People here are constantly talking about how this country or that city are worse to travel to than they were in the last past few years, but what places have gotten BETTER to travel to? Which places have gotten less crowded? Better amenities? Safer? Easier to get to? Or at the very least, even if you think that in totality a place has gone downhill, in what areas has it improved the most?
Positive thread 🙂
China, Thailand, Philippines, Russia
Thailand and Bangkok definitely did NOT get better, at all.
>China
lolno
It has become utterly soulless. China’s golden age was mid 90s to 2013.
close. it went to shit after the 2008 beijing olympics. early 2000s was kino though I agree
I was about to write 2008 but then I remember that it was still kinda ok. Smartphones still weren’t a thing, Wechat and cashless society still were’t there, plastic surgery wasn’t as rampant, people were genuinely nicer. The definitive turnpoint was 2013 though.
>Russia
Bait and hasn't actually been
The only overseas holiday we did as kids was to Bangkok and Koh Samui when I was 10 in 2002. I have since been back to Thailand many times starting in 2012 (and will be going to Bangkok next week) and I think Thailand in general has gotten worse, esp the late 2010's before covid it was just too full of tourists - Koh Samui was still already very devleoped even back then, but I wouldnt even go now.
However, I think Bangkok has become 10 times better. You can have a proper international city experience, while a lot of the cheap and backpacker vibes are still around. It seems to have kept the good parts that make it different and exciting for westerners, while also becoming a proper global City. I know a lot of old timers bemoan the loss of things like old bars like cheap charlies and replacements with condos, but the general trend is far better. The quick and intense building of transport has been a game changer. The BTS has half the size at most 20 years ago and there was no metro to the old part of the city which there is now.
I wish I was a bit older and could have explored the Thai islands before they were ruined with resorts, but thats life
Why tf would I travel half-way across the world to have an "international city experience" or hang out in a "Global City"? If I wanted that, I would just go to New York City.
Bangkok. Another two new lines opened up this year. Yellow and Pink line. orange line is getting built and should be ready before or just after GTA 6 comes out.
I could only imagine how much of a pain it was to get around before the BTS and MRT.
why the frick are you using the GTA 6 release date as a point of reference, lmao
Not the mist exciting destination, but Richmond, VA is leagues better than it was in 2000
>Not the mist exciting destination, but Richmond, VA is leagues better than it was in 2000
I visited as a Bong and I was pleasantly surprised.
Southern Arizona has gotten more expensive, but is kind of comfortably at this place of a lot of the old virtues of the area, combined with better creature comforts.
>old virtues of the area
If you're referring to 80s-00s old virtues, they didn't exist in Phoenix. Those were some real dark ages
Thankfully with tech and wealth some parts have gotten really, really nice, especially in peripheral areas you wouldn't expect. Traveling to Phoenix sucks unless you know someone who shows you the nicer parts
I grew up in London and I swear the place was a lot dirtier around the turn of the millennium. People littered everywhere and it didn't get cleaned up.
Yes but it's overcrowded and chock-full of shitskins and soulless basedpods now
Turkey. Their economy is absolutely fricked and the lira is toilet paper that doubles as legal tender. It's still the same cool place but it's now significantly cheaper than it was during my previous visits over a decade ago. Minus points for shitting up the Hagia Sophia though.
Saudi Arabia actually has tourist visas now so I guess that counts as an improvement too.
Mongolia is doing this moronic thing where they give temporary visa free access for a few years, then take it back for a couple only to reestablish it again. But that's still progress, I guess.
Not a universal thing but a few years ago Murrica finally made true on their promises to include my country in the visa waiver program, which means travelling to the USA and using it is a transit hub (Caribbean) is now significantly less bothersome.
Almost entire post-commie Europe with exception of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
This depends on who you ask. I'd rather be in those countries 20 years ago for the cooming, but I'd rather be in them now if I had a family and wanted to live somewhere cheap but still Westernized.
Pretty much everywhere that is not the West has seen big improvements. Especially East and South East Asia.
Eastern Europe is also looking pretty good these days.
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that video is so fricking cherrypicked it hurts to watch
Rotterdam
Everywhere feels boring and sameish now, globalism was a mistake
>everything is sameish
Only true if you upscale your travel experience. All the luxury high-rises and businesses are owned by global corporations or international investors who copycat successful designs the world over.
Yet life for the common people on the street continues on much as it has for decades, with smartphones & their connectivity being the only real globalist influence. Only budget travelers get to experience the real side of a country...the good and the bad alike.
>things were better in the good old days, now they are ruined
Oldgays always say this. What they mean is "I had a lot more fun when I was young". They resent that new generations of youth are now having fun and "ruining" places, when the truth is, boomers are the ones driving up airline & lodging prices by refusing to quit travelling as they age.
I disagree man. I worked as a PCV in Morocco in the early 2000s, I saw life as it was really lived in a state of pre-modern innocence. Nowadays even in the remote towns every man, woman and child has a smartphone, even people who can't read have one. People's desires have changed, self-image, sense of self-worth. This is how neoliberalism works; it creeps in insidiously through habits of consumption, then one day you turn around and everything has changed.
