When travelling to another country, other than your passport, it’s important to remember to bring along the right currency. Imagine booking an e-hailing ride but not having the right currency to pay the driver. This was the case for this young student who booked a Grab ride but then realised that she didn’t had any Singapore currency with her.
Earlier this week, a Thai-Japanese university student who goes by Hana or @hanae_nakaa on TikTok posted a video on her channel of her unexpected experience with a Grab driver in Singapore. In the video below, the student arrived at her destination but unfortunately, she only had Malaysian Ringgit (RM) on her instead of Singapore Dollars (SGD).
@hanae_nakaa Kind grab driver in Singapore! #ntu #留学 #シンガポール留学 #singapore #マレーシア留学 #malaysia #シンガポール
Rather than scolding the young woman for her mistake, the driver kindly accepted the currency. “I accidentally ONLY brought Malaysian RM but the grab uncle was so kind to [accept] the money,” she wrote in the video caption. Feeling guilty for the trouble, the 20-year-old can be heard asking the driver if it was really okay for her to pay in RM to which he insisted that it wasn’t a problem.
The video went viral with over 300k views at the time of writing. Netizens praised the Grab driver for his kindness and even pointed out that he can use the Malaysian currency for his next trip to Johor Bahru. There were a few who were curious on how the passenger could have made the mistake when travelling to Singapore. Grab Singapore even reached out to her to ask for details to presumably reward the kind driver.
Speaking to AsiaOne, Hana explained how she got herself into that situation by mistake. It is understood that she was in Malaysia prior to her trip to Singapore and had forgotten to change some Singapore dollar notes. Another factor for the confusion was that both the RM50 note and the $50 SGD note apparently look similar, according to the student. She noticed the mistake after the driver pointed out that she gave him the wrong currency.
We also learn that the foreigner doesn’t have a Singapore bank account as she was an exchange student, which explains why she wasn’t able to pay the driver using another method of payment such as PayNow or PayLah. The driver reportedly kindly declined the passenger’s offer of transferring the money to him later with her friend’s help.
Who knows what could have happened if she had a different driver? Thankfully, things went better than expected. Let this be a reminder to double-check the currencies before travelling.
