I wanted to wire some money from my Bangkok Bank account to one of my accounts in the UK. I’d been meaning to do this for a while, so I finally got round to looking into it during my last trip to Bangkok. The MBK branch where I opened my account told me to go to the Siam branch, who then told me to go to the Silom Branch, which is where the head office is. First lesson: go to your bank’s biggest branch.

The Bangkok Bank head office is a huge, confusing place. I eventually found where I needed to be (on the second floor) and the whole process took a little less than an hour. Bear in mind that to wire money from one country to another, you the SWIFT code of the bank you are sending money to. The only problem I came across was that because I no longer work in Thailand, I was only able to wire 350,000 baht between accounts.

Had I been in possession of a work permit then I would have been able to wire the lot. Likewise, a letter from my previous place of work would have done the trick. Though it was a slight inconvenience, I opted to withdraw the rest in cash and change it to pound sterling there and then. I guarded that money all the way back to London, where I quickly found a bank to deposit it.

There was no charge on my UK bank’s side and the charge from Bangkok Bank was only 400 baht (Western Union would have charged something like 12,000 baht). The exchange rate I got was about 52 baht to the pound. I am no great economist, but the value of the pound compared with the baht has decreased by about one third in the last four years. I don’t know if it is going to sink much lower, but I have been reading that the pound is likely to recover. Call it blind faith, but I would rather entrust my money with the UK than Thailand.

Any other experiences then please share them here.