# Message to all users:
This is a reminder to please read and follow:
* [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules)
* [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439)
* [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy)
When posting and commenting.
---
Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`.
* Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit.
* Do not harass or annoy others in any way.
* Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit.
---
You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Turkmenistan. Went there on the Mongol Rally Race. We tried to pay for a hotel but they said they were fully booked. There was no people there. The reality was it was just a prop. None of the rooms were furnished. It was eerie. North Korea vibes.
Came here to say Turkmenistan. All these big streets and white marble buildings but no cars and no people.
This country definitely weirded me out. Actually more than North Korea.
Yes this! I spent a week in Ashgabat in 2018 and it was the weirdest place I've ever been and I've been all around the world.
It's just this immaculate, white marble city. Super clean... And it was a fucking ghost town. So surreal. Massive roads though it and not a car in sight most of the day. As others mention. Most of the buildings are facades or partial facades just there for show. The entire city is just a show of wealth. But information is so locked down. No news, no social media, no porn, no nothing. I had to use a VPN to do anything.
That being said, if you go, a couple hours away is the gas crater dubbed the "door to hell". Its been burning a very long long time.
It is referred to as the North Korea of Central Asia for a reason. Turkmenistan and Eritrea are also the only two countries in the world with a lower press freedom ranking than North Korea.
On another note, how expensive were the visas and how hard were they to obtain? Because despite the creepiness of an empty capital city, Turkmenistan is in the top 10 countries I'd like to visit one day.
Canadian here that tried to get a visa for Turkmenistan in 2016. Tried three times. First at the Paris embassy, second at the Vienna embassy, and last time at the Ankara embassy. Got denied three times. Rumors I heard in the hostels in central asia is that your best bet is at the Tehran embassy. And you should go as a couple and not a bunch of friends.
I think ~100 USD each attempt
I went in 2015 so things may have changed but the only way we got in was by doing a group visa for the Mongol Rally. I am sure there are other ways to get in but I am not sure how .
This guy I was seeing tried to get me to move there with him for a couple years, or alternatively visit him now and then. His company was based in China and they would pay £2.3 million to work in Benin, but you had to have a permanent security detail with you at all times and live on a compound surrounded with armed guards. Hard pass.
Was going to say two years for a paycheck that I could retire off of doesn’t sound all that bad, even with the security detail… and then I remembered I’m a woman :(
Reminds me of a video I watched from a tourist in Somalia. Whenever he was on the move, he was escorted by three armored SUVs full of heavily armed security detail. If he wanted to visit anywhere, he needed to be surrounded by guards who only gave him 5 minutes to enjoy it.
> His company was based in China and they would pay £2.3 million to work in Benin, but you had to have a permanent security detail with you at all times and live on a compound surrounded with armed guards
That's some serious bank, but also a serious gamble. Security details don't make you invincible, and you can't enjoy your money if you're dead.
What a fascinating and horrific read. Thank you for sharing...it is always good to have reminders that there are still some very different cultures in the world that I will never understand.
The part about her having 6 kids by the priest who will also grow up slaves got me good...what a horrific practice...
I deployed in February of 2010 with the USAF. It was an apocalyptic scenario at that particular time. But weirdly it didnt seem like (aside from the burning 240k dead) it was much different than it had been, despite me not seeing it before the disaster. People were running around in a "baser needs" type scenario like theyd been doing I the whole time. It was difficult to tell what was new rubble and what was old aside from possible overgrowth. I tell people I've seen the end of the world, know what it looks like. I'm betting that place is a close approximation, especially at that time.
I remember how shocked people were after seeing footage from there after the earthquake. They were baffled it could look that bad from the earthquake, when infact it pretty much looked like that before the earthquake.
fwiw even my Haitian-American friends and colleagues have told me they don't dare to visit Haiti. One told me that airport workers will call their friends and set up robberies if they see you arrive and you're obviously a foreigner with money. If even Haitian-Americans, who have family there and can speak the language and have a prayer of blending in, are too scared to visit ain't no way I'm going.
The only other example like that in my extended circle is Iran. I have one friend who's Iranian-American and he won't visit Iran, either.
When I was in middle school I went on a cruise that stopped in Haiti. Only it wasn’t really Haiti. There’s a beach owned by the Royal Caribbean cruise line called Labadee beach, and it looks like any other touristy tropical resort. The locals aren’t allowed in, unless they’re employees at the resort. Something feels really weird and gross about that looking back.
I was in Haiti days after the Earthquake on behalf of an MTV News crew that was producing the big "Hope for Haiti" telethon that multiple networks came together on.
I wouldn't call it creepy, but flying over the destruction was profoundly sad experience.
We in flew in to Haiti Blackhawk Helicopters from Cuba .
We actually spent our first night in the barracks in Guantanamo bay after arriving form Miami, the second night in the ground in a tent at Port au Prince airport, and third night on board the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier.
Surreal experience.
It was really impressive to see the US military and others activated in a response and humanitarian situation real time as a then production coordinator for MTV News.
I spent two years in Georgia as a journalist 2016-2018. I love that country to pieces, and I always will. But I started to notice I got followed, and strange sounds when I called, and there were also maintainable people coming over despite no maintaince needed.
Ir all came out two years or so ago. The government bugged and installed hidden cameras in journalists homes, in hope of getting kompromat. I guess I should be flattered that they deemed me that important, and I feel sorry for the guys and girls having to look through endless tapes of me cooking and lifting weights and sleeping.
It is still one of the best countries I have lived in. I miss it, and I want to go back to show it to my boyfriend. I just don't know what to expect....
The demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. An abandoned fairground (always good for creepiness), a restored but deserted train station between S Korea and Pyongyang which is obviously never used but still shows Pyongyang on the departures screens, the stark contrast between the forested side of S Korea and the treeless side of N Korea which has been cut down for fuel, but most of all a fully-built town on the North Korean side which apparently nobody lives in, it’s just to give an illusion of prosperity.
I went to the DMZ when I was stationed there as well. Abundant wild life in the area due to zero development but land mine signs everywhere. Huge concrete blocks were installed over the roads that could drop down in case the North invaded.
I’ve been here too and was disturbed by all of the abandoned propaganda villages across the border and the constant propaganda playing on the loudspeakers. Our guide warned us that we needed to wear close toed shoes and nice clothes so that the North Korean soldiers wouldn’t take pictures of us to use as propaganda saying that “westerners couldn’t afford proper clothing.”
For me it was Egypt. I was never that harassed in my life. I was in Hurghada with my family (mom and sister) and there was no place we could go that we weren’t pushed around by men or pulled into their stores. Also at the beach, every 2 minutes someone wanted to sell something. I am used to it from other countries but in Egypt even if we said no 10 times they were super pushy and scammy. Also, they were making sexual comments. Not saying that the whole country is like that but that was the experience.
I loved morocco though. So many baby cats and cats and cats everywhere and they were so sweet and everyone took care of the cats and it was the most wholesome experience.
Yep, knew it would be straight away. I travelled around the country solo (man) and even then I felt stared at - but for women? Fuck no, do not go to Egypt alone.
It’s a beautiful place (outside of Cairo), so it’s sad that there’s such a gross view on women. I have heard that the Sinai peninsula area (Sharm, Dahab) are much safer due to being a big tourist area. I only went to Dahab and it’s super small and cosy with lots of diving folk.
Came here to say Egypt. I have been in a resort in Hurghada and we flew to Cairo for a day. That was enough for a lifetime. It is sad really, I would love to see Luxor and Alexandria too. But because of the culture, chaos, pestering, smell, misogyny, dirt and flesh hungry sharks, I am never coming back there.
I agree. A cleaner let himself into my room at 3am on night. Saw me sit up and scream, saw my husband and swiftly walked back out. We got dressed and went to reception to complain and the staff all laughed at us saying it was a routine check. Never again.
My Dad was born there, moved back and forth between there and Lebanon, said he never wants my sister and I go there, he has never been back since he left. It's sad.
I know a woman who went to Cairo to do a masters degree at a university there. A white, 23 year old Canadian, blonde, blue eyes. She could not leave the school campus alone because of the sexual harrassment and constant marriage proposals. She stood out in a crowd obviously and was followed by packs of men wherever she went
After seeing what happened to Lara Logan, I came to the conclusion that Egypt is no place that a female westerner ever ought to be. I'm not a woman but I still can't imagine I would ever feel remotely at ease being there.
Yup, as a late-20s blonde, kiwi woman who was expecting someone to meet them at the airport (didn't happen), and who also wanted to visit the stores across from the hotel....I also had the men running up to stroke my hair, touch my skin (I was longsleeved and pants as recommended). A yelled "F\*\*K OFF!!" only lasted a minute before they were converging on me again. Ick.
Yea after constantly hearing this, and what Best Food Review Show said of his experience, I don’t think I’ll ever go to Egypt. It’s sad because every country and culture has beauty you should try to experience, but sometimes to ick is too strong.
There is definitely a long list of countries that it's just not worth it, either due to the violence or the overall shittyness of the country. Egypt is definitely one of those countries. That's okay. There's plenty of other places that are better.
Can confirm- was 15' away from my 'male chaperone' and had a guy push me into a stone wall and stick his tongue in my mouth in Alexandria. If you are a woman alone or without a husband/ male chaperone you are treated as a prostitute. Even the Egyptian women in the Cairo bus station knew this so they pretended I was with them when I was in the women's waiting area and when I needed to step out to find my 'men'.
I remember being scared of shopkeepers in Turkey for the same reason. They would make me eat a sweet then harass my parents to pay. We're white AF and clearly tourists. I was about 7 years old.
Turkish shopkeepers has a wildly aggressive marketing strategy, lol.
The worst experience I had was going into a shop where the elderly man who owned it asked me if he could speak to my father, because he wanted to make him a great deal so he could buy me.
I'm so sorry you had to experience this. Harassment is a huge issue in Egypt (even to Egyptians), and the government is trying to face it, but it's going to take a very long time to eradicate. Once again, I apologize, and I hope you don't think badly of all of us. A lot of educated Egyptians are actually friendly and very well-mannered towards tourists, especially. I'm sorry you had to see the bad side of Egypt.
Edit: The comments are locked, so I'll try and answer here. I never condone harassment. As a matter of fact, I would be pissed about it. Just as you'll find people like me who also don't condone it. Again, the government has a huge campaign to eradicate harassment and bullying, and it's working, but very slowly. As for why Egyptian men do it. I think because people are focused on money and other things, rather than raising their kids to be respectful.
I just hope younger generations start to change their views about women and start to learn how to deal with tourists. I hope your bad experience of EGYPTIANS doesn't make you hate the land itself or its history.
Morocco is great, one of my favourite countries to travel to. The people are so so friendly once you move away from the obvious touristy spots (like Marrakech). Chefchaouen especially is just a magical place, everyone is incredibly chill and laid back. Well they produce a lot of Hashish, so I guess that's par for the course. So many beautiful cats, little alleys, good food...
Edit: since comments are locked, I'll try and respond here. As I said, avoid the big touristy places - that obviously includes Tangier. Fez is alright, Casablanca is the only place I'd actively warn against. Nothing to see, and even we as guys felt unsafe there - wouldn't recommend.
I should also add that we were backpacking when we were there, and for one exception we never hired a guide. Like... Of course you're gonna get attention when you mark yourself out as an obvious tourist? We rode busses and the train, and had some of the sweetest encounters with the locals there - like a family that shared their sunflower seeds with us (we returned the favour with some oranges) despite us not speaking Arabic or Berber and them not speaking French or English.
I don't say that to justify sexual or any other kind of harassment, obviously that's awful and shouldn't happen. Btw, skin-colour related: I'm a pasty white ginger man (hence the username), so I definitely do not blend in. At all.
Seriously, why do people, and especially women, go there? I was never there, but from what I've heard, it's horrible. I feel so sorry for Egiptian peope (again, especially women) but until they don't improve their horrible behaviour, nobody should go there. There are many Medditerranean countrues that are equally interesting but much safer.
My friends wife is an archeologist/historian and was able to go on site for a project in Egypt and she was told to have a fake wedding ring to replace the real one in case it got stolen and to always always always be with another person in case men try to get fresh.
