We drove into San Francisco from Burlingame, dropped my bags at my sister's apartment, and went for a walk on Haight Street. It was a sundrenched day. Every store had a sign in the window that said AMERICA: OPEN FOR BUSINESS. Sure enough, everyone was out shopping, including me. I spent $150 on a pair of shoes and seriously considered buying a used shirt for $50. In Southeast Asia, a $150 can cover a full week of travel expenses. Fifty dollars buys a three-day pass to the Angkor temples and leaves enough for two nights in a guesthouse. But I seemed to have readjusted automatically to the dollar, I seemed to be incurably materialistic again, buying shoes even though I was already wearing my sturdy Australian boots.

As we went in and out of stores, I found myself inexplicably attracted to shiny shirts and stylish vinyl jackets. In Cambodia and Laos, I wore the same three sweaty t-shirts for ten days, and hardly ever washed my socks. In Vientiane I rejected a twelve-dollar guesthouse room as daftly overpriced, but tonight I would spend the same amount on two drinks. The Akha villagers fed us whatever they could scrounge up each day: some bamboo they'd pickled, an unlucky duck, rice, a few bananas. San Francisco's little corner groceries, most of them run by Asians, were stocked with so much good fresh food that a Lao villager might pass out at the sight (and the prices). Yes, I was back, and I could prove it by my wanton outlay of cash.

What we take for granted as American travelers is astounding, and it starts with our money. In Southeast Asia, I converted my dollars into currencies called rupiah, kip, baht and riel. These all looked and felt and behaved very much like money. But the stalwart publisher behind the ghostwritten notes was the American Mint, and my dollars trumped any other nation's money. I could exchange them anywhere: not only in banks and airports, but in restaurants and guesthouses, and in the markets where skulking men and women whispered exchange? exchange?, offering slightly better rates and crumpled bills. It was frequently unnecessary to change my money at all: merchants, cabdrivers, and immigration officers gladly accepted my indomitable dollars.

Americans may mistakenly conclude that Southeast Asians accept whatever currency tourists happen to have: it's that 'Oriental courtesy.' But try offering Dutch guilders, English pounds, Japanese yen. Forget it; that's not money. Wherever you've come from, you've got to come from there with crisp Benjamins, or with travelers checks or credit cards which will procure same. (There are no ATMs in Laos or Cambodia.) Only dollars count, and if you are holding them in your hand you have immense power, as if you were holding a staff that had become a snake, as if you brandished a rain stick, could walk on water, threw thunderbolts when angry. Open your money pouch in Laos and the stares lock onto your long green. Those bills are sacred texts, inscribed with mysterious power and rosicrucian knowledge. Whoever has them is closer to the gods. Dollars are the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, with all the savor, power, and evil ascribed thereto. And to most Southeast Asian eyes, you have already taken a bite.

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