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In my experience, it seems that no matter what you do, you're going to be slugged one way or another for Forex!
On trip to Japan last month, ATM withdrawals using a Visa DEBIT card (as opposed to CREDIT card) attached to my regular bank account offered the best effective rate, providing I took out enough to diminish the impact of a $5 ATM withdrawal fee. On the other hand, actually using credit cards was pretty bad and worked out to be about 3 to 3.5% worse than the typical "rate of the day", as determined by various websites.
In Japan, buying JPY with AUD offered bad rates, but USD changing was fine. (Although I concur with above comments that in places like Singapore & Thailand, best rates I've seen were changing AUD in forex booths).
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