What is the exchange rate for American travellers cheques in pounds and dollars in Bangkok at the moment?
My bank has told m ei will incur a 5% fee withdrawing money in thailand using an atm and would like to know if travellers cheques provide a better deal. Any other suggestion would be usefull. cash is not a viable option as I will be spe nding 3 months there.
Have you checked with your credit card companies? 5% sounds pretty awful. If you do bring travelers checks, cash them in at a local bank in Thailand, or possibly the airport. The best rates I got were from my Chase card. For some reason they were giving me a few points more than the others. DO NOT exchange at the hotel, these are the absolute worst rates you could imagine. I usually exchange a little in the hotel just so I can use that rate on my expense reports and then use my credit card for everything else. My regular bank charged me $3 for using an international ATM, but I would just take out as much as possible each time to limit the percentage.
Also, I have had a hard time getting travelers checks cashed in some places. Counterfeiting is pretty bad there, and they don’t know how to check for authenticity so they’d rather not take the risk.
