History of the Baht vs USD

[f0xxee]

Here's a little something for the number crunchers...

The Thai baht/US exchange rate going back to 1981.

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/dat...ny/day-fxth2us

Worst case: 1981: when it was apparently fixed (I'm guessing so dont shoot me people who know about finance) at 20.661 B to the USD.

Best Case: January 1998 when it was 54.3 B to the USD.

Until the Asian Tiger collapse it was pretty strong at 24 to 26 baht to the dollar. Post 1998 it seems the average was around 38-40baht to the dollar until the current world financial crisis.

Here;s hoping it returns to these levels sooner rather than later, and not to pre-1998 levels!

[JaiDee]

My first-ever trip to The Kingdom was just after the financial meltdown.....I never saw that 54 personally, but I got there when we could get about 46 baht to the dollar; it dropped to 43 and 42 soon afterward and then fluctuated wildly for years after that as your chart shows.

But it never really FELT like it was down; as long as it hung around 40 or the high 30's we yanks were happy....these days we are lucky to get 32 or 33 and may even go lower, who knows. Still cheap for all of us westerners to live in Thailand, but damn would it be nice to have that extra 10 baht per dollar that we used to have. For Brits; 20 or 30 baht!!

[Lefty]

If the Thais realize we are getting say 38-40 again, if we ever do, do you think they will adjust prices upward because of our extra buying power? Or do the Thai merchants not really pay attention to what we get for exchange because all of it seems a lot to them?

[whore]

On my first trips to Thailand, I used to bring 1100euro in cash just to get a nice round figure of 50k. I think it was around 49/48 at that time. That same amount of euro will get my 40k now. Yikes.

I never used to pay much attention to the exchange rates until now. A trip to Los is running at 20% more than it used to with it just under 40baht to 1euro.

But with every cloud there is a silver lining. That 20% or running off the figures above, lets say 250euro, can be recouped on cheaper flights and hotel deals easily. With the trouble in Thailand, the poor exchange rates and it being low season also, there is some great deals to be had.

[Master Bator]

add to that an inflation of at least 10% per year....

If Thailand should want to recover they have to devaluate the Baht and have a period of deflation.
Even then it may take a very very long time.

[Torurot]

Now some of you UK/US get to experience what some of us with lessor $$$ have always had. Fuck all Baht to our $$$/Peso. Less talk of "cheap Charlie" now?

[Ivor Biggun]

Yeah but are you taking in to account the differences between your home currency and the USD/GBP. I doubt it has been on a par with them so it's still relative