It never fails – every time I’m in a taxi, the final fare happens to be either 45 baht, or 65 baht (or something very close to these).  You can either fumble with a fistful of 20’s – if you have enough – or give the driver 100 baht note, which are plentiful.  If you’re lucky, you’ll get the correct change back (sometimes a fistful of coins), but quite often, you’ll get a grinning driver who tells you ‘Sorry, no have change.’  As you dig in your pocket for more, tuk-tuks and taxis are honking behind you and motorbikes are whizzing by your door – it’s just a crap scenario to be in.  This is all usually avoidable if you have a 50 baht note (sometimes you need a 20 to bolster the final tally), but they’re not as common as you’d think!  That’s why, in Thailand, the 50 baht note is one of my all-time underrated things.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they were discontinued in 2004, but they’re not often seen.  In fact, whenever I get one, I stash it in an alternate pocket in my wallet – perfect for those times when you need something more than 40, but less than 100.  It may seem like a trivial, silly thing, but it often really speeds a payment up.  They’re also one of the small number of notes around the world that are plastic, something that the Australians figured out.  They last a lot longer than the ol’ paper money (actually mostly cotton) that’s the standard, and are much harder to counterfeit.  All hail the ‘fiddy’ baht!

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