Cash, Traveler's Cheques, or Credit Cards

One of the most common questions travelers ask on the online travel forum is whether they should bring cash, traveler's cheques or credit cards for their trips to Thailand. Here's my 2 cents based on my personal experience.

Cash - bad choice. In general, it's inconvenient to bring a large sum of cash when you travel. And you'll never get it back if it's lost or stolen. I only brought a small amount of cash with me for emergencies.

Traveler's Cheques - good choice for people who are conscious about exchange rates. All banks in Thailand accepts TC. TC offers away better rate than cash and credit cards. Credit card companies offer you the worst rate of the day and take a big chunk out of each transaction. That's how they make money. There's a service charge (about $1 CAD or 30-33 baht) to process each TC, so it's wise to get TC with large dominations like 100s. The main advantage of TC is high reliability of safe keeping of your cash. No one else can use it if it's lost. One tiny inconvenience is that you need present your passport at the time of transaction. I used TC for the first time while in Thailand, and now I'm a strong advocate of using TC.
Credit Cards - good for people who are not bothered by the low exchange rate. It's extremely convenient when you shop at department stores buying big items like jeweleries and digital cameras. I used it a couple of times at the duty free shops at the airport when I ran out of Baht.

Oh I almost forgot to mention bank cards. Yes, it's another option. You can use your bank card to take out Baht from ATM over there as long as your bank shares the same network as that of ATM, commonly Interac, Cirrus, or Maestro. The major downside of using ATM abroad is that you bear two service charges. One's from your bank, and the other is levied by the Thai bank. Your bank MAY or MAY not charge you a fee each time you use it. I say MAY because some banking plans come with a couple of free ATM usages. I bank with BMO, and my banking plan comes with two free ones every month. The fee charged by Canadian banks varies from bank to bank. Some charge up to $5 CAD, which I think is quite high. I don't know how much Thai bank charges (probably $1 or $2 CAD, my guess), you may be able to find out about it online.

Hope this helps. Happy travel!