My Time In Tunisia

My family (2 sons 19, 17 and my partner) have just returned home from a 10 night all inclusive holiday in Tunisia. We considered Greece and Turkey, but Tunisia seemed to give the best value for money as well as good facilities. It’s important to note that same sex sexual activity is illegal in Tunisia and the LGBT+ community may feel unwelcome. We chose a package tour operator and flew from Cardiff Wales Airport, which we feel is more convenient than Bristol.

After a lot of online research we chose to stay at the Hotel Phenicia in Hammamet Sud – which is equidistant between the old town and Yasmine Hammamet. Our priorities were a relaxed atmosphere with water sports nearby. It’s worth mentioning that all hotels in Tunisia charge a daily tourism tax of roughly £3 per person per day which is paid in Tunisian Dinar when checking in. This added a not insignificant cost of £120 to the holiday.

We flew into and out of Enfidha-Hammamet airport which is a modern, tourist airport roughly 45 minutes from Hammamet. You should expect lengthy waits for passport checks on arrival as several flights land at the same time. There are limited, expensive food and drink options available in the departure hall and we couldn’t find any drinking water stations to fill up our bottles.

Tunisia has a closed currency meaning you cannot exchange pounds for dinars in the UK or take Dinars out of Tunisia. Authorities are at the airport to check that you aren’t taking dinars out of the country, they also asked us if we had cash in euros or sterling. There is a fixed exchange rate, roughly 4 dinars to 1 GBP, so we took sterling to cover the tourist tax and exchanged it at the hotel on checking in. You can exchange any unused dinar back into sterling at the airport on your departure if you keep your exchange or ATM receipts but we decided just to take out what we needed and no more. We paid in dinars for all of the excursions, meals and shopping and were rarely able to use our cards.

Salaries in Tunisia are very low so tips are essential for supplementing household incomes. We tended to give 10 dinars a day to waiters or cleaning staff as standard. You don’t have to tip, and plenty of people didn’t, but we chose to.

Lovely as our hotel was, we felt a little stir crazy after a few days so booked a private excursion to visit the great Mosque and medina at Kairouan followed by the colosseum at El Jem.

We could have done this with our tour operator but as we were a group of 4 we decided it was much more cost effective to hire a local taxi company www.tuntaxi.com .This had the added bonus of ensuring our spending stayed local and allowed us to set our own pace on the day. I can’t praise tuntaxi enough. They gave us a reasonable fixed price on booking and all communication was completed via email and whatsapp. It is definitely something we would do again in Tunisia. 

I estimate that our day trip worked out at £130 for 3 of us. The 17 year old decided to stay on resort, including all entry fees, a local guide in the medina (essential to save you from getting lost and overheated), meals and refreshments as well as the taxi. The excursion took roughly 8 hours.

Hammamet medina and fort was a 10 minute taxi ride away from our hotel. Local yellow taxis are easily available outside the hotels and are very cheap – though it’s best to agree on a price before you get in. We paid 10 dinar each way.

The medina has lots of narrow lanes with shops selling leather goods, perfume and fabrics including carpets and rugs. Although there were direction signs in the medina we found they kept us going in a circle so it might be best to follow your own sense of direction. 

Every shop owner asked us to come in and take a look around, promising us “no hassle” and though they were persistent we didn’t find it uncomfortable or intimidating. A fellow hotel guest told us she walked around the medina with 3 other women and found people grabbed her hands and arms trying to pull her into their shops.

It’s important to mention security and safety in general as this year sees the 10^th anniversary of the 2015 terrorism attacks in which 59 tourists were killed at Tunis’ Bardo museum and Port El Kantaoui, Sousse. The country remains in a formal state of emergency. As our hotel had a beachfront location armed tourist police were stationed there throughout the day supported by heavily armed mounted police monitoring the beach. 

We saw non tourists being asked for their ID whilst walking along the beach and our taxi was thoroughly searched when we returned from an excursion. Historical sites have airport style security scanners. All of this was reassuring and the Tunisians we spoke with were clear the country could not afford another attack on tourists.

We left the hotel during the day as a group of 3 or 4 people without a problem however a fellow young male traveller told us he went out alone and was accosted by two separate people trying to sell him cannabis which unnerved him.

As a family we agreed that we would happily return to Tunisia and would be keen to explore other parts of the country. It won’t appeal to everyone, even in the tourist areas it’s quite run down, but the welcome we received was warm and genuine.

Top Tips

• The 12 dinar ticket for Kairouan’s historic sites includes the Aghlabid Basins, medina and Mosque.
• Female travellers should take a scarf or wide brimmed hat with them if they plan to visit cultural sites.
• Don’t be put off from using your hotel laundry as the costs are low. We paid 10 dinar to clean and iron one hoodie and two t-shirts.
• Take food to the airport on departure as options are limited