Money money

A couple days ago, I was opening a bank account and was told that if i deposit Rp 1,000,000 into my acct (pictured below) I would get a free gift! So of course I went over to the nearest ATM and took out a bundle of money and deposited it to the new acct right away :D

This is about US$100 in rupiah, the currency of Indonesia. Isn’t it nuts how something that can be represented with just one bill in the US requires at least 10 bills here? (our biggest bill is Rp 100,000)

A bit of Indonesian history: As far as I can recall, Rupiah wasn’t always this weak against USD. it wasn’t until the huge asian financial crisis back in 1997 that the value of US dollar literally quintupled against Rupiah, as it did to many other currencies as well. I believe before the crisis, the exchange rate for US$1 was Rp 2,000 – 3,000. Immediately after the crisis (1998-1999) the rate became Rp 12,000 – 16,000 for US$1… so you can just imagine how CRAZY it was for us. Anyway, Rupiah never really recovered from the crisis… even now, 11 years later. I believe the lowest exchange rate was only around Rp 8,000 per USD, which was back in 2008. In fact, right now it is back at around Rp 11,400 due to the recession.

Welcome to Indonesia, where things aren’t as nice and dandy as it is in the states

(… but still a million times better than Zimbabwe)