Job Discussion Forums

snollygoster · Joined: 04 Jun 2009 Posts: 478

How did you get your money out and liquidise various assets out of interest?

Money out- put your Viet savings into a bank with a VISA card account, and when you get to your destination, raid the hole in the wall.
You will lose some in fees, but you have access to it. Other ways are almost impossible, or are impossibly expensive.

Liquidize assets? I gave some away, and sold the rest. Some things I wanted to keep I took to the post office and went through the mind numbing exercise of itemising each one, its value, and going to the never ending array of counters to weigh it, declare it, have it packed, have it stamped with the big red stamp, have it inspected, have it stuffed round with again by some nit wit fat woman with a stern stony face, have it sticky taped up, an invoice issued, and paid. YES- all at separate counters!. When it arrived at my destination, I simply went aND PICKED UP THE BOX- No stuffing around. Yes its anoyher Asian country that has a Post OIffice that is not in the spy and corruption "make life as difficult as possible" business.

My current stay in Vietnam is short term, and as stated earlier I have found it largely positive for me-HOWEVER-there are always exceptions to the rule.
I bought for my very young child a baloon which he lost grip of on the way "home" and several people tried to stop to pick it up. WOW what nice helpful people thought I. No way-they were out to keep it despite what had just happened before their very eyes, and eventually a man grabbed it and started to make off with it, It was only a balloon but a principle was involved and a chase down resulted in him being forced to the road side and having to make a choice about returning the balloon or some other consequence. He choose to return the balloon.

Lifts, queues and dropped stuff, in addition to giving away my dog to a "friend" who sold him to the butchers, are the negatives so far. Traffic is another matter where the dogma seems to be to get there BEFORE the driver in front, and to be prepared to kill ones self and anyone else in doing so- NUTS!

Life seems so worthless-even one's own. In 9 years I saw so many dead people on the roads, its obvious the care about life is low. On at least 2 occassions I have had other peopl'es brains on my shoe, always due to a recdkless regard for life and safety.

Hmmmm! wondering of a return is really likely.