To be perfectly honest, it's asia. Paying in cold hard cash is the preferred option there compared to say the states or western Europe.
Don't bother with a debit card at all. Open an account and go take it all off the day you get the deposit. You won't find atms all around the place, a lot of the restaurants and shops won't accept them either.
Not to mention the fact that most ATM that there are, are inside the buildings. Meaning, if you need cash after about 5pm, you're shit out of luck.
On the contrary, there are ATMs everywhere. While it's true most bank ATMs have opening hours (even when they're outdoors, annoyingly), convenience stores usually have one, and those are all over the place, and open 24/7. There're at least three 24/7 ATMs within a 5 minute walk of where I live. And online shopping is a big thing here too (which is the main reason I want a proper card).
It is true that many shops, restaurants, etc won't take card. But a debit card or the ability to make transfers is needed for online shopping (and to send any money I have left over back home again when I leave), and precisely because I can't pay for many things by card, it would be fairly useful to be able to get cash out without having to pay a large fee or travel several stops on the metro to be able to get to the nearest ATM run by my own bank, within 9-5 on weekdays (when I am likely to have other commitments, such as uni). The banks themselves are often only open 9-3, with an hour lunch break on top of that.
But the main problem is just the level of bureaucracy, incompetence, and distrust of foreigners involved in getting a bank account, rather than the account itself.
