Cash, ATMs and Cards: Handling Money on an Asian Tour

Thai ATMs charge a flat fee on every withdrawal regardless of amount, Myanmar barely accepts foreign cards at all, and the exchange booth beats the machine more often than you would think. Here is how money actually works on a ride through Asia.

Why this is a rider question

A tourist in Bangkok is never more than four hundred metres from a cash machine. A rider on the third day of a loop through Nan province, stopping for lunch at a place with plastic chairs and no sign, is in a different economy.

Rural Asia runs on cash. Not as a preference, as a fact. The noodle stall does not take cards. The village fuel pump does not take cards. The homestay does not take cards. The temple donation box, the roadside fruit, the mechanic who welds your pannier frame back together for the price of a beer: all cash.

Which means the question is not whether you can get money out, it is how much you carry, in what, and where you top up. Get that wrong and you spend a riding day looking for a bank instead of riding.

The Thai ATM fee, which everybody meets

Thailand charges a flat fee on foreign card withdrawals at essentially every machine, and it is levied per transaction rather than as a percentage. That single detail reshapes how you should use them.

Because the fee is flat, taking out a small amount is disproportionately expensive and taking out the maximum is comparatively cheap. Two small withdrawals cost twice as much as one large one for the same money. Riders who take out a little at a time, out of caution, pay for the privilege repeatedly.

On top of the local fee sits whatever your own bank charges, and then the exchange rate applied. The three together are why people come home surprised by their statement.

The other thing that happens at a Thai machine is the dynamic currency conversion offer: the screen asks whether you would like to be charged in your home currency, which sounds helpful and is a worse rate every time. Always decline. Always choose to be charged in the local currency and let your own bank do the conversion.

Cash or card: the honest comparison

For Thailand specifically, changing cash at a licensed exchange booth frequently beats an ATM withdrawal once the flat fee is counted, particularly for larger sums. The booths in Chiang Mai and Bangkok offer competitive rates and take euros, sterling, dollars and Australian dollars without difficulty.

What they will not take is damaged notes. Bring clean, unmarked, recent-series banknotes. A torn twenty is worth nothing at a Thai exchange counter and the person behind the glass will hand it back without discussion.

The best practical approach for most riders is a hybrid: arrive with a moderate amount of home currency to change on day one, carry a card with low or no foreign transaction fees for larger payments, and use ATMs for top-ups at maximum withdrawal rather than as the primary channel.

Country by country, because they are not alike

Thailand is the easiest. ATMs everywhere, cards widely accepted in cities and hotels, cash needed for everything rural, and a QR payment system that is universal domestically and not much use to a visitor.

Vietnam is broadly similar with better card acceptance in the cities and a currency with a lot of zeros, which produces genuine confusion at speed. Learn to count the zeros before you hand over a note; the difference between two denominations is one digit and a similar colour.

Laos and Cambodia both run partly on US dollars. In Cambodia the dollar is effectively a parallel currency and prices are frequently quoted in it, with local currency handed back as small change. Carry clean, small-denomination dollars and you will use them constantly.

Nepal and India have working ATM networks with lower withdrawal limits, meaning more transactions and more fees. Indian currency cannot legally be taken in or out in quantity.

Bhutan is largely cash and the tour is prepaid anyway, so you need spending money rather than operating money.

Japan is the one people get wrong in the opposite direction. It has modernised but remains more cash-dependent than a European expects, particularly at rural fuel stations, small restaurants and vending machines. The reliable place for a foreign card is a convenience store or a post office rather than a bank.

Myanmar is the extreme case. Foreign cards frequently do not work at all, ATMs that accept them are scarce outside the largest cities, and the practical requirement is to carry the entire trip in physical US dollars in pristine condition. That is a real constraint and a real risk, and it is one of several reasons that country currently sits in a different category from its neighbours.

How much to carry on the bike

The question everybody asks and the answer is smaller than instinct suggests.

