Out of every locale that you've visited, which is the biggest shithole?
We know that the politically correct answer is that all cultures are created equal and equally valuable, but I want to know about your worst travel experiences.
Here are the kind of things I'm talking about:
> Corrupt local officials that harass foreigners
> Authoritarian and bureaucratic governments
> Open sewers, street shitting, pollution, smog
> Aggressive scammers and muggers, drugs and crime
> Very little local culture to speak of. Shopping malls are considered the height of cultural experience.
> Racism and prejudice
> Political instability
> Unappetizing local cuisine
Give me the worst of the worst! I want your personal experiences only, not things you've heard about secondhand.
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La Paz, Bolivia
>Everything outside of the city center is essentially a big ass favela
>City center looks like something out of mad max, not even african cities are that depressive
>All historical buildings or landmarks are rundown
>People are hostile, german shy autistic and ugly
>No connectivity, for some reason taking a smelly bus to a town 50 km away requires buying the ticket on person in cash and it takes like 2 hours (massive issue with counterfait money, it has to be stamped to be received by cashiers)
>Food is an impressive downgrade compared to Peruvian, even worse than european, and its also surprisingly expensive. Be careful where you eat
and i didn't even mentioned corruption, instability and lack of education/culture
Was considering adding La Paz to my trip. What brought you there to begin with?
1 month backpacking around southern peru and bolivia with friends. Uyuni and Santa Cruz its ok, and southern peru may be tourist-trapy but its worth it. Go to Arequipa and Cuzco (and obviously Macchu Picchu), the rest is skippable
Thank you for the suggestions, bro.
I heard Santa Cruz is skippable, but it sounds kind of interesting. My plan was Sucre, Uyuni, La Paz, Titicaca - should I consider adding in Santa Cruz?
Youngstown
Story?
Former steel town which was the site of probably the worst mafia war in American history. Think over 10 years and 80 bombings bad, all over a city of (formerly) ~150k. The city never recovered. crime and gangsterism is still extremely obvious. A solid half of the younger men (mostly black) I saw were either in groups wearing all the same colors, in motorcycle club jackets, or something similar. Despite clear efforts to manicure the downtown, you could still see these guys just hanging out walking nowhere in particular at 2pm on a Thursday. To really top it off there's really nothing to do there and nowhere to go. The closest interesting place is Pittsburgh, over an hour away strictly by car, so there's absolutely nothing at all to do there besides drugs and murder unless you go to the mediocre state college.
It's actually so shitty there's even an Encyclopedia Dramatica about it. Even fricking Gary and Camden are at least close to more interesting places. Youngstown is just a genuinely terrible place in the middle of nowhere.
> Corrupt local officials that harass foreigners
> Authoritarian and bureaucratic governments
> Open sewers, street shitting, pollution, smog
> Aggressive scammers and muggers, drugs and crime
> Very little local culture to speak of. Shopping malls are considered the height of cultural experience.
> Racism and prejudice
> Political instability
> Unappetizing local cuisine
India matches all of those other than the last one. The street food is usually tastes good, but it's gross. SItting outside for hours, often times rotten meat covered up with spices, bugs flying around and getting on the food, unsanitary people who don't shower scratching their ass then cooking your food. If you go to a high end restaurant the food is good.
>inb4 banned for this post.
Also, India has a rich culture, especially Hinduism, but it's a schizophrenic non-sense religion. If you look at the people that follow Hinduism you'll realize that the temples and states are beautiful and some of the imagery is almost psychedelic, but there isn't much beyond that.
>inb4 banned for this post.
How is the food at dhabas and other places that are actually restaurants just cheap ones?
Paris, easily. I don't think I saw a single European person until I left Paris and the whole place was grimy and poorly maintained. Also their conception of food seems to be cramming together as many kinds of saturated fat as humanly possible.
> Open sewers, street shitting, pollution, smog
Vanuatu
> Aggressive scammers and muggers, drugs and crime
Italy and Spain
> Very little local culture to speak of. Shopping malls are considered the height of cultural experience.
