Originally Posted by
aster
So basically exchanging cash is a bad idea in general, or are there places where the spreads are decent and comparable to doing an ATM withdrawal to pick up some Yen?
No. Unless your ATM card has awful fees and that has to be really bad relative to the norm. With some US based ATM cards you can get interbank rate without any fees, so that's impossible to match.
The only place that I have seen really good cash rates has been in Turkey. Of course when things go really down hill like in Argentina right now there is a black (or blue) market for USD and EUR.
http://dolarblue.net/