Before credit cards became the norm, one of the best way to travel is with travellers cheques where you can cash out money in one of them american express travel bureau.

Planning how much you intend to spend overseas is important. And one good way to gauge is to find out the living standard of that particular country against your own country. For example, I know Thailand’s living standard is rather close to Malaysia, so I will ask the question how much would i intend to spend based on the costs of malaysia which is to include three square meals, some transport allowances, some snacking allowances, shopping allowances and touristy thingy allowances.

Personally, this is what I normally do for overseas travel. I will use Thailand as an example since I will be there before the end of the month. For Thailand my personal budget is set at RM200 per day per person. So since I am going there with missus, I will set RM400 per day. But out of this entire sum, I will only change enough for RM200 per day. The other half, I will use credit card to pay. Factually, credit cards exchange rates are quite favourable and good. Normally the first few days, I will use credit cards wherever they accept them. Then towards the end, I will check to see if I am above or below my budget. If I am above my budget, I will have to use credit card to cash out. If I am below budget, I will stop using my credit card and use cash for most transaction to leave me with minimal foreign currencies when I leave that country.

Normally the rule of thumb states that the best exchange rates are normally those found at home. First you have an avenue to go back to the exchanger and re-changed the money back to ringgit at competitive rates. Usually because you are exchanging from home, chances of being cheated (which can be quite rampant in some countries) is minimal. Even if you need to change while overseas, make sure you exchange them from official and good bureau.