It’s officially my three-weeks’ mark here in Kathmandu. I have since discovered my favorite cheapest, closest, and delicious place for food, crossed streets with almost a blind eye confidently, and started to get more used to the noises and air quality here.
My one interesting and sort of funny realization has to deal with money conversion. I have gotten a lot more familiar with the currency exchange, and started to be very calculated with it. For instance, in deciding which yoga studio to attend to, I based my decision on a few things: pricing and location. The two yoga studios in consideration had similar classes and ideal locations. The price per class from each place isn’t too different; one charges Rs 700 per class, Rs 6500 for ten classes; the other charges Rs 500 per class, and Rs 4000 for ten. The differences in Rs 700 and Rs 500 is quite minimal, but when comparing Rs 6500 and Rs 4000 — the difference of Rs 2500 sounds a lot of money, since on an average day I spend less than Rs 500. For a mere Rs 160, I could get two items (vegetable momos and thukpa; Rs 80 each!) for dinner at my favorite eatery spot.
Naturally, Rs 2500 seems like a huge deal to me now. With my calculation, I can practically take five taxi rides to Boudhanath, or get 30 plates of momos, which is like a whole month’s worth of dinner; the calculated comparison goes on. Differences between the two individual yoga class aren’t that much either — a mere Rs 200; however, even Rs 50 sounds like a lot to me. Yet, if I were to compare Rs 2500 to US Dollars, it’s like 20 dollars, which, back home on the State side, doesn’t seem like an awful lot. My sense of money conversion seems both hilarious and amusing. I recalled the time, some 15 years ago, when I first moved to the US, I converted USD back to New Taiwanese Dollars (NTD), used it as a baseline, and found everything in the states to be extremely expensive. I have also experienced similar analogy in this, whilst traveling in other countries, though not as profound and hilarious as now here in Nepal, for an extended time.
P.S. Current goal: being able to NOT withdraw cash; let’s see how much I could my USD $340/Rs 38080 since my arrival in Kathmandu; both as a way to limit my spendings, and to not touch cash because of my slight germaphobia.
Rs 160 dinner; veg. Momos and thukpa
Rs. 150 lunch; home cooked meal (and I always get seconds)