Money exchange

Hello everyone. I read in the guidebook that Taiwan is anything but full of exchange offices, and that the normal is to change money at the airport, a hotel, or, obviously, at some bank. My question is, should I expect to get a fair exchange rate (97-98% of the actual, official exchange rate of that date), or the lack(?) of exchange offices means I would get a lousy rate (losing more than 5% of my money's worth)? I will be carrying euros and Malaysian ringgit. I have checked several places at Kuala Lumpur to change my ringgit, and they keep an average of 4% (I mean, the difference between the actual worth of a ringgit, as seen on various websites, and the money you get in your hands in Taiwanese dollars, is about 4%). Is any bank in Taiwan said to offer better exchange rates than others?

If you have any tips, very-very welcomed.

Cheers from KL

I can confirm that there were almost no exchange offices in Taiwan. We changed money (euros) at banks, mostly Bank of Taiwan. I don't remember the exact spread but it was decent (by decent I mean transaction costs of less than 3% that I would lose by using an ATM).
You can see BoT rates here: http://rate.bot.com.tw/Pages/Static/UIP003.en-US.htm
The rate for M'sian ringgit seems very bad.

PS. If you decide to use an ATM, some of them charge a fee on top of what your bank charges you and the exchange rate loss. Not all though, so if you are warned by the ATM that a fee is about to be charged, abort the transaction and look for another one behind the street corner.

You'll have to do the numbers to be sure, but since the spread is usually narrowest on USD exchange you may find it cheaper to change ringgit to USD before leaving, then USD to NTD as needed in Taiwan.

Thanks a lot, both of you. Good tips. The BoT link helped a lot, and in the end we chose a combination of two solutions. We changed some ringgit at Ampang (that's where I found the best rate) for the first day or two (to avoid changing money at Taipei's airport late at night), in Taiwan, and after doing the math we realized that THE best solution is to, indeed, change ringgit to US dollars, and then USD to TWD. Even though you change twice instead of just once, in this case you end up saving money. Plus, after Taiwan we're going to the Philippines, so the USD will prove useful. Changing ringgit to pesos at KL was out of the question, not at these rates.

Again, thank you VERY much, guys. You helped us save money :-).

You're welcome :) I appreciate posters like yourself, who understand concepts of spreads and transaction costs. Usually when I asked about changing money on this forum I got answers like "use an ATM" which are not really helpful, as using an ATM costs quite a lot, especially if your home currency is not USD nor EUR.