My income is Thai baht in cash and as I don't have a work permit I've not had luck opening a bank account. What is the cost of using Western Union to send money to a Citibank account in the U.S.? I checked their web site but it seems more oriented to sending money in the opposite direction. Any one have any experience using WU for this or can suggest an alternative, say if I want to do this right away (tomorrow)?

I have a friend in the same boat as you. Depending on the amount of money,and how often you have to send it, using places like Western Union or Moneygram might not be the best way to go, as their fee's generally are quite high, and exchange rates can be a bit crap. If it's a small amount and not often then using the above methods is fine as you won't loose that much and it's quite convenient.

However if your talking about larger sums, then the fee's and exchange rates will hammer you. The alternative is to open a Thai bank account (you can do this easily, i even managed to do this on a tourist visa at SCB), then request a second card, and send the card to a friend back in your country, then have them pull money out of the ATM on ur second card.

The thai bank charges you 100b for international atm withdrawl, and you get either the Mastercard of Visa exchange rate (which isn't too bad considering).

Just as an update, I went to a Siam City Bank branch with a Western Union sign in front on Rama I today and they said the fee for sending 5000 baht to the U.S. via WU would be 600 baht, i.e. 12 %.

Yep Western Union is great for a emergency but not reg use. Fee's just too high

Just bumping this back up to find out if anyone knows of an alternative to WU for sending cash from Thailand to a U.S. bank account if you don't have an account in a Thai bank. It's OK if transfer time is as long as a week or 10 days and it can only be done from Bangkok. Hmmm, for that matter would it be possible to just walk into say a Siam Commercial or Bangkok Back and do a wire transfer (or preferrably a kind of ACH electronic check that'd be slower but cheaper) without an account?