Tunisia
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Visas, Embassies & Border Crossings
Tunis Airport: You can't use Tunisian Dinars in the airport tax-free shops. If you have money left over when you leave the country. Make sure you change them back to hard currency before you pass the safety control.
Ake Dahllof, Sweden (Jan 03)
Travel Tips
Tunisia was a great place to travel with a 2 and a half year old and a 9 month old. People were friendly and helpful and seemed to genuinely love children. The only problems we had were louages, baby food and toilets. The toilets in bus/train stations were completely unsuitable for a two year old - too dirty and in some cases no running water. However, most restaurants were ok and some of the sites such as El Jem, Sbteila and Dougga had ok toilets.
In terms of baby food - it is available in supermarkets and chemists but is of the overpureed kind which older babies tend not to like. This presented a problem because most of the food in restaurants, cafes, etc. is too spicy for a baby so ours survived on the jars of food we had brought from home, bread and yoghurt. I would advise anyone to take their own baby food with them if in doubt.
Emily Peckham, UK (Jan 03)
In Tunis, near the Bouchoucha Métro Station, there is an over one kilometre long section of the Carthage - Zaghouan aqueduct still standing. It is nowhere near as long and impressive as the section you can see along the road to Zaghouan but for people who wish to see a genuine Roman aqueduct and don't feel like taking the trouble of leaving the city it could work as a substitute.
Chenini: The guidebook says that the best time to arrive is early in the morning so you can have the place to yourself before the tour buses arrive. Personally I don't agree. I arrived late in the afternoon, after the last tour bus had left. Not only do you have the place to yourself but when the evening sun lights up the ruins the place becomes magic. Though I should say this is valid for mid winter. It's possible that the sun in summer goes down further towards the north so that the evening rays no longer hit the front side of Chenini.
Zaghouan: There is a very beautiful old mosque in the centre of the town. It's just above the mosque with the Turkish minaret, on the way to Temple des Eaux. A local guide showed me this place. Without his help I wouldn't have found it. Unfortunately I had to pay for this help and the guide also had me pay an entrance fee and a photo permit fee. I believe he was ripping me off and that I could have both seen it and taken photos without paying anything more than a small nominal fee.
Ake Kahllof, Sweden (Jan 03)
In the medina in Sousse we'd recommend avoiding the main entrance because it is brimming with cheap tourist merchandise. During the early afternoon the medina is a much more relaxed environment. The spice vendors and sandwich vendors seemed especially kind and patient.
The Sunday market in the Souq el-Ahad compound in Sousse is definitely a local affair and probably not a good stop for the timid or culturally unaware traveller. The market near the colosseum in El-Jem is equally as local, but it's much smaller so that it is not as overwhelming.
The path which leads from the town of Sidi Bou Said down to the Gulf of Tunis is absolutely beautiful, but it is also unmarked and can be hard to locate. Don't give up though because it is worth it!
Jessica Chloros & Melissa Carr, USA (Nov 02)
If travelling to Tunisia with a baby I would definitely suggest bringing all the baby food you think you will need because it is very expensive here at TD2 for a jar. Baby wipes are also expensive at TD14 for a pack of 72 wipes.
Elizabeth Ben Hassine, Australia (Dec 02)
Bring toilet paper and always carry some with you. There is hardly a toilet with paper, even at restaurants. All the locals use a water hose.
Sven Lotzvie (Nov 02)
Monastir is supposed to be a resort town but it's almost impossible for western women to go to the beach, walk around on the streets or do anything outside their hotel because they get harassed by the locals. I went there with my sisters and it was very annoying.
Niklas Damm, Sweden (Nov 02)
Hammam Mellegue has a bath for women and a bath for men, and both are open all day. The woman running the bath let all four of us (three guys and one girl) use one bath by ourselves. If you don't have a car you can take a taxi from Le Kef to Station Hammam Mellegue (more like a barren bus stop than a station) where the little dirt road that heads off past the army base towards the baths begins. If you wait there for a while, a pick up truck heading down the road and give you a lift. We paid 10 dinars total for the pick up which took us from the little stop to the baths, waited for us to go in, and then took us back to where we could catch a taxi back to town.
John Anderson & Nate Wessler, USA (Nov 02)
Before going to Tunisia make sure you have a few different internet accounts (i.e.: a Hotmail, a Yahoo, a Bigpond) as the government cuts off some of the providers every now and then. Hotmail has now been down and inaccessible for three months! We learnt that the same has happened to Yahoo and Wanadoo!
Loretta Rafter & Philippe Sibelly (Oct 02)
Telephone numbers have changed since December 2001. The starting 0 has become a 7. This way, a Sousse number starts with 73 instead of 03. Mobiles now start with 98 instead of 09.
Souvenir prices start very high, maybe 10 times the actual price. For example, a plate is supposed to cost TD60. The tourist knows he has to bargain and does so and finally drops the price to the half. Here's the trick! The winner is the shop owner for the actual price of the plate is TD8. He managed to sell it for 4 times its price.
Dimitris Tsouflidis & Tasa Kampouroudi, Greece (Oct 02)
Save yourself some money and do a good deed at the same time. Take extra pens to trade when travelling down south. At Chott el-Jerid the locals selling souvenirs alongside the road were more interested in our pens than the whiskey we had brought to barter with. Apparently they give them to their children to do their studies with.
