China 14 Day Tour - What's The Best Currency To Take?

stressedoutmum

OH off next month for 14 day tour. Never been before. Would it be better to take chinese currency, UK Sterling, USA Dollars or travellers cheques or a mix. Was only taking his credit card for emergencies. thanks.

HXDave

your tour provider should be able to give their reccomendation, however i have just had clients come back from china, and they found it very very difficult to change travellers cheques, so u guess these should be avoided at all cost.

apparantly, during the olympics there was a flood of forgeries, and many banks now are reluctant to take them. my clients tour rep managed to get a bank to change them for them, however it took a lot of persuasion and nearly 2 hours.

stressedoutmum

thats very interesting to know thanks. He's booked with voyages jules verne so I'll get him to give them a quick call.

malkie76

I took Chinese currency, and had no issues using their ATMs for more money when there. I was in Beijing, and found everything pretty cheap compared to UK prices.

stressedoutmum

Malkie 76

Was that recently??

Voyager2002

I always used to use my Nationwide card to get cash from ATMs over there. (There are several in the arrivals area at the airport, and I would usually get enough there to last me for most of the trip.)

I am sure that changing UK cash would be easy in most places. If you have the chance to buy Chinese currency in the UK, check the exchange rate carefully: I would imagine that you would pay over the odds to get yuan outside China. (You should get about 13 to the pound. Once you are there and spending money, you will find that four yuan buy about a pound's worth of goods and services.)

Pollycat

We did a 27 day tour of China in Oct 2008 and took cash.

All our hotels had safes.

I'd agree with HXDave about travellers cheques.
When we arrived in Shangai we had no problem changing our £ into yuan but a couple on the same tour had a bit of a palaver trying to change a not particularly big denomination TC.

We found it easy to change money at the hotels we stayed at.
However, as all the meals, transport and entrance fees were included, we only spent cash on tourist 'tat'.

We paid an amount (in sterling) when we first arrived to our tour guide to cover all the tips for drivers, local guides etc.

malkie76

stressedoutmum wrote: »

Malkie 76

Was that recently??

March of this year. If you buy anything from markets (and you 'look' western' they'll increase the price 10-fold so be prepared to really push for lower prices. Don't feel guilty about starting at £50 and bantering down to £5 - they market sellers won't let you buy at a price that doesn't make them a profit.

Taxis were a very cheap way around - never paid more than £2 for a journey - however if you want to take the underground I think it was 20p per journey.

Very good food, and we never paid more than £10 per head including a few beers. Most expensive thing was an all you can eat and drink champagne brunch which was £40 per head, which for Beijing is extremely expensive. However, it was quality champagne, lobster, caviar and every sort of food item you can imagine (try here http://www.timeout.com/cn/en/beijing/restaurants/feature/3621/best-brunches.html )