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The trouble with money
This may seem quite irrelevant, but it is estimated that Britons bring back around 920 million pounds or almost $NZ2.4 billion in currency each year from overseas trips and stash it away in drawers, never to be seen again. Multiply this across the globe and a large nation could probably be kept solvent with this forgotten cash, or at least one despot able to maintain a healthy offshore bank account. Although we are not Britons we are culprits, now having worked our way through seven and a half different types of currency in ten countries since leaving home in December. We each have a bag of assorted coins and notes which threaten to put us over our allowable baggage weight limits, and we’ve come full circle, because we are back to the euro and pound for the second time.
Each time we change country, as well as learning a whole new repertoire of pleases, thank yous and hellos, there is the challenge of mental currency conversations in shops and with street traders, and attempting to identify the value of coins. Coins from the United Arab Emirates, for example, have no recogniseable symbols to identify their value so, aside from the 1 dirham coin worth about NZ46 cents, those of other denominations simply accumulate unused.
And what of the other currencies; one euro, used across the EU countries, except for Great Britain, is currently worth about $NZ2.30, while the pound buys about $2.56. The euro and pound were almost at a identical value when we were in the UK in January and raises the question of why this remains the only EU country not to utilise the euro for general use. It’s not as though the pound has any great intrinsic or nationalistic value, even the French have given way and abandoned the franc.
One Omanian Rial, made up of 1,000 paisas, currently converts to $NZ4.38 (try calculating that in your head while haggling over the purchase of a Khangar, or traditional dagger, at Muscat’s Mutrah market), while the Egyptian pound is worth about NZ30 cents. One Thai baht is worth about five New Zealand cents, so twenty of them to the dollar makes for an easy mental conversion; the Singapore dollar slightly more awkward, each one worth $NZ1.15.
We described working our way through seven and a half different currencies, the half being Australia which doesn’t really count as, although passing through Sydney twice as we’ve zig-zagged our way between countries, we have only been there in transit. There, our exchange rate had to take into account the scandalous prices imposed by airport retailers, akin to being captured and held to ransom as café proprietors charge prices which make those on the Champs Elyse in Paris look modest – which might be alright if the ambience was the same.
Within days we expect not to worry about exchange rates and comparisons. Kaelene has invested in a winning British Lotto ticket and we expect that this investment, at one pound a line, will pay handsome dividends.