A long stay in Thailand: how to change money over three months
Article updated: 2026-10-01
Best rate USD · Hua Hin: 33.65 — Twelve Victory — Hua Hin 2 (Naresdamri Rd) · Oct 24, 19:45 → Details
Before you exchange:EKTA ↗Trip.com ↗Booking.com ↗
From November to March, Hua Hin, Pattaya and Phuket fill with people who are not here for two weeks but for the whole winter. For them money is not a single errand on the first day; it is a routine that repeats twenty times. If the routine is set up badly, a little leaks away every month without anyone noticing.
Do not change it all at once
The biggest mistake is changing the whole winter’s budget on day one. Three reasons.
One day’s rate. Over the twelve months to September 2026 the dollar moved against the baht within an 8.4% range, the pound within 8.1% and the Australian dollar within 14.7%; the average week-to-week move was about 0.7%, and the largest single week close to 2%. Over three months a swing of a few per cent is normal. Change once and you have bet on a single day. Change in tranches and you get the average, which is what you want when you have no forecast. How much exchange rates move has the numbers.
Cash in the room. A winter’s budget in notes is a four-figure sum in dollars or pounds. Many apartments and guesthouses have no safe you would trust with that.
The notes themselves. Someone bringing everything at once tends to bring it in the largest notes available. For US dollars that means $100s, which is fine as long as they are recent series; older designs are regularly refused, and one refused note out of a thick stack is more annoying on day one than on a Tuesday in January. Spreading the exchange across the winter also means you never need a single counter to absorb a large pile on one afternoon.
The tranche rhythm
What works: one tranche a week or every two weeks, large enough that you are not queueing constantly, small enough that there is never too much in the room.
- Work out your weekly budget — accommodation, food, transport, excursions, a margin. What a month in Thailand costs gives the shape of it.
- Change that plus a cushion, but not double.
- Pick two or three branches near you and glance at the boards in the morning — for your town, the Hua Hin page or the Pattaya page.
- Keep the last tranche deliberately small, so you do not end the winter sitting on a pile of baht. Leftover baht explains what changing back costs.
What to bring from home
For a winter the right answer is a mix, not a single method.
Part in notes. US$100s and $50s, £50s and £20s, A$100s and A$50s. Those sit on the top line of the board wherever your currency is quoted — for the dollar the gap between the top and bottom tier is a couple of per cent, so it matters. Which notes get which tier is in which banknotes to bring.
Part through cards. Two cards from different issuers, kept separately. Ideally a debit card for withdrawals and a credit card for bookings — cash advances on a credit card are expensive.
An emergency reserve. A few hundred dollars in $100s, or the equivalent in pounds or Australian dollars, that you do not touch unless something has gone wrong. A card blocked on a Saturday evening is the most common reason to need it; lost or stolen card in Thailand covers the first hour.
Using the ATM properly
Thai machines take 220 baht per withdrawal from foreign cards, whatever the amount. Your own bank adds its share on top.
Over three months that means:
- Few, large withdrawals. If your card allows 20,000 or 25,000 baht at a time, take that. Twenty withdrawals of 5,000 baht cost 4,400 baht in machine fees alone.
- Above roughly 10,000 baht, changing notes at a good counter is usually cheaper than the machine. The ATM is the Sunday top-up, not the plan.
- Always decline DCC. When the machine or a card terminal asks whether to charge you in dollars, pounds or Australian dollars, press no. That conversion comes from the machine’s operator and is several per cent worse than your own card’s. Thai ATM fees has the arithmetic.
Payment apps from home do not work at Thai tills. The local system is PromptPay, and what a foreigner can and cannot do with it is in PromptPay and QR payments.
What to sort out before you leave
- Travel health insurance. Many annual multi-trip policies cap each trip at a fixed number of days — often shorter than a winter. A longer stay needs a long-stay policy, taken out before departure, not after. Travel insurance for Thailand sets out what it has to cover.
- Card limits. Ask your bank for the daily withdrawal limit abroad and the fee per withdrawal. Many accounts carry a limit that is too low for a three-month stay, and it is easier to raise it from home.
- The numbers for blocking a card, written down somewhere you can reach without your phone.
- A look at the chains at your destination, so the names on the boards are familiar when you arrive — Twelve Victory Exchange in Hua Hin, for example, or T.T. Currency Exchange in Pattaya.
Rent and other large payments
Anyone renting an apartment for the winter usually pays the rent in cash or by bank transfer, often with a deposit on top. That is the one amount to plan for separately:
- Change it as its own transaction at a large branch. Ask beforehand whether they have that much baht in the drawer.
- Take the receipt. On an amount that size it is not a formality.
- Count it at the window, before you step away.
Renting by the month covers deposits, utilities and how landlords prefer to be paid. Anyone coming back winter after winter eventually arrives at the question of a Thai bank account; that needs the right visa and a proof of address, and practice varies from bank to bank — it is a story of its own, told in can a tourist open a Thai bank account.
When you do not need this
- A stay of three or four weeks. One or two tranches and a card is enough; the rate will not move enough to reward anything cleverer.
- A no-foreign-fee card with a high withdrawal limit. If one 25,000-baht withdrawal costs you under 1%, a fortnightly ATM visit is a perfectly good routine and you can skip the counter entirely.
- Rent paid by transfer from home. Then the largest single amount never passes through a counter, and the rest is small enough to handle week by week without a strategy.
The short version
Tranches, not one lump. Large, recent-series notes rather than small ones. Two cards, few and large withdrawals, DCC always declined. Insurance and card limits sorted before departure. And at the end, not a heap of baht left over. The full list of tracked counters is in the shop directory.