What is the best way to get a good exchange rate on the road?

ATM withdrawals from a real bank machine, on a card with no foreign transaction fee, beat every airport counter and most exchange desks. When the machine offers to charge you in dollars, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and it costs 3 to 7%. Take out larger amounts less often so any fixed fee spreads further.

Should I prepay hotels to lock in a rate?

Only where the currency is moving against you fast. For most countries on this list the trend has run in your favor, so paying on arrival in local currency has been the better bet for two years running. Prepaying makes more sense in Turkey and Argentina, where inflation is high enough that local prices reset every few months.

How much of a currency move do I actually feel?

Less than the headline suggests. Hotels and restaurants reprice with local inflation, and anything aimed at foreign visitors often gets quoted in dollars or euros and never moves at all. A 30% currency gain across a decade might show up as 10 to 15% in your real trip cost. Your flight, priced in dollars, does not move at all.

Is it worth changing my destination based on the exchange rate?

Between two places you would enjoy about equally, yes. As the deciding factor, no. The 2016 list is the argument against it: six of those ten picks reverted or reversed inside a decade, and the countries themselves did not get worse or better because of it.

Which of these currencies could move against me during the trip?

The Turkish lira, which can shift several percent in a month. The Cambodian riel and the Vietnamese dong barely move at all. The yen has been volatile, but across a two-week trip a 2% swing is a rounding error against what you paid for the ticket.

Do I need to carry cash in these countries?

In Japan and Egypt, yes. Japan still runs on cash outside the big cities, and card acceptance in Egypt thins out fast once you leave the hotels. India, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey run on cards and QR payments. In Vietnam and Sri Lanka, carry cash for anything outside a city.

Where does the dollar go furthest in Latin America right now?

Brazil, and it is narrowing. The old answers no longer hold: the dollar buys 23% fewer Colombian pesos than a year ago and 9% fewer Mexican pesos. Argentina is stable for the first time in years after the 2025 currency controls came off, but Buenos Aires restaurant prices have caught up, and a comfortable independent day there runs $80 to $120.

10 Places the US Dollar Goes Furthest in 2026

On January 6, 2016, we published a list of ten countries where the US dollar went furthest, and we printed the rates: 1.39 Canadian dollars, 0.91 euros, 15.63 rand, 106 Nepali rupees. That article is still in the archive.

How the 2016 list actually did

Two of the ten moved in the dollar's favor by enough to matter. The rest are flat to negative for USD holders.

Nepal. 106 rupees to the dollar then, 153 now. The dollar buys 44% more rupees, and it was the best call we made.
Brazil. 3.96 reais then, 5.15 now, up about 30%. The real has taken back 5% in the past year.
Canada. We described the whole country as a 40% off sale. The Canadian dollar is 1.386 today against 1.39 in 2016. A decade of nothing.
Europe. The dollar bought 0.91 euros then and buys 0.86 now. Paris costs an American about 6% more on exchange rate alone than when we told you to hurry.
Australia. Flat across ten years, and moving against you now. The dollar buys 9% fewer Australian dollars than it did last August.
Colombia. The sharpest reversal on the list. The dollar buys 23% fewer pesos than it did a year ago.
South Africa, Cambodia and Cuba all sit within a few points of their 2016 rates. Russia is up 18% and is not somewhere most Americans can practically travel.

Exchange rates still matter. They just mean-revert, and local prices don't. A currency swing gets absorbed by ten years of hotel and restaurant inflation almost every time. Medellín is the cleanest example: the peso moved against you, and remote workers bidding up El Poblado rents did more damage to the value proposition than the exchange rate ever could.

So this list has a rule the 2016 one didn't. A currency move only counts if it is big enough to still be visible after local inflation takes its share, and we will say so when the number on the screen is lying to you.

Top 10 for late 2026

Rates are as of August 28, 2026.

Japan

1 USD = ¥159

The biggest currency story for American travelers and it is not close. The yen was 118 to the dollar when we wrote the last list. It is 159 now, and 8% of that slide happened in the past twelve months. A ¥1,200 bowl of ramen cost about $10 in 2016. It costs $7.50 today.

Everyone else worked this out too. Japan took 42.7 million visitors in 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 was the busiest on record. The government is answering with price. The departure tax tripled to ¥3,000 on July 1, and Kyoto moved to a five-tier lodging tax on March 1 that tops out at ¥10,000 per person per night. None of that cancels a 35% currency advantage. It does mean you skip Kyoto in blossom season and put those nights on the Sea of Japan coast instead.

India

1 USD = ₹95.6

The rupee has gone from 66.9 to 95.6 since the last list. The dollar buys 43% more rupees than it did in 2016 and 9% more than it did a year ago.

What has changed is what the top end costs. A five-star room in Udaipur or a car and driver for a week in Rajasthan now prices out where a mid-range hotel in Western Europe does. If you have always treated India as a backpacker country, 2026 is the year to price the other version of the trip.

