RustyC

It's hard to say because there are places like Nepal or Vietnam (circa 10 years ago) or Laos where what you can buy is very limited at any price. Would imagine that parts of Africa also fall into this category. You can't do a Big Mac index because McD's still doesn't operate in most of those places.

Generally you need a range of choices at the level of an Indonesia or the Philippines before it starts getting interesting. The Philippines is one of very few places where McDonald's is NOT #1 in burgers, so they're in a bruising price war with Jollibee.

The time to have been traveling around was in late 1997 and early 1998, in the wake of the global currency crash. In a very short time the dollar doubled in purchasing power against the baht and tripled against the rupiah. There was a short period where everything at the high end was cheap, if you had dollars. Even airline tickets (if originating in those countries). A combination of currency appreciation and inflation has eroded away most of those gains by now.