The Only Thing That Counts Is Me

Money Madness

I haven't been posting much in the last 2 months or so because I've been travelling a lot. Most of it is either boring work related stuff which I shouldn't tell you about or really cutting edge highly sensitive work related stuff which I shouldn't tell you about.

But what I can tell you about is my recent trip to Macau / Zhuhai for gaming & golf. Most of that trip is boring golf related stuff which I shouldn't tell you about but the one thing I do want to tell you about is the strange currency shenanigans that go on in the Pearl River Delta.

The Pearl River Delta consists of 3 territories with their own currencies. The first one is Macau. The official currency of Macau is the Pataca. Actually, "pataca" is just the Portuguese word for peso (which strangely enough is the Spanish word for weight, not currency) and since Macau isn't Portugal, the correct word for the Macau currency is the Macanese Pataca and it looks like this.

Since Macau is a tiny settlement with a negligible economy, the Pataca is not commonly traded outside of Macau. The Macanese Government knows this so they wisely peg the Pataca at a practically 1 for 1 value to the Hong Kong dollar (Hong Kong being the second territory in the Pearl River Delta). This means that the Hong Kong dollar ("HKD") is freely useable in Macau and anyone travelling to Macau usually brings HKD with them instead of Pataca.

The third territory in the Pearl River Delta is of course China. The Chinese currency is the Renminbi ("RMB") which is also known as the "yuan". I don't know why they have 2 names but as far as I know, neither word in Chinese means weight so that's not the confusing part about it. Whether intentionally or not, RMB is also at a practically 1 for 1 value to HKD.

Having all 3 currencies at the same value makes perfect sense since you can easily travel between Macau, Hong Kong and China (Shenzhen or Zhuhai) within an hour's ferry ride. What would also make sense is if the 3 currencies which are at the same value are freely convertible. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

In my recent experience, the Sands and Wynn casinos in Macau deal exclusively in HKD. They are in Macau but they accept only HKD and they pay out only in HKD. Maybe they accept Patacas but I never saw anyone trading Pataca for chips. And they definitely do not accept RMB. I've heard it's because it's much easier to counterfeit RMB but maybe it's also partly because they don't trust Beijing's monetary and exchange rate policy. Anyway, that's the first strange thing about currency in the Pearl River Delta.

The second strange thing is denominations. Let's say you win 13,000 at Sands Casino (which I was lucky enough to do once). When you cash out, they pay you 13 one thousand dollar HKD notes. If they paid out in RMB, you'd be given 130 one hundred dollar RMB notes. One hundred is the largest denomination note in RMB. That's about US$12.80. Can you imagine if the largest denomination note in the U.S. was $12.80? And the smallest RMB note? I don't know but at a restaurant in Chong San, they gave me a 0.5 RMB note. That's about 6 cents (USD), in the form of notes, not coins.

All of that kind of reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's explanation of Galactic Currency:
"There are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altarian Dollar has resently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeble for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change."

Don't be surprised if you walk into the Pearl River Delta with a few large HKD notes and walk out with lots of small RMB notes and a few infrequently exchangeable Patacas. Oh, and perhaps some Altarian dollars, Flainian Pobble Beads and a Ningi.