Do Bangkok Bank Managers Target

Foreigners?

Opening a Bangkok Bank account seemed like the logical thing to do around 12 years ago when I first decided that visiting Thailand on a regular basis is what I wanted to do.
In those days, for foreigners opening any bank account in Thailand was simply a matter of filling in the necessary forms at the Bangkok Bank of your choice, submitting a copy of your passport along with a small deposit and you were issued with a bank passbook.

For me, having been only recently introduced to the wonders of Thailand, I thought that the Nana Plaza was the most wonderful place on the planet and could see no reason to venture any further from it than my legs would carry me in any more than a 5 minute stroll. So I set up a Bangkok bank account at the soi 3 branch of the Bangkok Bank which is around 200 meters from Nana Plaza situated at the beginning of soi 4 Sukhumvit.

Pattaya has Bangkok Bank

Branches too.

However it wasn’t long before I discovered that places like Pattaya and Phuket also had similar wonders available and quite often were a lot easier on the pocket and also had branches of all the major Thai banks including the Bangkok Bank.

A few months later having moved my main base to Pattaya after being mugged on one occasion, and drugged on another around the Nana region of Bangkok, I decided to transfer my bank account to the Pattaya branch of the Bangkok Bank but because Pattaya is in a different province, I was informed by bank staff that the option to electronically transfer wasn’t available and that I needed to open another separate account in Pattaya.

Review the Updated and Revised

Money Number One Special 2012 Doomsday Edition

Here

Once again, no problems in doing that, but for the same reason quoted above, I was again told by staff that carrying out a direct branch to branch funds transfer also wasn’t an available option.

At the time, I thought it all a bit strange being accustomed to carrying out simple transactions like this at home with no problems, but having been getting used to the idea of TIT  accepted it all with no more than a little annoyance.

At the time, I had close to a million baht deposited in the Soi 3 Nana branch of the Bangkok Bank which I wanted to deposit into my Pattaya account and since the staff in Bangkok had refused previously to do it electronically, and with my mild annoyance slowly rising to mild anger, I caught a bus once again to Bangkok where I confronted the staff and demanded my money in cash.

Now my forever wise girlfriend of the time couldn’t bear the thought of me being mugged yet again with all that cash on me, particularly with the knowledge that she would be getting at least some of it (if I wasn’t mugged) she in her wisdom, after a quick and hushed conversation with the bank teller, convinced me to take a cashier’s check which I could then deposit directly into my new Bangkok bank account in Pattaya.

Well, that made perfect sense and so as soon as the Pattaya branch of the Bangkok Bank’s doors opened the following morning, I was standing at the back of the inevitable queue that generally snakes around the inside of most Thai banks regardless of the time of day, while armed with my 12 hour old check for around a million Baht and my 4 day old Bangkok Bank Pattaya branch passbook, which I eventually was able to pass to the teller who upon examining them both along with the deposit slip, promptly disappeared into a closed office set outside the parameters of the queues and toward the back of the bank.

On her return a few minutes later, she told me that I would need to pay a transaction fee of around 9000 baht in order to finalize the deposit.

When my query of why returned the same answer I’d received previously relating to being different provinces, the mild anger I’d experienced the day before escalated into a seething volcanic rush scarcely kept under control with extreme difficulty as I politely requested an interview with the bank manager whom I had rightly assumed was secreted behind the closed door the teller had visited several seconds before.

After many objections from the patient Bangkok Bank staff members and the security guards who’d been conversing with whoever was behind the closed door… through the closed door, I was eventually ushered into that mystic office where I was confronted with what appeared to the bank manager…… an impeccably dressed gentleman of undetermined age who was just rising from his padded chair to adorn his suit jacket for what he told me was his luncheon break at 9:30 am!

Well, it was around about then that the volcano finally gave way to pressure and violently erupted spewing molten cascades of extremely loud and multi-colored verbal displeasures and abuse to every corner, nook and cranny of the building and which I’m sure would be hard pressed to be rivaled in any waterfront bar on the planet.

