You might be able to apply for another tourist visa from a Thai consulate in a neighbouring country, but the one we tried (Vientiane who are fine issuing visas to rich country passports), refused to deal with an Ethiopian passport. The Pnom Penh Thai consulate website is ambiguous on this so might be more amenable, they refused to clarify on the phone, but we gave up before trying in person.

by which time I'd lost a fair bit on the rate. My money was from savings, so I couldn't provide a wage slip etc. They threatened to keep the money. Wise always easy.

On CurrencyFair and Wise, you can put a limit order, or automated transaction, that triggers if a rate reaches a given level. These need time and care, but are great for grabbing a rate that is only available briefly due to a momentary spike. With Wise, they leave a THB balance in Wise, which can be spent on the card absolutely free, or transferred to a Thai bank for 32 Baht (fixed charge, regardless of amount).

Santander Zero claims to be a zero fee card, but actually adds a 0.83% margin to the Mastercard rate, which already has a 1-2% margin on GBP.

Halifax is genuinely a zero fee card, gives you the Mastercard rate, but as mentioned that currently includes 1-2% for GBP.

The Visa rate is best, adds just 0.3% to the ECB interbank rate, which is what Wise gives. So spending on card too, Wise comes out a percent or two better than even fee free Mastercards. EDIT: MasterCard were adding a percent or two margin, just to GBP, probably due to the recent chaos in the UK. Visa and MasterCard are now competitive with each other, and it varies by day which edges ahead. So worth checking MasterCard and Visa rates on the day.

MasterCard rates:

Visa rates:

These are apparently the ATM limits:

Citi: THB 50,000, so THB 220 is 0.44% (plus MC 1%)

Krungsri: THB 30,000, so 220 is 0.73%

Bangkok Bank: THB 25,000, 0.88%

Krungthai: THB 25,000; (max 50,000 p/day)

SCB: THB 20,000, 1.1%

But if you're withdrawing money on a card, far better to go into the bank if you've time and do it over the counter. That way you are not subject to your card daily ATM limits, the Thai bank's transaction limits or the ridiculous 220 Baht fee.



If you use this to open your Wise account, you get fee free transfers for your first £500. If I get three people to transfer £200+ in one go, I get £50.

Wise is cheapest, and if you've time, set an automated conversion up to grab a slightly better rate.

Here's some research i did about a year ago

Auto convert within Wise - £10.94 on £2000

Spend THB with Wise card: free

Transfer Wise THB balance to Bangkok Bank: 31.70 Baht (79p) per trx, any amount

Convert and transfer: sum of above (eg £2000 => ie, 10.94 + 0.79)

So rarely any reason to just convert - you may as well set up an automated transaction a percent or two better than the current rate, depending on how much of a rush you're in, turn your phone off and forget about it, and Wise will snipe the better rate whenever a peak comes along.

Global Reach (a dedicated broker) just gave me a quote, £20k 6th Dec 5pm gmt+7, 42.59 no fees, so 851,800 (haven't clarified but assume 500 Baht receiving fee would also apply when they SWIFT THB to Bangkok Bank)

Interbank rate, at time 42.7467 (I miss this rate!)

Bangkok bank TT buy at time 42., net 845,950 Baht

Wise at time 42.7570, £110 fee (0.5%), net 850,430 Baht

Currency club 849,867

Currency fair 851,923 (assume receiving charge of 500 Baht to come off too)

Remitly is good if you're American.

Looked into a few others, including moneygram and XE, nothing comes close to these. monito.com gives you some quotes.

Alternative currency brokers much like Global Reach are Currencies Direct, TorFX and Moneycorp (but they refused to give me a spot rate without passing all the 'know your client' checks).

So Global Reach better than Wise but only by 900 Baht / 0.1%. They could probably push things though - this was just a spot rate reluctantly shared.

Currency Fair was better than Wise by 1,100 Baht / 0.13%. EDIT: Checked again a few weeks later, amid a sinking market, and on both occasions CurrencyFair was worse than Wise. I also tried CurrencyFair and had a week of paperwork proving source of funds before they'd release my converted funds, by which time I'd lost a fair bit on the rate.

I'm very probably out of my depth in this conversation, but I did read that ending consonants are not aspirated, ie, they are just the way air is stopped, which makes them much more subtle than English ending consonants, but still discernable once you learn to hear it. Think you're probably a bit further on this than me though.

I did reply on the math/maths. Obvs I think my figures are closer - exchange rate will profit and interest will usually be less, retirees will be spending in Thailand, many do get ripped off, and it is nice to be clear of corruption - but it wasn't that interesting. I did have a look at Singapore savings accounts but couldn't get past the promotional talk to make sense of it.

I see a lot of people making this argument, but I'm not sure they're doing the maths. 4% on an average of 600k over the year is 24k thb. So if you get 5% home and pay no tax on it, you're losing 24k a year in interest. In normal years you'd be losing less. And plenty people do get caught with stamps from elsewhere, locked in, lost money, etc.

@Ron ******

are you sure Vientiane accepts SA passports? I ask because they refused an Ethiopian passport for us. It looked like Pnom Penh would accept it but we didn't try.

Does anyone happen to know if Savannakhet are more willing to work with poor country passports than Vientiane? Vientiane consulate absolutely refused to open my wife's Ethiopian passport, Pnom Penh seemed more flexible on internet and phone, but we couldn't try it. Could we have popped to Savannakhet to try them?

@John *********

thanks very much, good to know

Thanks very much to both of you, John's right.