Oreoconomics

I’m here to tell ya, if you didn’t figure it out in 7th grade, that math can be difficult, time consuming, and outright annoying. Know what else is great fun? Figuring out exchange rates during the first two hours in a new country, that’s what. Finances get weird at border crossings:   83.47 Nepali rupee to the US dollar, 30.6 Thai baht to the dollar, 7,956 Laotian kip to the dollar, 260 kip to a baht (which can be used in Laos), 4,000 Cambodian riel to the dollar, 130.7 riel to the baht (also used in Cambodia), 1.9 kip to the riel (used in Cambodia), 9, 876 Indonesian rupiah to the dollar.. You get the picture. Things get weird. It’s hard to sense how much food, lodging, transport should cost when you arrive in a new region. Alas, I have a system! It’d sure be nice to have an idea of the local economy when starting to pay for food, taxis, beer, and emergency snacks when we get to a new place. What’s an emergency snack, you ask? Emergency snacks get Hill and I through the long, steamy, Asian nights. The portions over here are relatively miniscule and  because of all the simple carbs we eat in the rice dishes, dinner burns out far before breakfast is ready, so in this metabolic emergency.. I wake absolutely Godzilla-style ravenous by 4AM and cannot go back to sleep.. “Eat dinner later”, you say. Simple right? Well no. We stayed in some pretty quiet areas of Thailand where stuff closed around 9pm, Laos had a nationwide curfew (Communists for ya), and stuff in Cambodia closed down early just for the fun of it.  Our solution is to buy snacks at the mini-marts. My go-to is the Oreo. You can count on the Oreo. The Oreo is omnipresent. The Oreo recipe doesn’t change dependent on region (Coke, Chips Ahoy, Sprite, Pringles.. These all get messed with in Asia). The Oreo single sleeve package is a standard 137g everywhere. It’s reliable. Therefore, not only will it save me from a hypoglycemic toddler-style meltdown in the wee hours of the morning, the Oreo will also give me insight into how far my dollar will go in a certain area.



I’ve dubbed them the great International Economic Equalizer: Oreos.  

 I can determine the strength of a local tourist economy by the price of the ever-present single-sleeve Oreo pack. Oreos have been the only standardized food item throughout our travels. The portion sizes have been uniform. You cannot really judge how much beer should cost because the quality changes much in different regions. Fruits costs vary based on transport efficiency in different regions. Oreos stay the same, always. They are a good predictor of how much things will cost in a given area. Oreo is my go-to emergency snack. Nepal: 30c  Thailand: $1  Laos: 50c  Cambodia: 50c  Indonesia: 75c…

Pretty sure we could just go ahead and fix this whole Fiscal Cliff thing with Oreoconomics.   Eurocrisis? Gimme a week, I’ll smooth it out with some Oreos. No Big.