Furious. Money is always an issue for us out here. We’re trying to be deliberately careful with our budget (with the exception of Susie buying a £200 silk bed sheet) and banks keep on making this bloody hard. First of all, we’re getting charged about 5% every time we withdraw cash from a cash point. This 5% is roughly calculated at about 2.75% (the standard Visa charge for currency exchange) and 2% from Natwest - which happens to be the highest bank charge out of all the banks in England. In Thailand and Cambodia this wasn’t too much of an issue, because their ATM’s either wouldn’t charge a fee or you could get out large sums over the counter. In Vietnam, you can only get out a maximum of about 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 VND (£90 - £120) in one transaction via ATM, which each time incurs a fee of between 20,000 and 40,000 VND (60p - £1.20). So money in Vietnam has become a ball-ache. On Sunday, we withdrew 2 sets of 3,000,000 each for preparation to get money changed for our Laos Visas. Susie got one load of 3,000,000 from an Agrabank ATM, and I followed her up with another 3,000,000. We could hear the ATM counting money, but after 5 minutes it didn’t spit any out; the terminal just sat there on a “Please Wait” screen. Eventually, an error message popped up saying the transaction had been canceled. Annoying, but fair enough. I thought i’d just search around for another ATM with decent enough rates. HOWEVER. This morning after checking my balance, I’ve noticed that I’ve been charged the FULL AMOUNT as if the fucking ATM had dispensed my money! £90! If I had a bit more faith in my bank to resolve this, i might not be so stressed out today. But I don’t. And it’s going to mean another lengthy, expensive, crap quality call to Natwest today to sort it out.
I know this isn’t my banks fault, but as I said, I just don’t have any faith in those money grabbing bastards. My advice; If you have a Natwest account, DUMP THE WANKERS. /End