The rates you only have to learn once
Most conversion rules rot. A few are effectively permanent.
A pegged currency is one whose government or central bank holds it at a fixed rate against another currency, usually the US dollar or the euro, rather than letting the market set it. For a traveller this has one very convenient consequence: the rule of thumb you learn does not go stale.
Pegs worth knowing
| Currency | Pegged to | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|
| UAE dirham | US dollar, at a fixed rate | The Dubai rule never changes. Learn it once. |
| Saudi riyal, Qatari riyal, Bahraini dinar, Omani rial | US dollar | Same — Gulf conversion rules are stable for years. |
| Hong Kong dollar | US dollar, within a band | Moves only slightly, within a published range. |
| Danish krone | Euro, within a narrow band | The most stable rule in Europe. |
| Bulgarian lev, and several West and Central African francs | Euro | Fixed, so euro-based rules hold. |
| Nepalese rupee | Indian rupee | If you know the India rule, you nearly know Nepal. |
| Cambodian riel | US dollar, in practice | Widely treated as a flat 4,000 to the dollar. |
What a peg does not protect you from
- Your own costs. A fixed rate does not stop your bank charging a foreign transaction fee, or a bureau taking a wide spread.
- Pegs breaking. They are policy, not physics. Countries have abandoned pegs abruptly, and when it happens the move is large and sudden.
- Local inflation. The rate can be fixed while prices in the country rise steadily, so what a dirham buys changes even though what a dirham costs does not.
Where a currency is pegged, the cheat sheet says so — those are the pages worth actually memorising rather than re-checking.
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