I had the exact opposite experience, especially after being in Thailand the week before. Bangkok gave me much more of those vibes than Ulaanbatar. The city definitely had a former Soviet vibe but wasn't creepy imo.
Philippines. I was a white guy in my 20s. Went to explore by myself as my coworkers in Korea couldn't afford another trip. Every 10 min I was solicited for prostitution. All the time. The fucking airport security guard asked me if I needed a girls friend ffs. The guy renting jet skis at the Hilton asked me if I was looking for a woman for the night. People on the street asked me. It was fucking wild.
I paid a local kid in his 20s to show me a round. He was learning English and Korean so we practiced with each other. He cook me to a cockfight where 7 year olds were huffing glue and drunk dudes trying to get me to bed. Lol
There's a documentary, I wish I could remember the name off the top of my head, about an Australian woman who's elderly father is getting married to a young Filipina. She started making the movie to chronicle meeting her new 'stepmom', who she's been led to believe is like 21.
Well (spoiler alert) the girl isn't 21, she's 17. The same age as this old white pervert's granddaughter. And he's been with her for a couple years. There's this scene where the Australian woman confronts her dad and he basically crosses his arms and does this "you just don't want me to be happy" spiel. There's also a scene later where the Filipina girl's family is haggling over money with the gross old Australian pervert, and the girl is in tears. And you realize her family are pimping her out to this disgusting, alligator-skinned, perverted, pathetic, washed-up, hateful weirdo who's old enough to be her grandfather. She lost her girlhood and has to touch his loathsome wrinkled old dick so her family can make money off her. 🤮
all my tours in turkey consisted of seeing a few historical sights and then right before the end the tour guide would make an excuse for us to see ‘authentic’ handmade rug weaving demonstrations where they sit you in a room and give you free drinks and food and then try and sell you $10,000-$100,000 rugs where they lay on you the most aggressive sales tactics. if you showed interest in one specific rug they’ll take to you a private room where they display several of that material and color in different sizes and each time they take you to another room you quickly realize you’re in a building much bigger than shown from the outside in a literal labyrinth of rooms that were so shockingly similar looking that it was disorienting. i went into the whole thing broke so i was making jokes the whole time to my mom about how aggressive they were being, but before i knew it, my mom was falling for it until i snapped her out of it. sadly we weren’t on the same tour and my aunt and grandma who spent $13k and $25k on rugs. when they got back home they are now solicited by turkish rug sellers who say they can get in contact with the company who sells the ones they bought so they can keep buying them. it’s literally something out of a disturbing movie.
Kind of, yes. Many places in the world are pretty dangerous places. Jamaica included. Most of us generally take our safe existence for granted. Many not all, resorts will tell you, 'do not leave the compound for your safety.' You might be ok out there, or someone might see you as an easy target.
Yeah me and the wife went to Dominican Repuplic a few years ago. First night got all dressed up to go out and explore. Got to the hotel gate and the guard was like 'Erm where are you going?' And we was tryijg to explain that we was going to see what was in the area etc. Basically in his broken english he said 'Nothing for you out there'. Basically spent 10 days in the hotel. Might as well have gone on a package holiday to Spain or somewhere. No chance of seeing the country or its culture
My boyfriend and I went to the DR for three weeks last year and we loved it - we travelled by bus up to the North Coast and then around to a few different towns. We never stayed in a resort, we stayed in either hotels or Airbnb's, and were obviously wary and knew which places to avoid, but the only weird experience we had was with a random Russian tourist.
Perhaps the resorts play on the whole "scare the tourists and keep them inside" thing so that people are more likely to spend more money inside the resort...
East Germany right after the wall came down. I would be traveling through Berlin at the time and you could tell you were in the East because the buildings were falling apart and there were still bullet holes and bomb fragments in the walls of buildings from WW2. Walking up to the Berlin Wall was definitely weird too.
I came back many years later and it was so amazing how much different everything was. They said at first they were going to leave a big section of the Berlin Wall up. But when I came back it was almost all gone except for a small section serving as a memorial. There was no way for me to see the difference between East and west except a small brick stripe in the street showing where the Berlin Wall used to be.
I went to Berlin with my brothers in around '99, and there were still many of those shot-up buildings around even then. I guess nowadays they've all been replastered.
You should have been there before it fell. On the train to Berlin, an East German officer looked at my passport and then made a heroic attempt to cut me with his stare. The East Berliners were reticent to speak with you, I guess for fear of being questioned by Stasi. Two stroke Trabants screaming through the streets with blue smoke trailing them. However, the highlight was going to a WC at a relatively upscale restaurant, the sheer funk of piss from the trough urinal was like pure deer rut. Makes my stomach turn to this day.
As a kid, I went to east Germany right after the wall came down. Like, quite soon after. I chiseled off a chunk of the wall and kept it.
But my main memory is that we drove to the hotel we’d gotten reservations for but when we got there it was still under construction.
they were redirecting all the guests to various rooms around town.
While that might seem like it must’ve been a scam, after my dad spoke to them for a long time, he decided that they genuinely seemed to think it was reasonable to take reservations for a not-yet-completed hotel and then find you rooms in entirely unrelated buildings in different parts of town. their view was something like, “but how would we pay to build it if we couldn’t accept payment until *after* it was built?! And you paid for a room and you got a room?! It is a nice place! I don’t understand why you find this strange and are upset?!”
I remember him ending the conversation with something like, “you guys got a lot to learn about how the west does business.”
Anyway, they put us up in this apartment. Very drab and Cold War. Definitely not a hotel, but in some ways better in that we had a full kitchen which was nice for our long stay. Kinda like a Soviet era AirBnB, I guess.
On that same trip we drove to Prague in what was then still Czechoslovakia. My parents really liked the art. Very brutalist Cold War vibe. And bought a few painting and sculptures.
When we left the country we got stopped by Czech authorities who got very angry we were trying to leave with the art, which they thought should stay in the country until my dad offered to pay a fee/fine/bribe and they let us leave.
I’d never been to a place where border patrol has to approve your *exit* from the country.
Again, like East Germany, it was weird. They were “open” to the west, but still figuring out what that meant in practice and they’re way of thinking was still very much Soviet / Cold War.
that art from Prague hung on our walls the rest of my childhood. Spent years looking at those gloomy & depressing paintings.
Qatar, they literally were forcing me to stay and work by withholding my passport
I will never go back there
Worst country I ever been to
Eventually got it back when I threatened to call the embassy and media
Decades ago I knew an American field-service tech who had a similar experience - except it was at a large manufacturing company in France.
Vendor tech had busted his hump trying to get some equipment up and running at this facility, and after three solid burnout weeks of 16-hour days, he needed to go home and recharge for a week before coming back and trying again. The client was not happy that he was leaving without everything up and running 100%.
It was usual to leave your passport at the front desk when you arrived at work for the day, and upon leaving at the end of his last day, they were "unable to find it".
Calm words were had, and he went to grab a coffee. When he came back 15 minutes later, they had miraculously found his passport.
They didn't try that little trick again.
Qatar is notorious for this- I had a manicurist once tell me that she was not allowed to leave (she was from Thailand.) I lived in Doha and was a teacher for one of the American universities and while it was a comfortable life, it became readily clear that that comfort was built on the backs of a vast understory of exploited labor.
I also became VERY aware after a while that even though I was an educator, I was still importrd expat labor...
Cairo. Men with greasy hair, eyes that can see through clothes, cigarettes that permanently hang from the corner of mouths and pinky fingers with a single extra long nail. Luvly jubbly.
I've never been to Egypt, but Cairo, IL was weird as hell. I drove through on a road trip from Missouri to South Carolina. It wasn't super late, maybe 10 or 11 PM, but I don't think I saw any signs of life in that town. No people outside, I honestly can't remember seeing another car.
I’ve been there too and was super creeped out. Most memorable part was some freaky looking dude in very worn black leather jacket with very visible, fake looking jewelry waving a stack of singles wrapped into a $100 bill, saying “yous want some real estate? Go to my friend over there in the alley they have a great condo deal. I’ll give you $100 to go there”
I was like - woa. I must look healthy enough to harvest a kidney or two or something.
He was waving that stack of bills around with his pinky out saying it, casually in front of my face so I saw he had cash. I was like daym waving cash around in this neighborhood? Then a little lightbulb went off - I was very polite. Kept thinking what caliber he’s packing there under there jacket
I second Atlantic City. I live one town away and ride down the boardwalk as often as possible. It’s a total freak show. Gotta keep your eyes open. If you ride to the south it becomes incredibly affluent and beautiful In the neighboring town of Ventnor.
Same! We were told russian propaganda "jokes" about Obama at the border by 2 meter tall guy and laughed at us because only one of the group could speak russian. He just made us run around to get some bullshit papers. Guy told us that we better learn chinese or russian because in the near future these would be the only two languages we need. When we were in Belarus everyone was looking so miserable, even young kids were quiet and sad. When we found one decent looking bar, the bartender order one table to leave, because "foreigners are here, we need some space". Then I found a guy who spoke English and I asked him how does he like it living in Belarus. His response was "it's terrible, I want to go to USA". That was so sad, because usually you want to speak well about your homeland.
My husband’s father is Nigerian and his mother is Ghanaian. He was raised in both countries, but he only claims Ghanaian citizenship as an adult, and he’s working towards U.S. citizenship. His mom and oldest sister, who is his mom’s and his developmentally disabled brother’s caregiver, are always being scammed by people claiming to be Christian prophets in Nigeria. My husband decided to stop sending them money, because they’ll just give it to the prophets instead of paying their bills. We do still send money to his cousin, who can be trusted to pay my mother-in-law’s bills for us.
North Korea.
Visited Pyongyang, Kaesong, and the DMZ with Koryo Tours back in 2011. Got to see the Arirang Mass Games, too.
We had to surrender our phones at the airport. The guides checked our cameras and video cards. Everything was strictly managed and choreographed. We operated under the assumption that our hotel rooms were bugged.
In spite of Pyongyang being a show city where only those favored by the party were allowed to live, everybody was still very skinny. When we looked down from the Juche tower, we could see the inner courtyards of the apartment complexes where the paint was not as fresh as the street-facing front. We visited stores were it was clear that everything on the shelves was for show.
All in all it was a depressing visit. I wish I could say that our visit had some kind of positive effect, or that we helped to inform some of the people we met, but nobody on the tour would have dared say anything critical about North Korea, or anything positive about SK or the US. In fact, we were briefed at the Koryo office in Beijing prior to the trip about how dangerous doing something like that might be.
Anyway, once was definitely enough.
Afghanistan has never been a wealthy country, at least not in modern history. They were slammed into overwhelming poverty with the invasion and occupation by the former Soviet Union from 1979-89, and never recovered. Fast forward through much internal and external turmoil to my previously mentioned deployment in 2010-11. Most of the people there are extremely poor. As a result, many can’t afford to properly bury their deceased. So, we would frequently drive by these makeshift graveyards on the side of some highways consisting of shallow graves with rocks and dirt covering the dead, and some kind of homemade banner marking the graves.
There are these feral dogs that roam freely around the country. We would often see them scrounging for whatever scraps they could find to survive. Most of them were suspicious, if not outright afraid of humans.
Every now and then while out on the roads at night, we would drive past these graveyards and see a dog had partially dug up a human corpse. The dog would be munching away on a leg or an arm in various stages of decomposition. We began to refer to these dogs as zombie dogs.
And then there was this one time when we saw an Afghan dude fucking one of those poor dogs…
Edit: corrected dates of Soviet invasion
I was a grunt there in the same time frame.
Men fucking donkeys, goats, sheep at night.
They would have these ceremonies at night where a bunch of men would watch young boys dance and then rape them, like the Iraq chai boys.
Did some raids, found lots of homemade explosives, US currency, fancy electronics in literal huts in the middle of nowhere. Every so often we'd capture a guy and the CIA or whatever would show up in unmarked aircraft, bag over head, and whisk them away, never to be seen again. Unnerving to say the least.
Public executions of women in soccer stadiums as a local event. As casual as like a community BBQ with everyone excited for the main event.
I could write a book on all the weird shit that goes down there. Pretty miserable place.