Angela Fountain, New Zealand (Oct 02)
You cannot use a credit card to buy ferry tickets at the port, nor are there any ATM's. Make sure you have enough cash on you.
Marie-Claire Muir, UK (Apr 02)
Taking gifts to Tunisia: If taking a new mobile phone as a present, remove it from the box. Do anything to make it look like your own. If customs decide you are bringing it in as a gift you will be expected to pay a telecom tax (TD20) and a duty charge (15 percent of estimated value) on it, else it must remain in customs for the duration of your stay. This may apply to other items? The boxed CD Walkman was OK to take in.
Colin Kenworthy, UK (Sep 02)
I was recently in Tunisia and was very dismayed to learn that it was impossible to access free email services such as Hotmail and Yahoo from computers there. My Tunisian hosts let me know that this was due to govenrment censorship and control of the media. There is only one Internet Service Provider in Tunisia and they have blocked access to numerous websites including the mail sections of Yahoo and MSN. I did not check to see if Ekno worked. I bring this up because this could cause problems for travellers to the area. I myself rely heavily on email for communication with family and friends back home and I was caught in a bind during my stay.
Anon (Aug 02)
Moving About
The trains in Tunisia are very good and run exactly on time. Be sure to get there early - they are crowded and have no reserve seating in 1st or 2nd class.
Claudia Flynn & Troy West, USA (Feb 03)
Generally, I think using louages should be much more strongly recommended as the bus system is erratic, seat reservation seems impossible and fares are almost identical. The best practice is to head for the bus station. If the bus departure for your destination is more than 1 hour away, head for the louage station. It is highly unlikely that you will have to wait more than 45 minutes.
George Kouseras, Greece (Jan 03)
Do not accept offers from taxi drivers at Tunis airport when they approach you! Go to the taxi stand and make sure your driver has a meter in the car. Sometimes if the hotels call a taxi for you it will cost extra. It is best to either go to a taxi stand or flag one down in the street yourself.
Jessica Chloros & Melissa Carr, USA (Nov 02)
In Tunis, taxis are allowed to take a maximum of three people. There were four of us which caused some problems and it took us awhile to understand why. Some taxis will carry four people but they charge a lot for the risk and one made us get out a little early because there were a lot of cops around. It's much easier to take two taxis if there are four or more people.
John Anderson & Nate Wessler, USA (Nov 02)
We travelled through Tunisia last week. We enjoyed very much that country. We write in order to advise that there is one way to travel by train very cheaply. You are able to buy a card called blue-card which is available through all the country and for a period of time (in fact seven, 14 or 21 days). You can buy it in every train station. As an example, it costs around 20 dinars for seven days and by the way, you just have to pay for the booking which is really nothing.
Greg and Sylvie, (Feb 02)
East of Matmata, the road to Toujane is under reconstruction (and it looks as if that may take quite a while). It is at this moment just passable in a 2WD in good dry weather. The road from Toujane to Medenine is now ok. The first (mountain) part is tarmac but very narrow, the remaining 25 km through the valley is under reconstruction: at this time soft top, but very easy to drive. The road works are still going on particularly building the bridges.
Ronald van Engers, Netherlands (Jan 02)
Scams & Warnings
In Tunis there was a friendly man who approached us to welcome us and asked some other innocent questions like "where are you from?", "when did you arrive?" and "which hotel are you staying at?". It didn't seem strange to us and finally he left us with his best wishes. Some minutes later a second man appeared who welcomed us too and asked us if we remembered him from the hotel X last night. He told us he was working there and blah, blah, blah ... we didn't remember him but we didn't suspect anything. With this friendly approach, he succeeded in becoming our unwanted "amateur" guide, managing to take us to the terrace of a shop with "great views". After a while we realised that he didn't work at the hotel and that it was impossible to get rid of him. Finally we gave him a tip just to release ourselves and stop losing our time wandering with him from shop to shop. He got angry because the tip wasn't enough according to his criteria. Of course we didn't give him any extra dinars. I know that maybe we were a bit foolish but the imaginative approach surprised us.
In Kairouan we experienced another imaginative technique. We were driving around the wall of the medina when a man appeared in a moped and showed us a good place to leave the car. Then he told us that he was an official guide and showed us a carnet (in Arabic of course). We politely refused his help and told him that we prefer to wander on our own. He went away politely and didn't ask for any tip. Some minutes later he appeared again with a boy, telling us that he was his son and that he would come with us without a tip, just because he was collecting postcards and would give us his address at the end of the route. We suspected it was another technique but we couldn't get rid of them. Of course, we started the walking (or better running) tour which finished in a carpet shop. It's not necessary to say that the boy just asked for a tip, not for a postcard. What is more, when we took the car again to leave the city we came back to the walls to take a last picture and the moped man appeared again until he realised who we were.
Another scam we faced two times, but we didn't fall for it, was a man approaching us with a wrapped note of 30 dinars asking us to exchange it in minor notes. 30 dinar notes were not common and a man we met at Techine told us that even Tunisians have problems to know whether one 30 dinar note is legal or false, so imagine tourists!! It seemed that there was an large amount of false 30 dinar notes around and it's important to be careful with them. At the banks they usually give you 10 or 20 dinar notes, but no 30 dinar notes.
Joan Ferrer, Spain (Jul 03)
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