No monies, mo’ problems.

So, we’re headed to dinner out on Ngor Island. Which means, we have to walk to the beach, get in a dinghy, take a boat over, etc. But first, we need to exchange more dollars into local currency. We figure - we’ll either see a bank/atm or hotel on the way. On the way, we come across this impressive building with high security presence. King Fahd’s Palace. We investigate. Turns out it’s just a fancy hotel with a golf course. And not one, but two ATMs! Perfect. Chris goes to the ATM to take out cash, comes back out of the privacy screen to tell me “Oh no, I think I took out too much!” The screen says “Please take your card.” He furiously tries to cancel the transaction. The screen responds with “Your card has been captured” and does not dispense any money.

We tell the front desk what happened. They direct us toward a hotel manager in the lobby. She was very sympathetic, but indicated that “...yeah, this used to happen.... the problem is, it’s Friday night and the bankers won’t be back until after the holiday, on Tuesday.”

Our flight out is early Monday. So, I’m like...

And Chris is like...

After a lengthy hold with Capital One, the hilarity of him trying to remember answers to secret questions, trying to figure out if they would send a new card to a random address internationally, which country we should even attempt delivery given our short stays at each stop, continuous laughter at the fact that his customer service rep sounded like George W. Bush (which only reminds him of this), he managed to get a card shipped to my uncle’s house in Bangladesh scheduled to deliver by Thursday. The world is a magical place. In the interim, we did not go to the island for dinner, but we used credit card where we could, exchanged our dollars sparingly, and got a pretty funny story out of it. Moral of the story: Don’t pick the “fast cash” option in developing countries. Wah wah.