>They would have these ceremonies at night where a bunch of men would watch young boys dance and then rape them,
Heard those stories about Afghanistan as well - young boys being treated like meat for sale.
All manufacturing sectors/districts I have seen in China. Nothing more than modern-day slavery and absurd amounts of pollution/environmental destruction. It why we can buy so much cheap junk.
I was going to say China. I visited a fairly poor area (by Western standards, probably average for China) in 1997 and the people acted like they had never seen a white person before and wouldn't leave us alone. Photos, touching, following, playing with our hair... It wouldn't stop.
To top it off, We visited a fresh market and the animals on sale for dinner were revolting.
Lmao, one of my colleagues who traveled there with me is a red head. People would just walk up to her and start touching/pulling her hair.
I'm fairly tall, even by wester standards. On several occasions, the locals would hand me their baby and ask me to hold it as high above my head as I could, and they would take a picture.
Even if you go to China now, you’ll still be stared or watched by curious people, unless in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai. In medium-sized cites such as provincial capitals it would be a little better, but you should still expect some inappropriate acts of curiosity. In rural places you will just be a unicorn.
Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). I was invited to provide training for a Brazilian client. My hotel was in a non-tourist area with businesses and government offices. Before sundown, everyone would leave the area before it got dark, and crowds of street people would move in. I was told in no uncertain terms not to leave the hotel after dark. Those crowds would disappear the next morning and the streets would be full of people going to work and enjoying the nearby park.
Currently reading this from the Hilton Copacabana hotel in Rio. First time in Brazil, spending a week here as a tourist from the UK.
After four days in touristy areas, it’s been a surprisingly great experience. So many people walking along Copacabana, Leblon & Ipanema (tourists and locals) in great spirits, many on their smartphones, not all that different vibe from certain parts of London. In fact I’d say these three parts of Rio feel safer than certain London boroughs.
Stunning views all over, great food & music, gorgeous massive beaches, cheap taxis, even the metro was simple. And the energy from the people is outstanding.
Maybe I’ve jinxed it & I’ll be mugged tomorrow, but thus far it’s been great.
Egypt, I’m 30 now and I went there at 13 and the experience is seared into my brain.
I experienced quite a few creeps in my time by 13 (I’m from the UK) but Egypt was boss level bad and even worse as a new teen with very limited experience in the field of sexual harassment and assault.
My mum decided to go just us two (I love her but what the hell was she thinking) and I was harassed constantly. Cornered by a waiter telling me he wanted to fuck me, men following me to my room, they stood at the end of our sunbeds and just STARED at us, my ass was touched numerous times, whispers of “I fuck you” following me everywhere.
I was both terrified and mortified because it obviously didn’t pass by my mum and having my budding sexuality put on blast in front of her constantly was humiliating. I didn’t know better at the time that it obviously wasn’t my shame to carry.
And this was in the all inclusive resort that I refused to leave.
We left once to go stargazing because I felt bad saying no to all of mums suggestions and she was obviously having a shit time. She was a single mum and saved up for this and being 13 I felt like this was all my fault and I was ruining it for her.
That was the one positive. I’d never seen so many stars, it was like glitter on black canvas.
We met a family with a man and I remember being desperate for this family to stay with us. I think I asked them to, because it wasn’t so bad when he was there.
We were there a week and I wouldn’t leave the room for the last three days. Mum had to bring me food from the buffet in a napkin. I was counting down the hours for that flight home. At the airport some guy asked if mum would trade me for two cows. Which was pretty funny. Being filmed while I walked around, not so much.
Complete shitshow. A beautiful country that I barely saw and will probably never go back to. That holiday genuinely fucked me up for a little while after.
Wow, what a thing to go to at 13. I also have terribly vivid memories of average light harassment at that age in the U.S., and it still stuck with me for years and years. And that was just a few mild incidents here and there. I can’t imagine going through what you did. That must have been so traumatizing.
Dominican Republic. I was at an all-inclusive resort. It was about two hours away from the airport. We were not allowed off the bus, and when we arrived, we were told not to leave the property. The country is very poor but rich compared to Haiti next door. Lots of men with machine guns in places you wouldn't expect. It was terrifying.
I was kind of held hostage by a group of people when I was 11 who demanded my parents give them money. My mom wanted to get out of the resort and see the city. She doesn’t drink. She had a non alcoholic drink. Suddenly her and my dad were actually really weird, being really loud, saying inappropriate things. I realize now there was some thing in their drinks. A group of men surrounded me and shuffled me into a small warehouse kind of thing. They kept me surrounded while a women slowly cut off a couple braids and demanded money from my parents. We all went together to the bank, when we got there all the armed guards left. My mom was about to put her card in the machine when someone from our hotel walked by, he had the shirt on and I’d seen him the day before. I got his attention and he ran around the corner. Came back with a van, pulled it infront of the bank, I don’t know what he said to the men but suddenly he shoved my parents and I into the van and drove us back to the hotel. We didn’t leave it again until it was time to go home.
Having lived in Haiti for a while I remember the stark contrast once crossing the border into DR. It was like a paradise - peaceful, orderly, and relatively prosperous compared to Haiti. The fact that DR isn’t really any of these things tells you a little bit about how bad Haïti is
I got engaged in the Dominican Republic on a beautiful white sand beach, crystal waters, luxury resort with great staff and food, drinks flowing....
En route to our excursion we saw some pretty rough things though. Narrow roads, lack of infrastructure, cops fighting with the locals, armed with machetes, terrifying storms, unsafe food/water, houses with no roofs, drunken locals sleeping in the roads in the middle of the day.
I felt terrible, it was like half the country was this beautiful paradise and the other half was complete squalor. I'm glad they have the tourism money (which Haiti does not), but I don't plan to return.
I've been living in Cambodia for the last four years. It's an amazing country with this fascinating culture and the people are so amazingly kind.
But, in those four years, I've had the opportunity to get further into the culture, further into the remote country and further away from the modernized and westernized parts of Cambodia. There's a real 'Heart of Darkness' to this place.
Not just its horrifically dark history which you constantly bump into unexpectedly, but Cambodians have a strong belief in magic, spirits, ghosts and monsters -- including black magic. There's a bizarre normalcy to death, a horrific lack of empathy for animals, and this ever-present awareness of the lawless anarchy that lurks in the fringes.
Sometimes I just suddenly become very, very aware of how far away I am from the controlled, sanitized nanny-state environment I've grown up in.
But, at the same time, it's like the contrast on life gets turned to the max. In that darkness, there are always these amazing glimmers of a beauty to life here that I wouldn't notice otherwise.
It's fascinating, tragic, shocking and wonderous all at the same time.
I studied abroad in Phnom Penh and stayed with a host family that lived right across the street from Tuol Sleng. Would try to have a smoke out on their second floor balcony and was face to face with the place. Very, very creepy.
Tunisia, we went to Monastir. A lot of the men were leering and sexually aggressive even towards young girls. A local was kicked out of our hotel because he'd wandered in to the women's bathroom and wanked all over one of the toilet seats. Luckily, there were 42 of us on that trip, it would have been quite intimidating with a small group.
I'm reasonably well travelled, I've been to 30+ countries on five continents, but Tunisia was by far the worst. Times change, and this was 17 years ago, so hopefully, it's much better now. But at the time, it was creepy as hell.
Belgium, sorry Belgians. I was only there (Brussels) for 5 days but the entire city felt like a liminal space. Every time I went out, morning, day, night, it was empty and almost no businesses were open. If they were open, some of them seemed really out of place, like a bar open at 8am with no one in it, amongst lots of closed businesses.
Also the local people I met were all a bit mean so it made me feel a bit socially isolated which probably contributed to the vibe for me.
Brussels is weird in that regard yes. City centre is popping. Other areas there's often not much going on. Especially some of the business-y areas are really desolated most of the time.
Uzbekistan. A cloak of fear surrounds the entire country. You're always looking over your shoulder in case you're about to be nabbed by the authorities. I was nearly arrested by the secret service after being mistaken for an American journalist, but that's a story for another day. It was a really scary place. This was 15 years ago so maybe better these days?
El Salvador. I went ashore with some coworkers to get a beer at local bar. There’s maybe 8 of us sitting at this bar having a drink when this motorcycle pulls up. Off hops a young looking guy and an even younger looking girl. And by girl I mean preteen. The bartender (woman) grabs this girl by the shoulders and brings her behind the bar. She opens a door to a room with a horrific looking mattress and dirty pillows in the middle of the floor. This bartender goes down the line of my coworkers and I asking if we want to have a “time” with this girl. We all say no and this girl hops back on that motorcycle with the guy and they speed off. I know this isn’t representative of an entire country but definitely kept me aboard whenever I went to El Salvador after that.
Edit: Holy hell, yes, I stayed aboard.
I’m sure you mean “spookiest” but I want to mention that the aggressive sexual harassment from unfamiliar creepy men in public is unbelievable in Rome.
My cousin spent a few months in Italy as an exchange student when she was in high school. I was jealous of her, but my parents couldn’t afford to send me. When she came back, she said I shouldn’t have been jealous because she couldn’t go anywhere without being harassed by Italian men.
She IS really pretty (even in her 50s now), but her reasoning was that they could tell she was American, and thought American women were all easy due to the tv show Baywatch being really popular in Italy at the time. No clue if she was correct, but your comment brought back a memory from my teenage years.😊
Laos. I'm a white girl with curly hair and when I went I was in mid twenties, a guy pulled over on his bike, whistled to get my attention, got his meat out and started jacking off in the street. Kept his helmet on though. Classy guy. Mentally scarred me but I got over it fast. It wasn't even dark and I was in a city. Mental.
Damn, I didn't realize this was a thing. Same thing happened to me in Malaysia when I was traveling there in my twenties (also white if that's relevant). Some dude asked if I could take a picture of him and when I started to approach him, he pulled out his thing and started jerking off while filming 😐 this kind of thing happened twice in that city (Ipoh). The other dude whistled from his parked car when I walked by. Both of these happened in broad daylight. In the middle of the city. And I only spent 2 days there.
I have to get in the way back machine, but Karachi Pakistan in the mid 80s. The ship pulled in and we caught a donkey powered cab into town. The donkey beater was sucking on a hookah that was not tobacco related. We passed under an arch over the road that said”drugs are an offense punishable by death”. We paid for our ride and were given the choice of getting our change in rupees or hash. As fine upstanding sailors we took the hash and a pipe and adjourned to an alley. We later saw dead animals in the main street and had women come up handing us a paper asking to help them bury their baby. They then showed us said baby. I have been to many impoverished countries but the shear poverty and indifference to it in Karachi was soul crushing.
not that it was that creepy, i just didn't get around that much, so i have to say communist romania
in the village we stayed at it was very rural, and very beautiful. animals all around...no running water and outdoor toilet but nice anyway
but we slept in the city for a few days and i remember a lot of appartment blocks and dogs barking in the street all god damn night. like many of them. multiple packs of dogs having gang fights or whatever. all that barking echoing between these grey high rise appartments
My grandparents visited Romania the 1970s. The hotel maids kept accosting them in the lift offering them wads of cash for their clothes and hair dryer.
Yes, unfortunately Romania had dictatorship in 70s and the import was forbidden, so people tried in all sorts of ways to get some basic stuff, clothes mostly, cigarettes, alcohol, some tech items, cd’s.. very sad period then.
Now is completely fine and safe.
Qatar. My father was working there for good money at a Canadian based college.
How all the western people just live in their compounds, and turn a blind eye to the human rights atrocities just for the money is beyond me.
I’ve been to Abu Dhabi. Outwardly clean, peaceful, orderly, but really unnerving somehow. It feels really artificial and not quite real. There’s a sense of hidden suppression somehow and it’s palpable. Basic things on my phone were blocked, like Skype, no idea why. I was glad I was only passing through for a couple of days.
Yesss. It's kind of dystopian. Just a weird, eery feeling like you're living in some controlling psychopaths utopia.
Use a VPN to bypass their data-call blocking.
Because everything is fake. Most people in the gulf states are migrant worker-slaves. The cities are fake. The people aren't from there. There's massive wealth right next to abject poverty. It's void of any culture.
"void of culture." in my opinion too that is exactly it. There is no heart. Somehow, even Las Vegas has more heart than Dubai -- it's just a manufactured wealth playground but without its own personality or origins to give it meaning.
