Denominations of the Dirham: I’m a Fan
January 23rd, 2008, No Comments »
At the moment, CAN $1 = MAD 7.53. In my experience, very few things are less than one dirham (about 12 Canadian cents). In coins, I’ve seen a half-dirham (it literally has a 1/2 symbol on it), one dirham, five dirham and ten dirham denominations. In bills, there’s a 20, 50, 100, 200 and so forth.
Practically speaking, there are no cents or centimes or santimat. Unlike most other countries I’ve visited, there are no ones and hundreds–it’s just hundreds. On the other hand, you’re not working in absurdly large quantities, as in, say, Zimbabwe or Italy before the Euro. The worst conversion experience I’ve had is Hungary, where one Canadian dollar equaled 175 forints. Try making that calculation on the fly.
Transactions are easy in Morocco. It’s just one number, and it’s almost always below 500. This is a real boon to my incredibly crap French, handy when you have to negotiate the price of many purchases over, say, 10 bucks Canadian.