In a few months my wife and I will be returning to my home in the USA. Our plans have changed from living here year-round, to spending 9 months of the year in the USA and only returning to our rental home in Thailand during the winter months. I've already closed out my bank account when we moved closer to Bangkok and have a cashiers check that I was going to open a new bank account with. A friend recommended that we cash the baht into dollars while the exchange rate favors the baht and bring it back to the USA. Realizing that the baht will most likely weaken within the next year, we can then exchange dollar back into baht when we return to Thailand later.

Someone mentioned that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to take 800,000 baht out of Thailand and told me to check the legal constraints. It wouldn't surpise me if the Thai government had some regulation restricticting the amount you can take out, but I've never heard of that before.

Does any forum member know the law regarding this? If so would you please advise me?

In a few months my wife and I will be returning to my home in the USA. Our plans have changed from living here year-round, to spending 9 months of the year in the USA and only returning to our rental home in Thailand during the winter months. I've already closed out my bank account when we moved closer to Bangkok and have a cashiers check that I was going to open a new bank account with. A friend recommended that we cash the baht into dollars while the exchange rate favors the baht and bring it back to the USA. Realizing that the baht will most likely weaken within the next year, we can then exchange dollar back into baht when we return to Thailand later.

Someone mentioned that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to take 800,000 baht out of Thailand and told me to check the legal constraints. It wouldn't surpise me if the Thai government had some regulation restricticting the amount you can take out, but I've never heard of that before.

Does any forum member know the law regarding this? If so would you please advise me?

This is a direct "cut and paste" from the Thai Customs website;

V Currencies

Inbound Passengers: Inbound passengers are allowed to bring in unlimited amount of foreign and Thai currencies.

Outbound passengers: Unlimited amount of foreign currencies are permitted to carry out of Thailand. However, the amount of Baht 50,000 or more in Thai currency must be reported on departure, except those traveling to Lao PDR., Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam are allowed to take out Thai currency not exceeding 500,000 Baht.

http://www.customs.go.th/Customs-Eng/Trave...?menuNme=Travel

If you brought that amount of dollars into the US, you must declare it. That could be dicey, no?

If everything is legit, then just wire it

Thanks to you folks that answered and especially to Silverhawk for the direct legal info from Thai Customs.

Now I need to find out about converting baht to USD and a wire service. It would be great if I could just go into a bank and have them give me a fair conversion rate and transfer it directly into my US bank account. I'll talk to them and see, but somehow suspect that I may have difficulty. Seems there have been many times in Thailand when I thought conducting business should be simple and then find out they make 'a mountain out of a mole hill'.