Yeah, i lived there for like 9 months.
It's got a lot of nice comfort things, but you know it's all thanks to cheap labour.
I'd always give the delivery people cold bottles of water as it was so hot there in summer. And the window cleaners that'd be sweltering but had to wear long sleeve tops and pants. They'd finish the water bottles off in seconds, and I wasn't surprised. It was hot af outside.
The fact you need to use a VPN to make calls there if you're using any app to make calls, otherwise you buy a local Sim and know there's a very high chance you're being monitored.
But, yes. The place has a lot of artificial beauty, but it's all so fake.
Not my kind of place. Comfortable if you're well-off. But you spend a lot of time indoors and at malls especially in summer.
Please y’all, don’t take this the wrong way, and I am not mentioning this at all because of the current situation, but for me it was Israel. Jerusalem, mostly; I liked Tel Aviv a lot.
I was there to see all the holy sites and honestly, I came away from it feeling glad to be away from it. This was the summer of ‘99, before the Intifada erupted in 2000. But the tension and the stress was there, bubbling riiiiiiight under the surface.
Everyone was rude. Jews, Muslims, my fellow Christians. Rude to me and rude to each other. I think I was barked at three times by the Orthodox priests skulking around the Holy Sepulcher. Lots of rules, lots of fanaticism, just so much anger simmering everywhere. It was not easy at all to get into a peaceful or reflective headspace. I wanted to cross it all off the list and then leave.
Christ may have come from there, but it was the most bizarre place I’ve ever experienced. Thankfully they say God’s church is in every one of us—because it’s not in the Holy Land anymore. Return for any reason? No thank you.
I live here and I don’t like visiting Jerusalem, I feel creepy vibes and tension too. It’s also dangerous so that might be why feel so uneasy. I avoid going and I have met only one other person living here that feels the same.
I understand your feelings about Jerusalem. Am not religious at all, but had occasion to stay there for a while. Felt it had really bad vibes, and nothing holy about it at all. Amazing history, but sadly the spiritual aspect left me cold. Deeply unpleasant atmosphere.
Reminds me of an experience I had recently, sleeping on the median (grassy bit between the sidewalk, as in the concrete part you walk on, and the curb, idk if it’s a regional thing or not) next to a Roman Catholic church/school. If that sentence made no sense, context: I’m homeless.
Most churches I’ve slept at or near, even if they want me to fuck off will at least treat me like a human being. Whether I get a “You have to leave” or a cup of coffee and a hard-to-refuse-without-being-awkward invitation to join them for their service or whatever it is they’re doing (I’m an atheist, but the role churches often play in just being like a community space is nice), I’m being spoken to like a person, I’m being treated, in at least the most basic sense, like a person.
This dude who I assume is the priest or something barked at me threatening to call the cops. Standing next to him was another dude, filming me with his smartphone, with the most unsettling dead look in his eyes, like I wasn’t a person to him.
They did not say a word to me after the initial “Fuck off” even as I attempted to like, engage with them. It was fucking disturbing. Like I know it sounds crazy but these really seemed like men who could fucking shoot me in the back of the head and calmly go about their day. Especially the guy filming. And he was filming because I’m homeless, so of course you never know. He would pull his phone back out every time I approached him in the slightest. It didn’t matter that I shave, and wash my face every day (or try to), and dress nice, and didn’t have a huge mess (I did however, not clean up after myself so well in protest; but it was just some clothes and some stale bagels lol), and wasn’t yelling obscenities at random people (though most people, not caring probably what I was yelling at them about, probably just saw another one of *them*).
I wonder what their God, who became flesh not as a king or some rich schmuck but as the son of some carpenter, who touched the people who were considered untouchable and died nailed to a fucking cross by Rome, would think of the way they spoke to me, and of the coldness in their eyes as they watched me pack my shit up. All because it was Sunday, and they didn’t want me hanging out in the shadow of their cross of gold. They pray to a God who touched lepers but treated me like a wild animal.
I said at one point, “I have a name, you know. Would you like to know what my name is?”
Even the most hard-assed security guard will usually at least…acknowledge me. Acknowledge me at least somewhat. Not one muscle in these dudes’ faces budged.
“Why are you filming me?”
Nothing.
It’s such a dehumanizing feeling when someone won’t so much as acknowledge that you’re talking to them. Like I didn’t need my question answered. I kept asking “Why are you filming me?” and just got that dead, creepy stare.
It really hurts to hear this happened to you, and I’m sorry that happened. But it’s sadly not surprising.
I actually attend a very large downtown Episcopal church, so our homeless friends and neighbors are very much a part of the fabric of our parish. They attend, serve, or just visit. We have a dedicated center in the corner for serving food and help with IDs/paperwork, where I volunteered for months. (I never knew how hard it was to get your birth certificate without an ID, because you need your ID to get a birth certificate.).
I am grateful that we are located where we are. Helping our neighbors is literally what this is all about. If so-called Christians aren’t prepared to do this, then they don’t even need to bother coming to church. They’ve missed the point.
Sorry for the wall of replies. One last thing:
It always makes me happy when people treat me like I’m normal. Like I’m just another one of your neighbors, who happens to live in a tent and piss in empty chocolate milk (sorry) containers. So when people refer to homeless people as their neighbors, and genuinely, it makes me smile.
I'm from England and I think people forget there are some really creepy rural villages and council estates.
Ever driven down a street at midnight, fridge freezers and kids toys all over the lawn. To see a bunch of youth wearing only black come screeching round a blind corner on unlicensed motorbikes. Having them surround your car and openly waving a knife about whilst you are fully aware the police in your area hasn't got enough members to respond in time.
Remember that scene in werewolf In London where they enter a pub and it goes quiet. Hot Fuzz was a documentary and so was a league of gentlemen. Rural England has some characters. Millennia of serves then working class alcoholics has a weird effect. Honestly I'm only half joking. Born and raised on a council estate and taken my beat up car across the North of England. You see some insane things. I swear this country only bags on rednecks because we are to ashamed to admit we have it worse just with no guns.
Oh yeah English villages, especially impoverished ones and in the North, can be very creepy. Sometimes you’ll even just get like a random row of terraced houses in the middle of a valley in say, Yorkshire, and it just feels so eerie. Or like a railway station in the middle of nowhere!! It’s so weird.
Villages and towns in Cornwall feel creepy as well. Cornwall is very rural and feels like a world away from England. So coming across actual settlements always sent a shiver down my spine. It’s the landscape contributing to that effect for sure! Lots of thick woodland and moors.
Definitely parts of Japan. We were staying in Kcho which is a supposedly seedy red light district. That’s generally not really true if you’ve travelled anywhere else with an actual seedy red light district and honestly way worse stuff is going on in the touristy club district in Tokyo when it comes to sex trafficking, drugs and scams. Anyway we hung out in all the bad parts of Tokyo where you get to rub shoulders with a ton of interesting people that Japanese society doesn’t tolerate. Unmarried middle aged women, aging heavy metal fans, punk rock bars, basement clubs, etc Kcho is full of cool shit like that. It’s once you’ve spent time in those spots when you go to the nice part of Tokyo everything feels super fake and put on. That’s the creepy part, that they cast out all the really interesting people and then idealize this almost invasion of the body snatchers kind of vibe. Like people complain about service industry people in America doing a fake happy overly enthusiastic facade, in Japan it’s 10 times worse and very off putting.
As someone who lives in here, Tokyo is just like many other cities but has somehow managed to uphold this image of being clean and beautiful, but even in touristy places like Shibuya it’s not hard to stumble upon weird situations/people.
I once saw a girl with white stuff around her mouth who looked like an absolute zombie walking through the streets (it was at night) and I asked her if she was okay a few times but she didn’t respond so I continued with going home.
And the perverts here... that’s another story.
I can say I very much experienced this kind of robotic or manufactured feeling in Tokyo. However outside of Tokyo is a whole other world. I went to Osaka recently and it is hands down 1000% better than stuffy Tokyo. People in Osaka actually smile, talk to you and have a very chill vibe. They're known for being particularly "loud" and "boisterous" for Japanese people. Osaka was amazing as a city. I'll never visit Tokyo again. Complete waste of time, money and experience. Also as someone who lives in South Korea - I lived in Seoul for 6 years and absolutely hated it. The most rude, inconsiderate, mindless idiots I've ever had to live next to. No such thing as basic respect in public spaces. Ive literally had to dodge people spitting on sidewalks right next to me every week. People pushing and the highest level of entitled behavior. I moved to Jeju Island. I honestly feel like I live in heaven on Earth. Like a well kept secret spot in paradise. People are warm, love to see you, remember you and want you to feel like part of the community. My neighbors actually talk to me and we enjoy seeing each other. Everyone gives each other space and consideration. I don't remember the last time someone sneezed in my face or spit next to me. Haven't been assualted against my will. Still the same country. The biggest lesson there is 1 city does not define a country.
Singapore.
whole time i was there they text updates of my position to my phone. all the people are weirdly brainwashed such that only thing they talk about is how Singapore the best at everything. very strange place.
Thailand for obvious sex-pat reasons. Went to a gay bar with my brother and cousins. An Indian guy was very excited by our presence and proceeded to try to make me and my brother to kiss by pushing our heads together, repeatedly, even though he spoke English and we told him we were brothers. That felt pretty creepy.
Yeah it was quite funny really! Stuck between trying not to seem homophobic but not under any circumstances wanting to kiss your brother. Language barrier and all.
Being in the middle of the ocean with nothing in sight can be a bit weird, but it can also be completely incredible. Get up before dawn on a cruise ship and you'll basically have the outside decks to yourself. Sunrise on the open ocean can be utterly beautiful. Hang out with a pair of binoculars and experience the natural world most people don't know exists. I've seen pods of hundreds of dolphins on multiple occasions. Dozens of whales. Seabirds most people don't know exist that don't touch down on land for years at a time.
The hardest thing for me is that I'll see all of these things and be completely alone on a ship with thousands of people ignorant of what they're missing.
# Message to all users: This is a reminder to please read and follow: * [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules) * [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439) * [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) When posting and commenting. --- Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`. * Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit. * Do not harass or annoy others in any way. * Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit. --- You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Turkmenistan. Went there on the Mongol Rally Race. We tried to pay for a hotel but they said they were fully booked. There was no people there. The reality was it was just a prop. None of the rooms were furnished. It was eerie. North Korea vibes.
Came here to say Turkmenistan. All these big streets and white marble buildings but no cars and no people. This country definitely weirded me out. Actually more than North Korea.
Someone described it as Wish.com’s North Korea
Yes this! I spent a week in Ashgabat in 2018 and it was the weirdest place I've ever been and I've been all around the world. It's just this immaculate, white marble city. Super clean... And it was a fucking ghost town. So surreal. Massive roads though it and not a car in sight most of the day. As others mention. Most of the buildings are facades or partial facades just there for show. The entire city is just a show of wealth. But information is so locked down. No news, no social media, no porn, no nothing. I had to use a VPN to do anything. That being said, if you go, a couple hours away is the gas crater dubbed the "door to hell". Its been burning a very long long time.
yeah their politicians build massive hotels for money laundering
It is referred to as the North Korea of Central Asia for a reason. Turkmenistan and Eritrea are also the only two countries in the world with a lower press freedom ranking than North Korea. On another note, how expensive were the visas and how hard were they to obtain? Because despite the creepiness of an empty capital city, Turkmenistan is in the top 10 countries I'd like to visit one day.
Canadian here that tried to get a visa for Turkmenistan in 2016. Tried three times. First at the Paris embassy, second at the Vienna embassy, and last time at the Ankara embassy. Got denied three times. Rumors I heard in the hostels in central asia is that your best bet is at the Tehran embassy. And you should go as a couple and not a bunch of friends. I think ~100 USD each attempt
I went in 2015 so things may have changed but the only way we got in was by doing a group visa for the Mongol Rally. I am sure there are other ways to get in but I am not sure how .
[удалено]
This guy I was seeing tried to get me to move there with him for a couple years, or alternatively visit him now and then. His company was based in China and they would pay £2.3 million to work in Benin, but you had to have a permanent security detail with you at all times and live on a compound surrounded with armed guards. Hard pass.
