Getting My Wallet Stolen in Vietnam
It was New Years Eve and Katherine and I were out on the town in Hanoi, Vietnam. Being in the capital of any country on New Years Eve is of course a lot fun. We had already had a pretty eventful night. We had been to a several bars and restaurants and had just left a rooftop bar. The action of the night was at the Heineken Countdown Party right in the heart of the city. The crowd for the DJ was crazy and even as we found a spot toward the middle, we found ourselves getting pushed to the front in the chaotic sea of people. We were having a lot of fun. Everybody was having fun. We toasted some beers at midnight and then a new DJ came out and the things really got going.
I had already been minding my belongings all night, but we were packed in the crowd like sardines so I decided to move them somewhere even safer than my pockets. I put my iPhone and my wallet into my FRONT jacket pockets and zipped them closed. I figured that would be safer than my pockets because it was higher up on my body and closer to my front where I could see and feel. I was definitely wrong.
Even then, I was still checking my jacket pocket every few minutes because I kept forgetting I had moved my stuff from my pants pocket. Just like that though, I checked the pocket one minute and it had my wallet in it and then the next time I checked it it was unzipped and open and only my phone remained.
I wasn’t super happy when I discovered this. I turned on my flashlight on my phone and had it facing the crowd as I shouted. People backed away and left me in my circle of anger. I was yelling about it a lot, but it fell on deaf ears because no one could understand me. Needless to say I drew a lot of attention. We kind of just stood there dumbfounded for a minute or two and then of course we decided we needed to leave.
What do do when a pickpocket steals your wallet abroad
When you lose a wallet or get it stolen you have to call your credit card companies as quickly as possible. It is an all out race against the person who has it because they will inevitably go to the nearest store and try and max everything out.
The contents of my wallet were:
- $250 cash (we had literally just gone to an ATM to have cash for the week. Usually I would leave about half of that back in the room)
- My driver’s license (So now I get to go to the DMV when I get home, pay for a new license, and will have to carry around my passport if I want to get into a bar until then)
- My university student ID card (I’m graduated now so I can’t get a replacement one, which means I will never be granted a student discount again)
- A credit card
- Our only ATM/debit card
- The wallet itself was a birthday present.
So, we go back to our hotel to make some phone calls. The hardest part about that is that it is 1:00 am and I don’t know how to call the US from a Vietnamese phone number and do we don’t have a phone to use (our phones are only for wifi at this point on our trip).
Call Your Bank and Credit Card Companies
So, I can only use an internet phone line and we have garbage Vietnamese WIFI speeds so it takes quite awhile. The banker has to read off the recent transactions to make sure they were all me. I can hear the pity in his voice after he asks me about the $250 ATM withdrawal only hours before this phone call saying my wallet was stolen. The bank cancels the credit card and the ATM card so at least now they can’t be used anymore. It is now coming up on 3am. We go to bed late and pretty bummed.
No Cash, Only Credit
The next morning we get up and take an inventory of what we have now. I am an experienced traveler and so I have made some preparations for just such an occurrence. We are lucky we didn’t lose our passports or my phone. Those are pretty important, but so is having money, which now we don’t and most places only take cash. I intentionally brought backup cards and always keep them separate. I had originally brought two different ATM cards with me, but one of them expired just one month before because we had been gone longer than we had anticipated. Now we realize that we only have a credit card as our only method of payment and credit cards are rarely accepted anywhere outside of the cities in SE Asia. There are plenty of restaurants that take credit cards in Hanoi, though, so we weren’t completely out of luck for food. Those places are KFC, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Dominos Pizza, etc. I think you get where I’m going with this. Needless to say, we had some pretty shameful meals that first day.
