Weirdly, I've been wanting to write this post for a while.
Times when exchange rate worked out pretty well
Japan, 2000. The exchange rate was 100 yen to the dollar. So easy for my first time abroad.
Syria, 2004-2005. 50 lira to the dollar. This was easier to convert on the fly than it looks. Multiply by two and then move the decimal over two places. Simple.
UAE, 2010-2015. 3.65 dirhams to the dollar. This sounds difficult to convert, but hear me out: just divide by four and add back ten percent. Usually I ended up dividing by four and calling it good, unless it was something that I wanted to make sound more expensive than it was. Then I divided by three.
Finland, present day. The Euro and the dollar are almost equal, close enough that for small transactions, I don’t make a considerable distinction between the two.
Times when I couldn't even with the exchange rate
Jordan, 2006-2007. 1.4 JD (Jordanian dinar) to the dollar. I hated this exchange rate so much. It was almost 1.5…but not quite. The reverse was equally as awkward (0.70 dollars per JD).
Turkey, all the times. In 2004 there were a gazillion zeros on the end of whatever the rate was. When we went back a few years later, they had cut off the zeroes, but it was still some unwieldy fraction that made it hard to calculate.
Egypt, 2010. I think the exchange rate was almost 6 guineas per dollar. We went with five and called it good (always mentally adjusting with “but a little more/less”).
