Refractory Road

Laos has caused us some initial money-math turmoil. The country’s own currency is the kip, but people also accept the US dollar and the Thai baht. This makes for some interesting math, given that as I write the published exchange rate is…

$1 US = 8033 Kip = 30 Baht

1 Baht = 264 Kip

Folks simplify this to a degree as $1 US = 30 baht = 8000 kip; and 1 baht = 260 kip.

This, however, is the math of the more scrupulous folks. Those that have you over a barrel- like the people running the slow boat on the Mekong – calculate things as 20 baht = 500 kip, which causes you to lose five cents on the dollar. Yeah, it doesn’t seem like much, unless I told you that your bank was charging a five percent international transaction fee. Now, that would probably get your attention.

I have read in travel books several recommendations to use baht in Laos. I can’t see the merit in that recommendation so far. Things get quoted in kip from the start, and any baht translation is probably going to be to your loss. Consequently, I am drawing kip from ATMs now, and exchanging my baht for kip, and doing everything in the currency of Laos.

Doing math in thousands is a bit mind-bending, even after adjusting to doing math in hundreds in Thailand. We got used to certain yardsticks in Thailand: a dinner over 300 baht is expensive, a motorbike should run 150-200 baht a day, a room over 1,000 baht is pricey. Now, we are having to create new yardsticks for Laos, and a dinner costing 60,000 of anything sounds insanely expensive (even if that amount in kip translates to $7.50 US).

Jen made my brain hurt less by pointing out that 10,000 kip translates to $1.25 US. (10,000 kip notes are a staple, and 10,000 kip is the standard charge for a large BeerLao. So, beer math meets money math, which works well for me.)

Even armed with that mathematical simplification, I spent about thirty minutes with a hotel clerk and a calculator working the translation of dollars to kip to baht before we saw eye-to-eye, so it still ain’t easy.

By the way, the room cost us two cases of beer a night.