Some (Possibly Not Very Interesting) Observations on Money

Traveling, you need to relearn how the money works in each place that you go.  Part of this is just making sure that you can pay for stuff and that you're not walking around with gobs and gobs of local currency, and the other part is trying to do the calculation to dollars to see how much this is actually costing you.


In the US, paper money is king; change has value, but in most ways it's best collected and changed to paper money. If you have a lot of change in your pocket, it's likely that at most you're going to have several dollars. In Japan, Hong Kong and Korea on the other hand, bills start at the (equivalent) 10 dollar denomination with 5 and 1 dollar equivalents being minted as coins. (In Hong Kong there is also a ten dollar coin, but money in Hong Kong seems designed from the ground up to confuse you – more on that in a minute.) You can have quite a bit of money in your pocket in just change.


The real weirdness about money in Hong Kong is that it is issued by at least three separate banks – none being an official government entity – and each bank has a different design for the notes. So a ten HK dollar note can look three totally different ways (same for the other larger notes).