Can some UK people help me?
I am aware that £1 is NT$60, but I am looking for local level prices and not trhe excange rate,
for example, £1 = 1.46 Euro, but the people in Europe regard 1euro as we would £1. Therefore what do the Taiwanese treat as we treat £1? Is it NT$100?
So, if I bought something for NT$480, it would be like spending £4.80 back home! Is that correct?!
Hope you can help!
the local people treat £1 like nt60. if you bought something for nt480, it would be like spending 8 pounds back home.
I don’t hiink you’re right. I believe the OP means there is a certain amount that people in a country think of as a unit that has an emotional meaning. For an American it’s 1 dollar; for a Canadian it’s 1 dollar too, not the exact equivalent in the exchange rate on any given day.
In Taiwan, for me, it was 100nt. Too bad, because that’s worth more really than the loonie I consider basic back home. But I treat it the same - if something costs less than a loonie, or less than 100nt, I don’t care - it’s nothing. If we’re dividing up a bill and it’s 100nt or a loonie more or less one way, I don’t care.
When I first arrived in TW, £1 was around 50NT$. That rate has been deeply lodged in my head ever since, irrespective of the actual exchange rate. So, for me a 100NT$ Happy Hour beer is 2 quid and will always be 2 fecking quid. 
I still think of NT$1000 as being US$40, even though it’s more like US$30.
Me too. Gold shiny coins = a pound. Those brown NT$500s are a tenner, the blue things twenty quid. I just have to switch off the automatic currency converter in my head when drinking in Taipei.
Me too. Gold shiny coins = a pound. Those brown NT$500s are a tenner, the blue things twenty quid. I just have to switch off the automatic currency converter in my head when drinking in Taipei.[/quote]
ditto. It makes life seem cheaper here, so long as i ignore what my salary converts to in pounds I’m happy.
Me too. Gold shiny coins = a pound. Those brown NT$500s are a tenner, the blue things twenty quid. I just have to switch off the automatic currency converter in my head when drinking in Taipei.[/quote]
ditto. It makes life seem cheaper here, so long as i ignore what my salary converts to in pounds I’m happy.[/quote]
Really? Doesn’t it make life here seem more expensive? I mean, NT$500 is actually eight quid at todays exchange rate, but I still think of it as ten.
Dollars are like pence here. So I always imagine a dollar to be roughly 2 pence although it isn’t.
I treat 100NT like I treat 1 pound.
It’s wierd in Taiwan, because they don’t have cents anymore. They just have dollars. Unfortunately, 1,000 dollars can’t buy you airfare and 3 nights in Rio de Janeiro, but it can get you 4 tickets to the cinema.
[quote=“vallillo1983”]Can some UK people help me?
I am aware that £1 is NT$60, but I am looking for local level prices and not trhe excange rate,
for example, £1 = 1.46 Euro, but the people in Europe regard 1euro as we would £1. Therefore what do the Taiwanese treat as we treat £1? Is it NT$100?
So, if I bought something for NT$480, it would be like spending £4.80 back home! Is that correct?!
Hope you can help![/quote]
What a strange question. Why do you need UKanians to help you? Surely the question is as relevant for Americanos and Canuckistanis, although it may be a bit complex for them. Even the Kiwis have made the transition to a money economy these days.
Why not think in terms of some more concrete thing than a construct like money? I mean, a ‘pound’ is just a note from the Bank of England promising to pay you ‘one pound’. What the hell is that?* (OK, it’s a coin these days, but you get the idea.)
The concept of the mars bar as a unit of currency has been around for a long time. Perhaps the local equivelant would be the pig’s-blood-on-a-stick thingy? The chou dofu dollar?
Personally I think of stuff in terms of how long I have to work to pay for it. Does it take longer to pay for this meal than it does to eat it? I think there was some kind of MacDonald’s index somewhere about that.
- ‘One pound’ refers to one imperial pound, 16 ounces, of sterling silver. Sadly, the days when you could knock on the doors at Threadneedle Street and ask them to trade your notes for ingots are long gone.
I don’t hiink you’re right. I believe the OP means there is a certain amount that people in a country think of as a unit that has an emotional meaning. For an American it’s 1 dollar; for a Canadian it’s 1 dollar too, not the exact equivalent in the exchange rate on any given day.
In Taiwan, for me, it was 100nt. Too bad, because that’s worth more really than the loonie I consider basic back home. But I treat it the same - if something costs less than a loonie, or less than 100nt, I don’t care - it’s nothing. If we’re dividing up a bill and it’s 100nt or a loonie more or less one way, I don’t care.[/quote]
I agree. If I have 1 pounds fifty in London I wouldn’t find much to eat, whereas in Taipei I can get a slap up meal in a local reataurant. Likewise if I wanted to put some fuel in my vehicle I could get twice as much in in Taiwan than I could in England with the same money’s worth. If I wanted to smoke, I could purchase more than two packets worth of smokes in Taiwan with 100nt, yet I wouldn’t have enough for one pack in England if I exchanged that money to pounds.
Next year I will be able to purchase a Honda Civic in Taiwan that is made in England, exported all the way out here and it will cost me 11,824.16 GBP in Taiwan or about 740,000.00 TWD. I don’t think for an instant that as far as living expenses go it is anywhere near the same cost here as the const in Britain. Property is expensive here in Taipei though and I specify Taipei as the surrounding area is dirt cheap compaired to Britain. Taipei is non compairable to Britain because of its remarkable topography which limits the space for construction and so raises the value of each property. The majority of housing is not located in Taipei however and so the prices in Taipei should not stand as an average idea of property value.
[quote=“vallillo1983”]Can some UK people help me?
I am aware that £1 is NT$60, but I am looking for local level prices and not trhe excange rate,
for example, £1 = 1.46 Euro, but the people in Europe regard 1euro as we would £1. Therefore what do the Taiwanese treat as we treat £1? Is it NT$100?
So, if I bought something for NT$480, it would be like spending £4.80 back home! Is that correct?!
Hope you can help![/quote]
If you bought something for NT$600, it would be spending £10
But if you’d bought it in the UK, it’d probably cost more. So if the cost of living is roughly twice the cost of living in Taiwan, you’d have to have spent £20 for the same thing.
So spending NT$30 here will buy you about the same as what you’ll get spending £1 in a place where living costs are twice as high.