what money to take Philippines?

cash security : just use moneybelts that you wear concealed under your clothes. I find that placing the moneybelt a little further past a gun holster position, like at about 9 if your torso was a clockface with the front belt buckle being 12 noon, is the best place.

it's totally invisible. They don't even notice it at airports when they have all sorts of equipment and you are supposed to take off all belts including those. So what chance does a mugger have?

I tend to think that having a 'dummy' wallet is a bit contrived. The chances of being mugged or otherwise robbed is very low. Nothing close to it has ever happened to me and I am quite close to street level for a foreigner in the Philippines. I stay in cheap pension houses. I ride a 125 motorbike. I videoke in 5-peso Filipino bars most nights and have never had , or even looked like having,,any trouble.

because of the rip off rates banks charge, and because I have never really needed to set up a Philippines bank account, I now rely on cash only for my annual 4-month trips with my budget being between £3500 and £4000 after flights which is ample for 122 days. . £4000 is 80 £50 notes, or 200 £20 ones. Which would you rather have in a moneybelt?

you should never hide cash in bags even if the bag is with you to hand on a bus, or ferry and never have cash in it when the bag is in a baggage compartment. Bags can go missing, but a moneybelt in your pants won't.

for when you go swimming there is totally waterproof moneybelt pouches you can get on Amazon for a miniscule amount of money. Like 3 for £5. Although it doesn't matter all that much if cash, unlike your passport, gets wet. You can leave an ATM card, or even a passport, concealed in your hotel or pension house room, even when there is no safe in it. But you would never leave like £3000 there. That kind of cash has to stay with me at all times. For me it has to be moneybelt type pouches. I have more than one, three, but I use two. One of them is cash-only, which contains either £50 notes, or 1000 peso bills. The other pouch contains passport, cards etc, and I basically only ever wear it when I need to show my passport, which is not very often in the Philippines.

I've worn moneybelts years ago but I no longer bother. I don't find them comfortable in hot climates to wear, and its a pain accessing it.

Frankly, I wouldn't considering wandering around the streets with even a thousand pounds on my person, in a moneybelt or otherwise. Although I tend to enter the country with say 500 or a thousand to start with, I definitely wouldn't consider wandering around with four thousand pounds. That seems to me to be asking for trouble - specially if you live 'near street level' as you claim. I tend to stay in hotels with a safe and I tend to leave the bulk of my cash in there, and if there's no safe, then I leave the bulk of my cash hidden in several different places and even when I carry cash, I carry it distributed in several places between myself and my wife, and even then, there's not usually that much of it.

I disagree. Plenty of people have their pockets picked or become the victim of robberies, some of them wearing money belts as in this note.

http://travelmag.co.uk/2013/01/drugged-and-robbed-in-the-philippines/

In the event that you do one day have a knife held to your throat or wind up drugged in a cheap bar, you're going to have a hard job convincing the guy you don't have a wallet or any money, if all you possess is stuffed in a money belt. People aren't idiots - one of the first things a robber will look for is a classic money belt. Its a well known tactic as old as the hills. They will ask you to lift your shirt.

For that reason, it makes a lot of sense to have a throw down wallet with a few thousand pesos in it and a few cards. They will take it and run off. I've used that strategy for years in many countries and it makes me feel better anyhow. Your mileage may vary.

I'm curious what you do on your annual 4 month trips to the Philippines. Don't you have a partner there? Would be a hell of a lot easier to use her bank account...

I keep my money in the bank, just draw what I need for a few days. Anyone walking around with large amounts of money on them must be crazy.

That is what I thought till I was recently pickpocketed in Bogota as I described here.

We have previously transferred via World Remit to families bank account and withdrew every couple of days when we arrive.

where you went wrong, was actually having a wallet in the first place. They are ridiculous things.

if thieves could be consulted about what object they would like people to walk around with, that would make it much easier for them to steal cash and other desirables quickly and conveniently, then they couldn't come up with anything better, than a wallet. So don't make life easy for them. Don't carry one. Use something else.

they make them in all sorts of modern material these days they are not in the least bit uncomfortable if loosely worn - and in fact you have no physical sense that you are actually wearing one. Worn around your waist, they are impossible to 'lose'. It's impossible for them to 'fall off' or 'fall out'. They cannot fall out of your pocket, accidentally, like a wallet can.And as for 'accessing' cash from a moneybelt, you should never do that in a public or semi-public place. You should not draw attention to the fact that you have one at all. They're invisible. You've already withdrawn whatever money you need from the moneybelt for the day and night hours before you actually need to spend it. You are certainly not continually fishing around in it, every time you want to spend a little bit of money.

