Well, a couple of answers to that.

First, a lot of our hotels will be reimbursed by my husband's employer since it is a semi-business trip. They've never had a problem with our overseas credit card charges before.

Second, I consider anywhere in the US a million times less safe than Hong Kong. As a result, I don't carry any more cash than necessary. Using credit cards almost exclusively gives me piece of mind, and I can rationalise forking over an extra HK$600 (even more at times) for purchasing HK$30,000, especially if I'm getting ~14,000 miles out of it).

Third, HSBC (my bank) ATMs are not easily found in the US unless you are in New York or California even if I did want to use cash.

Fourth, using credit cards makes sense when disputes arise. We had a dispute with American Airlines and their baggage fees during our last trip. We came back to Hong Kong and successfully reversed the charges. We got back US$120 which more than paid for any foreign transaction charges we incurred elsewhere during our trip.

Fifth, I do have a local US HSBC Premier card which is always foreign transaction fee free. A lot of its protection policies don't apply to non-US residents or items taken out of the US. Its reward programme (just like Citibank PremierMiles Travel Discount) is also useless to me because it requires travel to originate from the US. Even if I could use the rewards, I don't use the card enough to get anything substantial out of it.