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Published: March 15th 2015
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Stiggbucks
When there is no Starbucks, Stiggbucks will have to do We loved Bagamoyo but disliked the double pricing system
If you are thinking about visiting Tanzania you might wish to have a quick read in the end of this blog entry where we write about the double pricing system. But for now we would like to write about things that are more fun.
The last couple of days on this journey in Tanzania we spent in and around the towns/cities Moshi, Tanga, Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam. We stayed only one or two days in each place and there was really no need for lingering much longer at any of those places. Well, now that we think about it we could have stayed yet another day in Bagamoyo and still enjoy it.
Moshi
The city itself was a bit of a disappointment. Other people might end up in Moshi and feel that it is a nice place to chill out, but we didn't. It just wasn't our kind of place.
But even though we weren't very fond of the city we must say that our visit there was still a success. We went to
Camel Hotel
Nothing special with this hotel other than we liked the name Moshi only because we wanted to see Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, which can be seen from Moshi city centre. We saw it from the roof of the hotel in the afternoon and, since we didn't find anything else in Moshi to be of any interest to us, we left the next day.
Tanga
Tanga was more our kind of place. We spent several hours just walking around randomly and we enjoyed every second of it.
From Tanga we also made a day trip to a few sites in the surrounding area, the Tongoni Ruins, the Amboni Caves and the Galanos Sulphur Springs.
The Tongoni Ruins is the ruins of a mosque, from the 14th or 15th century, surrounded by roughly 20 tombs.
The Amboni Caves is a limestone cave which also is the home for thousands of bats.
Galanos Sulphur Springs is a natural hot spring with sulphurous water. It's a small spring in a small clearing in the forest. To be honest the walk to the spring was more rewarding than the spring itself. The spring is located
Mount Kilimanjaro and a bottle of Kilimanjaro mineral water
Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, can be seen from Moshi city centre. You can't see it well but you can see it and that was enough for us in what used to be a prosperous farm. The farm houses are all in ruins and the land is partly cultivated with various crops and partly its turned into a forest. Walking through this abandoned farm was a nice experience.
Bagamoyo
Bagamoyo used to be a very prosperous settlement with a lively port. It was even for a while the capital of German East Africa. The town later went into a decline and today it is a quiet town filled with crumbling old buildings. Many of the buildings are just ruins while others are still in use.
We absolutely loved Bagamoyo and the walk we took through the town was one of the highlights of this part of our trip in Tanzania. If we ever come back to Tanzania we will make sure to make a stop in Bagamoyo for a day or two.
Dar es Salaam
In Dar es Salaam we followed a walking tour described in the guidebook. By following the route suggested we would pass by some of the more interesting landmarks and points of interests in central Dar. Well, the fish market was OK, we
Clock tower
German clock Tower in Tanga did like the signs on the old post office and the National Museum was definately worth a visit. But the rest of the walking tour felt a bit desperate. The writers of the guidebook probably did the best they could to make Dar es Salaam sound like an interesting place but there simply weren't any attractions around making it worth a tour. We stayed in Dar es Salaam one day and we were quite happy with that. By then we had seen everything that was worth seeing in the Tanzanian capital.
We did even have time to go and see one place that wasn't mentioned in the guidebook, the former US embassy. On August 7 1998 the US embassy in Dar es Salaam and the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya were the targets of a coordinated terrorist attack. 11 people were killed in Dar es Salaam and 213 were killed in the capital of Kenya.
The double pricing system
Here at the end we would like to bring to attention the double pricing system they have in various sites in Tanzania. If you are not going to travel to Tanzania any
Tongoni Ruins
The Tongoni Ruins is the ruins of a mosque, from the 14th or 15th century, surrounded by roughly 20 tombs. time soon you will probably find this part rather dull and then feel free to skip it.
The Ministry for Natural Resources and Tourism has set up a price list for the entry tickets to the sites they supervise. They have decided that there at these sites is going to be one price for domestic visitors, that is the locals, and another, considerably higher, price for foreigners.
We guess that the logics behind this is that foreigners earn much more money than Tanzanians and therefore foreigners should pay more and by doing so effectively subsidizing the tickets for the locals so they also can afford to visit the sites.
Typically a foreigner's entry fee would be 20 times more expensive than the fee a Tanzanian would pay. Here the logic stated above starts to break down.
• To start: We consider ourselves average foreigners. We are pretty sure that we don't earn 20 times more than an average Tanzanian. We certainly don't earn 20 times more than the average Tanzanian
who visits the tourist sites where they have imposed the double pricing system. We do have a higher salary than
The double pricing system
Typically a foreigner's entry fee would be 20 times more expensive than the fee a Tanzanian would pay. 20,000 TZS is equal to about €10 or $10.50. the average Tanzanian but we also pay much higher taxes and living costs are much higher in Sweden than in Tanzania.
• By having the double pricing system they probably get more locals visiting the sites than they would if they had had a flat rate for everybody. However, they get fewer foreigners. They typically asked for 20,000 TZS for the entry fee. That is equal to about €10 or $10.50. It's not terribly much money. But if you take in account that many of the sites are not very special, it all of a sudden is a lot of money to see very little. At one of the sites we visited Ake paid the entry fee but Emma decided to skip it because she thought it wasn't worth it. At another site we told them that the price was too high and that we decided to skip it. When they saw that we were going to leave they offered us a heavily reduced price and we decided to go in. At least three sites we visited we checked the price and left again because it wasn't worth paying what they asked.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Tanzania East Coast
I am not surprised that you found these cities or towns unremarkable as scenic sites. Their appeal are their markets or vibe. Most seem to be for population or commerce and the aesthetics seem not important. An obvious exception is Zanzibar which is a jewel. Your comments on pricing are interesting. We found if you are white you are regarded as a millionaire. Maybe lucky the entry fee is only twenty times but of course if its too high one doesn't bother entering so it is a balance. Was there any talk of terrorism risk on the Tanzanian East coast like there is in coastal Kenya?