Turkey, May 4, 1998
Turkish Lira Fun
You think you can add fast? Try math with seven zeros on each number!
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The Turks have a crazy money system, even crazier than Russia's
New Money. See, there
are 240,000 lira to the US dollar, and falling fast. So many zeros
make it hard to figure out what your paying for stuff. The sign might
say 1,000, but is that four thousand, four hundred thousand, or four million?
And what do you pay with? The bill with 1,000 on it, or the coin with
10 on it? To top it off, they love to give change in the smallest bills
possible, making it hard to figure what you paid.
In all this confusion, the Turks helped themselves to a bit of our money. I am still not sure if I paid two dollars, or twenty dollars, for a ice cream, and I know we paid ten bucks for a four dollar taxi ride. It made me quite mad until I stopped and looked around. What's a taxi driver in Istanbul got on me? Nutitn' but a chuck of bad karma coming his way.
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