For some reason I always take travellers checks and they are always a pain. Expensive to cash and inconvinent. I really find that the ATM is much more effecient.
In South Africa the SA bank charge me a .60 cent fee to use their ATM, my home bank charged $3 to non-WAMU ATM, which I knew before I used. Still to be able to get local rands at a grocery store at noon on Easter Sunday, makes it all so worth it. It was a bank to bank conversion with no additional fees.