No Need to Get Local Currency Before Arrival
You can easily get local currency on arrival and often at a rate more favourable than in your own country. For currencies are not freely available or convertible on the international market, you’ll have to pay a premium to buy them outside the country of issue. If you need local currency to pay the taxi driver for your transfer to the hotel, please check with us for a reliable taxi fare estimate first. For guests in such situations, we generally volunteer this information when we send out the final update two weeks prior to departure.
Do Your Due Diligence
Not all currency exchange services are created equal. Some of them, especially non-bank dealers at airports and tourist areas, are very much into gouging. So, stay away from them if you can. In case of emergency, you are better off using your bank card or credit card to withdraw cash from an airport ATM machine operated by a bank.
Always do your homework before buying local currencies from the hotels. In countries like China and Vietnam, hotels acting directly on behalf of banks charge exchange rates very close to what you’d get at a local bank, making it unnecessary to make a trip to a bank unless you transact a large amount. However, same cannot be said of Hong Kong, where hotels set their own rates and add a huge premium to the convenience. When you visit Hong Kong, you should pool your funds with fellow tour members and trade with a local bank so that everybody gets a better rate and shares in the transaction fee.
Currencies of the Countries Pertinent to Our Tours
Cambodia: Cambodian riel (KHR)
China: Chinese renminbi yuan (RMB)
Hong Kong: Hong Kong dollar
India: rupee
Japan: Japanese yen
Laos: Lao kip
Myanmar: Burmese kyat
Singapore: Singapore dollar
South Korea: Korean Won
Taiwan: Taiwan New Dollar
Thailand: Thai Baht (THB)
Vietnam: Vietnamese Dông (VND)
Bank Card & ATM
Except in Japan*, Most local automated teller machines (ATM) accept bank/debit cards issued by foreign financial institutions. This is probably the most convenient way to withdraw cash when you travel. It would be perfect if you bring a debit card that charges zero or a very small fee on cash withdrawal in foreign countries. Please check with your bank before the trip to see if your card is ATM-compatible in the countries you are travelling to.
Credit Card
Visa and Mastercard are widely accepted throughout the destination countries. You should always use a credit card for big purchases. Many credit cards issued in the U.S. charge no foreign transaction fees. In Canada, such cards are rare. Check out this article on credit cards available to Canadians that charge no foreign transaction fees.
* Why Your Bank Card May Not Work In Japan
Many if not most of Japanese ATMs still reject bank cards issued outside the country. The reason is cost. Influx of overseas tourists is a recent phenomenon. Before that, except for a small number of locations with high traffic of foreign travellers, having ATMs connected to an international payment network made no economic sense for Japanese banks. There is a high monthly fee to get a machine connected to an international network (Visa, MasterCard etc) but it requires a minimum number of transactions per month to justify the cost. Until very recently, there hadn’t been enough demand to make it profitable for the banks to keep their machines connected to international networks.
Things are changing, albeit a bit slow, with surge of international tourist arrivals in the past decade. Hopefully, by the time you are there the challenge described above is already history.