well I've been coming to the Philippines for 16 years and seen a whole heap of fights and confrontations in 5-peso videoke bars over that time and never even sensed the onset of any violent confrontation of that sort.

if you are going to be robbed, it isn't going to be like that. It's going to be someone you know that also knows where your stash is and what your habits are. Like your girlfriend or wife, and her friends and relatives. A domestic help. Somebody that comes round to fix the roof. People like that. Not random strangers.

it won't happen because robberies like that are exceptionally rare, but they can ask me to lift my shirt all they want and they still wouldn't see anything. It's concealed in my pants. Even going through airport security with all the x-rays and so on, I never bother to take it off and nobody ever says anything. Even airport security can't see it. A robber would have to ask me to not lift my shirt, but drop my pants, which won't happen because robbers in this sort of situation, are always short of time. They only have a few seconds to get the loot and get away. They don't even have a few minutes, but a few seconds only. Unless they are Abu Sayaf, they have kidnapped you, and you are on your way to Jolo. They'll have plenty of time then.

with an ACR card I can open up a Filipino bank account any time I like. I suppose I should have done by now. But I've never quite got round to it. I certainly wouldn't use somebody else's, like a girl's bank account. With them being Filipino, and being like the vast majority of Filipinos, in all probability pretty poor and a member of a large extended family of other pretty poor people, I'd be thinking that - regardless of whose name it was under - it would be likelier to be them that was using my bank account, and not me theirs.

Well done, Whippy, do you know what the demographic of this Forum is? This is not a Living in Cebu type Forum most of whose membership are single, often misogynistic, males looking for a good time with young girls. Almost everyone here is in some form of long-term relationship with a Filipina and, yes, we do have both married and unmarried Filipina members too. You have just accused the majority of the population of this country of dishonesty. You are not a natural fit here being as you are, quite simply, a sex-tourist.

Please go away.

hmm I usually pull my punches when writing but this time I'll make an exception. That is the most moronic and plain offensive post I've seen here for quite a while. I have a particular problem with your idiotic assertion that my wife would likely rob me. I have had my suspicions about sex tourism for a while, as Markham clearly has, and if you've been going to the Philippines for 16 years needing money for the day and night as you put it then I guess it's true. I have no time for that. With a set of attitudes like that you deserve to end your days in the pasig river knowing what the sharp end of a butterfly knife feels like. I can't really improve on Markham's post.

No problem here transferring money into families bank account for us. In fact last time we went to Pinas we transferred into Asawas brothers girlfriends bank account, so technically not even family. I can only say that you know a different calibre of people in Pinas than I Mr Whipster

why don't you open up a bank account of your own. It's easy enough to do. I wouldn't want to make a habit of 'using' anybody else's bank account, whoever they are and wherever they are from and nobody who works in the financial services industry would advise anybody to do so. I might perhaps deposit the odd cheque say, if need be, but I certainly wouldn't want to make a habit of it. There have been times when I've gotten plane tickets and hotel rooms by 'using' a Filipino's debit card. But that's as far as it goes.

There seems to be an awful lot of over thinking regarding money here. I did the same there as I do here. Put money in my wallet and she put it in her handbag.

My pockets are normally empty anyway.

if you are in the Philippines for 4 months and spending £4000 sterling and you are using ATM's with a foreign card, you get charged 200 pesos plus whatever your home bank is charging on top per 10,000 peso withdrawal, which with now one solitary exception, HSBC - a bank with almost no branches in the Philippines - is what you are stuck with. Let's say it is 350 pesos per withdrawal. - although it could be more. You will make 27-28 withdrawals. It adds up to 10,000 pesos in fees. If you bring cash, you pay nothing.

That's as maybe, but if you are going to carry it all around at the same time in some nerdy money belt then you are going to look a right dick and may as well have a sign saying 'rob me' sellotaped to your back.

why would you look a dick. Nobody has the slightest idea you are wearing one.

they are totally invisible even when it's a waterproof one and you are wearing nothing but a pair of swimming shorts.

Anyways I don't really give a * about that. Now the topic is out in the open I want to know whether you are a sex tourist @whipster. What the heck are you spending four thousand sterling on when you're living at Street level?

Why is a money belt nerdy ? Experienced travellers have been using them for many years.

maybe @Maharg was just annoyed. II don't think they are terrible - just not as secret or as discreet or as unknown to thieves as @whipster fondly imagines.

Wow. The lynch mob is in full cry.

Anyone else been to Angeles City... apart from 'deanobeano', who mentioned it yesterday, and myself, who used to live there with my family ? Clearly awful 'sex tourists'.