As the years pass, memory gets a bit foggy. With exchange rates seeming to be ridiculously low these days (as in: they suck) I was trying to remember what the rate was back when I first started visiting Thailand. I could swear it was in the low 20s. But everything seemed so cheap then, that couldn’t be right. So I turned to Google and managed to find a list of dollar to baht exchange rates from 1981 to the present, based on cable transfers payable in foreign currencies. Okay, not the rate I’m gonna be getting on the streets of Bangkok, but close enough for government work. Uh, that’s because they are thanks to government work; these are historical rates published by the US Federal Reserve Bank.

And my memory isn’t as bad as I thought. Things did seem cheap back then, but sure enough, the rate of exchange was even worse then than it is now. The blame is to be laid at the high rates offered in the early 2000s; now those were the good old days! And wouldn’t it have been nice to have stocked up on baht in the beginning of 1998 when it was almost 53 baht to the dollar.

Going back further than my visits to the Kingdom, I found that from 1956 to 1981 the rate hovered around 20 baht to the dollar. Let’s hope we never see those rates again. Below is a graph charting the monthly exchange rates since 1981, followed by a list of quarterly rates covering the same period, after the jump (for those who love numbers). Interesting to note that according to the chart, the U.S. is not, and has not been, in a recession for several years now. Geeze, I hope the rest of this information is a bit more valid.

>>>> Click for historical quarterly dollar to baht exchange rate numbers.