This morning I walked beside Magsaysay Avenue, past Baguio City Market, toward Sacred Heart Pharmacy to get vitamins for the family in Baguio Gold. I saw so many hand-scribbled signs reading “buy dollars,” “dollars change here” and the like.

Several merchants in stalls and perched on stools along the sidewalk asked me for dollars, assuming that I’m a vacationer.

I didn’t know why they want to take dollars for peanut butter, pineapple jam, ube candy, peanuts and carved wood trinkets. The U.S. dollar has been devalued at a worrisome rate, so I don’t know why eight people plaintively beckoned me to change dollars to pesos or to buy foodstuffs in dollars.

The dollar trades today for 42.98 pesos. Why do Filipinos want to pay almost PhP 43 for a dollar? That’s not a bargain for them.

Of course, I have no dollars here. I have for a plastic bag into which Dominic and I dumped coins that we’d brought in March. I’d like to have dollar bills to exchange without Wachovia skimming off the top! †