BBQ stories - read the price at a restaurant...carefully

Time for another story that I often tell at BBQs - mostly when the conversation turns to restaurants and expensive meals.

When we were living in Krygyzstan in 1999 Chris and I gave ourselves a budget of about $30 a week for food - which was entirely sensible considering the markets were really cheap, and you could have a meal out at a cafe for about $2 for a drink and noodle soup.

So some American friends we had made invited me out to lunch at the new sushi place in town.  I got really excited to come, as we had been living there for about five months, and I had no had sushi for a while.  So I took 40 som with me (about $4 at the time), ready to have lunch with my friends (Chris couldn't come for some reason....maybe this story would have turned out better with his eye for detail..).  Funnily enough three were no locals at this restaurant, but we put this down to Krygyz possibly not knowing about how yummy susih was yet.

When we looked at the menu it had a whole range of delicious options, set out like this:
Little bit of Sushi                  30
More sushi                           50
Platter of sushi                     100

No monetary symbols next to the prices.  I assumed the prices were in som.  We ordered a platter of sushi between three of us, and gobbled it up.

In going to pay the bill it was discovered the prices were in American dollars.  I had just spent our whole month's food budget on one third of a platter of (not very good) sushi.  And I only had $2 cash on me.

Fortunately my American friends were walking around with wads of cash (?!) and were able to pay, and I had to shrink back home, find our emergency American dollar cash, and pay them back.  Embarrassing.

But I learnt my lesson.

Always take Chris and his budgety nose for detail out for lunch.