Familiarity with currency is always a dead give away in terms of how long you have been in a country. I think it grows on you in stages – the fastest step is familiarity with the notes, with the trickiest ones being those that are the “wrong” colour for their denomination. In Malaysia the currency colours go from blue, through green, then red/ orange, yellow/orange a greener blue and magenta. This is complicated by the fact that they are changing the currency and while the blue of a new 1MYR is distinctly different from the 50MYR the same can not be said of the old one (I have a feeling I gave a taxi driver a very generous tip one day!)
Coinage is trickier – it is only when you are figuring it out in another country that you become aware of how much your management of coin is based on touch, not sight. I unconsciously know what the weight of a NZ 50c feels like versus a twenty or a ten, so any visual check is a confirmation of the selection rather than a requirement to determine the value. And the size and shape tells us the value far more than the number on the coin. I am convinced that having to look at a coin to see what the number is the moment when the locals think ” aha – a newbie”
In Malaysia it is made more complicated by the currency transition for coinage – the new 50 and 20 sen are gold and not dissimilar in size and weight to a NZ 50c and 20c. The old ones are silver and bigger, as in the old 2o is about the size of the new 50. Fortunately this change is also frustrating the locals in much the same way as the New Zealand change (was in 10 years ago) did. This means that I don’t get to feel quite such an idiot when I am working it out. And after 6 weeks I am getting to the familiarity level that suggests I know what I’m doing.
Quite apart from the issue of currency recognition is the stages you go through when you assess price. The first few weeks there is a constant mental math exercise going on and for larger items, referencing of the currency conversion app to convert into New Zealand dollars (or the currency most familiar to you – AUD, British Pounds and Euros are the more common here). I have noticed over the last couple of weeks though that for familiar things, particularly groceries I have stopped doing that and just assess the price in MYR. At the back of my mind there is still a rule of thumb e.g a 50 MYR is in the range of 20 NZ so I can do a quick mental review that 300 MYR at the supermarket is about 110-120 but even that is fading. I can see that it wont be long before I assess how much I have spent in Malaysian terms.
The exception being the Jimmy Choo boots I fell in love with – in that case the currency conversion app comes out to try and prove that MYR5000 converts into a perfectly acceptable NZD figure (it doesn’t 🙁 )