San Francisco and Fiji -both about a decade ago.
To be fair Fiji isn’t the sort of place we’d usually be attracted to (don’t do beaches), but we were going to Australia for a few weeks and then visiting friends in NZ for a couple of days and thought it’d be a good stop off (it’s our equivalent of Spain for New Zealanders) as we knew we’d be unlikely to choose it as a holiday destination. Went somewhere recommended by NZ friends.
The ecological devastation of the island to make it a holiday destination was dreadful (e.g. removal of mangroves), although I understand that that’s now being addressed.
San Francisco OMG
In the car from the airport the driver (who still had vivid memories about how cold it was in Germany when he was in the army -having never seen snow before, or since 😆), told us where not to go, never go down an alleyway etc. and about the drugs problem and we thought he was exaggerating.
He wasn’t.
We were staying at the Four Seasons (in the CBD) and remember asking the concierge about going shopping with my youngest, then aged 8. He got the map out and, crossing off most of the city, said I don’t want you to go outside of this (v small) area. I took him at his word.
The streets were literally lined with people shooting up and passing out. The levels of deprivation in probably the wealthiest area in the world was absolutely hideous.