Tong Family

Well, another way to think about travel occurred to me while I was in Australia. Where an incredible hotel room that costs A$500 is not more like A$300 because of the Exchange rate shifts, so how about going to XE.com and finding out what countries have dropped the most compared with the USD or Euro and then going there. A little Excel munging plus a save as HTML gave me this table and the conclusions comparing exchange rates in USD between 2 July 2008 and 2 December 2008

# Iceland. Man, it is a nice country and the exchange rate is down 47%, so your money buys you nearly double what it did in July. Only problem is that it is winter there 🙂
# Australia and New Zealand are both down 33% or so from their highs, so again, you are getting a good bargain. What was $300 a night is now $200 a night there. And it is sunny
# Brazil. Same deal and a little closer to the US. A great time to get down there at 30% discounts. Chile is down 20% so a little less of a discount
# Nordic region. Norway and Sweden is down 30% quite a bit because of oil, Jon 🙂 A good time to hang out in an ice hotel.
# Poland, Hungary and Czech republic. Supposed to be beautiful countries. A good spot for the spring perhaps.
# Indonesia is down 25% and they have great beaches. Bali baby! And across all of French Polynesia, they are down 20% like the Euro. Even Fiji is down 17%

Other places that are down but still expensive:
# Although still expensive, UK is down 25% and the Euro is down 20%, so at least a little more reasonable.