Withdrawing Cash from the ATM's Was not Easy in Hoi An, Vietnam

Upon arriving to Da Nang, Vietnam, we were able to withdraw some cash from our bank account right away as there was a bank machine right outside the Da Nang Airport.

Therefore, we made the same assumption regarding cash withdrawal when we travelled to Hoi An, a UNESCO Heritage Site about an hour bus ride away from Da Nang and very popular with tourists. Not wanting to charge everything on our visa charge card, we needed to have some cash on hand for small purchases such as coffee and street food etc.

We thought it would be easy getting cash from the ATM machines in this popular tourist town. How wrong were we! Yes, there were a lot of banks and ATM machines on the streets of Hoi An especially in the busy tourist area. We saw quite a few people lining up for their banking business in front of these machines. Not sure if they could do it easier than we could.

We tried withdrawing money both from our own bank account and charge card. However, everyone of these ATMs rejected our cards! It was frustrating as we had such an unexpected difficult time getting money from our accounts via these machines. We even went to a few banks in person and were told that we couldn't do the withdrawal from our Canadian bank.

Finally, a bank employee told us about the HD Bank, one of the few banks that could exchange the currencies for us and might allow us to withdraw money. We went and thank goodess, after much searching and looking, eventually we did find a bank which could help us, the HD Bank, where we could retrieve some cash so that we could continue our vacation in Vietnam with some pocket money! RT, Hoi An, Vietnam, 2026