Quote:
Originally Posted by lazypucker
I remembered that I went with a few uni friends to the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, and knowing that they were (and still are) countries that much prefer cash, I was prepared.
As an Asian person, I had pre-exchanged a bunch of Yen and Won for the trip, in addition to carrying USD with me just in case. But one white dude in the group thought he could just whip out his credit card and he would be god. No way man, how could you expect an 80-year old street vendor would have one of those card imprint thing handy at 2am when you buy a bowl of noodles for 2000 won?
Another dude had a bunch of traveler's cheques with him and he had a disastrous time trying to talk to some old Japanese man who speaks almost zero English behind the bank counter trying to convert them to cash.
So at the end, they ended up borrowing money from the rest of the more "prepared" group.
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I remember taking them to Taiwan for the first and last time. This was probably 12 years ago. I had always done cash (CAD and or USD), but somehow because I was gone for a month, someone convinced me to do travelers cheques vs keeping cash on me (CAD and USD) the whole time. I relented and regretted that decision.
Somehow the only place I could conveniently cash/use them was at the exchange at the hotel. They charged me about a $15-20 (?) CAD fee for cashing something like $500 CAD in travelers cheques (part damage deposit, part full cash out). From that point on, due to how inconvenient it was to use, I vowed to just bring USD (if CAD considered not easy to exchange) instead of using those things again.
That same trip, I vowed to get a small credit card for foreign travel. I often liked cash for convenience and not having to ever worry about being skimmed and dealing with that aftermath. But leaving cash behind for higher damage deposits was stupid. So I basically started bringing one with like a $1000 max limit for basically hotels only, until it got more and more convenient.