The office door suddenly slammed open as a result of what I assume was a silent signal, and with a violent crash which knocked over a vase of plastic flowers, dislodged a picture, a clock and a calendar from the wall, while what I assumed was the manager’s umbrella snapped with a resounding crack when he tripped over it in his hastened step backwards against the wall at my sudden explosive outburst and tirade.

Pattaya’s Bangkok Bank Cleaned Out by Crazed Farang

However when I spun around at the sound, it wasn’t the normal Bangkok Bank’s security force outlined in the doorway I faced, but the full blown might of the law in what I thought at the time was at least 50% of the whole darned Pattaya police force who must have been alerted by security when they realized that something out of the ordinary was about to go down.

On furtively casting my eyes around like a trapped rodent at what had until a few seconds before been a normally crowded bank, I realized the whole bank seemed to have been evacuated by customers, and the staff who had remained seemed to be either white faced and cringing in fear, or warming up for a bit of unscheduled Thai boxing practice with me clearly being lined up as the punching (or kicking) bag.

In the meantime, my forever faithful and devoted girlfriend had vanished without a trace leaving me armed with no more than the spattering of Thai words I’d picked up most of which were mainly in the polite vein with a few endearments thrown in, which left me trying to explain to the police what had happened in words which amounted to thank you please my darling, never mind you lovely, I’m hungry and boom boom tirak.

Now I’m not going to suggest for one moment that the Thais don’t have a sense of humor because they certainly do, but how those police officers were able to keep a straight face through all this astonishes me to this day and it wasn’t until months later I learned that they had all cracked up in fits of laughter after releasing me from custody around 6 hours later.

It’s interesting to note that this story has a happy ending in that the following morning, while accompanied by my girlfriend having become mysteriously unvanished on my release from the soi 7 police station the day before, I went to the Siam Commercial Bank situated just down the street from my previous day’s harrowing experience, where I was able to open a new bank account into which I was able to deposit the cashier’s check I’d received from the Bangkok Bank in Soi 3 and all for a grand total outlay of 300 baht!
Needless to say, I’ve never done business with the Bangkok Bank again!

A Short Biography of Money Number One

Man, Neil Hutchison.

Neil Hutchison

I think everyone has an imaginary visualization of someone they’ve either spoken to on the phone or heard about which in 99% of cases turns out completely wrong and this was the case when I first met Neil Hutchison.

I had purchased and read all the Neil Hutchison books prior to our meeting in Pattaya Thailand and was curious as to learn what sort of a person could write such humorous stories and so, set out on a quest to track him down.

It wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined because one of the owners of a popular Aussie bar I got chatting to one night aptly named “The Boxing Roo Bar” on third road, happened to be a mate of Neil’s, and halfway through my eighth or fourteenth beer while amicably chatting about Neil Hutchison, he looked up and said “Here is is now”.

True to the lore, Neil Hutchison looked nothing like I expected him to and on turning around saw a jovial looking gentleman of average height and of rather stout proportions approaching us while desperately trying to wheedle his way through the four or five giggling bar girls who seemed to have glued themselves to various parts of Neil’s body while he was valiantly tying to unglue them without actually causing them any physical harm.

Neil Hutchison from Bachelor of Science

to Money Number One

The following is his story:

Born of poor but humble parents in the former British colony of Australia, Neil Hutchison spent his early years trudging barefoot through six miles of crocodile-infested wasteland getting to and from school every day. There was another school right next door to his humble home but his parents decided the exercise would do him good.

Eventually he was sent to board at an all-boys Grammar School, which kind of explains his adult infatuation with women. Following that, it became a long slog at Queensland University to be rewarded with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. That was the mid nineteen-seventies, the time of sex, drugs, Rock ’n Roll and a fashion statement that will hopefully never be repeated. Neil missed out on the sex, avoided almost all the drugs, loved Rock ’n Roll and became the fashion guru of flared trousers and wide psychedelic neckties.
“I remember when Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album came out. I played it at my 21st birthday party and knew all the moves to ‘Time Warp’.”

Pathetic, isn’t it?

