medicine can’t get out in a hurry.

And don’t forget–donate via the Web! A larger percentage of your donation goes to relief this way, rather than to overhead.