Just the other day, I found an American dime in my pocket–No idea how that got there–and I had to stare at it for a moment or two, before I could place the country! That made me laugh, until I realized that we have seen ten countries’ currencies to date. That could explain the delay in recall of my own country’s coins.

It got me to thinking about all the different types of money, coins vs bills, cents vs dollars and the buying power of the USD. It’s great in some places (think Malaysia, Thailand) and not so great in other places (think England, Australia.) It’s also been interesting to  learn fun facts about currencies around the world.

For example:

  • Thailand uses the Baht (33.3 Baht=1 USD.) All prices are in Baht. There is no decimal placement, ie no “cents” in Thai currency.
  • Malaysia uses the Malaysia Ringt (3.3 MR = 1 USD). The rate of currency in Thailand and Malaysia never fluctuates vs the USD.
  • England uses the Pound Sterling, which even when “weaker” than it used to be, still kicks the USD’s butt :( (1 GBP = 1.6 USD)
  • The majority of the rest of the European countries use the Euro (1 Euro = 1.4 USD.)
  • Argentina uses the Argentine Peso (1 peso = 0.25 USD) The symbol is similar to the USD symbol $, thus forever confusing tourists as to the actual price of an item. If you ask if the price listed is USD, it most likely will be.
  • Chile also uses the peso, but you need over 100 of them before you can even get on the USD map. 100 Chilean pesos = 0.20 USD, so most prices were in the high hundreds and low thousands, thus creating the need for lots of bills. If I remember correctly, they didn’t have any coins under a ten piece, or something like that.
  • In Bolivia, they broke from the “peso” tradition and use a “Boliviano”, not to be confused with a “Bolivian”, a person from Bolivia. 1 Boliviano = 0.15 USD.
  • Peru also went out on a limb and calls their currency “sol” or “soles.”  1 Sol = about 3 USD. They don’t have any coins under the 100 centavo coin.  In 1991, Peru replaced their old currency, the Inti (also known as the Incan Sun God) with the Nuevo Sol due to hyperinflation and poor economics of the 80′s.
  • The dollar comes back in New Zealand and it’s almost on par with the USD. Right now, 1 NZ dollar will get you about .70, which may seem like American travelers in New Zealand, come out on top, but as the cost of living is higher, unfortunately the opposite it true.
  • And finally the Aussie dollar, right now trading at about 1 AUD to .88. What do I have to comment on this? Well, they don’t use any coins under 10 cents, so anything ending in 0-4 is rounded down and 5-9 is rounded up.