What Currency Should I Bring for Phuket Tours?

By Phuket Thailand Travel · Local Phuket travel experts · Published November 10, 2026

Baht on the boat, card for the booking. Mixing those up is the expensive mistake.

What currency should i bring for phuket tours? Thai baht, for everything that happens on the ground – park fees, drinks, tips, the longtail ride you decide on at the last minute. Your home currency is useful only as something to exchange, and paying in it directly, where that is even offered, almost always costs you a poor rate. The sensible setup is a card for the big prepaid items and enough baht in small notes for a day on the water, since boats and island kiosks are cash places and always will be.

Baht is the only currency that works on the ground

Thailand’s currency is the baht, written THB, and it is what every transaction on a tour day is priced and settled in. National park fees, bottled water, a plate of noodles at a pier, the optional kayak, the tip for the crew – all baht, nearly all cash. A handful of tourist-facing businesses in Patong will quote you a price in dollars or euros if you push, but the rate they use is theirs to set and it will not be in your favour. Treat your home currency as raw material for exchange, not as money you can spend.

Note denominations and why small ones matter

Baht notes run 20, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000, with coins at 1, 2, 5 and 10. The practical problem is the 1,000-baht note, which is what ATMs like to dispense and what a beach vendor or longtail boatman genuinely cannot change at nine in the morning. Break large notes at a 7-Eleven, a supermarket or your hotel early in the trip and keep a working float of 20s, 50s and 100s. It removes a surprising amount of friction from a day out.

Nobody needs US dollars here

The advice to carry emergency US dollars is a holdover from a different era of travel and does not apply to Phuket, where exchange facilities are dense, ATMs are everywhere and cards are widely accepted for anything substantial. Dollars are simply a second exchange step. The only argument for bringing some is if your onward itinerary includes somewhere they are genuinely useful, which is a different question from a Phuket tour.

How much cash to carry for a tour day

The amount depends almost entirely on whether your tour price already includes the national park fee, because that is the largest single cash item on most island days. Beyond that you are budgeting for drinks, lunch if it is not included, one or two optional extras and a tip. The figures below are typical ranges rather than fixed prices and all of them move, so treat them as a planning frame and reconfirm what your own tour includes at booking.

Park fees are the item people get caught out by

Whether the national park fee sits inside your tour price or is collected from you in cash at the pier or on the boat varies between operators and is one of the most common sources of confusion on an island day. It is a legitimate government fee either way, not a scam, but you want to know which arrangement you are on before you are standing at a ranger’s desk. Our piece on whether national park fees are included in Phuket island tours explains how to check, and the Department of National Parks publishes the official fee schedule.

A reasonable daily float

For a family of four on a full-day island tour with park fees already included, two to three thousand baht in mixed small notes covers a comfortable day with room for something unplanned. If fees are not included, add them on top. Carrying much more than that onto a boat is simply exposure to loss, since nothing on an island needs settling in bulk and a wet bag is a real possibility.

Where to change money, and where not to

Phuket has a competitive exchange market and the spread between the best and worst rates available within a few hundred metres of each other can be substantial. The pattern is consistent: dedicated exchange booths in town and in the main beach strips beat bank counters, bank counters beat hotels, and everything beats the airport arrivals hall and your own airport at home. Rates are posted on boards, so comparing takes a minute and no negotiation.

Bring clean, newer notes

Exchange booths in Thailand are notably fussy about the physical condition of foreign notes, and a torn, marked or heavily creased bill is often refused or accepted at a worse rate. Older series of some currencies get the same treatment. If you are bringing cash to exchange, bring it crisp and in larger denominations, which usually attract a slightly better rate than small ones.

Change a little at the airport, the rest in town

You need enough baht on landing for a transfer, a SIM and a meal, and the airport rate on that small amount costs you very little in absolute terms. Changing the whole trip’s budget there does cost real money. Take a couple of thousand baht at arrivals and do the rest at a booth near where you are staying the next morning. If your transfer is prepaid, which it is with arranged airport transfers, you need even less.

Cards: what they are genuinely good for

Cards are the right tool for anything booked ahead and anything expensive: the tour itself, hotels, restaurant bills in town, supermarket shops, attraction tickets bought online. They give you a record, a chargeback route and no need to carry the equivalent in notes. Visa and Mastercard are accepted broadly, Amex much less so, and a growing number of places take QR payment that is tied to Thai banking and not much use to a short-stay visitor.