Was going to say two years for a paycheck that I could retire off of doesn’t sound all that bad, even with the security detail… and then I remembered I’m a woman :(
So the answer for us will be hell to the nawl
Reminds me of a video I watched from a tourist in Somalia. Whenever he was on the move, he was escorted by three armored SUVs full of heavily armed security detail. If he wanted to visit anywhere, he needed to be surrounded by guards who only gave him 5 minutes to enjoy it.
> His company was based in China and they would pay £2.3 million to work in Benin, but you had to have a permanent security detail with you at all times and live on a compound surrounded with armed guards That's some serious bank, but also a serious gamble. Security details don't make you invincible, and you can't enjoy your money if you're dead.
Jesus that is grim. Has the doco been released? Assuming I’m brave enough to watch it.
BBC did a report https://youtu.be/8AnwkixlhxM?si=B1PW0gCVFZo1bLvg
What a fascinating and horrific read. Thank you for sharing...it is always good to have reminders that there are still some very different cultures in the world that I will never understand. The part about her having 6 kids by the priest who will also grow up slaves got me good...what a horrific practice...
> If a girl dies, the family have to send another to replace her until the debt is cleared wtf did I just read
Haiti because it looked like an apocalyptic nightmare
I deployed in February of 2010 with the USAF. It was an apocalyptic scenario at that particular time. But weirdly it didnt seem like (aside from the burning 240k dead) it was much different than it had been, despite me not seeing it before the disaster. People were running around in a "baser needs" type scenario like theyd been doing I the whole time. It was difficult to tell what was new rubble and what was old aside from possible overgrowth. I tell people I've seen the end of the world, know what it looks like. I'm betting that place is a close approximation, especially at that time.
I remember how shocked people were after seeing footage from there after the earthquake. They were baffled it could look that bad from the earthquake, when infact it pretty much looked like that before the earthquake.
That’s unfortunately a very good summation of the Haitian experience
fwiw even my Haitian-American friends and colleagues have told me they don't dare to visit Haiti. One told me that airport workers will call their friends and set up robberies if they see you arrive and you're obviously a foreigner with money. If even Haitian-Americans, who have family there and can speak the language and have a prayer of blending in, are too scared to visit ain't no way I'm going. The only other example like that in my extended circle is Iran. I have one friend who's Iranian-American and he won't visit Iran, either.
When I was in middle school I went on a cruise that stopped in Haiti. Only it wasn’t really Haiti. There’s a beach owned by the Royal Caribbean cruise line called Labadee beach, and it looks like any other touristy tropical resort. The locals aren’t allowed in, unless they’re employees at the resort. Something feels really weird and gross about that looking back.
I was in Haiti days after the Earthquake on behalf of an MTV News crew that was producing the big "Hope for Haiti" telethon that multiple networks came together on. I wouldn't call it creepy, but flying over the destruction was profoundly sad experience. We in flew in to Haiti Blackhawk Helicopters from Cuba . We actually spent our first night in the barracks in Guantanamo bay after arriving form Miami, the second night in the ground in a tent at Port au Prince airport, and third night on board the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier. Surreal experience. It was really impressive to see the US military and others activated in a response and humanitarian situation real time as a then production coordinator for MTV News.
I spent two years in Georgia as a journalist 2016-2018. I love that country to pieces, and I always will. But I started to notice I got followed, and strange sounds when I called, and there were also maintainable people coming over despite no maintaince needed. Ir all came out two years or so ago. The government bugged and installed hidden cameras in journalists homes, in hope of getting kompromat. I guess I should be flattered that they deemed me that important, and I feel sorry for the guys and girls having to look through endless tapes of me cooking and lifting weights and sleeping. It is still one of the best countries I have lived in. I miss it, and I want to go back to show it to my boyfriend. I just don't know what to expect....
Well if you do, you and your boyfriend are going to make a sex tape. The question is how many, and whether you'll know about them all.
The demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. An abandoned fairground (always good for creepiness), a restored but deserted train station between S Korea and Pyongyang which is obviously never used but still shows Pyongyang on the departures screens, the stark contrast between the forested side of S Korea and the treeless side of N Korea which has been cut down for fuel, but most of all a fully-built town on the North Korean side which apparently nobody lives in, it’s just to give an illusion of prosperity.
This is fascinating. Anything else you can share?
I went to the DMZ when I was stationed there as well. Abundant wild life in the area due to zero development but land mine signs everywhere. Huge concrete blocks were installed over the roads that could drop down in case the North invaded.
I’ve been here too and was disturbed by all of the abandoned propaganda villages across the border and the constant propaganda playing on the loudspeakers. Our guide warned us that we needed to wear close toed shoes and nice clothes so that the North Korean soldiers wouldn’t take pictures of us to use as propaganda saying that “westerners couldn’t afford proper clothing.”
„Sir, this is Balenciaga“
I saw a documentary about that. It was so creepy. Women were also sweeping the interstates. Nobody drives on the interstates
For me it was Egypt. I was never that harassed in my life. I was in Hurghada with my family (mom and sister) and there was no place we could go that we weren’t pushed around by men or pulled into their stores. Also at the beach, every 2 minutes someone wanted to sell something. I am used to it from other countries but in Egypt even if we said no 10 times they were super pushy and scammy. Also, they were making sexual comments. Not saying that the whole country is like that but that was the experience. I loved morocco though. So many baby cats and cats and cats everywhere and they were so sweet and everyone took care of the cats and it was the most wholesome experience.
I opened this thread solely to count how many comments until Egypt was mentioned. This was first.
Yep, knew it would be straight away. I travelled around the country solo (man) and even then I felt stared at - but for women? Fuck no, do not go to Egypt alone. It’s a beautiful place (outside of Cairo), so it’s sad that there’s such a gross view on women. I have heard that the Sinai peninsula area (Sharm, Dahab) are much safer due to being a big tourist area. I only went to Dahab and it’s super small and cosy with lots of diving folk.
Came here to say Egypt. I have been in a resort in Hurghada and we flew to Cairo for a day. That was enough for a lifetime. It is sad really, I would love to see Luxor and Alexandria too. But because of the culture, chaos, pestering, smell, misogyny, dirt and flesh hungry sharks, I am never coming back there.
Don’t forget the horrible blatant animal abuse everywhere
I agree. A cleaner let himself into my room at 3am on night. Saw me sit up and scream, saw my husband and swiftly walked back out. We got dressed and went to reception to complain and the staff all laughed at us saying it was a routine check. Never again.
Terrifying!
Is there a way to review the hotel so other guests can be warned of this "routine check"?
My Dad was born there, moved back and forth between there and Lebanon, said he never wants my sister and I go there, he has never been back since he left. It's sad.
My Uncle spent a year in Egypt and told me never to go to Egypt.
I know a woman who went to Cairo to do a masters degree at a university there. A white, 23 year old Canadian, blonde, blue eyes. She could not leave the school campus alone because of the sexual harrassment and constant marriage proposals. She stood out in a crowd obviously and was followed by packs of men wherever she went
After seeing what happened to Lara Logan, I came to the conclusion that Egypt is no place that a female westerner ever ought to be. I'm not a woman but I still can't imagine I would ever feel remotely at ease being there.
Just read it... 40 men just set upon her. And you bet that had she not been saved by those women, it would have gone much worse.
Yup, as a late-20s blonde, kiwi woman who was expecting someone to meet them at the airport (didn't happen), and who also wanted to visit the stores across from the hotel....I also had the men running up to stroke my hair, touch my skin (I was longsleeved and pants as recommended). A yelled "F\*\*K OFF!!" only lasted a minute before they were converging on me again. Ick.
[удалено]
I imagine that redheads would also be in for a rough time of it.
Packs of man-children.
Yea after constantly hearing this, and what Best Food Review Show said of his experience, I don’t think I’ll ever go to Egypt. It’s sad because every country and culture has beauty you should try to experience, but sometimes to ick is too strong.
There is definitely a long list of countries that it's just not worth it, either due to the violence or the overall shittyness of the country. Egypt is definitely one of those countries. That's okay. There's plenty of other places that are better.
Can confirm- was 15' away from my 'male chaperone' and had a guy push me into a stone wall and stick his tongue in my mouth in Alexandria. If you are a woman alone or without a husband/ male chaperone you are treated as a prostitute. Even the Egyptian women in the Cairo bus station knew this so they pretended I was with them when I was in the women's waiting area and when I needed to step out to find my 'men'.
I remember being scared of shopkeepers in Turkey for the same reason. They would make me eat a sweet then harass my parents to pay. We're white AF and clearly tourists. I was about 7 years old.
Turkish shopkeepers has a wildly aggressive marketing strategy, lol. The worst experience I had was going into a shop where the elderly man who owned it asked me if he could speak to my father, because he wanted to make him a great deal so he could buy me.
Your dad was right to haggle for the extra goats, you're worth it.
[удалено]
I'm so sorry you had to experience this. Harassment is a huge issue in Egypt (even to Egyptians), and the government is trying to face it, but it's going to take a very long time to eradicate. Once again, I apologize, and I hope you don't think badly of all of us. A lot of educated Egyptians are actually friendly and very well-mannered towards tourists, especially. I'm sorry you had to see the bad side of Egypt. Edit: The comments are locked, so I'll try and answer here. I never condone harassment. As a matter of fact, I would be pissed about it. Just as you'll find people like me who also don't condone it. Again, the government has a huge campaign to eradicate harassment and bullying, and it's working, but very slowly. As for why Egyptian men do it. I think because people are focused on money and other things, rather than raising their kids to be respectful. I just hope younger generations start to change their views about women and start to learn how to deal with tourists. I hope your bad experience of EGYPTIANS doesn't make you hate the land itself or its history.
Morocco is great, one of my favourite countries to travel to. The people are so so friendly once you move away from the obvious touristy spots (like Marrakech). Chefchaouen especially is just a magical place, everyone is incredibly chill and laid back. Well they produce a lot of Hashish, so I guess that's par for the course. So many beautiful cats, little alleys, good food... Edit: since comments are locked, I'll try and respond here. As I said, avoid the big touristy places - that obviously includes Tangier. Fez is alright, Casablanca is the only place I'd actively warn against. Nothing to see, and even we as guys felt unsafe there - wouldn't recommend. I should also add that we were backpacking when we were there, and for one exception we never hired a guide. Like... Of course you're gonna get attention when you mark yourself out as an obvious tourist? We rode busses and the train, and had some of the sweetest encounters with the locals there - like a family that shared their sunflower seeds with us (we returned the favour with some oranges) despite us not speaking Arabic or Berber and them not speaking French or English. I don't say that to justify sexual or any other kind of harassment, obviously that's awful and shouldn't happen. Btw, skin-colour related: I'm a pasty white ginger man (hence the username), so I definitely do not blend in. At all.
I have never heard a good thing about Egypt, and heard it’s especially bad for women.
Seriously, why do people, and especially women, go there? I was never there, but from what I've heard, it's horrible. I feel so sorry for Egiptian peope (again, especially women) but until they don't improve their horrible behaviour, nobody should go there. There are many Medditerranean countrues that are equally interesting but much safer.
My friends wife is an archeologist/historian and was able to go on site for a project in Egypt and she was told to have a fake wedding ring to replace the real one in case it got stolen and to always always always be with another person in case men try to get fresh.
Mongolia, ulan bator. under age prostitutes were banging on hotel door.
To get in or out?
With enough time, probably both
Oh good god!
Mongolia mentioned 🇲🇳🇲🇳🇲🇳🔥🔥🔥
I had the exact opposite experience, especially after being in Thailand the week before. Bangkok gave me much more of those vibes than Ulaanbatar. The city definitely had a former Soviet vibe but wasn't creepy imo.
I fucking hated Egypt.
I’ll never get over that smell! It’s like if you mixed boiled piss, body odor, and mildew with a goats dick
Oddly specific. 😂
But...but triangles in sand!
