Finally I found something that isn’t right with the country. There’s no small change (moneda) – and it’s a big problem. Want to take a bus? If you don’t have 1.20 pesos (BTW that’s 20p a ride..) then you just can’t. Simple as that. If you want to buy a bit of fruit or some sweets or a cold drink from one of the millions of hole in the wall kiosks in the city and you don’t have any coins then tough. If you want to make a local phone call from one of the booths usually located in a kiosk and have no change that also is not possible.
I began to plan my purchases like a mathematician. If I buy a newspaper and a map with a 20 peso note then I’ll get 6 pesos change which will have to include a 1 peso coin – aha! Two pesos come in note form so 7 pesos change would be no good. And I started hoarding change – lots of locals told me that I had to get mean and always insist that I didn’t have any even if I did. Even in the supermarket I was either given more change – in paper form - than I should have had or not enough. Would you like to donate the excess? is what you’re asked by the weary cashiers. As for beggars or buskers asking for a donation – no chance mate.
I couldn’t believe it. These people – the lollipop sellers, the kiosk owners, the phone booth managers - must be losing money hand over fist. Why didn’t they make a fuss? Why doesn’t the government make more change? Where is all the change anyway? Aside from in bus ticket machines.
There are tonnes of theories. Someone told me that the coins are worth more melted down so people are stock-piling and selling them to scrap yards. Another that it’s become a lucrative business, flogging desperately needed change, so that it’s been deliberately taken out of circulation. I once saw a couple of guys by the long queue for buses wearing holsters (very apt: this is war) with neat piles of coins stacked into slots. I wonder if they were in the change business. The cleaner in my hotel said that in her barrio you got 8 pesos change and a couple of sweets for a 10 peso note. In some places shop-keepers have started issuing vouchers as change. Clever fellas. Something is going to have to give – even the banks will only give customers 5 pesos worth of change each. Madness but entertaining in an exasperating kind of way.
I began to plan my purchases like a mathematician. If I buy a newspaper and a map with a 20 peso note then I’ll get 6 pesos change which will have to include a 1 peso coin – aha! Two pesos come in note form so 7 pesos change would be no good. And I started hoarding change – lots of locals told me that I had to get mean and always insist that I didn’t have any even if I did. Even in the supermarket I was either given more change – in paper form - than I should have had or not enough. Would you like to donate the excess? is what you’re asked by the weary cashiers. As for beggars or buskers asking for a donation – no chance mate.
I couldn’t believe it. These people – the lollipop sellers, the kiosk owners, the phone booth managers - must be losing money hand over fist. Why didn’t they make a fuss? Why doesn’t the government make more change? Where is all the change anyway? Aside from in bus ticket machines.
There are tonnes of theories. Someone told me that the coins are worth more melted down so people are stock-piling and selling them to scrap yards. Another that it’s become a lucrative business, flogging desperately needed change, so that it’s been deliberately taken out of circulation. I once saw a couple of guys by the long queue for buses wearing holsters (very apt: this is war) with neat piles of coins stacked into slots. I wonder if they were in the change business. The cleaner in my hotel said that in her barrio you got 8 pesos change and a couple of sweets for a 10 peso note. In some places shop-keepers have started issuing vouchers as change. Clever fellas. Something is going to have to give – even the banks will only give customers 5 pesos worth of change each. Madness but entertaining in an exasperating kind of way.
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