How to declare money at border for bank deposit?

Ask for customs declaration form (green) fill it and get signature and seal. May be they dont know the purpose so just say that to open bank account. They are too lazy to seal so should wait. With that declaration form, you can deposit a maximum of $3000 (in HSBC)

Any 'Paranoia' based on a healthy doubt of safety
and security is not excessive.  Risk is ubiquitous.

I'd be (more than) a little frightened if I was carrying
that much loose change around.

Most people are only as honest as they can afford to be.

So stay scared.     All healthy people are...       

Ha ha ,hi hi.......
This is so funny,  what a way to start Yogi's day.   

You poor bastard.   If the border guys don't confiscate ya money , the savages on the bus will probably get it.

Ha ha ha ha....failing that you'll probably get ambushed the minute you step off the fuckin bus...
Hi hi hi 😆😆😆😆😆😆

Welcome to Club med Vietscam.

Let us know how you get on. I'll bet those idiots at the border will want coffee money to issue  customs clearance form.   is it possible to transfer the money electronically between banks using the SWIFT bank transfer system.   You'd need a bank in Cambodia that operates that system though.  Fee would apply.
Aussie banks charge around $25 for those transfers.   Who knows what the Cambodia mob charge
Good luck

Yoga aside, there is an upside.

PTSD is treatable.     

( sorry: curable )

Thanks for the replies, but nobody has answered my main questions. Do you have to show them the money or only declare it? And how long does the process take? Will the bus from Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh wait for me?  I would appreciate serious replies from someone who has actually done this.

If nobody knows, does anyone have a suggestion of another website where I could find this information?

If I have to take the money out and show it to them, I won't do it. That is too risky.

I haven't looked into fees to transfer it to Vietnam, but I will. They are probably expensive.  Also I can't transfer it now because I haven't opened the USD account in VN yet. I have a VND account but plan to open the USD account with this money.

I already asked my VN bank if a withdrawal receipt for the cash from a Cambodia bank was sufficient proof of where the money came from, but they said no, I need the customs receipt. But the bank person could have been wrong. They all give you a different answer to any question.

I appreciate your frustration, having been there myself.
Fortunately(?) I had printout bank statements for one
credit card and the 'travel cards' I use for deposits and
withdrawals.   They were not interested in the few k's I
was carrying, just wanted to know if I had sufficient
resources to return.   So they said.

Use your own common senses and have plans B, C, D,
(etc) to fall back on.   I do, and have had to use them
far too often to think or do otherwise.
         ..simply stated, have documentation....     

They make up their own rules to suit the situation.

Their (own) 'rule of law'.     Your risks...

The risk of declaring something at the border is greater than not saying anything. You'll end up paying customs and then still paying the bank clerks assuming you don't get robbed stepping off the bus. Many Viet Kieu visit home carrying large amounts of cash to spend and give to family. They usually don't declare anything however this is coming in through an airport not a land border crossing and they are travelling with family members. This means if anyone is stopped the total foreign currency allowed is usually under the number of people * amount allowed.

Your problem is with depositing it. It's only 5k USD....why not keep schtum, play dumb and then find a way of getting it into the account. Take it to a gold shop to change to VND with better rates and deposit it. Multiple deposits if ou have too....If they still won't allow you, can't you just get a local to make a transfer for you and you give them the cash. That's what i would do.

" If they still won't allow you, can't you just get a local to make a transfer for you and you give them the cash. That's what i would do."

What most of us do.   There are more ways than one

To skin a cat.           

hi the process at Tan son  hat airport was seemless.. less than a minute.. one time the counted it once they just saw the wad and gave the stanped paper.. no need for lucky money

sorry no idea at the land borders

use a money belt inside your shirt if worried and have a friend meet u whenthe bus arrives

" use a money belt inside your shirt if worried and have a friend meet u whenthe bus arrives "

  ..just like the rest of us do...   

I have three bank accounts in Vietnam -- ANZ, Commonwealth and Exim, all with VND as well as USD options -- but so far I've not been able to deposit anything into any of them unless it came from my legal employer or I could produce supporting documentation like a red invoice. This was never a problem when I lived in Malaysia. So I just use a Vietnamese friend (who oddly enough can accept bank transfers from other Vietnamese without paperwork, unlike me). Cash is king here -- Vietnam really needs to liberalise its arcane banking regulations if it wants to join the world.

Sorry I can't help with info on the border formalities. Good luck with that.

Why don't  you just keep it on you instead of putting it in the bank ?
You'll spend it more quickly than you think, depending on the duration of your stay

The OP is looking for help and instead gets lots of worthless snark, including the guy who only refers to himself in the third person and rarely offers anything useful. Total: only a few bits of solid helpful information. Sheesh!

It'd be nice to have a definitive answer, though since it's Vietnam, I'd go with #8 & #13. It's how I do it.

Yogi007 wrote:

Ha ha ,hi hi.......
This is so funny,  what a way to start Yogi's day.

Yeah Gobot also got big laugh at this question. Because, you know, how many things could go wrong? 

-JohnD- wrote:

The OP is looking for help and instead gets lots of worthless snark, including the guy who only refers to himself in the third person and rarely offers anything useful.

