I am a Vietnamese businessman traveling to the US via Singapore. I was told that if I exchangde my VND for USD in Singapore, I would get a better deal than if I tried to do an exchange at a dealer in Saigon, where the quoted rates are V21000/$ Bid and V22000/$ Ask.
When I arrived in Singapore, I went to an exchange dealer and I saw the following quotes:
Bid
Ask
S$/VND
0.00006
0.00016
S$/$
1.34
1.38
I told the dealer I want to exchange my VND for USD. He said he will have to do two transactions:
Convert my VND to SGD at the Bid rate.
Convert my SGD to USD at the Ask rate.
I felt uneasy about this deal. Anyway, I did the deal. But I had some questions as I walked away:
Was there another way this could have been done? T/F
If done differently, I would have been better off. T/F