The Bank



Today we were quite lazy. We ate, walked a little and went to the bank.

In Thailand there is a charge of 220 Baht (£5.50) everytime you use an ATM to withdraw money. This is in addition to any charges from your bank at home. 220 Baht is about the price of a budget double hotel room for the night! You are also limited to the amount you can withdraw at any one time. Therefore you either risk carrying a lot money by taking out the maximum allowed or pay a lot in fees for continually using the ATM.

However, today we thought we would try something a little different. We had read on a blog that if you withdraw money over the counter you may be able to avoid the ATM charge. So we thought we would give it a try.

In Lampang where we are at the moment there are a number of different banks. We translated what we wanted into Thai and visited a few. Each time you enter a bank you take a number, a comfy seat and relax under the air conditioning. The first few banks shook their heads when we asked but eventually we were told to visit Bangkok Bank. So we did and enroute we saw a gigantic snail!


Bangkok Bank said in broken English that we had to come back in the afternoon. We took their advice wondering why and went for lunch. We returned in the afternoon and the bank tellers tried to help again but this time they tried to send us to another branch near the train station. Everyone was very nice but we were all a bit confused...

All of a sudden a man appeared through the front door with a bag. He emptied the bag onto the counter and a little chip and pin machine appeared. The bank teller took a moment to plug in the tangle of wires and called us over. She photocopied a passport and we signed a couple of times before entering the card into the machine. She typed the amount we had asked for and we entered the pin.

The machine spurted out a receipt and the girl took the money from her drawer and handed it to me. All done with zero transaction charge, but why all of the confusion.

We think the bank share the little chip and pin machine between their branches. When we arrived in the morning the machine was at another branch.  The teller ordered it to her branch for the afternoon and she asked us to return later. When we did return we got there before the machine and everyone was confused as to what we should do. They were about to send us to the branch that had the machine when it suddenly arrived!

A little complicated but it seemed to work. An interesting experience for all!

Note to self: The friendly soya milk girl and rice snack lady don't work on a Wednesday.

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