Hey,
Originally Posted by
flygirl555
Will be taking a cruise to Turkey, Ukrane, Romania and Bulgaria in the fall.
I'm Polish, but when I travel to non-Western places (TK, UA, Saudi etc) I never change currency. I always use my debit card to get local money from the ATM. I sell remainings at the airports. I know - maybe not the most effective when it comes to costs of those transactions etc but has two simple advantages:
- it's as simple as possible - finding atm is not a problem usually, just check with your bank if your card works there. I never had problems (but never used US cards)
- banks usually cheat a bit less then unknown currency-exchange windows, random shops etc.
I'm pretty good at quick maths, so I get a feeling of local prices pretty quickly, so solution above is the only one I practice for 5 years now. I am ok to pay a premium to be on the simple and safe side.
Just a thought
mf