Cash or card - Vietnam and Cambodia

[Slow.Patrol]

We are off to Vietnam and Cambodia later this year. We are on a group tour with a lot of meals included.

What is the best way to pay for the occasional snack or drink. I prefer not to use my credit card abroad and was looking for a pre loaded debit card, but many don't support Vietnam and Cambodia. Or do we just go old school and get currency from our bank.

[captain_cynic]

Those places are cash economies.

Get a card with no foreign currency conversion fee for ATM withdrawals and use that to get cash out from local ATMs.

I use a card from Starling Bank for travelling.

Cambodia uses USD but change less than $1 is given out in rials. Also ATMs spit out $100 notes which my have to be changed into smaller notes by a bank.

[Froomee]

Slow.Patrol said:

We are off to Vietnam and Cambodia later this year. We are on a group tour with a lot of meals included.

What is the best way to pay for the occasional snack or drink. I prefer not to use my credit card abroad and was looking for a pre loaded debit card, but many don't support Vietnam and Cambodia. Or do we just go old school and get currency from our bank.

I have just come back from Cambodia and Vietnam.

For Cambodia you won’t be able to get local currency beforehand but you can use dollars, for Vietnam you can get currency beforehand and the rate here is better plus you wont’t have to pay 3-5% fees on withdrawals or lots of card payments.

Many places take card (I had a Chase card and Santander credit card I used without any issues and both have zero fees). I transfer money into chase to use whilst away which keeps my day to day banking seperate to payments abroad.

Download grab and register with what’s app if you intend on using cab’s (This is mainly for Vietnam).

My advice would be to take some dollars and Vietnamese Dong (which is what we did) and also take cards as above. Alternatively if you’re happy to pay the fees on withdrawal and use cards abroad then that’s easily do-able.

Just to add that for larger notes you can change these up fairly easily by going into the local 7/11, pharmacies, etc and buying something small.

Edited by Froomee on Sunday 19th May 13:55

Edited by Froomee on Sunday 19th May 13:55

[Griffith4ever]

yep, take USD to Cambodia, BUT, I never had trouble using ATMs. Vietnam, same. Good ATM networks. They may scoot 4-up but when it comes to tech they are far from third world.

I have fee free cards. Starling for ATM, Clarity for shops, though Clarity is crazy cheap for ATMs too.

[Slow.Patrol]

Thanks. Some really useful information here which I need to properly read.