Can I ask…
How do you motorbike ride to EBC ?
Terrain doesn’t seem suitable.
All the vids I’ve seen appear to be hike only, apart from Yaks and Donkeys carrying gear up to higher Villages.
I’ve kept my Latitude card. I use it for way more things than travel and would be a pain to change. I’ve sucked up the fee even though it goes against the grain.
I did look into that CBA option but came to the conclusion I’d struggle to put through 2K/month consistently and would be no better (and possibly worse) off fee-wise.
Will definitely look into the UBank option.
Yeah managing the CBA $2k spend is a pain when you are churning earning and burning cards for points all the time.
Thanks for this heads-up. Opened an account just now.
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Has anyone had experience with Trip A Deal?
Most of the gripes I’ve read (sales pitches/shopping stops, schedule inflexibility, not much time at each location, hotels not always in great locations, hotel standard varies etc.) could be said of any of the organized tour companies. We’ve done tours with well established, big name operators and all the above can be true.
We haven’t done a packaged tour for many years, but are considering one next year (because we have limited time, and it seems a reasonably cost-effective way of doing it when I’ve tallied-up the costs of doing the itinerary ourselves).
Trip A Deal currently have virtually the same itinerary as one of the big names, but at about half the cost (and with airfares included). So I’m wondering… how do they stack up? What (if anything) is the catch?
Everyone else in the bus is a Yank?
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Probably, but again… that’s been pretty much the case with any packaged tour we did.
My favourite was a tour of Morocco, where (other than ourselves and a couple of girls from Sydney) the bus was exclusively 60+ year-old Seppos.
It was free afternoon in Fez. Ourselves (and the Sydney girls) chipped together and offered a local guide USD80 to be our guide for the afternoon and show us around the medina and the city in general. The Seppos were horrified - convinced we’d never be seen again.
Ignorant idiots… he looked after us like we were royalty. Of course he did… we’d just offered the guy what was quite possibly his monthly salary for an afternoon, he wasn’t letting us out of his sight. Had a great time.
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When we were in China recently we caught up with my folks who were on their 19th visit to China and probably half of them were with Trip A Deal. They have done a few to Vietnam aswell with them. They don’t go on any of the excursions or the like anymore and on their free days they just go off and do their own thing.
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The secret to that is to only visit Australian destinations.
Like Perth, the Gold Coast and Bali.
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My neighbour loved her trip to Japan with them.
No idea of the demographics. Shes a little older but I don’t think that should turn you off it.
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Well, I ain’t completely a spring chicken myself… 
What did you think of HHN compared to other years? I have nothing to compare with but people there on the nights we went were mostly saying the houses were better. I’ve heard mixed reaction to the scare zones.
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Yes, highly recommend Macquarie.
Friends did the 4 Stans - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan & Uzbekistan- with TripADeal.They said was a fantastic experience overall. However, accomodation varies considerably across the trip.The major legs of flights were with Emirates.
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To visit Horace Rumpole’s Golden Road to Samarkand.
No love for Turkmenistan though.
That country is run by an ex-dentist deranged despot.
Fantastic place, Shame about the bozo running the place
Going to Sydney for work next week. Cheapest fair on Qantas in upwards of $1100 return. The flight i booked was $1400. Extortion.
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Do they have different buy and sell rates for foreign currencies?
Macquarie gets appalling reviews on Google. Average rating 1.4/5.
Buy and sell? You can’t load up with foreign currencies. It’s not a ‘travel’ card, but a normal transaction account with good exchange rates.
Can’t comment on the other reviews but has worked well for mum and I.
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