Markets and exchange rates may be bouncing around these days, but while changing planes today in Heathrow’s shiny new Terminal 5, I came across a rare example of exchange rate stability.

You can surf the Internet for 1 pounds or 2 euros, a bargain for Euro-holding customers. At the current exchange rate (Nov 9, 2008) 1 pounds = 1.22 euros. That means that someone using a pound saves 78 euro cents every 20 minutes.

Even at the exchange rates offered by currency counters in the airport it would be worth your while to change euros into pounds before surfing the Internet in Heathrow. I also was surprised that a UK-based vending machine is allowed to accept a foreign currency.

In other exchange rate news, the Salmon Crumble photographed here in a Hong Kong supermarket suggests the price of transportation to Hong Kong is 4.60 pounds per fish.

The price marked on the box, 1.09 pounds, is equivalent to 13.21 Hong Kong dollars. The price in Hong Kong, however, is 69 Hong Kong dollars, or 5.69 pounds, more than 5 times the cost in British supermarkets.

It is rare to have such an readily available price comparison. Next time I’ll have to go to Britain to shop. With return flights to London going for as little as 435 pounds, you only need to bring 100 boxes of fish to justify the trip.