Dubai in a nutshell! or Credit card Hell!

Using a credit- or debit- card in Dubai is a natural thing. As with most other developed countries this is one of the features that normally works. During most of the shopping festivals around here we see a major amount of advertisements for VISA, MasterCard ,Diners, American Express and so on. Usually one of the credit card companies have teamed up with a Bank and several of the shopping malls and other outlets so that you can earn points for life for every dollar you spend. Once you have your gold card another bank comes up with a platinum, or why not the latest titanium card. The banks keep calling us to tell us how good their card is and why we must have it. Just use it and earn points you can even use on the airlines. Why not! They are very surprised when I tell them to never call me again as it seems they believe they have the offer of a lifetime. (Have a friend who actually took them up on the offer.. 8 months later he had still not received the card or was it the pincode to use it... And guess what the shopping festival had ended.)

It worked perfect for a while, I have a VISA and MasterCard from my usual bank and not a Dubai based one, so don't need any more cards thus I don't earn any points... But neither do I pay all the various transaction fees that they invent meanwhile. Until lately, that is.

I normally fuel up at the most prevailing fuel chains. It is two Dubai based companies that somehow are still owned by the same company and they almost have a monopoly in Dubai for the fuel stations. I know of one other chain also but to find a fuelstation from them is virtually impossible.

4 months ago the large ones announced that it was too expensive for them to cover the Creditcard fees so they would charge 1.5% or 2% on each transaction. I did not really complain about the 2 Dirham they charge me extra but it felt crazy... the reason for using the card should be benefiting the company probably more than me as it means no cash to move around thus less risk of robbery.

To my surprise it was getting more and more difficult though to use the cards. The attendants kept coming back to me saying "card no work!" Looking at the 4-5 slips they had it was evident that the card did work but their machines did not. Transaction cancelled was the error code so normally I sent the guys back and voila! it worked.

Now yesterday I tried to fuel up and pay with my card again and the guy simply informed we "we don't accept credit-cards anymore!"



Hmmm. Well looking at how things work in Dubai in general I am not really surprised. It seems everything is about how to move costs around and try to gain maximum amount of profit for a few in the shortest possible time. I guess it is not unlike any other place but to stop accepting credit cards that must be a novelty in this day and age. Are they on to something the rest of us don't know about yet?!

Maybe the fuel company got fed up trying to access the lines to the bank 5 times as they could only charge for one transaction try.... maybe it is the bank that is not catching up with their internal connections?.. for sure this is the case with the local bank we normally use for our office!, or maybe it is the telephone company lines that simply can not catch up with the expansion in the country..still charging for each call tried between the fuel station and the bank, thus they earn their money while no transaction could be made, or maybe it is that all these credit card offers in reality look nice on the surface, and the easy way out of delivering all the points is to close down the services people use and then maybe re-create them in the future, under a new name not in the list of participating companies.. Thus avoiding people to amass enough points to make it worth anything.

I have no clue what the answer is but I just cant figure out why a major chain would suddenly stop having people pay this way. Oh by the way you can though still get their internal fuel payment cards and pay with them ;-) I dont know but I would guess it works on pre-payment ;-)

I do though know that the price has always been cheaper in the next Emirate, Abu Dhabi, and guess what?! They have never charged for using the credit cards !? Even from their large almost monopoly size company.

Once I climbed Mount Makilala, Mindanao

I am sure very few people have a clue about were on earth this mountain is. It's not like it is well known like Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro :-)

We had to set up a new operation in Mindanao to support mainly the Muslim population in the hard to reach areas of the island. Mindanao is a very nice island and could be a tourist paradise but it is instead notoriously known for all the kidnappings of prominent people or foreigners. Either the Abu Sayyaf or some of the other rebels are making sure of this. Most of the time the people were released after paying a ransom. Most of the time!

The UN office in Manila had assigned one of the security officers to join me on the mission as I would not be allowed to travel alone or with a driver only. The risk for kidnapping was too high. After looking at a few of the maps I had identified some of the potential locations for our communication systems and one was Makilala. As most areas are off limits for anyone let alone visitors we made arrangements with the commander on the island to get access on the mountains.

So me and my security officer arrived early in the morning to the local military outpost close to the mountain and greeted the commandos. they were just about to finish their morning briefings when we arrived. They invited us for coffee and we sat just chatting with them. Being all in uniform they wondered if we really planned to climb the mountains. But of course that is what we have to do. Hmmm....

They all looked at me, then at my security officer in despair. Me in my safari vest, shorts and sneakers. My normal field outfit :-) a tad overweight ;-) and with an orange T-shirt. then they looked at my colleague. A retired general still looking fit, but retired.

hmmm.. They did all their calling around to check if we would be allowed on the mountain but found out we did have permission.

We jumped into our car and drove ahead to the meeting point. After about 30 minutes we see two military trucks coming over and stopping. 20 soldiers jumped of and again we were told to wait. They needed to send some troops ahead to clear the tracks for us before we could start climbing.. It was clear that there was potential for threats in the area.

After a few minutes we started walking up toward the mountain in a nice tempo.. I started to remember the trip up the mountain with the Karamojong in Uganda and the speed they walked at... Guess what? The Philippine commandos seem to keep the same speed or maybe it is me who has gotten slower ;-)

We walked and walked and the scenery was spectacular. Village people coming out greeting us on the way. Living very simple in their wooden huts. They for sure did not have a lot of money but their smiley faces would not go away. Most people on the mountain lived on harvesting the rubber from the rubber-trees. After 10 minutes we needed to slow down..again after another 10 again..... It continued like that and our faces were full of sweat. It got steeper and steeper and the track smaller and smaller. We could hear the commandos signalling between each other but we could only see the 6 that we had as close escort. The rest was moving in a very different way.

After almost one hour the retired general was slowing down and could not keep my pace even so we split our group also and I continued. After another 30 minutes of struggling I finally reached the top to the amusement of the commandos who was already preparing their lunch. It had taken just about 3 hours for the climb.

We got word that the general had fainted and been taken to a small hut to rest. But he was ok. He did arrive to the top 30 minutes later.

I did my work and then we just sat there taking in the view. It was spectacular about 1500 meters up. We could see Mt Apo the highest peak 2954m in Mindanao and about 100 km away. The skies were clear and the forests around intensely green. Unfortunately no picture taking in this area for security reasons.

After a bit more checking the site we headed down again. It was more difficult to see the tracks coming down. We also noticed that we had basically gone around one mountain to go up on the next one. Once down we met up with the commander again and then headed back to Davao. Once we reached Davao it was dinner and then straight to bed. It was fun but we had both reached our limit,that day:-) The next morning we drove to mount Malalag and started all over again.