Neil Hutchison’s early adult life was unremarkable, and it just went downhill from there. Careers were wide, varied and had nothing to do with chemistry.
“Getting that degree turned out to be a total waste of time, except for the fun I had at uni.”
His marriage began well and produced three wonderful children but, after ten years, the union began to disintegrate. Fearing total nuclear meltdown, he did what he was destined to do; he ran away.
He spent a year living in Hong Kong before moving to Manila, Philippines, where he spent a further two years learning the tricks and secrets of the poor, huddled masses. Neil concurred with Dwight D Eisenhower, who

Neil Hutchison arrives in Pattaya

served as chief military aide to General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines from 1935 to 1939, and later wrote that he, “learned to expect a maximum of promise and a minimum of performance” from Filipinos.
It wasn’t until after he hit rock bottom, standing alone in the pouring rain on a congested Manila street trying to avoid the attention of homicidal jeepney drivers, that fortune smiled and led him to Thailand. Soon after arriving in Bangkok and being informed by his good friend, host and guide that they were going to Pattaya, Neil uttered those immortal words, “Where’s that?”

Neil Hutchison Discovers Pattaya.

In Pattaya, Neil Hutchison found the most interesting people, the best food and the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He posed the standard questions: “How long has this been going on?” and “Why wasn’t I told about this place?” He quickly fell in love with a local working lass and saved her from a life of immorality. Or so he thought. When he eventually confronted her with being less than forthright with him, she reacted to his

Lie Detector

anger with a smile and the words that still reverberate in his ears today: “Money Number One!”
He began taking notes of his experiences and listening to the tales and advice of others. What followed was a long, slow and sometimes costly learning experience which, even after a decade, is still a work in progress. He found an Australian publisher willing to take a chance on publishing his advice, tips and anecdotes collated into a book bearing the message his first girlfriend had burned into his brain.
For Neil Hutchison, every day spent in Pattaya held the opportunity for a new experience or new lesson to learn and more stories followed. With eventually enough material for a second book, it was published under the title that epitomized the way Neil saw himself: “A Fool in Paradise“. And for Neil Hutchison, the rest as they say, is history.

Money Number One in Thailand

By Sean K Kelly

If ever money number one was set in time as a national catch cry, it would have to be in Thailand where the phrase money number one is used countless times daily by many of the Thai people in dealing with the thousands of foreign tourists they regularly encounter.
Money Number One Updated 2012 Doomsday Edition Available Now Below

Neil Hutchinson, an Aussie expat living in Pattaya has been instrumental in writing a series of books around the money number one catch cry, which have become extremely popular best sellers in recent years…

Other Money Number One Books

The first of the books actually entitled “Money Number One“, was first penned some years ago and has been updated several times to suit the ever changing influx of emotionally and sexually starved hordes of single men who have made places like Pattaya, Phuket, Koh Sumui, Chiang Mai and of course Bangkok among others, a regular “watering hole” over the past 50 years or so.

While the Money Number One Books including his other titles such as “A Fool in Paradise”, “The Fool is Back” and “A Fools Diary” are written somewhat tongue in cheek, they epitomize the humor in the sometimes ridiculous and other times tragic relationships which spring up between the local inhabitants and the dyed in the wool westerners who attempt to introduce western cultural ways and ethics into a society based on thousands of years of immense cultural difference where money number one has been a way of life long before the modern western man set foot in the beautiful country known as “The Land Of Smiles”

Mainly set in the seaside resort city of Pattaya situated on the eastern seaboard of The Gulf Of Siam in Southern Thailand, the stories contained within the Money Number One book series and their corresponding sequels and additions, vary in length and subject but are all for the most part based from true instances and events gathered over the years by Neil’s own personal experiences and those of others either relayed to Neil or told in person in one of the many bars and haunts he frequents in order to carry out his somewhat clandestine research.

Dubbed by many as “The Single Man’s Survival Guide to Pattaya” and “The Pattaya Bible” the Money Number One series are a recommended read by thousands of experienced Thailand visitors both male and female when advising potential new visitors about the who, what, where and whys of Thailand long before the bags are packed to go, and indeed long after they have been unpacked on their return home.

Money Number One Books in Paperback.

Although the Money Number One books are available in paper back from the shelves of many of Thailand’s reputable book stores, they can sometimes be a little late to procure in order to learn the valuable lessons contained within the money number one series� after arriving in Thailand and are now available for instant download in PDF format.