Cash Advance on a credit Card
Now, I have never had to do a cash advance before so I didn’t know much about it. A cash advance basically just means you can take out cash at an ATM using your credit card, but you pay a larger transaction fee, the interest fee is WAY higher, and it accrues interest immediately. That’s all fine and dandy with me BUT, if you have never used your credit card like this before you have to call your bank and request a PIN number. My bank told me they can’t email it to me OR give it to me over the phone for security reasons so guess what Capital One thinks the most efficient method of delivering this information to me is? By MAILING IT…to my HOME ADDRESS!!!! They said it would get to my house in the US in 7-10 business days. So best case scenario, in 10 days I have to convince someone in Colorado to go to my house and check my mail and give me the PIN number over the phone.
Western Union
So now we are starting to think we might be more screwed than we thought. We have to be out of the country soon because our visa expires, so we can’t just wait in Hanoi eating fast food for two weeks. We’ve got to figure something else out. We learn that a Western Union transfer takes 4 business days to do from a bank account, which is still too long. If you use a credit card it can be same day, but after multiple failed attempts, I called Western Union and was basically told that they just plain can’t send money same day to Vietnam.
Using a Credit Card to get cash from a bank
Now we realize that we can’t rely on Western Union and we can’t use my credit card for cash advance. In a last ditch effort we walked into just a random Vietnamese bank and tried to communicate that I wanted to use my credit card to get cash and I can’t use an ATM. I am sure she just assumed I didn’t have any money and my card was getting declined for it. In her mind why would a foreigner be here with a card that he can’t use at an ATM, and be expecting a Vietnamese bank to do something about it. She went to the back and returned with some paper work that basically said they would run my credit card for any amount plus 4% and then pay me out the cash. That was great news.
After our experience thus far, we have pretty much marked off being able to withdraw cash again for the rest of our trip. We knew we needed enough cash to last about a month in Loas, or at least until that PIN number reached my home back in the US. I had to play it safe in case the PIN didn’t work, though. I didn’t want to be stranded without cash again. So I wrote down $1,500 USD on a piece of paper. She saw the USD part and told me they could only give it to me in Vietnamese Dong, which I already knew. I just couldn’t do the conversion on the spot. After the conversion rate it came to something like 40 million Vietnamese Dong. When the banker handed the paper to her supervisor, her eyes popped out of her head at the amount. Based on the fact that the safe in the bank was right up front and the size of a standard mini-fridge, I am going to assume that Vietnamese banks don’t keep a whole lot of cash on hand. She puts the money through the bill counter and then just kind of shoves it across her desk to me like I had just won a table game at a casino. Forty-million Dong might as well be in a duffel bag or a metal briefcase. I had to wad up the cash and stuff it into multiple pockets. With that, we got up and turned our backs to the group of puzzled bankers and walked out of there.
I haven’t yet received that PIN number, so I still don’t know if that will work out. In the meantime we’ve divided up the cash and are making our way towards Laos. Ordinarily, if this ever happens to you, you will just have to wait a couple of days for a wire transfer, Western Union, or even for your bank to mail you a new card. However, our situation was unique as we had to keep moving to make it out of the country before our visas expired. There are obviously a lot of things we should have done differently and probably some solutions I didn’t even think of. We handled it well, though, and while it did occupy two days of our time and cause a lot of trouble, it isn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened. We both learned a few things from the experience and now it is just one more for the books.
What I have learned:
How to prepare for getting your wallet stolen or lost
- Take pictures of the front and back everything in your wallet and save them in your email in case you lose your phone too
- Make PIN numbers on all of your credit cards just in case you ever do need to do a cash advance
- Check the expiration date on all of your bank cards before leaving the country
- Only keep about a day’s worth of cash in your wallet at any given moment
- Bring a back up Credit Card and let a travel buddy hold on to it or stash it in your bag
- Know that some banks will let you use them like an ATM with your credit card without a PIN number
- Western Union fees are actually lower than the fees for using an ATM sometimes
- Those numbers on the back of your cards to call that say “for outside the US” don’t just work when you pick up any phone and call them. There is a calling code you should know beforehand
- If the DJ puts on Sean Paul and you have been drinking all night, you are very vulnerable to theft.