Always decline payment in your home currency

When a card terminal or a booking page offers to charge you in your own currency rather than baht, that is dynamic currency conversion, and the exchange rate built into it is set by the merchant’s provider rather than by your card network. Choosing baht and letting your own bank do the conversion is almost always cheaper. The offer is designed to look like a convenience and it is worth training yourself to refuse it every time.

Tell your bank you are travelling

A first transaction in Thailand is a classic fraud trigger and a frozen card on day one is a genuine inconvenience when you are trying to pay a balance. A travel notice, a working app with roaming or wifi access, and a second card from a different issuer kept somewhere separate covers most of what can go wrong. Keep the card you use on the boat to a minimum and leave the backup in the hotel safe.

Paying for the tour itself

Most reputable Phuket operators take card payment online for the booking and settle any balance on the day, and the arrangement varies between companies. Paying the main amount by card is worth doing where it is offered, both for the record and because it keeps a large cash transaction off your tour morning. The specifics – how much is taken when, and in what form – are the operator’s to state, so get them in writing rather than inferring them.

Deposits and balances vary by operator

Whether a deposit is required, how large it is and when the balance falls due are set by each company and are not something we can state on another operator’s behalf. Ask for it in writing at booking, and read it alongside the cancellation terms, since the two interact. Our pieces on whether a deposit is required to book a Phuket tour and whether it is safe to book Phuket tours online cover what to look for.

What a day out actually costs

If you are still at the budgeting stage, the total matters more than the currency. How much a Phuket day tour costs and how much a trip to Phuket costs overall set out the ranges, and packages sometimes shift the cash-versus-card balance by bundling fees in – see whether a package is cheaper than booking separately.

ATMs in Thailand and the fee to expect

Thai banks charge a fee on foreign-card withdrawals that is levied per transaction rather than as a percentage, commonly in the region of 150 to 220 baht, and it is charged on top of whatever your own bank adds. Because it is a flat fee, the arithmetic favours fewer, larger withdrawals: taking 20,000 baht once costs the same fee as taking 2,000. Daily limits vary by bank, typically in the 20,000 to 30,000 baht range per card per day.

The screen will offer you a conversion – say no

Thai ATMs routinely offer to convert the withdrawal to your home currency at the machine. This is the same dynamic currency conversion trick as at a card terminal and the rate is worse than your bank’s. Decline it, accept the machine’s fee notice, and let your own bank convert. Also take the receipt, because a disputed withdrawal is far easier to resolve with one.

Use machines attached to banks where you can

An ATM in a bank branch wall, a mall or a convenience store is a better bet than a free-standing machine on a dark beach road, for the ordinary reasons: maintenance, CCTV, and somebody to talk to if the machine retains your card. Check for anything loose around the card slot or keypad, cover your hand when entering the PIN, and count the cash before you walk away.

Tipping, and what is actually expected

Thailand is not a tipping culture in the American sense and nobody on a tour boat is depending on your tip to make up a wage. Rounding up a taxi fare, leaving the coins from a restaurant bill, or handing a crew a couple of hundred baht at the end of a day they clearly worked hard at are all normal and appreciated. None of it is obligatory and no reasonable operator will make you feel it is. Small notes make this easy; a 1,000 is awkward for everyone.

Service charge on a bill

Smarter restaurants and hotels add a service charge, typically ten per cent, sometimes with VAT shown separately. Where that charge is on the bill, an additional tip is genuinely not expected. Check the bottom of the bill before adding anything, which is the same habit that catches the occasional error.

A simple money setup for a Phuket trip

Put together, the advice reduces to a short routine that takes very little effort and removes nearly all the avoidable cost. It assumes a card that does not punish foreign transactions, which is worth sorting before you fly rather than after.

1. Tell your bank you are travelling and pack a second card from a different issuer, kept separately.
2. Change a small amount at the airport for immediate needs; do the rest at a town exchange booth.
3. Take fewer, larger ATM withdrawals to spread the flat per-transaction fee.
4. Break the 1,000-baht notes early and keep a float of 20s, 50s and 100s for boat days.
5. Decline every offer to be charged or converted in your home currency, at terminals and at ATMs alike.

What to carry onto the boat

• A day’s cash in small notes, in a dry bag or a sealed pouch
• One card, not all of them
• A photograph of your passport rather than the passport itself, unless the operator has told you otherwise
• Park fee money separately, if your tour does not include it

Reading this in Thai

There is a Thai-language version of this question at the Thai-language guide to what currency to bring. For official destination information see the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and for the day tours themselves see Phuket day tours or ask us on the contact page.

Frequently asked questions