Tunisa?

[Roastonsun8]

Had anyone been to Tunisa with their DC alone? I noticed it's really cheap. Is it similar to Turkey?

I didn't enjoy it, we stayed at a hotel which was OK and the beach was beautiful. But we went with extended family, there were 11 of us and at least 6 were really unwell with D and V. We were pestered to buy stuff (including live animals ) on the beach and in the local town although I imagine it's different away from tourist areas.

We tend to go to different to hotels each time but usually TUI ones. Haven’t been for a few years due to the threat levels but booked for next month and really excited to go back.
Hotels with private beaches are good as the guards stop any sellers hassling you.

I’ve not been, but my friend went about 10 or 11 years ago with her husband and 3 small children.

she hated it and was really afraid someone was going to snatch her youngest. People were constantly offering to buy her/her children.

she said the hotel was nice, but going outside of it was just stressful.

it put me off ever wanting to go there. I certainly wouldn’t go as a woman alone, as much as I hate to say that as a very independent woman.

I just got back from my first visit to Tunisia (Hammamet, but not the Yasmine side) yesterday. The weather is lovely in October, and with no exceptions at all, the people could not have been kinder. (In contrast, we were back in France for LESS than five minutes before getting yelled at by an airport functionary. Welcome home!)

But. My Moroccan partner pretty much insisted that I stay glued to his side every second we were there. (He tends to be a bit clingy anyway, but nothing like that.) I also brought a few Moroccan dresses and bought a few Tunisian ones, all long-sleeved, and wore those whenever we went out. I don't know how much all of this contributed to me not being hassled or leered at even once the entire time we were there. Also, we did get pulled over on the highway three times (two of those times within the space of five minutes) for ID checks to make sure that either (a) we were married, or (b) he wasn't a Tunisian national. The cops were really not that intimidating, so it was more of a pain in the butt than a scary situation.

In terms of the other stuff, we really did have a wonderful time. Stayed at a hotel/resort with a great private beach, several restaurants, a spa... it would have been totally possible to just never leave the premises if that's what you're into. We ran around most of the time and went to a bunch of souks, quadding, boating, getting lost in Tunis, and a whole bunch of other diversions. The food was uniformly good, and I must say my favorite was a 30-cent sandwich that we had in a souk in Tunis.

I do have reservations about returning with my young teen daughters for all the reasons people described above, so that will be a family conversation if my guy doesn't get distracted by something shiny in the meantime.

Well we go to Turkey every year and cant even explain how much I love it. Nothing to not like. Weather superb, food amazing. People lovely.

Have also been to Tunisia many, many times. However, stopped following the terrorist beach attack as it was so close to home for me. We had taken our children from babies and I found it very upsetting.

But, prior to that, we loved it. Similar to Turkey in some ways I'd say, hospitality etc. And how Turkey was probably years ago. Its quite underdeveloped. People great(no bad incidences ever ). Weather beautiful.
Food not as good as Turkey though but we aren't fussy people.

Hotels are all big and all inclusive or Hb. So all hotel based. So slides , entertainment even golf. So different to Turkey in that respect. We have travelled extensively around Tunisia too with overnight stay near the Sahara. Beyond amazing.
And I agree with the poster who said the EL Jem amphitheatre knocks the Coliseum out the water!!!

Oh I have also been alone with DC and no unwanted attention whatsoever.
If you are happy with a big hotel with everything based there, Tunisia is good.

I feel sad if these stories are an interpretation of how Tunisia is today. The experiences I have had are are positive. None of thiss having to prove that you are married!!
Sounds more like Saudi Arabia or Dubai. (I'd never go to DUBAI if you paid me).
I wore normal.summer clothes mainly like any beach holiday.
Used to holiday in Port El Kantaoui mainly and Shane's.

Skanes not Shane's!!!!

Full of sex pests!
men follow you around and even had some try to buy me! I was covered up and with my FIL who is Tunisian! Been twice because of family but horrible place very unfriendly and awful attitude towards women. Turkey is better if you’re comparing the two.

@RockrrMom Sorry, I'm not very well travelled - why would your husband not have been allowed in Tunisia is he were a Tunisian?

I spent two very long months there. Sexual harassment was an issue in crowded places. It is not all bad in terms of what there is to see. I remember a beautiful amphitheater, salt flats and easy access to the Sahara. Sidi Bou was charming and elegant but I think it is where the mass shootings took place on the beach so I could never return there.

My man (I hate calling him that but we aren't yet married, so what do I say?) tells me that the "acte de mariage" check is also a thing in Morocco (and that it's more frequent than in Tunisia).

Basically, if you aren't Tunisian, the cops don't care. Once they realized he was not a Tunisian citizen, that was pretty much the end of it.

Actually, it was Port El Kantaoui - they are the only two, nice places I can remember

Oh okay!

Yes that's where the shooting happened. So sad.

Sorry, maybe I explained it wrong? My companion (we are affianced but not married yet) is Moroccan. So people there assumed he was Tunisian, until he opened his mouth and spoke Arabic with the Moroccan accent.

In both Morocco and Tunisia, you aren't supposed to be staying in hotels and whatnot as a non-married couple. However, these laws are only enforced against the locals. (Which is why we went to Tunisia instead of Morocco!) So the cops would see us in the car, him looking Tunisian and me (white) obviously not, and they would stop us to check if he was Tunisian. (And if he had been Tunisian, the next step would have been "produce your marriage license.") Because he was able to produce a non-Tunisian passport, that was the end of every one of those traffic stops.

