Wrapping our heads around local currency has taken some getting used to. Let me explain.
We started our travel adventures in Hawaii, and as you likely know, the Canadian loonie is worth less than the American greenback. But growing up with this, it was fairly easy to convert USD and roughly figure out how much things were costing us. In Hawaii that was, simply, A LOT. It's always fun to run the McDonald's test: cost out something at Rotten Ronnie's and compare to home. You'll be interested to know a bacon, egg, cheese mcgriddle in Hawaii sold for $4.99 US (which is like $20 bucks Canadian, right?).
Then we moved on to New Zealand. Now all things in New Zealand were expensive (bacon egg Mcmuffin at Macca's was $6.51 NZD (about $5.50), so our stronger Canadian dollar gave a bit of piece of mind. The conversion was easy. Take the value and subtract a bit to feel better about the higher cost.
In Nepal, we lucked out with the Nepali Rupee conversion. One Canadian dollar was basically 100 Rupees. Here the McDonald's test failed miserably. You see, Nepali people are mostly Hindu and the cow is sacred. So sacred in fact that if you killed one you'd be jailed. And there are no McDonald's. But to give you an idea of how far a hundred rupees will go, know that you can buy 2 plastic red bangles or 2 tubes of oreo cookies for 100 rupees. We quickly learned to just move the decimal two places to get the Canadian equivalency. Sunglasses 1300 NPR - $13.
Now, we've just landed in Thailand and have to work a little harder on the Thai baht conversion. One hundred baht is equal to roughly $4 Can. The trouble with this is that we are still seeing Nepali rupees when we look at prices. Tonight we went out for supper and the menu listed rice noodles and chicken for 120 baht. Score! $1.20 for a plate of delicious Thai food. Nope, times that by 4. Actual price $5.00.
There are two conflicting issues messing with our brains - first the prices (for food at least) are much higher than Nepal and second, our conversion “shortcut” is a fail.
Truly, the food is much better and there are many more choices, so we want to eat everything! Still, it’s way cheaper than Hawaii or New Zealand - even if we struggle with the math!
