kip-baht-usd

Is there a "better" currency to use while travelling in Lao? I just assumed Kip would be best, in terms of "value," but of course I don't want to end up with a doorstop-sized hunk of those bills at the end of the trip.

Is the baht or us dollar devalued much by gh & restaurant owners or vendors because of a poor exchange rate?

Thanks!

Use USD or Baht. If you are going to be traveling for a week or more, you will have an unsightly bulge with all those kip in your money belt! You will get some change back in kip, and you can use that up on tuk-tuks, bottles of Beerlao and tips...

If you have easy access to USD, they are the best foreign currency to use. You spend a $20 and get change in Kip. Spend the kip, pull out the next $20 bill and repeat.

However, with the 50K kip note now in use, the large bricks of kip aren't so large anymore for carrying around cash.

I generally had a pocketful of kip (never more than about $40-60 worth, which only adds up to 20 or so bills if they are in 20K notes) then any additional cash in dollars.

Use THB or Kip, exchange rates given by restaurants etc. is usually pretty close to what you will get in a bank. Change will be in Kip...

i used USD and kip. and i never had a brick of cash in Laos

Hi there,

Can I confirm that the guesthouses and restaurants in Don Dhet/Don Khon etc. are happy to accept payment in dollars (small notes I guess)? Are prices quoted there in dollars or kip (or both), if not do they generally give a fair exchange rate?

Cheers

I really cannot say of one way is 'better' or not.

I always paid in kip. People will accept US$ or baht at certain locations, but they will round off the cost (eg of room or meal) to their advantage, as compared to paying with kip. One way or the other you have to pay, right? So I exchanged my currency in one go at immigration, and again later at a bank (with t-cheque). There is a small exchange advantage this way -- so 'better' value.

Whether or not you end up with a lot of kip at the end of your trip will depend almost 100% on how good you can plan the cost of your stay. I ended up with maybe 1-2 dollar's worth of kip after a month.

After crossing the border from Thailand to Laos with 150 $ previously changed into baht (followng similar advises), I tried to figure out why do people tell that. Why to take baht to Laos?

Dollars and baht both are widely accepted. You get around 9200 kip for 1 US$ (9500 in banks, I was there in July). And ~265 kip for 1 baht (281-287 in banks). As you get ~32 baht for dollar in Thailand, it means you'll have 32*265=8480 kip for 1 US dollar.
The rate of baht is so low, that sometimes you can have profit from buying it Laos and changing into US$ in Thailand! not kidding.

Paying in baht always means loosing money. Just for example, when we wanted to hire a boat for 60$ and asked for a price in baht, recalculating it by a normal baht-dollar rate you get in Thailand revealed that it becomes 72$.

You don't exchange $ into THB, normally you would simply withdraw it from ATM's in Thailand...

My wife visited Laos in Nov/Dec 2005 (and also in 3002) and used both kip and US$ Generally paid in kip for small purchases in the market, food stands, haircut, etc., and used US$ for larger expense items such as guest houses and excursions. With US$ it is best to have plenty of one-dollar and five-dollar bills. For details and photos of our visits to Laos see the "Thailand & Laos" and "Indochina" sections of our travel website: www.evcal.org</a>