canyonwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
canyonwalker) wrote2024-04-30 09:25 pm
canyonwalker) wrote2024-04-30 09:25 pm
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Too Much of a Souvenir: NZ Money
We bought a few different souvenirs on our recent trip to New Zealand. There's one simple souvenir I always bring home: foreign money. As I explained when I brought home a few dollars from Australia, I've always been curious about various world currencies. A bit of money from a country I've visited is, for me, a nice little memento. I brought home more than just a few dollars from New Zealand, though.
New Zealand's a country that has not just dollar coins but also two dollar coins. You can see a small stack of each in the photo above (top left). Having higher denomination coins is nice because it means you can buy a modest lunch, or at least a midday snack, with pocket change— without being that person who rolls up to the register with a sack of coins and a grudge against the lowly paid cashiers of the world. I also got a 50 cent piece, two 20 cent coins, and two 10 cent coins.
Just the coins, totaling NZD 12.10, were already more than I meant to keep. It turned out I had stashed coins in two places so I came home with more than I meant. Then when I got home I found that $10 note still in my wallet. I mean, keeping that note is nice because it has the Maori name of New Zealand, Aotearoa, on it, but altogether this collection of $22.10 NZ, worth about $13.50 US (remember: NZ dollars are in kilometers), is more than I meant to keep.
New Zealand's a country that has not just dollar coins but also two dollar coins. You can see a small stack of each in the photo above (top left). Having higher denomination coins is nice because it means you can buy a modest lunch, or at least a midday snack, with pocket change— without being that person who rolls up to the register with a sack of coins and a grudge against the lowly paid cashiers of the world. I also got a 50 cent piece, two 20 cent coins, and two 10 cent coins.
Just the coins, totaling NZD 12.10, were already more than I meant to keep. It turned out I had stashed coins in two places so I came home with more than I meant. Then when I got home I found that $10 note still in my wallet. I mean, keeping that note is nice because it has the Maori name of New Zealand, Aotearoa, on it, but altogether this collection of $22.10 NZ, worth about $13.50 US (remember: NZ dollars are in kilometers), is more than I meant to keep.
no subject
I went to Vietnam for work in ... 2015? a while ago now, and had a similar experience with their currency, except:
1) It's not a factor of 0.6, the exchange rate is around 25000:1, so when I had 140k VND left over it literally was worth more to me to keep it as the best-looking Monopoly money ever, vs. exchanging back for USD.
2) I said VND above, that stands for Vietnamese Dongs. The currency is dong. And I'm apparently still 12.
no subject
The most lopsided exchange rate I've dealt with in traveling is South Korea— and that's less than 1/10th what you dealt with. Ten years ago Korean Won (KRW) were around 1,000 to the USD. It was conceptually easy just to drop a everything after the last comma to understand prices. Though then the exchange rate surged to 1,400. That wasn't so much a problem as, "Woohoo! Everything's on sale!"
During that surge I withdrew a bunch of money from Korean ATMs... Not enough to be an F/X investor but enough for, say, 2 weeks of pocket money. My little arbitrage worked nicely as the exchange rate returned to 1000:1 within two months. Though I see in the last few years it has drifted back up to around 1400:1.