On a fully inclusive guided tour, the accommodation, the meals, the fuel and the guiding are already paid. What you actually need day to day is drinks, snacks, souvenirs, entrance fees where they are not included, tips and the occasional beer. That is a modest daily figure.

What changes the number is the tipping convention at the end of the trip, which is customary for the guide, the road captain, the mechanic and the driver, and which people frequently forget to budget for and then scramble to find cash for on the last evening.

Carry a working amount on you and leave the rest in the hotel safe or the support vehicle. Split it: some in a jacket pocket, some in the tank bag, some in the luggage. The reason is not theft so much as loss, because a wallet in a jacket pocket is a wallet that can leave the jacket while you are pulling gear off in a car park.

Cards, and telling your bank

The most common money problem on a trip is not theft or shortage. It is a card blocked by an anti-fraud system that has noticed you buying fuel in Laos.

Tell your bank the dates and the countries before you go. Most now handle this in an app in thirty seconds. Do it for every card you are bringing, including the one you are only carrying as a backup, because the backup is the one that gets used at the worst moment.

Bring two cards from two different networks and two different banks, and keep them in different places. A single card that fails, gets swallowed by a machine or gets blocked leaves you with nothing on a mountain road in a country where you do not speak the language.

Check your foreign transaction fee before you travel. The difference between a card that charges nothing and one that charges three percent on every transaction is, over a fortnight, a meaningful sum for zero benefit.

And know your PIN. Some countries’ machines require a four-digit PIN and will reject a six-digit one, and some cards issued for domestic contactless use have never had the PIN used at all.

The machine that swallows your card

It happens, usually at a bank branch that has closed for the day, and it is worth knowing the drill.

If the machine is attached to a bank, go in during opening hours with your passport and it can normally be retrieved. If it is a standalone machine in a shopping centre, it is gone and you are cancelling the card.

The prevention is boring: use machines attached to bank branches, during banking hours, in towns rather than at a fuel station on a highway. On a tour that means doing your withdrawal on a rest day in a decent-sized town rather than at nine at night in a village because you have run out.

The related risk is skimming, which exists in the region as it does everywhere. Standalone machines in tourist areas are the higher-risk category. Cover the keypad, check the card slot for anything that looks added on, and prefer machines inside a bank lobby.

Tipping, since it is the main cash use

Conventions vary and getting it roughly right matters more than getting it exactly right.

Thailand does not have a strong tipping culture in ordinary life, but the tour context is different: the guide, the road captain, the mechanic and the support driver are conventionally tipped at the end, and the group usually organises this collectively rather than individually, which is easier for everybody.

Nepal and India have stronger expectations. Japan does not tip at all and attempting it causes confusion rather than pleasure.

The practical point is to ask the operator what is customary on that specific route rather than guessing, and to have the cash for it before the last night rather than discovering on the final evening that the town has one ATM and it is empty.

Small notes, which are the real currency

An underrated practical point that comes up several times a day on a motorcycle tour.

Cash machines dispense large denominations. Roadside stalls, fuel pumps in villages, market vendors and boat operators cannot break them. Handing over the largest note in circulation for a bowl of noodles produces an awkward pause while somebody goes to three neighbouring stalls to find change.

The habit that works is to break big notes deliberately at places that can absorb them: hotels, supermarkets, fuel stations on main roads, restaurants in towns. Then spend the small ones where small ones are needed.

In Cambodia this is doubly true because of the dual currency. Prices in dollars, change in riel, and the useful thing to carry is a stack of one and five dollar bills. In Vietnam the problem is the opposite: enormous numbers of zeros and several similarly coloured denominations, and the mistake of handing over a note worth ten times what you meant is one everybody makes at least once.

Paying for the trip itself

Separate from spending money, and worth knowing before you book.

Deposits and balances on a motorbike tour are normally paid by bank transfer or card in advance, in the currency the operator quotes. Watch the transfer fees and the exchange rate your bank applies, because on a four or five figure sum those are not trivial and there is often a better route than the default.

The security deposit for the bike is a different thing again, held on a card at the start of the trip or in cash, and released at the end. If it is being held as a card pre-authorisation, make sure the card has the limit headroom to carry it for three weeks alongside your ordinary spending.