Nepal

1 USD = NPR 153

The only repeat from 2016, and it earned the spot. We printed 106 rupees to the dollar then. It is 153 now, up 44%, with 9% of that in the past year.

Trekking permits and guide wages have risen in rupee terms, so the teahouse trek is not 44% cheaper than it was. Everything outside the trekking economy is. Kathmandu food, domestic flights and hotels are where the currency shows up.

Sri Lanka

1 USD = LKR 329

The dollar buys 9% more rupees than a year ago, and the currency sits far below where it was before the 2022 economic collapse. Sri Lanka is one of the few places where a currency crisis turned into travel value without the country becoming difficult to be in.

Fuel and power are stable again. The trains still cost a few dollars end to end, and the south coast is priced for people who remember 2019.

Philippines

1 USD = ₱61.9

From 47.1 to 61.9 since 2016, so the dollar buys 31% more pesos, 9% of that in the past year. The peso has slid steadily rather than in one crisis, which makes it easier to plan around.

Domestic flights are the reason to care. Island-hopping here means buying five or six internal flights, and those are priced in pesos while your long-haul ticket is priced in dollars.

Indonesia

1 USD = Rp 17,745

The dollar buys 27% more rupiah than in 2016 and 9% more than a year ago. Bali's tourist economy quotes in dollars and has priced itself accordingly, so almost none of that is visible there.

Everywhere else in the country it is obvious. Sumatra, Flores and Sulawesi are priced in rupiah by people who are not watching the exchange rate.

Egypt

1 USD = E£50.2

The pound has collapsed. It was under 8 to the dollar in early 2016 and it is past 50 now. Egypt is the cheapest major destination in the world for Americans right now and it is not a close race. What costs $200 a day in Italy costs $60 to $80 here at the same level of comfort.

Domestic inflation is running near 15%, so pound prices climb while you watch. Over two weeks that mostly cancels out. Over three months it does not. Budget travelers get by on about $30 a day, and mid-range with private drivers and guides lands under $150.

Vietnam

1 USD = ₫26,045

The flattest currency on this list, down about 1% against the dollar in the past year, and that is the argument for it. Vietnam manages the dong in a narrow band, so you get the accumulated decade of drift without the volatility.

What has changed since 2016 is the north. Ha Giang and Cao Bang have the roads they lacked, and they are still priced like places nobody visits.

Turkey

1 USD = ₺48.2

Here is where the number lies to you. The lira has gone from 3.01 to 48.2 since our last list. That looks like a 1,500% improvement. It is nothing of the sort.

Turkish consumer inflation was running above 32% in mid-2026. Lira prices climb about as fast as the currency falls, so Istanbul is not meaningfully cheaper for you than it was five years ago and the gap with Greece and Spain has closed in peak season. It is still decent value: a meal where locals eat runs 6 to 12 euros, street food is 1 to 3.50, and a transit ride is about a euro on an Istanbulkart. Just do not plan around the headline rate. Hagia Sophia, Topkapı and the Basilica Cistern together run about 125 euros in entry fees, and those are set with foreign visitors in mind.

Brazil

1 USD = R$5.15

Up about 30% since 2016, which makes it one of the two calls we got right. It is also the only entry here trending against you. The dollar buys 5% fewer reais than it did a year ago.

If Brazil has been sitting on your list, this is a closing window rather than an opening one. Go in 2026 rather than 2028.

Where the dollar lost ground

Worth knowing what to stop assuming:

Europe. The dollar buys fewer euros than it did in 2016. The near-parity moment is over.
Mexico. The dollar buys 9% fewer pesos than a year ago and 3% fewer than in 2016. Mexico City is not a cheap city anymore.
Colombia. 23% fewer pesos than last August, the largest one-year reversal on this list.
South Africa. 10% fewer rand than a year ago.
Israel. 11% fewer shekels than a year ago.
Canada and Australia. Both flat over ten years and both moving against you now.

Step back and the dollar is not broadly strong in 2026. The dollar index had its worst year in more than a decade in 2025 and most forecasts have it drifting lower through the rest of this year. What the dollar has is a specific advantage against a set of Asian, South Asian and North African currencies. That set is the list above, and that is the whole of it.

How to choose between them

For the widest gap between what you pay and what you get, Egypt and India. For the biggest recent move, Japan. For a currency that will not shift under you mid-trip, Vietnam. If you are building a round the world route, the dollar advantage concentrates almost entirely in the Asia leg, so weight your nights there and treat Europe as a place you connect through rather than a place you linger.

One thing outweighs all of it: the flight. A $400 swing on a long-haul ticket beats a 9% currency move across three weeks of hotels. Price the flight first, then let the exchange rate decide how long you stay in each place.

The Bottom Line

Currency is a tiebreaker, not a reason. It tells you where to spend the extra week, not which continent to fly to. The 2016 version of this list had that backwards, and the scorecard at the top is what that looks like ten years on.

If you want to see how an Asia-weighted trip actually prices out, run it through the trip planner. And the January 2016 original is still up if you want to check our math.