I don’t know how many of you actually know that one of the best rates for overseas spending would have to be via your credit card. Just to give you a guideline, I used Mastercard, Visa and American Express. There was a small mistake made when the bulk of my swipe came from American Express which gives the poorest exchange rates among the three.

However, it is still better than cash exchange rate. Just as a guide, when I change my ringgit into bahts, I managed to get 9.7 bahts for every ringgit I changed. Now, compaared that with American Express which gave me an exchange rate of 9.8 bahts for every 1 ringgit. The best would have to be both Visa and Mastercard which gives me 9.93 bahts for every 1 ringgit. Though it may not sound like much but the amount we spend for the entire trip was nearly RM5,000 which at 2% would mean a good RM100 saved.

So hopefully my little experiment above will help you plan how you spend your money in future. Always as a guidelines, I will only use credit cards at reasonably reputable establishments like hotels, food chains or departmental stores. Cash would be used for hawker like environment.