Numbers Numbers Everywhere

Another thing that is really tricky about traveling to different countries is the exchange rate. Anyone who’s been to a group dinner with me knows my lack of mental math, and inability to figure out the tip/tax/ what I owe. Since I’ve been in Asia, I’ve been doing more mental math than when I had to pass the LAST.

Every day I have to practice subtracting 12 just to figure out what time it is in the afternoon, because they use what I consider military time. When I see price tags (or, more frequently, when I hear the price) I have to translate that into English and then convert it to US dollars. Chinese numbers do make more sense than ours, but it’s not a necessarily easy conversion. For example, 138 RMB would be said like this, “ee bai san tsir bah yuan” which means “1 hundred 3 ten 8 dollars.”

I’ve gotten used to the relative prices for things in RMB, and can decide quickly if I’m being given a good or outrageous price, which helps me to barter. In Malaysia, everything I saw was in Ringit or RM (Ringit Malaysian.) It doesn’t help that RM and RMB is so close that I always said the wrong one, confusing everyone, including myself.

My daily allowance in KL was 270 RM, including the hostel which was 90 RM. Street food was 5-10 RM per dish. 45 RM is about 100 RMB, so a little less than half. 100 RMB is about $15 USD. When I saw Ringit, I converted it to RMB and then to USD.
(Keep in mind, my phone in China is so budget that it doesn’t even have a calculator even if I had the time to take it out throughout the day.)I’m not saying this is easy, especially for me, but I could roughly get an idea if I was getting ripped off.

Then, I get to Hong Kong. The trickiest part is that they use the dollar sign like in the US. Regardless of what I know is going on, when I see a salad menu like this:

$112 Green Salad, $115 Cesar Salad, $128 Avocado Salad

my heart starts to race.

It’s also tricky mentally because my spending allowance in this city is $1,300 Hong Kong Dollars. For the past two weeks, I’ve been having milo and chicken curry for 10 RM, and now my morning coffee and bagel $65.

Malaysia also has a much cheaper cost of living, but seeing $65 on my morning receipt is still jarring for me.