For me two of the hardest things about spending uang (money) in Indonesia are getting use to everything being priced in the thousands and trying to convert the price to dollars in my head.
Luckily I have a currency converter on my phone that I can use to help with the conversions. By using this converter I can tell you that at this very moment $1 = 9,190 rupiah. This may sound like a lot but as you can see the bills start at 1000 rupiah. Basically if something here were to cost 10,000 rupiah, you could figure that it essentially cost a little more than a dollar. Let me give you an example by using a mango. If you went to the pasar (market) to buy some mangoes then you would pay about 7000 rupiah per kilogram of mangos. (I can see you trying to figure out the conversions for rupiah to dollars and kilograms to pounds in your head to figure out the $/lb.) These are the kinds of math problems we get to work out in our heads everyday. Unfortunately we end up holding the lines up to check out sometimes while we team up to do the math.
Let me give you one more math problem to work out. There is a place called The Bizztro that is close enough for Jennifer and I to walk to and grab a bite to eat sometimes. Normally before we leave we have the conversation of how much uang (money) we should take. So let's say we decide to take 100,000 rupiah. We get to The Bizztro and order a plate of nasi goreng (fried rice) for about 27,000 and a plate of miefumie (a noodle dish) for about 23,000. Then the waitress asks what we want to drink, so I order es teh (iced tea) and Jennifer gets kopi (coffee) both of which may cost around 17,000. I could tell you the total and how much we would have to pay in rupiah and what that converts to in dollars, but if you were actually here there is a good chance that you would have to do that on your own to make sure you aren't getting ripped off. So have fun figuring out how much lunch was!
As you can see, the converting and the speaking of prices in terms of thousands can easily throw you off if you aren't paying attention, but then to add the icing on the cake you are using the "Monopoly money" pictured above to pay. If you quit paying attention once you have figured out the total and done the conversions (if desired), then you could still easily mix up the bills when it comes time to pay. The easiest to mix up are the 100,000 and the 10,000. Notice above how similar they look. OK... so they do look a little different but after you have just burnt up half your brain cells trying to communicate in a new language, figure up the total, and covert the amount you need to pay... they can look very similar. So you can't let your brain relax until the transaction is completely finished. If you went to the pasar and bought 1kg of mangoes at 7000 rupiah per kilo and you paid with a 100,000 rupiah bill, instead of a 10,000 rupiah bill, they may or may not give you change back if you aren't paying attention even though you just over paid by about 93,000 rupiah (which is about $9)- Bottom Line: Pay Attention.
So that has been our experience in trying to buy and pay for things in Indonesia, but what about the Indonesians? What is it like for them?
I recently asked a teman orang Indonesia (Indonesian friend) about what kinds of things Indonesians spend their uang on. He said the older people who are taking care of their families will spend money on the daily essentials, and the younger kids will spend their uang on playing games and buying a new cell phone if they can afford it. This isn't much diffferent than in the States, the parents are grocery shopping while the kids are wanting the latest phone or game on the market. The big difference between buying things here and buying things in the States though is things may not be quite as nice,quite as clean, or quite as fresh (they may have even expired two years ago). But then this is Indonesia and pretty much everything is beautiful, even the fruit in the pasar that is being sliced with the same knife and on the same cutting board that was used to cut the head off a chicken the stroke before.
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