Just want to let you know Vietnam is not a good place to exchange money if you have cash from currencies other than, say, USD, EUR, GBP,..
If you have cash from the popular currencies mentioned above, you get quite ok rate. The spread (i.e., the difference between the buying rate and selling rate) of USD is <1%.
However, if you bring cash from not so popular currencies, say Danish krone, you will not get so good rates at all. Banks like Vietcombank will post their official rates like this bank
http://www.vietcombank.com.vn/exchangerates/
but they will say that they will not buy from you, only sell!!
If you go to the various exchange bureaus, they will except your money but with a huge discount. A spot check at 5 different places show an incredible discount rate of 17-30%, i.e., you get only 700 VND instead of 1,000VND as shown in the vietcombank website.
So what is the best method? withdraw money from your credit/debit card. Be aware of the possible fees your bank will charge. There are 3 kinds of charge:
- Withdrawal fee charged per withdrawal: Some banks will waive this fee.
- Additional spread: An additional 1.5% to 3% spread will be added to the withdrawn amount. There is no way to get around this charge. Even with this additional spread, you still get a very good rate.
- Interest on the amount: it is common that credit card charge 20-30% interest rate you own them. For cash advance, there is no 40 days interest free. Interest will be charged from the day of cash advance. To avoid this interest, you just prepay the amount you will withdraw (and the rest of the balance) so you will not owe them anything even after you have withdrawn the cash. A similar method is to use a VISA/Mastercard debit card which normally will not allow you to withdraw money unless you have money in the account.
Also, there is generally an upper limit how much you can withdraw from an ATM per day as mentioned in this forum several times before.