im travelling to asia &australasia for 4 months, i wont be able to get a credit card, how can i take £ safely?

im thinking of getting some sort of debit card that wont charge me the earth to withdraw, and also will have a good exchange rate in every country

Another alternative is to get travelers cheques.

A few options other than a credit card would be like you mentioned, open a checking account and use your debit card.

I like to use my Paypal account. It's free to open an account with Paypal, you can link it to your bank account if you want to transfer money between the two accounts, or if you want Paypal to transfer money from your bank to pay for things.

They also have a Paypal debit card you can get, and when it's used as credit you earn 1% back on all purchases. It's also a MasterCard so it should be accepted pretty much anywhere.

Another option is picking up a Pre-paid credit card from someplace like Wal-Mart, you can choose MasterCard or visa's which are accepted worldwide.

Use traveler's cheques, or get a debit card with a visa sign on it, you can also get prepaid "credit" card in some countries or try www.travelex.com for an international debit card which you can load from you home account and is cheaper to use overseas

Too risky to rely on cash alone.
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/travel-money/foreign-exchange-guide/

[KathleenO]

don't rely on cash. debit cards are ideal. you will end up losing money with traveler's cheques when you exchange them. debit card don't charge you much to withdraw. maybe about a (US) dollar extra.