bettyboop08

First I want to thank everyone for all the informaion I have read to help me plan our trip. We are leaving Oct. 31st. We are wondering about how much money to take, and what kind of money to take. We were thinking of American Traveller Cheques, and Egyptian pounds. Any thoughts?

sf7307

Do you have an ATM card? Credit card? Then don't bother with traveler's checks -- noone uses them. I'm not even sure they'd be accepted most places. If you feel you must have Egyptian pounds before you leave, fine, but you really don't. When you get to the airport, you'll pay for your visa in USD (assuming you're American). Are you being picked up at the airport by a tour operator, or will you get a taxi yourself === if the latter, you might need pounds, if the former, you can get Egyptian money once you arrive at your hotel.

spassvogel

Cash or credit/bank card. No traveller cheques. Too fussy. You have to carry your passport in order to exchange them.

Their time has run out nowadays where you can find ATM's all over the place.

My husband gets rid of all the Epounds as soon as he leaves the country because they stink like hell. Don't know where and how they carry their cash ;-)

bettyboop08

Thanks for your help. I am Canadian and have an ATM card, Matercard and American Express. We are being picked up and touring with Lady Egypt. If I wait and get Egyptian money at the hotel, what will they want to exchange? Canadian, American ? How much will they exchange at a time? There are three of us. We all thought traveller cheques would be the answer.

Grcxx3

Skip the traveler's checks - they are basically worthless.

I can't answer for the ease of exchanging Canadian dollars, but US $100 bills are very easy to exchange. Just make sure that whatever bills you are exchanging are in good shape - no tears, no writing.

christabir

Stop at an ATM before you leave the airport. There are ATM's all over the city so cash is available whenever you need it. No need to pay anyone else to exchange your money. Tell your bank and credit card companies you'll be in Egypt. Travelers Checks are the most inconvenient and costly way.

MissGreen

I checked with Lady Egypt about changing Aussie dollars to Egyptian. Amanda said I would be better changing US. So I headed off with $1000 US (yes I know I carry too much cash) and it was very easy to change. At the Mena House the bank there was fabulous. The guy gave us rolls of 1 LE and 5's in nice crisp new packs of 100 or whatever they came in. There was only one bank guy who was hesitant at giving away lots of small money, so my husband and I would just go in seperately and then our combined money transaction would be exactly what we want.

At the Cairo Marriott and Steigenberger they were a bit more stingy with their money! If you asked for change of 100 they would give you 5 x 5LE and he rest in 20's. One time I was told there were no 5's and 10's and I said "please, I need them to pay for x" and he handed over a few!

My debit card connected to Maestro/Cirrus got a work out. My other debit card & hubbie's connected to Plus did not work.

Lady Egypt collected half of my tour fee when I got there but even my Visa card had issues and would not process. LE bought their mobile EFTPOS machine to the hotel a couple of days in a row and it didn't work. Finally, on day 3 of attempting it did. After that my credit card seemed to work smoothly (I used it to pay incidental hotel bills on check out rather than change cash) however, one time when hubbie wanted to buy a new camera lens that he was just crazy about none of our credit cards worked in the shop. The guy even took us to the next shop to see if our card would work as obviously he wanted to sell the lens, but alas, we had to leave empty handed and all through the trip, my husband moaned about the great camera lens he couldn't get. Through logistics, we couldn't get back to the store. Ahmed, our rep later told us that we should of said something to him as he would of arranged something like going to get it before picking us up and we could of just paid him back cash.

I didn't find the small money situation a problem. If you do get in a bind, Lady Egypt will help you get out of it. E.g. as hubbie's debit card wouldn't work he was freeloading off me until he could transfer some money to my card - the only card that worked for a while! I did not want to log in my bank details on a hotel computer that may of had a million viruses and could read our data, so we asked our guide Aamir if we could borrow his laptop. He was delighted to help.

I agree with the others about traveller's cheques above. I think it was at the Steigenberger in Luxor that said it does not accept them.

Most ATM's will let you withdraw up to 3000 LE (approx 500 US)

MissGreen

BTW, I told our bank all the countries we were visiting on our trip so there would of supposedly been no issue using our cards whilst abroad.

bettyboop08

Thank you very much for your information everyone. My debit card has Plus on the back and my bank told me that it will work there. Now I'm worried. Anybody else have problems with Plus?

sf7307

We had no problem with a variety of American ATM cards.