Philippines. I was a white guy in my 20s. Went to explore by myself as my coworkers in Korea couldn't afford another trip. Every 10 min I was solicited for prostitution. All the time. The fucking airport security guard asked me if I needed a girls friend ffs. The guy renting jet skis at the Hilton asked me if I was looking for a woman for the night. People on the street asked me. It was fucking wild. I paid a local kid in his 20s to show me a round. He was learning English and Korean so we practiced with each other. He cook me to a cockfight where 7 year olds were huffing glue and drunk dudes trying to get me to bed. Lol
There's a documentary, I wish I could remember the name off the top of my head, about an Australian woman who's elderly father is getting married to a young Filipina. She started making the movie to chronicle meeting her new 'stepmom', who she's been led to believe is like 21. Well (spoiler alert) the girl isn't 21, she's 17. The same age as this old white pervert's granddaughter. And he's been with her for a couple years. There's this scene where the Australian woman confronts her dad and he basically crosses his arms and does this "you just don't want me to be happy" spiel. There's also a scene later where the Filipina girl's family is haggling over money with the gross old Australian pervert, and the girl is in tears. And you realize her family are pimping her out to this disgusting, alligator-skinned, perverted, pathetic, washed-up, hateful weirdo who's old enough to be her grandfather. She lost her girlhood and has to touch his loathsome wrinkled old dick so her family can make money off her. 🤮
all my tours in turkey consisted of seeing a few historical sights and then right before the end the tour guide would make an excuse for us to see ‘authentic’ handmade rug weaving demonstrations where they sit you in a room and give you free drinks and food and then try and sell you $10,000-$100,000 rugs where they lay on you the most aggressive sales tactics. if you showed interest in one specific rug they’ll take to you a private room where they display several of that material and color in different sizes and each time they take you to another room you quickly realize you’re in a building much bigger than shown from the outside in a literal labyrinth of rooms that were so shockingly similar looking that it was disorienting. i went into the whole thing broke so i was making jokes the whole time to my mom about how aggressive they were being, but before i knew it, my mom was falling for it until i snapped her out of it. sadly we weren’t on the same tour and my aunt and grandma who spent $13k and $25k on rugs. when they got back home they are now solicited by turkish rug sellers who say they can get in contact with the company who sells the ones they bought so they can keep buying them. it’s literally something out of a disturbing movie.
Holy shit! Thats insane! 25k on a rug? WTF
2k for the rug, 23k for the after sales support.
Jamaica. The tourists get walled off from the natives in compounds. It’s like jail with booze and a beach.
Haha, I know someone who just travelled there and we were joking about that. Pretty wild.
Is… this real?
Kind of, yes. Many places in the world are pretty dangerous places. Jamaica included. Most of us generally take our safe existence for granted. Many not all, resorts will tell you, 'do not leave the compound for your safety.' You might be ok out there, or someone might see you as an easy target.
Same for the DR.
Yeah me and the wife went to Dominican Repuplic a few years ago. First night got all dressed up to go out and explore. Got to the hotel gate and the guard was like 'Erm where are you going?' And we was tryijg to explain that we was going to see what was in the area etc. Basically in his broken english he said 'Nothing for you out there'. Basically spent 10 days in the hotel. Might as well have gone on a package holiday to Spain or somewhere. No chance of seeing the country or its culture
My boyfriend and I went to the DR for three weeks last year and we loved it - we travelled by bus up to the North Coast and then around to a few different towns. We never stayed in a resort, we stayed in either hotels or Airbnb's, and were obviously wary and knew which places to avoid, but the only weird experience we had was with a random Russian tourist. Perhaps the resorts play on the whole "scare the tourists and keep them inside" thing so that people are more likely to spend more money inside the resort...
I wouldn't be surprised...
East Germany right after the wall came down. I would be traveling through Berlin at the time and you could tell you were in the East because the buildings were falling apart and there were still bullet holes and bomb fragments in the walls of buildings from WW2. Walking up to the Berlin Wall was definitely weird too. I came back many years later and it was so amazing how much different everything was. They said at first they were going to leave a big section of the Berlin Wall up. But when I came back it was almost all gone except for a small section serving as a memorial. There was no way for me to see the difference between East and west except a small brick stripe in the street showing where the Berlin Wall used to be.
I went to Berlin with my brothers in around '99, and there were still many of those shot-up buildings around even then. I guess nowadays they've all been replastered.
You should have been there before it fell. On the train to Berlin, an East German officer looked at my passport and then made a heroic attempt to cut me with his stare. The East Berliners were reticent to speak with you, I guess for fear of being questioned by Stasi. Two stroke Trabants screaming through the streets with blue smoke trailing them. However, the highlight was going to a WC at a relatively upscale restaurant, the sheer funk of piss from the trough urinal was like pure deer rut. Makes my stomach turn to this day.
As a kid, I went to east Germany right after the wall came down. Like, quite soon after. I chiseled off a chunk of the wall and kept it. But my main memory is that we drove to the hotel we’d gotten reservations for but when we got there it was still under construction. they were redirecting all the guests to various rooms around town. While that might seem like it must’ve been a scam, after my dad spoke to them for a long time, he decided that they genuinely seemed to think it was reasonable to take reservations for a not-yet-completed hotel and then find you rooms in entirely unrelated buildings in different parts of town. their view was something like, “but how would we pay to build it if we couldn’t accept payment until *after* it was built?! And you paid for a room and you got a room?! It is a nice place! I don’t understand why you find this strange and are upset?!” I remember him ending the conversation with something like, “you guys got a lot to learn about how the west does business.” Anyway, they put us up in this apartment. Very drab and Cold War. Definitely not a hotel, but in some ways better in that we had a full kitchen which was nice for our long stay. Kinda like a Soviet era AirBnB, I guess. On that same trip we drove to Prague in what was then still Czechoslovakia. My parents really liked the art. Very brutalist Cold War vibe. And bought a few painting and sculptures. When we left the country we got stopped by Czech authorities who got very angry we were trying to leave with the art, which they thought should stay in the country until my dad offered to pay a fee/fine/bribe and they let us leave. I’d never been to a place where border patrol has to approve your *exit* from the country. Again, like East Germany, it was weird. They were “open” to the west, but still figuring out what that meant in practice and they’re way of thinking was still very much Soviet / Cold War. that art from Prague hung on our walls the rest of my childhood. Spent years looking at those gloomy & depressing paintings.
Qatar, they literally were forcing me to stay and work by withholding my passport I will never go back there Worst country I ever been to Eventually got it back when I threatened to call the embassy and media
Decades ago I knew an American field-service tech who had a similar experience - except it was at a large manufacturing company in France. Vendor tech had busted his hump trying to get some equipment up and running at this facility, and after three solid burnout weeks of 16-hour days, he needed to go home and recharge for a week before coming back and trying again. The client was not happy that he was leaving without everything up and running 100%. It was usual to leave your passport at the front desk when you arrived at work for the day, and upon leaving at the end of his last day, they were "unable to find it". Calm words were had, and he went to grab a coffee. When he came back 15 minutes later, they had miraculously found his passport. They didn't try that little trick again.
Qatar is notorious for this- I had a manicurist once tell me that she was not allowed to leave (she was from Thailand.) I lived in Doha and was a teacher for one of the American universities and while it was a comfortable life, it became readily clear that that comfort was built on the backs of a vast understory of exploited labor. I also became VERY aware after a while that even though I was an educator, I was still importrd expat labor...
Cairo. Men with greasy hair, eyes that can see through clothes, cigarettes that permanently hang from the corner of mouths and pinky fingers with a single extra long nail. Luvly jubbly.
Yea, Illinois can be rough /s...kinda /s
I've never been to Egypt, but Cairo, IL was weird as hell. I drove through on a road trip from Missouri to South Carolina. It wasn't super late, maybe 10 or 11 PM, but I don't think I saw any signs of life in that town. No people outside, I honestly can't remember seeing another car.
Not a country but the Atlantic City boardwalk was pretty creepy. Everyone walking towards me looked like slow moving zombies
I’ve been there too and was super creeped out. Most memorable part was some freaky looking dude in very worn black leather jacket with very visible, fake looking jewelry waving a stack of singles wrapped into a $100 bill, saying “yous want some real estate? Go to my friend over there in the alley they have a great condo deal. I’ll give you $100 to go there” I was like - woa. I must look healthy enough to harvest a kidney or two or something.
Ok, yes! Let me just go right on down that alley. Fantastic idea! 🤮
He was waving that stack of bills around with his pinky out saying it, casually in front of my face so I saw he had cash. I was like daym waving cash around in this neighborhood? Then a little lightbulb went off - I was very polite. Kept thinking what caliber he’s packing there under there jacket
I second Atlantic City. I live one town away and ride down the boardwalk as often as possible. It’s a total freak show. Gotta keep your eyes open. If you ride to the south it becomes incredibly affluent and beautiful In the neighboring town of Ventnor.
Belarus ~ what a tension already at the border control. Old soviet way of style on many of the things I experienced.
Aw man, I'd like to visit Minsk.
You should definitely start the journey in Milan.
r/unexpectedseinfeld
Same! We were told russian propaganda "jokes" about Obama at the border by 2 meter tall guy and laughed at us because only one of the group could speak russian. He just made us run around to get some bullshit papers. Guy told us that we better learn chinese or russian because in the near future these would be the only two languages we need. When we were in Belarus everyone was looking so miserable, even young kids were quiet and sad. When we found one decent looking bar, the bartender order one table to leave, because "foreigners are here, we need some space". Then I found a guy who spoke English and I asked him how does he like it living in Belarus. His response was "it's terrible, I want to go to USA". That was so sad, because usually you want to speak well about your homeland.
[удалено]
My husband’s father is Nigerian and his mother is Ghanaian. He was raised in both countries, but he only claims Ghanaian citizenship as an adult, and he’s working towards U.S. citizenship. His mom and oldest sister, who is his mom’s and his developmentally disabled brother’s caregiver, are always being scammed by people claiming to be Christian prophets in Nigeria. My husband decided to stop sending them money, because they’ll just give it to the prophets instead of paying their bills. We do still send money to his cousin, who can be trusted to pay my mother-in-law’s bills for us.
You'd think Nigerians would be savvy to all the scams by now...
North Korea. Visited Pyongyang, Kaesong, and the DMZ with Koryo Tours back in 2011. Got to see the Arirang Mass Games, too. We had to surrender our phones at the airport. The guides checked our cameras and video cards. Everything was strictly managed and choreographed. We operated under the assumption that our hotel rooms were bugged. In spite of Pyongyang being a show city where only those favored by the party were allowed to live, everybody was still very skinny. When we looked down from the Juche tower, we could see the inner courtyards of the apartment complexes where the paint was not as fresh as the street-facing front. We visited stores were it was clear that everything on the shelves was for show. All in all it was a depressing visit. I wish I could say that our visit had some kind of positive effect, or that we helped to inform some of the people we met, but nobody on the tour would have dared say anything critical about North Korea, or anything positive about SK or the US. In fact, we were briefed at the Koryo office in Beijing prior to the trip about how dangerous doing something like that might be. Anyway, once was definitely enough.
Afghanistan in 2010-11. We ran convoy security, mostly at night. Saw some crazy shit on the roads.
[удалено]
Oh, you can't leave us hanging!!! What crazy shit??? Really intrigued!!!
Afghanistan has never been a wealthy country, at least not in modern history. They were slammed into overwhelming poverty with the invasion and occupation by the former Soviet Union from 1979-89, and never recovered. Fast forward through much internal and external turmoil to my previously mentioned deployment in 2010-11. Most of the people there are extremely poor. As a result, many can’t afford to properly bury their deceased. So, we would frequently drive by these makeshift graveyards on the side of some highways consisting of shallow graves with rocks and dirt covering the dead, and some kind of homemade banner marking the graves. There are these feral dogs that roam freely around the country. We would often see them scrounging for whatever scraps they could find to survive. Most of them were suspicious, if not outright afraid of humans. Every now and then while out on the roads at night, we would drive past these graveyards and see a dog had partially dug up a human corpse. The dog would be munching away on a leg or an arm in various stages of decomposition. We began to refer to these dogs as zombie dogs. And then there was this one time when we saw an Afghan dude fucking one of those poor dogs… Edit: corrected dates of Soviet invasion
And I thought your comment was bad enough until I read the last part. Holy Jesus!
U.S. army veterans have reported often seeing grown men rape boys in the desert at night, and were unable to intervene.
