I'll be flying into Cancun this weekend and staying in Playa Del Carmen for a week.

Nice man! Weather is perfect. It's high season, so just know it's rather crowded. Happy to provide any recommendations if needed....beaches, food, other shit to do, etc. Let me know. This place is small and I know it well. 

We are staying at the Riu Playacar. Hopefully, we picked a good one (or at least decent).

The beach is better in Playacar with less crowds. It's a rather far walk unless you're IN Playacar.

The tide is high for this time of year meaning a lot of the public beaches are very narrow. That + more people = very crowded beaches, especially on weekends. 

Playacar is a gated community, basically it's own little bubble. You can still get out to centro Playa, just hit up the hotel for a ride.

Have you been here before? If no, a few tips.

When out of the resort, never use dollars, EVER. Use an international CC when possible. It's a cash heavy town though. Pull pesos from Mexican bank ATMs (not tourist ATMs that offer USD) using your US debit card. Decline the conversion fee when that screen pops up on the ATM. You'll still get hit with a small ATM fee and possibly an international conversion fee from your bank, it all depends on who you bank with. That screen asking to accept is just some scammy BS that's easy to fall for.

Standard tip is 15% no matter what anyone tells you. 18% is nice, 20% is for great service.

posted by Automatik

When out of the resort, never use dollars, EVER. 

Yeah, totally ok. Place looks nice!

I’m not going to Mexico, but is using dollars a way to get robbed? Or it just not socially acceptable. 

More often than not, you'll get an unfavorable exchange rate. 

It's the simplest scam around. Restaurants will accept the dollar at 17 or 18:1. They make it seem like it's convenient for you because they will accept USD. 

When in reality the exchange rate is actually 20:1. Or they will just completely fuck you over, i.e. if you pay in dollars its $10 more than it would cost if you paid in pesos. I've caught this on several occasions. 

posted by Automatik

More often than not, you'll get an unfavorable exchange rate. 

It's the simplest scam around. Restaurants will accept the dollar at 17 or 18:1. They make it seem like it's convenient for you because they will accept USD. 

When in reality the exchange rate is actually 20:1. Or they will just completely fuck you over, i.e. if you pay in dollars its $10 more than it would cost if you paid in pesos. I've caught this on several occasions. 

When we were in Costa Rica, restaurants and other merchants had a basic exchange calculation.  It didn't matter one bit what the current conversion was at all.  So we were always better off using credit cards, as the CC companies do the converting, not the merchants.  Also, when we paid with cash, we got change back in local currency.  So the conversion could have been screwed up multiple times.