I will be in Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. How easy is it to use a Mastercard in these places other than at big hotels and shops? It is my understanding that Amercian Express is not widely accepted.
[b}Can anyone recommend what is best? Travellers cheques.....debit cards? My understanding is that many of these places accept USD and it is best to take travellers cheques. Advice please?
Reply to this tough call. Debit cards are hard as you have to look on the back of your card (if you're north american) and find out if your card is part of the maestro, cirrus or plus network. Once you figure that out, you have to find a machine that will take your card. If not, you run the risk of having your card eaten by the machine. Further, with the debit cards you want to figure out your daily limit for withdrawal before you go. Also with debit cards, you will get slammed with service fees for using a foreign bank machine. I think for me, it ended up being about $5 per transaction (so I ended up taking out as much money as I could per transaction).
Travellers cheques are safe but a pain in the ass. If you're sticking to major cities, you get the pleasure of seeking out your american express, etc office so you don't get slammed with service fees. That was one thing that pissed me off was that you got charged to convert to american, etc. and then charged to change your travellers cheques into local currency.
That being said, I've always travelled with cash though you might find that sketchy carrying that much money around. Cash is probably the best policy while trying to charge as much as you can onto your VISA (making sure you have a positive balance on it before you leave for a long trip).
With credit cards, just check if they charge you service fees even to use your card in a shop. Maybe this was just Europe, but I got charged 5 euros per transaction to use my credit card, or at another shop they hemmed and hawed over letting me charge 10 euros on it.
Reply to this I just took a simple cash card and a VISA debit card and had no problems anywhere in Thailand or Malaysia getting cash from any machines. You can get cash advances in Cambodia, but it's so cheap you won't have to carry more than a couple of hundred dollars anyway.
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