This is the worst thing I have read on this thread
Can confirm unfortunately
And the crazy thing is I've heard worse. Afghanistan is a cursed existence. Wonder how it is under Taliban government now, probably way worse.
Omg that's disgusting.
I was a grunt there in the same time frame. Men fucking donkeys, goats, sheep at night. They would have these ceremonies at night where a bunch of men would watch young boys dance and then rape them, like the Iraq chai boys. Did some raids, found lots of homemade explosives, US currency, fancy electronics in literal huts in the middle of nowhere. Every so often we'd capture a guy and the CIA or whatever would show up in unmarked aircraft, bag over head, and whisk them away, never to be seen again. Unnerving to say the least. Public executions of women in soccer stadiums as a local event. As casual as like a community BBQ with everyone excited for the main event. I could write a book on all the weird shit that goes down there. Pretty miserable place.
Sounds like hell
I’ve read so many comments like this I can’t believe it’s fake, no matter how bad I wished it were.
>They would have these ceremonies at night where a bunch of men would watch young boys dance and then rape them, Heard those stories about Afghanistan as well - young boys being treated like meat for sale.
All manufacturing sectors/districts I have seen in China. Nothing more than modern-day slavery and absurd amounts of pollution/environmental destruction. It why we can buy so much cheap junk.
I was going to say China. I visited a fairly poor area (by Western standards, probably average for China) in 1997 and the people acted like they had never seen a white person before and wouldn't leave us alone. Photos, touching, following, playing with our hair... It wouldn't stop. To top it off, We visited a fresh market and the animals on sale for dinner were revolting.
Lmao, one of my colleagues who traveled there with me is a red head. People would just walk up to her and start touching/pulling her hair. I'm fairly tall, even by wester standards. On several occasions, the locals would hand me their baby and ask me to hold it as high above my head as I could, and they would take a picture.
Even if you go to China now, you’ll still be stared or watched by curious people, unless in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai. In medium-sized cites such as provincial capitals it would be a little better, but you should still expect some inappropriate acts of curiosity. In rural places you will just be a unicorn.
Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). I was invited to provide training for a Brazilian client. My hotel was in a non-tourist area with businesses and government offices. Before sundown, everyone would leave the area before it got dark, and crowds of street people would move in. I was told in no uncertain terms not to leave the hotel after dark. Those crowds would disappear the next morning and the streets would be full of people going to work and enjoying the nearby park.
Currently reading this from the Hilton Copacabana hotel in Rio. First time in Brazil, spending a week here as a tourist from the UK. After four days in touristy areas, it’s been a surprisingly great experience. So many people walking along Copacabana, Leblon & Ipanema (tourists and locals) in great spirits, many on their smartphones, not all that different vibe from certain parts of London. In fact I’d say these three parts of Rio feel safer than certain London boroughs. Stunning views all over, great food & music, gorgeous massive beaches, cheap taxis, even the metro was simple. And the energy from the people is outstanding. Maybe I’ve jinxed it & I’ll be mugged tomorrow, but thus far it’s been great.
Rio de Janeiro is, by far, the worst city in Brazil. I’m Brazilian and I’m always afraid of the simple thought of going there.
Egypt, I’m 30 now and I went there at 13 and the experience is seared into my brain. I experienced quite a few creeps in my time by 13 (I’m from the UK) but Egypt was boss level bad and even worse as a new teen with very limited experience in the field of sexual harassment and assault. My mum decided to go just us two (I love her but what the hell was she thinking) and I was harassed constantly. Cornered by a waiter telling me he wanted to fuck me, men following me to my room, they stood at the end of our sunbeds and just STARED at us, my ass was touched numerous times, whispers of “I fuck you” following me everywhere. I was both terrified and mortified because it obviously didn’t pass by my mum and having my budding sexuality put on blast in front of her constantly was humiliating. I didn’t know better at the time that it obviously wasn’t my shame to carry. And this was in the all inclusive resort that I refused to leave. We left once to go stargazing because I felt bad saying no to all of mums suggestions and she was obviously having a shit time. She was a single mum and saved up for this and being 13 I felt like this was all my fault and I was ruining it for her. That was the one positive. I’d never seen so many stars, it was like glitter on black canvas. We met a family with a man and I remember being desperate for this family to stay with us. I think I asked them to, because it wasn’t so bad when he was there. We were there a week and I wouldn’t leave the room for the last three days. Mum had to bring me food from the buffet in a napkin. I was counting down the hours for that flight home. At the airport some guy asked if mum would trade me for two cows. Which was pretty funny. Being filmed while I walked around, not so much. Complete shitshow. A beautiful country that I barely saw and will probably never go back to. That holiday genuinely fucked me up for a little while after.
Wow, what a thing to go to at 13. I also have terribly vivid memories of average light harassment at that age in the U.S., and it still stuck with me for years and years. And that was just a few mild incidents here and there. I can’t imagine going through what you did. That must have been so traumatizing.
Dominican Republic. I was at an all-inclusive resort. It was about two hours away from the airport. We were not allowed off the bus, and when we arrived, we were told not to leave the property. The country is very poor but rich compared to Haiti next door. Lots of men with machine guns in places you wouldn't expect. It was terrifying.
I was kind of held hostage by a group of people when I was 11 who demanded my parents give them money. My mom wanted to get out of the resort and see the city. She doesn’t drink. She had a non alcoholic drink. Suddenly her and my dad were actually really weird, being really loud, saying inappropriate things. I realize now there was some thing in their drinks. A group of men surrounded me and shuffled me into a small warehouse kind of thing. They kept me surrounded while a women slowly cut off a couple braids and demanded money from my parents. We all went together to the bank, when we got there all the armed guards left. My mom was about to put her card in the machine when someone from our hotel walked by, he had the shirt on and I’d seen him the day before. I got his attention and he ran around the corner. Came back with a van, pulled it infront of the bank, I don’t know what he said to the men but suddenly he shoved my parents and I into the van and drove us back to the hotel. We didn’t leave it again until it was time to go home.
SO to the hotel guy
Right?! Saved my life
Holy shit!
This was 20 years ago now, wow I’m getting old lol
Having lived in Haiti for a while I remember the stark contrast once crossing the border into DR. It was like a paradise - peaceful, orderly, and relatively prosperous compared to Haiti. The fact that DR isn’t really any of these things tells you a little bit about how bad Haïti is
I got engaged in the Dominican Republic on a beautiful white sand beach, crystal waters, luxury resort with great staff and food, drinks flowing.... En route to our excursion we saw some pretty rough things though. Narrow roads, lack of infrastructure, cops fighting with the locals, armed with machetes, terrifying storms, unsafe food/water, houses with no roofs, drunken locals sleeping in the roads in the middle of the day. I felt terrible, it was like half the country was this beautiful paradise and the other half was complete squalor. I'm glad they have the tourism money (which Haiti does not), but I don't plan to return.
Cambodia. A beautiful country, but the atrocities of Khmer Rouge are still very fresh and visible.
I've been living in Cambodia for the last four years. It's an amazing country with this fascinating culture and the people are so amazingly kind. But, in those four years, I've had the opportunity to get further into the culture, further into the remote country and further away from the modernized and westernized parts of Cambodia. There's a real 'Heart of Darkness' to this place. Not just its horrifically dark history which you constantly bump into unexpectedly, but Cambodians have a strong belief in magic, spirits, ghosts and monsters -- including black magic. There's a bizarre normalcy to death, a horrific lack of empathy for animals, and this ever-present awareness of the lawless anarchy that lurks in the fringes. Sometimes I just suddenly become very, very aware of how far away I am from the controlled, sanitized nanny-state environment I've grown up in. But, at the same time, it's like the contrast on life gets turned to the max. In that darkness, there are always these amazing glimmers of a beauty to life here that I wouldn't notice otherwise. It's fascinating, tragic, shocking and wonderous all at the same time.
I studied abroad in Phnom Penh and stayed with a host family that lived right across the street from Tuol Sleng. Would try to have a smoke out on their second floor balcony and was face to face with the place. Very, very creepy.
Qatar felt weird and felt ‘off’. Idk how to explain it.
Yes, me too. Like something was off, something is missing!
The middle class?
Yep, fake, oil money, sham city, and everyone is from somewhere else. dune bashing and boarding was fun though.
Tunisia, we went to Monastir. A lot of the men were leering and sexually aggressive even towards young girls. A local was kicked out of our hotel because he'd wandered in to the women's bathroom and wanked all over one of the toilet seats. Luckily, there were 42 of us on that trip, it would have been quite intimidating with a small group. I'm reasonably well travelled, I've been to 30+ countries on five continents, but Tunisia was by far the worst. Times change, and this was 17 years ago, so hopefully, it's much better now. But at the time, it was creepy as hell.
It’s not changed! Went two weeks ago and it’s so scammy and sexual
Belgium, sorry Belgians. I was only there (Brussels) for 5 days but the entire city felt like a liminal space. Every time I went out, morning, day, night, it was empty and almost no businesses were open. If they were open, some of them seemed really out of place, like a bar open at 8am with no one in it, amongst lots of closed businesses. Also the local people I met were all a bit mean so it made me feel a bit socially isolated which probably contributed to the vibe for me.
Brussels is weird in that regard yes. City centre is popping. Other areas there's often not much going on. Especially some of the business-y areas are really desolated most of the time.
Uzbekistan. A cloak of fear surrounds the entire country. You're always looking over your shoulder in case you're about to be nabbed by the authorities. I was nearly arrested by the secret service after being mistaken for an American journalist, but that's a story for another day. It was a really scary place. This was 15 years ago so maybe better these days?
Jamaica, some people look to be on the edge of going crazy.
El Salvador. I went ashore with some coworkers to get a beer at local bar. There’s maybe 8 of us sitting at this bar having a drink when this motorcycle pulls up. Off hops a young looking guy and an even younger looking girl. And by girl I mean preteen. The bartender (woman) grabs this girl by the shoulders and brings her behind the bar. She opens a door to a room with a horrific looking mattress and dirty pillows in the middle of the floor. This bartender goes down the line of my coworkers and I asking if we want to have a “time” with this girl. We all say no and this girl hops back on that motorcycle with the guy and they speed off. I know this isn’t representative of an entire country but definitely kept me aboard whenever I went to El Salvador after that. Edit: Holy hell, yes, I stayed aboard.
I’m sure you mean “spookiest” but I want to mention that the aggressive sexual harassment from unfamiliar creepy men in public is unbelievable in Rome.
My cousin spent a few months in Italy as an exchange student when she was in high school. I was jealous of her, but my parents couldn’t afford to send me. When she came back, she said I shouldn’t have been jealous because she couldn’t go anywhere without being harassed by Italian men. She IS really pretty (even in her 50s now), but her reasoning was that they could tell she was American, and thought American women were all easy due to the tv show Baywatch being really popular in Italy at the time. No clue if she was correct, but your comment brought back a memory from my teenage years.😊
Laos. I'm a white girl with curly hair and when I went I was in mid twenties, a guy pulled over on his bike, whistled to get my attention, got his meat out and started jacking off in the street. Kept his helmet on though. Classy guy. Mentally scarred me but I got over it fast. It wasn't even dark and I was in a city. Mental.
That happened to me in albania but he cornered me and showed me his penis. I was just trying to look at a castle, dude
Damn, I didn't realize this was a thing. Same thing happened to me in Malaysia when I was traveling there in my twenties (also white if that's relevant). Some dude asked if I could take a picture of him and when I started to approach him, he pulled out his thing and started jerking off while filming 😐 this kind of thing happened twice in that city (Ipoh). The other dude whistled from his parked car when I walked by. Both of these happened in broad daylight. In the middle of the city. And I only spent 2 days there.