And check what is genuinely inside the tour price versus what sits outside it. On a fully inclusive big biking tour the accommodation, meals, fuel, motorcycle and guiding are covered, and what remains is drinks, souvenirs, tips and the occasional entrance fee. On a cheaper-looking quote, a great deal more of the trip is a daily cash outlay, and the totals converge in a way the headline figures do not suggest.

What not to do

Do not change money at the airport unless you need a small amount to get moving. The rates are the worst you will see.

Do not use unofficial money changers on the street, which is illegal in several of these countries and which is where counterfeit notes and short-counting happen.

Do not accept the home-currency conversion offer at an ATM or a card terminal, ever.

Do not carry everything in one place, and do not carry it all on the bike, because the bike is occasionally out of your sight and occasionally on its side.

And do not assume the next town has a machine. On the Nan loop, in northern Laos, across the Cambodian northeast and in almost all of western Mongolia, it does not.

What things actually cost, roughly

Useful calibration, because “cheap” is doing a lot of work in most descriptions of this region and the reality varies enormously.

In Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, a bowl of noodles or a plate of rice with a couple of dishes at a roadside place is a small single-figure sum in dollars. A large beer is similar. Fuel for a motorcycle for a full day of riding is a few dollars. A basic guesthouse room is well under twenty. This is where the region’s reputation comes from and it is accurate.

Where it stops being accurate is anything aimed at visitors. A hotel of a standard a European would book, a meal in a restaurant with a menu in English, a bottle of imported wine, a domestic flight: these are priced closer to global rates than local ones.

Japan and New Zealand are not in this category at all. Both are developed economies with developed prices, and a rider budgeting for them on the basis of a previous trip to Thailand will get a shock. Japan is cheaper than it was, because the yen has been weak for several years, and it is not cheap.

The practical planning point is that your daily cash requirement on a Thai motorcycle tour and on a New Zealand one are different by a factor of several, and the tour guide will tell you which is which if you ask before you go rather than at the first fuel stop.

The emergency backstop

Worth having a plan for the scenario where the cards are gone, which happens.

Keep a small emergency reserve of clean US dollars somewhere separate from everything else, in the luggage rather than on your person. A hundred dollars in a pannier lining has got a lot of riders out of a lot of situations.

Photograph your cards, front and back, and store the images somewhere you can reach without the phone that is in the same jacket. Know the international number to call your bank, which is not the freephone domestic one.

And on a supported trip, say something. An operator can float a rider who has lost their cards for a few days without drama, and would infinitely rather do that than have somebody quietly not eating.

Haggling, and when not to

A cash-adjacent question that visitors get wrong in both directions.

In markets, with souvenirs, with tuk-tuk fares and with anything that has no marked price, negotiation is expected and it is a normal social transaction rather than a confrontation. The convention is to be friendly, to expect a first price well above the real one, and to settle somewhere in the middle without either party losing face.

Where it does not apply: food stalls, fuel, anything with a printed price, and anywhere in Japan, where attempting it causes bewilderment.

The thing worth remembering is proportion. The gap being argued over is frequently less than a euro, and it matters considerably more to the person selling than to the rider on a motorcycle holiday. Getting a fair price is reasonable. Grinding somebody down over a sum you would not bend to pick up is not, and it is noticed by everybody watching.

Riding Asia for real

Our tours are fully inclusive, which is a large part of why the money question stays small: accommodation, meals, fuel, the motorcycle, the guiding and the support vehicle are in the price, so what you carry is spending money rather than an operating budget. There are no hidden costs and the tour page lists what sits outside the price rather than burying it.

For a first trip the ten-day Amazing Thailand is the straightforward one, and the fifteen-day Real Cambodia Ride is the one where the dollar-and-riel double economy is worth understanding before you land. The full range is here. If you want to know what a realistic daily spend looks like on a specific guided tour before you book, message us on WhatsApp and we will give you a number rather than a shrug.