As you know, I'm currently living in Bali. I went out the other day for lunch and ended up spending > 400,000 rupiah for wine, 2 appetizers and 2 main dishes. Rather than paying with a debit card, we decided to pay with cash and I just had to show you the ridiculousness of it all.
Ok, so the title is a bit click-baity and 400,000 Indonesia Rupiah is only worth ~ $28 USD, but that doesn't sound as good, does it?
Check this out. Also, we get a 10% discount for being members of the co-working space next door called Hubud. Hey and check out the chick on the front page of the co-working website! That's @crypthoe, my g/f and co-founder of @SteemSmarter!! She was w/ me for this meal.
Here's our bill. The wine here is actually pretty affordable.
Here's the bill w/ the cash beside it.
It's so many bills that you could fan yourself off with it if you really wanted to.
All the cash spread out on the table for a final count. Most of these bills are <10,000 which means they are worth at most $0.70 USD and the 2000 bill being worth just $0.14. What a joke. If I was the Indonesian government, I'd be embarrassed and embrace crypto as soon as possible. Too bad they've done the opposite and denounced it.
Of course our waitress had to come and count it all in front of us. Not my definition of market efficiency.
Btw, our rent is 25M (25,000,000) each month and this is what that looks like. Here we are paying our landlord. Even more annoying is that a lot of ATMs only allow you to pull out 1M/day which is ~$70 USD. The ATMs at the banks allow 3M/day and we have to pay $25M/month in rent. Again, gov's money is annoying and dirty.
Get this, even tho it's 25M IDR (Rupiah) for our rent, that's only 0.154 BTC/month. That's the difference b/t Free Market vs gov money. Long live FREEDOM!
You can use this page to convert back and forth to see how many Rupiah your lunch was today.
http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=USD&To=IDR
tl;dr
The government's money sucks. It continues to get more and more worthless. It's annoying to use, is dirty and full of feces. It's an inefficiency that the Free Market will not tolerate for much longer since we now have cryptocurrencies!
In Liberty,
Ashe
400000 rupiah is nothing... try getting a tattoo in Ubud (Yan Tino, the dude's amazing)... I had to pay 6.5 million Rupiah for my giant octopus, which required 3 trips to the ATM and on the last trip the damn machine ate my card. The stack of cash made me feel like Scarface.
oh, 400,000 Indonesia Rupiah equal to 400,000 Indonesia Rupiah why the currency too low as compared to Malaysia your neighborhood country !
the currency value too low as we compare to dollar too!
I'm am fascinated and amused by the loads of cash you paid at the resto. I'm even more amused to know you have to pay 25M each month and the banks don't allow you to withdraw more than 3M for the day. That's ridiculous!
By the way: cheap wine, but very expensive rent! Are you renting a house? An apartment? What does it cover? Is that rent rate common in Bali? I am curious to know..
Wine here is terrible. Highly taxed so they import grapes and make wine here. A $10 bottle from Australia costs >$40 usually. + Bali is magical @ashe-oro ;)
Terrible in terms of the taste and/or the price? Because here in my place, if I convert it to Israeli shekels, that's just around 28 shekels or 8 USD. And that's really cheap.
Terrible in taste and price. $10USD buying a bottle in Australia is $40USD equivalent buying in Bali on average.
Oh I see 😄
Bali is expensive to rent. There are too many ppl here "looking for their purpose" and are tired of their home country and think that Bali is magical for some reason. It doesn't rly resonate with me here. Also, we share the the rent with another couple. We have two, 2-bedroom apartments which share a common yard and pool.
Wow. Sounds like they're headed the way of the Zimbabwean dollar. That's a shame, but it makes it easier for us to take over the world, right? :)
"Ok, so the title is a bit click-baity and 400,000 Indonesia Rupiah is only worth ~ $28 USD, but that doesn't sound as good, does it?"
Gotta admit, my first thought was "400k WHAT!? That's a lot of wampum! Who needs a lambo when you're spending half a million on lunch?" But $28 is much more reasonable lol
Hehehe mehn this is hilarious , just when I thought my countrys currency was shit. I think I am better. So it means that to pay for a month house rent, you would need to go to the bank about 25 times in a month. That's ridiculous mehn
How do they pay for car? I hope its not with cash. I come from a country where our money is losing value but 400,000 in naira is over a thousand dollars, so its still fair but not so good
Lol ...when i saw the pile of money i thought you as if you are going to buy the hotel...😀
To spend in Indonesia maybe you need to carry with you maybe a bag full of cash... 28 dollars to 4000000 ripiyah wish there currency starts increasing its value. Otherwise start searching for a perfect bag.
damn are you serious what did you guys had
😂😂😂😂😂can't stop laughing. Your recommendation for their government to embrace Crypto is nicely put.
@eurogee
Awesome post! It's really crazy what a difference one bill is and what one item is worth among the different countries. I made my first million dollar in Vietnam (which is about $150 :D).
In Vietnam, both man and woman have fat Dong in pants.
These people could at least introduce high value bank notes. Idiots. I hope the inflation isn't too high.
PS: Just checked the inflation. It's 3.18 % not too terrible compared to other countries. Their taxes seem a little too high. https://tradingeconomics.com/indonesia/indicators
wow so many bills considering how much it cost! haha yes they need to get on the crypto train asap! LOL
wow thats really great. salute you man. carry on & best wishes for your future.
nices posts
Be happy your traveling. God bless you.
so much for that hundreds and thousands that only worth less . thanks @ashe-oro now i have an idea that i cannot put these in my handy wallet as it will just burst out. Regarding to your last post about your LVA's, what do they specifically do or what are their daily tasks ? I'm from the Philippines too !