Money Math

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Our journey so far has taken us to the USA, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Seoul, Hong Kong (back to China), and now Vietnam. That means we have had to adjust to eight different exchange rates so far.  That is a lot of calculations in a day; getting coffee, going to a movie, ordering in a restaurant, etc. We will use a lot of rough math to figure out what things cost and on the verge of becoming mathletes (in basic math).

Leaving from Canada and making our first stop the US was not a big deal. Since our exchange rate with the US has been close enough to par over the last few years, this one is easy. But I remember when....ok, how old are we now? There was a time when it took about a $1.40 CAD to get that greenback?!

Moving on to Japan, we had to convert $1 CAD to about 95 YEN . To make things easier, we would tell ourselves it was $1 CAD to 100 YEN. This made figuring out that 2000 YEN admission is about $20 CAD. This also means that while in Japan, you carry a lot of 1000 YEN bills around.

In Singapore, our loonie  ($CAD) is worth about $1.19 SGD (Singapore dollars) but I would use a one-to-one ratio knowing that it really was not as expensive as the sticker price.

Malaysia is where we had to start to test ourselves. We could get 3 RM (Ringgit Malaysian) for every Canadian dollar! This meant we had to divide everything by 3 to understand what something cost. We took a 349km bus ride from Kuala Lumpur to Georgetown. This double-decker bus was fancier than Greyhound; water and a meal are served by a bus attendant and there are power outlets for your laptop etc so you can work while on board. For the two of us it was 125 RM or $42 CAD!

China was a little more work. One CAD will get us about 5.87 Yuan, which means we divide everything by 6. I need easy math remember! This one was nice in the sense that we visited 5 different cities in a month and used the same currency. We did not have to relearn an exchange or change our currency.

South Korea's exchange was roughly $1 CAD to 1000 Won. We went to the market one day, and I found some really cute socks. The price on them said 1500 Won. I was not sure I was reading this right because that is $1.50 CAD (and yes, that was right!).  This one wasn't too bad to get use to, but at this point, numbers are just floating in my head! What's the exchange rate again?! Where are we?

$132.50 Hong Kong Dollars or $18 CAD

Then onto Hong Kong. Although they are part of China again (1997), they are a Special Administrative Region (SAR) which means they get to follow different rules. They continue to operate pretty much under the same rules as they did when they were under the 99-year lease to the UK. As such, they still have their own currency! Our dollar got us $7 HKD, so buying 2 tickets to Disneyland was $900 HKD or $125 CAD.

And now we are in Vietnam. This one really messes us up. Get this, one CAD is worth about 20,000 VND (Vietnamese Dong)! So if you have a couple 500,000 VND bills in your pocket (you are a millionaire for one thing), it is only $50 CAD. We went to a beach front restaurant the other day and had seafood fried rice, a large portion of grilled prawns, 3 beers and a coconut water for 480,000 VND. In other words,  $24 CAD total for all that (and that's a touristy place!).

2,000,000 Vietnamese Dong or $100 CAD

Be sure to check back later for more stories on being a Mathlete during our journey!

Interesting tidbits:

• money in Asia is colorful like Canadian money
• money in Asia is different sizes, usually the smaller the denomination, the smaller the bill 
• in Malaysia, they also round up/down, thereby phasing out the 1 sen (cent) piece

~ Christine