Australia
> Racism and prejudice
Serbia
> Unappetizing local cuisine
Vanuatu (some of the food was lovely, but a lot of it was vomit inducing)
Serbia sounds like a good place.
>Go to France
>"waaaahhh no one speaks English!"
what did you expect?
>people are nationalistic morons
Why are they like this when their country is shit? Is it just cope or are they actually delusional? I understand other people like the Swiss, Japanese, or Norwegians being nationalistic, but when Indians are it's laughable.
Because they are one of the few nations which constitutes a distinct civilization stretching back thousands of years, which despite its current state, once commanded immense wealth and power?
>cute black girls
lol
>once commanded immense wealth and power
Not even that. It has a lot of resources and grew a lot of spices, but it was rarely ever a place that commanded wealth. Furthermore, they were often controlled by foreigners, even before the British. They did produce a decent amount of influential philosophy and literature that unlike the Chinese, they didn't destroy every time a new dynasty came in.
>They did produce a decent amount of influential philosophy and literature that unlike the Chinese, they didn't destroy every time a new dynasty came in.
moron. What are you talking about. The Chinese kept meticulous written records since they invented writing. Ancient Indian writing was lost until Anglo colonizer chads discovered the edicts of Ashoka.
>moron.
Damn, I didn't know you posted here too. I hopeyou get banned again
Philippines ticks all your boxes but for some reason SighSee chads love it.
the big cities (Manila and Cebu) yes, but the islands and small towns are kino.
They love it because they're coomers preying on the poorest favela dwellers who are unironically some of the ugliest, uneducated and unhygienic women you'll ever come across - so not too dissimilar to your average SighSeener.
barcelona gave me gastroenteritis
I got buttfricked by exchange office once. I got lower rates and fees many times but there was one specific time that pushed ovver the edge.
This combined with paying exchange fees to my shitty local banks for spending aborad, I now learned to use cards like binance or cymi to save myself from those greedy frickers
How many times of buttfricking it took you to understand this lol
Also why cymi? Why not binance at all times?
Different benefits. Binance is good for cash withdrawals and cymi's card is good for spending because of their unified rewards plan
>Gross
Albania has a few thoisand tiny bunkers that people like to piss in/sleep in/throw trash in
>No culture
Phoenix, Dallas, and probably every other post-war Southern or Southwestern boom city
>Racism and prejudice
Japanese people, especially in Tokyo, are extremely pissed at me even though I've put a decent amount of effort in their language
>Unappetizing food, corruption, authoritarian, scammers, political instability
Never experienced these to a degree that's reportable (thought Albania would have a few, but nah)
"> Racism and prejudice"
That's usually what keeps a country from becoming a shithole in the first place.
naturally cliché answer but for me, South Africa
my dad's side of the family is British South African and they lived there since at least the 1910s, but I've lived all my life in the UK so when I went to Cape Town in 2011 it was a shock
everyone is, naturally, super corrupt, but the worst experience we had with it was several times being overcharged for stuff like the cable car, parking, etc
government can hardly be authoritarian when it is falling apart
pollution is bad at the seaside where beaches are covered in litter, people with fires, and there is runoff/shit washing up on most of them
in the city centre there is a lot of litter too
everywhere we were being approached by people trying to sell shit, including like at 10pm when parked by the beach, people would come and knock on the windows to try sell off tat
I can't speak for Black South Africans but British ones have literally no culture, considering we were only there for like 150 years and constantly pissed off at Afrikaaners. Most "culture" is either just British, stolen from Afrikaaners, or vaguely Australian. And yes there were a lot of shopping malls
racism - of course, both ways
cuisine is just chicken with rice and poor quality foreign food like Italian, Indian. My uncle got food poisoning from eating a Wimpy burger which is a bad sign, and I had a particularly unappetising pizza one night that was incredibly dry. At least nandos is good
Why were the British South Africans such israelites towards the Dutch South Africans?