Amazing historic sites etc, but I was constantly groped despite being well covered up , constantly, so will never return. The men think all Western women are whores and act accordingly.

I had an amazing time in Tunisia on an Explore holiday - no beach hotels, but a tour of the sights - El Jem, Matmata, Sidi Bou Said, Kairhouan, sleeping in the desert. It wasn't sex pesty at all but I was with DH and it was right in the middle of Ramadan which might have made a difference.

I came across this old thread as a friend of mine has invited me on holiday with her and her kids as she doesn't feel confident to travel alone.

She has suggested Tunisia.

I've been once, a couple of years before the beach terrorist attacks.

I remember tourism pretty much stopped there after those attacks and I wasn't aware it had started up again. I wonder if many people are going there these days.

A lot of my experiences echo the above. We made the most of it and had a good time.....but no, we wouldn't go back. I found the whole experience quite depressing and uncomfortable.

We are not usually the type of people to do AI or stay in the resort, but that's mostly what people do there and it wasn't really encouraged to leave the resort.

We stayed at the Royal Kenz near Port El Kantoui. The hotel was beautiful, food was great, staff were lovely. But they were bussed in early each morning from very poor towns a few hours away and bussed back again each night.

We were warned that if we went out of the resort, locals would pretend to be staff at the hotel to trick us into tipping them, and this is exactly what happened. They obviously just picked the names of the biggest hotels, Royal Kenz being one of them, so this was shouted at us constantly.

We had guys come up to us and try to put animals on us, snakes round my shoulders etc, then grab my phone and take a photo then demand money.

Ripped off in shops.

So much poverty everywhere, very dirty, 1000s of litters of skinny kittens with visible health problems.

This was in Sousse and the area round about El Jem. That's the only times we left the hotel.

I remember feeling very sad about the terrorist attacks. For the victims of the attack and also for the staff who will have lost their livlihood.

Interesting to hear from pp about Turkey being like that years ago, and I very hope that things in Tunisia improve and they develop like Turkey, because as I say, I found it all very upsetting / uncomfortable.

Needless to say, I won't be accompanying my friend and I will direct her to this thread as I don't think she should be going either.

Turkey is totally safe. The people are friendly I went 20 years ago to Marmaris and we all loved it.

I've just returned as a single parent with my Son from Turkey and its really impressive we stayed in Belek and you can quite clearly see a lot of money has been invested in the Country to attract tourists. I did a couple of trips including "Land of Legends" have a quick Google it was amazing. Its free entry to just look around on a evening when it's all lit up and watch the boats in the river. Or you can pay to use the waterpark but we didn't bother.

I've booked Egypt for next year mainly because it was a reasonable price for school hols next year. Like your saying about Tunisa I'm expecting Egypt to not be as bad. My aunt travels alone with her kids to Tunisa but she finds it fine as she doesn't venture out of the hotel.

If you have young daughters don't take them there I was sexually assaulted at the age of 12 by a 30 year old man. I hadn't even started puberty I was not dressed provocatively, I am ND so struggled to recognise if people were being just friendly. My parents then took me to Egypt and I was harassed there as well luckily not sexually assaulted. Turkey was fine to be honest but I was 28, I'm not sure I'd risk it with my DD to be honest.

I went as a 20 year old with my son and a female friend and yes we were harassed constantly. Ripped off buying absolutely anything.

I wouldn't go back.

I went to Egypt and much preferred it but again wouldn't feel safe exploring the area outside of the hotel alone.

I much prefer Greece/Spain for that, you can wander round the towns pretty safely.

This Greece and spain are lovely so much more relaxing for female travel. You don't need a male companion to just leave the hotel.

I have good memories of Tunisia from 2004 but I was with ExH who is Algerian. We stayed in a little hotel in Tunis and went for a day trip to the beach, and also to Hammamet. I don’t remember it being particularly dirty and nobody hassled me but that was possibly because of ExH, it might have been totally different if he hadn’t been there.

My friends and I returned from touring Tunisia two weeks ago, and I recognise very little from this thread. We based ourselves in Sousse but travelled the length and breadth of the country as far south as the Ksars, almost to the Algerian border in the west, and to Bizerte in the north. Yes, Tunisia appears to be dirty (they have little in the way of effective refuse collection - but that said you should see some of the back alleys where I live in the UK!). But we experienced no hassling of any sort. Yes, a couple of times people tried to "rip us off" by making claims about the value of things - but we had done our homework and knew qualities and values. Of course, nobody ever tries to rip you off in the UK, or anywhere else. Only in Tunisia. Nobody tried to pretend that they were staff at our hotel.

I am not going to say that none of these things happened - I am well travelled and I have experienced all of these things at some time or another - including in the UK. But Tunisia is not, in my experience, as bad as it is being painted here, and you don't have to treat the resorts as some kind of prison that you can't safely leave. Nor is Tunisia devoid of tourists - there were many British people there, plus tourists from most European countries, plus some African countries. The only country notieably missing was Russia, and that was because they can't easily get there any more due to bans on their planes in various airspaces between Russia and Tunisia.

We loved our time there. Others may not have. But I posted this because there is absolutely no balance on this thread and I don't think it presents a realistic view of the country - it really is beautiful and there are lots of positives. It may not be for everyone, but isn't that true of anywhere?

There are some vloggers on you tube that have recently been to Sahara Beach Hotel, as a couple they enjoyed it but I