We’ve survived our first day. Boy it’s hot here.
We arrived at 5:30am and got to our hotel by about 6:30. As we’d booked the night before, our room was ready for us and we were able to go right in and try and catch up on some much needed sleep.
Kath had a bit of a sleep on the plane, Kent on the other hand, was wingey and uncomfortable most of the time. Singapore Airlines are much better than Emirates in Kent’s opinon.
After a quick nap, we got up and had breakfast, our second breakfast for the day, the first one while on the plane.
After that we set out to get some money. This was proving to be a little difficult. The machine we went to to start with said that it only accepted MasterCard. So we stuck one of those in and attempted to withdraw 300dhr (about AUD$100).
The transaction failed stating ‘Invalid Card Number’, strike 1. Not overly surprised we went to the Money Exchange desk only to find their machine was broken. Strike 2.
Oh, well, lets try the front desk at the hotel we are saying at. They have published rates, (pretty bad rates, but rates none the less).
They could only trade in notes and as we wanted to use our card, it was stike 3.
They suggested the exchange place down the road. We proceeded down the road and after getting to speak to someone, they said that we couldn’t use the card unless we had our passports as well, which were locked up at the hotel. Strike 4.
A little bit less jovial at this point, we proceeded to call the ANZ card services team to find out why thr original transaction failed. This was a good experience and the lady indicated that the machine sent through a account type value that was not for a credit card. The ATM didn’t actually give us the option to choose the account type, so we thought we’d give it another go and see if there were any more options.
This time around, Kath spotted that the suggested card type was a ‘MasterCard Debit’. With this thought, I put my credit card away, and got out my ANZ debit card, and tried it. This is the one we wanted to use all along.
Low and behold it worked and we had 300dhs in old crappy notes and were as happy as you could see two Aussies in Dubai that had no money.
Stay tuned, more on Day 1 to come shortly…
Love, Kent and Kath.