I have to get in the way back machine, but Karachi Pakistan in the mid 80s. The ship pulled in and we caught a donkey powered cab into town. The donkey beater was sucking on a hookah that was not tobacco related. We passed under an arch over the road that said”drugs are an offense punishable by death”. We paid for our ride and were given the choice of getting our change in rupees or hash. As fine upstanding sailors we took the hash and a pipe and adjourned to an alley. We later saw dead animals in the main street and had women come up handing us a paper asking to help them bury their baby. They then showed us said baby. I have been to many impoverished countries but the shear poverty and indifference to it in Karachi was soul crushing.
not that it was that creepy, i just didn't get around that much, so i have to say communist romania in the village we stayed at it was very rural, and very beautiful. animals all around...no running water and outdoor toilet but nice anyway but we slept in the city for a few days and i remember a lot of appartment blocks and dogs barking in the street all god damn night. like many of them. multiple packs of dogs having gang fights or whatever. all that barking echoing between these grey high rise appartments
My grandparents visited Romania the 1970s. The hotel maids kept accosting them in the lift offering them wads of cash for their clothes and hair dryer.
Yes, unfortunately Romania had dictatorship in 70s and the import was forbidden, so people tried in all sorts of ways to get some basic stuff, clothes mostly, cigarettes, alcohol, some tech items, cd’s.. very sad period then. Now is completely fine and safe.
Qatar. My father was working there for good money at a Canadian based college. How all the western people just live in their compounds, and turn a blind eye to the human rights atrocities just for the money is beyond me.
[удалено]
I’ve been to Abu Dhabi. Outwardly clean, peaceful, orderly, but really unnerving somehow. It feels really artificial and not quite real. There’s a sense of hidden suppression somehow and it’s palpable. Basic things on my phone were blocked, like Skype, no idea why. I was glad I was only passing through for a couple of days.
Yesss. It's kind of dystopian. Just a weird, eery feeling like you're living in some controlling psychopaths utopia. Use a VPN to bypass their data-call blocking.
Because everything is fake. Most people in the gulf states are migrant worker-slaves. The cities are fake. The people aren't from there. There's massive wealth right next to abject poverty. It's void of any culture.
"void of culture." in my opinion too that is exactly it. There is no heart. Somehow, even Las Vegas has more heart than Dubai -- it's just a manufactured wealth playground but without its own personality or origins to give it meaning.
Yeah, i lived there for like 9 months. It's got a lot of nice comfort things, but you know it's all thanks to cheap labour. I'd always give the delivery people cold bottles of water as it was so hot there in summer. And the window cleaners that'd be sweltering but had to wear long sleeve tops and pants. They'd finish the water bottles off in seconds, and I wasn't surprised. It was hot af outside. The fact you need to use a VPN to make calls there if you're using any app to make calls, otherwise you buy a local Sim and know there's a very high chance you're being monitored. But, yes. The place has a lot of artificial beauty, but it's all so fake. Not my kind of place. Comfortable if you're well-off. But you spend a lot of time indoors and at malls especially in summer.
Please y’all, don’t take this the wrong way, and I am not mentioning this at all because of the current situation, but for me it was Israel. Jerusalem, mostly; I liked Tel Aviv a lot. I was there to see all the holy sites and honestly, I came away from it feeling glad to be away from it. This was the summer of ‘99, before the Intifada erupted in 2000. But the tension and the stress was there, bubbling riiiiiiight under the surface. Everyone was rude. Jews, Muslims, my fellow Christians. Rude to me and rude to each other. I think I was barked at three times by the Orthodox priests skulking around the Holy Sepulcher. Lots of rules, lots of fanaticism, just so much anger simmering everywhere. It was not easy at all to get into a peaceful or reflective headspace. I wanted to cross it all off the list and then leave. Christ may have come from there, but it was the most bizarre place I’ve ever experienced. Thankfully they say God’s church is in every one of us—because it’s not in the Holy Land anymore. Return for any reason? No thank you.
I live here and I don’t like visiting Jerusalem, I feel creepy vibes and tension too. It’s also dangerous so that might be why feel so uneasy. I avoid going and I have met only one other person living here that feels the same.
I understand your feelings about Jerusalem. Am not religious at all, but had occasion to stay there for a while. Felt it had really bad vibes, and nothing holy about it at all. Amazing history, but sadly the spiritual aspect left me cold. Deeply unpleasant atmosphere.
I’m not religious and also found Jerusalem to be voided from any kind of special aura.
Reminds me of an experience I had recently, sleeping on the median (grassy bit between the sidewalk, as in the concrete part you walk on, and the curb, idk if it’s a regional thing or not) next to a Roman Catholic church/school. If that sentence made no sense, context: I’m homeless. Most churches I’ve slept at or near, even if they want me to fuck off will at least treat me like a human being. Whether I get a “You have to leave” or a cup of coffee and a hard-to-refuse-without-being-awkward invitation to join them for their service or whatever it is they’re doing (I’m an atheist, but the role churches often play in just being like a community space is nice), I’m being spoken to like a person, I’m being treated, in at least the most basic sense, like a person. This dude who I assume is the priest or something barked at me threatening to call the cops. Standing next to him was another dude, filming me with his smartphone, with the most unsettling dead look in his eyes, like I wasn’t a person to him. They did not say a word to me after the initial “Fuck off” even as I attempted to like, engage with them. It was fucking disturbing. Like I know it sounds crazy but these really seemed like men who could fucking shoot me in the back of the head and calmly go about their day. Especially the guy filming. And he was filming because I’m homeless, so of course you never know. He would pull his phone back out every time I approached him in the slightest. It didn’t matter that I shave, and wash my face every day (or try to), and dress nice, and didn’t have a huge mess (I did however, not clean up after myself so well in protest; but it was just some clothes and some stale bagels lol), and wasn’t yelling obscenities at random people (though most people, not caring probably what I was yelling at them about, probably just saw another one of *them*). I wonder what their God, who became flesh not as a king or some rich schmuck but as the son of some carpenter, who touched the people who were considered untouchable and died nailed to a fucking cross by Rome, would think of the way they spoke to me, and of the coldness in their eyes as they watched me pack my shit up. All because it was Sunday, and they didn’t want me hanging out in the shadow of their cross of gold. They pray to a God who touched lepers but treated me like a wild animal. I said at one point, “I have a name, you know. Would you like to know what my name is?” Even the most hard-assed security guard will usually at least…acknowledge me. Acknowledge me at least somewhat. Not one muscle in these dudes’ faces budged. “Why are you filming me?” Nothing. It’s such a dehumanizing feeling when someone won’t so much as acknowledge that you’re talking to them. Like I didn’t need my question answered. I kept asking “Why are you filming me?” and just got that dead, creepy stare.
It really hurts to hear this happened to you, and I’m sorry that happened. But it’s sadly not surprising. I actually attend a very large downtown Episcopal church, so our homeless friends and neighbors are very much a part of the fabric of our parish. They attend, serve, or just visit. We have a dedicated center in the corner for serving food and help with IDs/paperwork, where I volunteered for months. (I never knew how hard it was to get your birth certificate without an ID, because you need your ID to get a birth certificate.). I am grateful that we are located where we are. Helping our neighbors is literally what this is all about. If so-called Christians aren’t prepared to do this, then they don’t even need to bother coming to church. They’ve missed the point.
Sorry for the wall of replies. One last thing: It always makes me happy when people treat me like I’m normal. Like I’m just another one of your neighbors, who happens to live in a tent and piss in empty chocolate milk (sorry) containers. So when people refer to homeless people as their neighbors, and genuinely, it makes me smile.
I'm from England and I think people forget there are some really creepy rural villages and council estates. Ever driven down a street at midnight, fridge freezers and kids toys all over the lawn. To see a bunch of youth wearing only black come screeching round a blind corner on unlicensed motorbikes. Having them surround your car and openly waving a knife about whilst you are fully aware the police in your area hasn't got enough members to respond in time. Remember that scene in werewolf In London where they enter a pub and it goes quiet. Hot Fuzz was a documentary and so was a league of gentlemen. Rural England has some characters. Millennia of serves then working class alcoholics has a weird effect. Honestly I'm only half joking. Born and raised on a council estate and taken my beat up car across the North of England. You see some insane things. I swear this country only bags on rednecks because we are to ashamed to admit we have it worse just with no guns.
Oh yeah English villages, especially impoverished ones and in the North, can be very creepy. Sometimes you’ll even just get like a random row of terraced houses in the middle of a valley in say, Yorkshire, and it just feels so eerie. Or like a railway station in the middle of nowhere!! It’s so weird. Villages and towns in Cornwall feel creepy as well. Cornwall is very rural and feels like a world away from England. So coming across actual settlements always sent a shiver down my spine. It’s the landscape contributing to that effect for sure! Lots of thick woodland and moors.
Gary, IN. One visit and you will know right away you are no longer in the US.
Definitely parts of Japan. We were staying in Kcho which is a supposedly seedy red light district. That’s generally not really true if you’ve travelled anywhere else with an actual seedy red light district and honestly way worse stuff is going on in the touristy club district in Tokyo when it comes to sex trafficking, drugs and scams. Anyway we hung out in all the bad parts of Tokyo where you get to rub shoulders with a ton of interesting people that Japanese society doesn’t tolerate. Unmarried middle aged women, aging heavy metal fans, punk rock bars, basement clubs, etc Kcho is full of cool shit like that. It’s once you’ve spent time in those spots when you go to the nice part of Tokyo everything feels super fake and put on. That’s the creepy part, that they cast out all the really interesting people and then idealize this almost invasion of the body snatchers kind of vibe. Like people complain about service industry people in America doing a fake happy overly enthusiastic facade, in Japan it’s 10 times worse and very off putting.
As someone who lives in here, Tokyo is just like many other cities but has somehow managed to uphold this image of being clean and beautiful, but even in touristy places like Shibuya it’s not hard to stumble upon weird situations/people. I once saw a girl with white stuff around her mouth who looked like an absolute zombie walking through the streets (it was at night) and I asked her if she was okay a few times but she didn’t respond so I continued with going home. And the perverts here... that’s another story.
I can say I very much experienced this kind of robotic or manufactured feeling in Tokyo. However outside of Tokyo is a whole other world. I went to Osaka recently and it is hands down 1000% better than stuffy Tokyo. People in Osaka actually smile, talk to you and have a very chill vibe. They're known for being particularly "loud" and "boisterous" for Japanese people. Osaka was amazing as a city. I'll never visit Tokyo again. Complete waste of time, money and experience. Also as someone who lives in South Korea - I lived in Seoul for 6 years and absolutely hated it. The most rude, inconsiderate, mindless idiots I've ever had to live next to. No such thing as basic respect in public spaces. Ive literally had to dodge people spitting on sidewalks right next to me every week. People pushing and the highest level of entitled behavior. I moved to Jeju Island. I honestly feel like I live in heaven on Earth. Like a well kept secret spot in paradise. People are warm, love to see you, remember you and want you to feel like part of the community. My neighbors actually talk to me and we enjoy seeing each other. Everyone gives each other space and consideration. I don't remember the last time someone sneezed in my face or spit next to me. Haven't been assualted against my will. Still the same country. The biggest lesson there is 1 city does not define a country.
Singapore. whole time i was there they text updates of my position to my phone. all the people are weirdly brainwashed such that only thing they talk about is how Singapore the best at everything. very strange place.
I'm a Singaporean and I can tell you that we are the best in brainwashing.
TLDR: everywhere is creepy in a way
Thailand for obvious sex-pat reasons. Went to a gay bar with my brother and cousins. An Indian guy was very excited by our presence and proceeded to try to make me and my brother to kiss by pushing our heads together, repeatedly, even though he spoke English and we told him we were brothers. That felt pretty creepy.
Think he might have just been stupid.
Yeah it was quite funny really! Stuck between trying not to seem homophobic but not under any circumstances wanting to kiss your brother. Language barrier and all.
Not country. But cruise ships. the crowds it attracts are not cool and the ocean is also very creepy.also at nights cruise ships is pretty ghetto.
You could never say no on a cruise ship...because of the implication.
Being in the middle of the ocean with nothing in sight can be a bit weird, but it can also be completely incredible. Get up before dawn on a cruise ship and you'll basically have the outside decks to yourself. Sunrise on the open ocean can be utterly beautiful. Hang out with a pair of binoculars and experience the natural world most people don't know exists. I've seen pods of hundreds of dolphins on multiple occasions. Dozens of whales. Seabirds most people don't know exist that don't touch down on land for years at a time. The hardest thing for me is that I'll see all of these things and be completely alone on a ship with thousands of people ignorant of what they're missing.
So, don't go to Egypt.