Traveling in a Group
When Supattra and I are traveling alone, I pay for everything, as it comes up. That's easy. But when we travel with our good friends from Bangkok, we do it differently. Tik, who is the wife of Wich, handles the money for the trip. She estimates what the trip will cost and she collects everyone's cut of the cost up front, in Thai Baht. Then she pays for all expenses of the group (food, housing, gas, etc) as we go along. If we run out of money, she collects an equal amount from everyone and we continue along with the same system. At the very end, she has us pay a small final amount, or she gives us some change. This keeps it very simple and we have only one person who is having to fiddle with the money during the trip. This is great, because I'm never the one who is fiddling with the money, I'm just enjoying the trip!Now as we go along, if someone wants to buy a souvenir or whatever for themselves, they pay for that directly. It's not a group expense, so Tik doesn't have to be involved with that at all. Easy.
How to Pay for Things
Okay, so now some specifics about money in Thailand. Nearly always we are paying for things with cash, that is Thai currency, Thai Baht. There are a few exceptions to this. Our favorite hotel, is always happy to take one of my credit cards. In airports, I can often pay with a credit card as well. But depending upon the card, you may incur an extra foreign exchange fee. Pretty much everything else is paid with cash. That actually keeps it simple, as you don't have to be thinking about foreign exchange fees.
Currency Complications
Now for some complications. Before I fly to Thailand, I go to the bank and get some dollars to exchange for Baht in Thailand. I always have this tucked away safely as I'm flying and it usually works out that I don't use it all and have some tucked away during my return. But here is the most important part to learn. I take C notes when I go over there, but I learned they can't be just any C notes. They must be totally new, with no marks of any kind on them. This is NOT a joke. Pay attention to my advice here. You want perfect, brand new unmarked bills. That may be the ONLY kind of currency that you will be able to exchange for Thai currency. I wrote about this back in June 2013. Go read that now, so you will have a clear idea of what I'm talking about.Okay, so by now you believe me that you only want to take brand new currency to Thailand. I always go to the US bank a few days before I travel to make sure they have enough brand new $100 bills for me.
Okay, now one more thing. There are ATM machines all over Thailand. I have also used these occasionally to get Thai currency. I can't recall whether they accept credit cards or only debit cards. In any case, the machine will charge you a clearly stated fee for this transaction. But they will not disclose what exchange rate you are getting on your dollars. That information will be on your bank statement when you get home. You could use this method all the time, but I've always been afraid I might end up with no way to get Thai currency, so I have generally gone the route of carrying around US currency to be changed to Thai Baht when I need them. It's a good idea to check the terms for all the cards you might use in advance, so you have no surprises when you get home to your bank statements. And of course, there's always this warning about debit cards. AND it looks like a Schwab account could be very useful for travel. I guess that's why I opened one a couple of years ago. I'll try it out during our upcoming trip.
The images of Thai currency are from Wikipedia.
