As a New Zealander planning a trip to Europe this year - the New Zealand Dollar against the Euro is doing well and getting better - we will get more value for money.

OOps - meant to tag this to the US dollar thread

I live in euro-land and have always made a point of planning trips with this in mind. Lots of the world is pegged to the US$ but also a lot of it is not -- so if there are major fluctuations, I make trips to the more favorable area. I love to travel, so I can certainly wait to go to certain places without ruining my budget -- replacement destinations are abundant.

I've always been fascinated by your (and the Aussies, Singaporians, Bruneiians etc. ) genuine "plastic money". How do they manage to prevent forgery?

logos999, the whole point (apart from durability) was to make the notes virtually impossible to counterfeit - the technology is much more sophisticated that just "plastic money". It was developed in Australia and is now in use in about 20 countries.