Excerpt from 2002/09 EastCoastDude - Living it up in Peru

During my hike I spotted a disco call Manhattan. Well at least I thought it was a disco. It's on one end of the Concorde Hotel. From Kennedy Park heading up the hill walking away and to the right of the traffic circle on Av. Ricardo Palma. Tall building with the street running on each side. Hard to miss. Entry fee 20 soles $5 to $6 American. Stepped in and immediately knew it was a strip bar. Not impressed at all. Rather run down, dingy. Only 4 girls working nothing caught my attention. Sat. night 9 PM and the place is dead. What's up? Hell might as well get my free drink. Before I knew it Carrie sat next to me. HELLOOOOO Carrie. Really struggled with the communication. Getting real frustrated and losing confidence with my weak Spanish. 15 minutes or so a waiter approached and offered me a menu of drinks for the lady. Most were 20 soles. No problem. Still struggled with the conversation. When they returned with her drink I heard, with a huge smile and in very good English, Thank You very much and cheers!!! I knew exactly how Don Gringo felt. We had a great laugh over that. We chatted some more and she suggested we leave for my hotel. OK. Like most strip clubs there was an "exit fee" Started at $70 American. He left to fix a drink. I knew that was outrageous and much to my surprise the chica tapped my leg and whispered, expensive. He returned too expensive. OK then 250 soles that's $40 American. Quick math, nice try, it's $70 American. Though that was neat. How many of you guys have tried this on the ladies. I showed him my "cheat sheet". When I travel to a country I use Excel to make a currency conversion chart. In one column I put an American dollar amount, the column next to it the countries currency value. Fold, laminate, keep it in my pocket. The girl was impressed and seemed to respect that. There would be no more fees expected for the lady. She would spend the night and not expect any more money. I caught the nasty look she gave them. I would discuss the ladies fee with her. It was not any of his business and not part of our discussion. More discussion we settled for $10 exit fee and the rest was between the lady and I. I'd like to think I'm a rather intelligent person. But DAMN can I do some real dumb shit on occasion. Turned to Carrie and asked what her fees were going to be. Well the manager was still standing there. It really upset her. Why do you ask me that when he's standing there? Worked so hard to make friends with this girl, took a liking to me and with one stupid statement might have blown it! I apologized and chatted with her. Asked $60 for the night, settled for $50 for the entire night. During the cab ride we discussed her actions. I was impressed. She was very honest and upfront. The more you pay them, and she got a very small percent, the less I had for her. She really liked me also, I was polite seemed to be a gentleman. She really appreciated me FINALLY (little giggle between us) discussing her fees without the clerk being there, impressed with the knowledge I had of the currency rate and thought my little sheet was brilliant. Prior to paying this guy I chatted with Carrie her fees. Asked $60 for the night, settled for $50 for the entire night.

Excerpt from 2002/10 Excat - Bare Eyes

Checked out MANHATTAN club, which was disgusting by comparison to Suites de Barranco and Club 69. Paid ten soles for admission including one beer, walked in, looked around, went to the toilet to take a piss, walked out.

hey,I liked your report and that thing with the excel conversion chart....sweet!
I was wondering if you can email me a little chart similiar to what you had so I can laminate
as well. I a newbie And very impressed with this site. Glad to be a member...MY Email..

jTicona79@hotmail.com

Here's a sample chart for you.

It's easy to generate one of these charts yourself. First go to www.xe.com and convert 1 unit of your target destination currency to US dollars. After conversion, the number you need will be below the original currency. In this case, 1 sol = .288 dollars. (You may want to adjust the dollar amount up because you are unlikely to get rates this high when you are exchanging money. For example, I usually got a rate of 3.41 soles per dollar while the market rate was 3.47 soles per dollar, hence my use of .294 dollars per sol) Once you have this number, set cell A1 to "10" and cell B1 to "=A1*.294" (replace with the value you determined), then use autofill to fill in a range of conversions. You can fill in conversions for 1 & 5 and format your table after that.

Peru Currency Chart in Excel PeruCurrencyChart.xls (13.6 k)

When saving the file, change the extension to ".xls" so that it will open properly.

My taxi driver told me Manhattan was closed some time ago. Taxi drivers are not the most reliable folk, but since I could not find this place, I assume he was telling the truth.