To ask which country you would not visit again and why?

[travelcat]

I love hearing about travel experiences and am interested in knowing about places you have visited that you wouldn't go back to.

AIBU to ask which country you'd avoid in the future and what specifically made your experience less enjoyable? Was it due to culture, safety, or something else?

Eating salad in Delhi; why would you when there is so much delicious hot food?😀

Yes but why wouldn’t someone expect most responses to come from a Western point of view when it’s a UK site?

Would they expect a chat forum in China say to not have any particular bias?

Dublin. 20 years ago it was quiet, and charming, and there were horse drawn carriages, and lots of Irish people. Went back last year, oh my god. You couldn't move on O'Connell street. Filthy, scruffy, overcrowded. Nothing like we remembered it. OK they've transformed the docks and riverside into a gleaming financial district, but so what? That area was just soulless, and dead after 5pm. It is just office space at the end of the day. Felt like the place had lost all its charm.

Oh another one. Vegas. Just ghastly, and I'm no snob. Just everything about it, not even fun tacky or ironic tacky, just ugh.

Don't tell me what happened. The fact that people were saying fucking English told me exactly why we were attacked

Lentilweaver · Today 16:31

This has also been quite a Western centric thread. Some cultures that people view as very cruel view British ways as very cruel.
For instance, many cultures think sending your elderly to homes or charging your children rent is far crueller than stray dogs on the street

Yes it would be interesting to view a similar thread from another country. I’m sure those who live in cities abroad where people aren’t mugged and robbed probably think it quite odd that so many people in cities in UK have their phones, purses etc stolen and nothing is done about stopping it.

@DonnaBanana I can assure you there are no MIDGETS or midges even in the NE of Scotland where I live 🤣

Agree with a PP about food in Budapest. I am by no means a fussy eater but never had a decent meal there and had the worst meal I've ever had in restaurant

No we are cunts though in Wales 🤣

Is it the stray dogs on the street or the treatment of them that people aee arguing is cruel? Again older people are just that they have their own opinions about where they want to live. My Mum lives in a house on her own and prefers it, in fact we can't even persuade her to move to a flat for the over 65's as she said her worse nightmare is people constantly knocking her door to socialise. I think objectively some things are just wrong like mysoginy and women as second class citizens- what is the good things about these issues?

Are not is

You were being snippy, which is fine, but why say you were only trying to help?

The poster banging on about London is bizarre, to me as someone who was born and brought up there, London is Disneyfied now; it is on parts unreal and just purely for tourists whereas it was a place people used to live not just rent an Airbnb! Equally, if you think it is edgy now you obviously never visited in the 80s and 90's!

There are nearly 92000 Air BNB listings in London, presumably these aren't permanent residents so if it has gone down hill it is in part due to over tourism and no one actually affording to live there anymore!

@Racheltension1

My husband’s dream is to go to Vegas. I’ve never been but I am pretty certain there’s nothing about it I would like - sensory overload and in all the wrong ways. Don’t like gambling, or the blatant drugs/poverty apparently that you see on the streets. I hear it’s got a very disturbing side underneath all the glitz and glamour. All artificial. He thinks it would be wonderful - he can go on his own (I reckon he’d have burnout after 24 hrs)

No thanks!

That's because you probably went to Vegas and stayed there.

Vegas has some amazing national parks within reasonable driving distance.

Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion. You can make it to Monument Valley and Petrified Forest at a pinch. Moab is a great place for national parks with Arches and Canyonlands but a bit of a trek.

Vegas also has some of the best restaurants in the world.

The thing to do with Vegas is to start/finish there and do a national parks drive to see some really spectacular scenery.

But yes, if you just spend all your time in vegas and you are not interested in shows or gambling I guess by the end of a week it could get a bit wearing.

I hear that Skin So Soft works on midges, but I've never had the need to fight off midgets.

Re: the sausage debacle. A public service announcement for non-Scots.

I admit that I'm not overly found of Cumberland sausage, but managed to hold myself together when I was served this in Cumbria. In Scotland, if you really don't want Lorne/square sausage for breakfast, the secret is to ask for link sausages.

Re: language difficulties. While the lingua franca of the United Kingdom is indeed Standard English, I would recommend avoiding all areas where one might encounter a different language or dialect.

In Scotland, this means avoiding any areas where Gaelic is spoken. (Mainly the Western Highlands, various islands, but other Gaelic speaking areas are available. If you venture to Canada, under no circumstances should you ever visit Nova Scotia!)

In order to avoid ever encountering the various dialects of Scots, a cognate of English*, I would recommend avoiding all towns and villages. You might be safe in some parts of Edinburgh, but I wouldn't risk being over-confident.

*See histories of Jamie the Saxt/James I for an explanation of how Scots was "lost" as a literary language.

Haha! Took my son when he was about 12 to Camden when we were there for the london dungeon and aquarium type stuff...he hated it, was actually quite scared and said 'I'm just a small-town boy Mum!' Bless him, but that's exactly what I said. You think it's edgy now, you should've seen it 30 years ago! 🤣

What a ridiculous post.
The food is the same as you eat I expect.
You won't beat Welsh scenery

Re Vegas and America generally

I read a really interesting essay recently which made the point in passing that Gen X (and previous generations but especially Gen X) was really in love with a certain kind of Americana - diners, trailer parks, Vegas, evvarious 'types' that we perceived to be related to a kind of American spirit, plus a kind of obsession with hard-nosed Manhattanites and the look of that city generally - but that almost no Gen Zers feel like that at all.

I think it's also true of Americans themselves - they did an incredible job of mythologising themselves, almost fetishizing their own culture. I don't think that's so possible now, since the cracks have opened and continue to widen.

IMO you can definitely beat Welsh scenery.

Vietnam. Beautiful scenery but my god the people were just vile, we had money stolen three times, once by a taxi driver who threatened us with an iron bar when we refused to pay an obscenely inflated price to the one he quoted before we got in. Scammers literally everywhere, you cannot cross the road without someone trying to fleece you. A mad old woman kicked me hard when I declined (politely!) to buy something off her. A bus driver smacked DH round the legs when he boarded the bus because he didn't realise we had to remove shoes first.

We were supposed to be there a month but moved on early, couldn't get away fast enough! We arrived in Malaysia and there were two airport staff ladies chatting and laughing at arrivals, I said to DH god I didn't hear anyone laugh the whole time in Vietnam! Just scowls and rudeness and general hatred of tourists. Would never recommend it.

Yes, exactly, I feel like this version of London only exists in Paddington films where poverty does not exist and everyone lives like the Browns!

I agree, had the same experience in Morocco. Also Egypt, I felt uncomfortable as a woman (although was travelling with my husband).

Egypt and Tunisia - the men are lecherous and awful.

Yeah at this point the thread is full of verging on racist posts- anywhere on the African continent how helpful - so you gave been to every African country.