Whoa, but Worthless Snark is always entertaining. Is there a rule now that expat.com is Be Serious Only? Gobot hopes not. Is it now good form to criticize entertainers, but bad form to entertain? Gobot (seriously) hopes not.
Besides, not seeing any answers in #14 to OP's specific questions.

Hello OP, Gobot has never declared anything, on purpose, yet he will temp arrows to offer more worthless opinion.

1. @Charmavietnam is pretty smart, she says you'll still have to hide 2Gs, because why declare 5Gs if you can only deposit 3Gs?

2. You can do like the Vietnamese. This is a cash society. Only a third have a bank account (per this) so they squirrel away the cash and gold at home.

3. Many expats complain about hassles getting money out of the VN bank. This is one fear you have control over, vs sticky fingered border guards, robbers, currency exchange rates.

4. Can you transfer the dough from Cambodia to your home bank? Then pull it out of ATMs? If you are truly worried about assault, $25 is cheap cure for sleeping better.

5. Is the Cambodia bank in an ATM network that works in Vietnam?

You know, Citibank ATMs (at least the one in D7) has raised the withdrawal limit to 12.000.000d. Beautiful, I can pay my rent in one bank visit now.
ok good luck!

I did this in Moc Bai and in Tan Son Nhat with no issues.
Yeah, depends on the officer, you should show the amount. I remember just show one time in TSN air port. Border? They just stamped within seconds.

gobot wrote:

You know, Citibank ATMs (at least the one in D7) has raised the withdrawal limit to 12.000.000d. Beautiful, I can pay my rent in one bank visit now.
ok good luck!

Reminds me of the time when travelling with family and we ran out of cash in rural vietnam. With multiple withdrawals each we managed to empty the only two ATM's in town. It was funny because our Vietnamese relatives came along as bodyguards. They said even the locals bring along a buddy for protection when using these machines.

2 year ago i come back via TSN with 10Gs Aus on me i had no idea about declaring or the amount allowed to bring in so just went through customs no hassle, Went to ACB bank with the money opened a new account they counted the Aus money they recounted it again then checked to see if any of the notes were defective, all good no questions about dec forms or anything like that... changed it to VND easy

Wow, sorry, I haven't visited the forum since January and see that there are a lot of new replies to my original post.

Aravish and Charmavietnam, thank you very much. You answered one of my key questions: do you have to show them the money or just “declare” that you have it. You both indicated that you have to show the money and that is a big turnoff for me. So you have to unbutton your pants to access your money belt, with some of your fellow passengers on the bus watching, and then let the sticky fingers guys at customs count your USD 100 notes. This is unacceptable to me.

I like Phikachu's advice. He suggested don't declare it, take it to a gold shop to change to VND, and find a way to deposit it.

When I opened my VND account last year, I went to a small local branch of a big state owned bank. They accepted my several thousand USD cash without question and without needing any documents and changed it to VND for me and opened a new ATM card account for me. I had no problem depositing the money into the new account. Are the rules more lenient for depositing into a VND account? 

The reason I now want to open a USD account is that, shortly after I converted and deposited the money, the VND devalued about 2%. If I opened a USD account I could just withdraw a little USD at a time and get the better rate by changing it at the gold shop. But if keeping it in VND avoids the hassles and risks of getting a customs declaration form, then I am willing keep it in VND.

Others on the forum are saying that their banks won't even let them deposit VND. But I was able to do it 6 months ago so I hope I will be able to do it again. But is it possible that my bank only let me deposit it in VND because the bank did the conversion from USD? And maybe if I changed the USD to VND at the gold shop and then tried to deposit it, the bank would refuse?

To other suggestions:

I don't have a Vietnamese friend who I would trust to transfer money into my account for me.

I don't want to walk around with huge amounts of cash on me. I can handle it just crossing the border, but want to deposit it as quickly as possible for safety. I don't have a permanent home where I can stash it, I live in inexpensive hotels and they don't have safety boxes.

Cambodia banks charge big fees to transfer, and then you also get a big fee from a “correspondent bank” so you end up paying 3 fees to 3 different banks: to send, to receive, and to the middleman bank.

My VN bank has a branch in Phnom Penh and I have inquired with them to see if I could transfer it cheaper by going through them. Their fee to transfer it is much cheaper than other banks in PP. However, they are unable to tell me how much the VN branch will charge to receive the transfer and said there might be other unspecified fees.

They also told me that I could transfer by linking the amount to my passport, and then receive the money at the VN bank. However, they said that as a foreigner I could only receive the money in VND once I arrived in VN. Could not receive it in USD, even though the funds I will give them are USD.

That's a bit of a turnoff since I hoped to convert it on the street, not at the bank.

Still no final decision made, but I do know that if I have to let the customs guys count the money, forget it.

Thanks all of you for your excellent and very helpful replies.

It may take a while coming (our government seems to have more pressing matters right now) but there has been serious consideration given by the US Treasury to eliminating $100 bills altogether.  This would be to crack down on money laundering and the drug trade in particular.   It's a lot harder to carry around a million in $20's.  As it stands now, most Americans seldom use $100 bills as ATM's dispense $20's.  I have read that they will stop issuing and that there will not be a recall, but if there were a recall imagine the panic in Vietnam.   How much would be floating around VN with no place to go?

My apologies to those who consider this    .