Problem with your logic is that oldgays also have the perspective and experience to see real improvement and progress. Some oldgays underestimate how many positive things have happened in the last 20 years but there have been undeniable regressions and homogenization.
>boomers are the ones driving up airline & lodging prices by refusing to quit travelling as they age.
cry me a river entitled zoom zoom homosexual
>Oldgays always say this.
Maybe, just maybe, things are in fact getting worse and worse with each passing year? Did you ever think of that? Usually the simplest answer is often the most accurate.
almost all developing world capitals and/or popular coastal towns are tangibly better compared to 20 years ago
some LATAM cities/countries are worse, namely Venezuela and Argentina, but both will bounce soon if you ask me
China
Travel is easier, especially this year bc you can directly buy tickets from 12306, link foreign debit cards to alipay and wechat, and access taxi apps, grocery and restaurant apps, utilities, mobile recharge, etc apps in wechat or alipay. Some stuff is still in Chinese completely but better than before anyway.
Generally China has gentrified everywhere and it's hard to find places that looked like they did 20 years ago. T1 cities are still crowded and overly competitive for everything, namely Beijing, but T2 & T3 cities actually are fairly decent to live now. I'd rather live in Hangzhou than in NYC. I've traveled everywhere as an American and never felt unsafe or on guard like I might just walking in any American city.
Expats whining that it got worse are moronic. They enjoyed running around like they had rabies while getting easy jobs with no qualifications. They never cared about the local quality of life and were the same frivolous coomers now tormenting SEA countries. Thank God those clowns left.
Was blown away by how amazing China was when I went. Most underrated travel destination I have ever been to and love how safe it is.
In terms of places I've been, which is entirely in Asia, I would say China and Vietnam. People are very optimistic about the future because for them things just keep getting better. The last 20+ years has been for them what the post war boom was for the US.
>China
>2023
>optimistic about the future
The best way to measure this is to look at the average age of a country. The younger they are, the better the prospects for the near future (the exception being when the average age is under 18, this usually means a recent conflict and in the short term the conflict will likely continue). Look for countries where the average age is late 20s and things are looking sunny, look at countries where its 40+ and things are fricking grim.
In basically every way, Japan seems to have improved over the past few decades despite having the highest average agw. Obviously it gets points deducted for volume of tourists, but that's just a testamemt to its value, most people want to go (here)
It's economic prospects are not good. If you want to become a resident long term, you will have to pay high taxes to support its elderly population. Meanwhile the lack of population growth will spiral economic growth down the toilet.
>economic growth
90% of jobs in Japan don't need to happen, it's like Maggie and her little fake car wheel in the Simpsons intro. Jobs exist here to prove that someone is worth the effort to include in the boss' social circle
>it's less foreign/globalization
This, in the most general way possible, is the best and only argument for Japan being worse now. I'd counter with the true statement that for people who don't want foreignness, it makes a whole new kind of country, aka "the best country in the West" and thereby for them it is redeemed, but we aren't going from the normie POV obviously. Most of the sub-arguments you later lay out are bullshit and shall be explained
>English is everywhere
It's definitely not and this could obviously be seen as a positive for even the majority of SighSee
>crowded with tourists
You are one of them so shush
>Japanese people don't think I'm special for being another race anymore
This is true, but I think it's also other simultaneous phenomena regarding the Japanese not finding foreign influence very important or useful anymore, and attempting to un-open the country culturally (you obviously want this too, but can't admit you yourself, as every other tourist, are a part of the issue)
>fashion
You care?
>Anime/vidya
Anime I get, but that's mostly because you don't have the taste modern anime viewers do, and most (or at least a plurality) of the highest-rated anime have come out within the past decade. Honestly if you think Monogatari is bad you're coping like a motherfricker. And vidya I don't get, I don't play it that often but Nintendo is as popular as ever even if genres changed
I'm sure it used to be perfect in a certain way, but it was still imperfect in many others, and it's likely you'll look back on the current Japan with a similar lens
>Japan seems to have improved over the past few decades
Absolutely not. I first went way back in 2007 and it was way better back then than when I returned this year. Going to Japan back then was truly like visiting another planet, Japanese culture was turned up to 1000 and you could be the only foreigner for miles even in the middle of Tokyo. Now it is relatively overall Globalized and same-same-ish like everywhere else in the world, English is everywhere, it is way too crowded with normie tourists, interactions with local Japanese is more muted because there are now so many foreigners they have 0 interest or intrigue in you anymore, fashion is the same shit everybody wears everywhere else these days based on the latest Instagram trends, Japanese anime and video games are complete garbage compared to what they were in the early/mid 2000s too if that is your thing. I basically only enjoyed my trip to Japan because it was a safe, organized, high trust and polite society compared to the chaotic dumpster fire the West has become, but as far as the culture, the cities, the tourists and the openness of the locals, it has gotten far, far worse. Peak Japan as far as culture goes was definitely in the early 2000s.
I was in Osaka and Kyoto in 2013 for one month and on most days I didn't see a single other non-asian person.
>Meant to be a positive thread
>Every time someone gives an answer, someone replies telling them they're wrong and that place is shit
I hate this board.
Honestly a lot of places made some progress in infrastructure but lost their vibe/comfiness/charisma/positivity so it comes to a net negativ.
Like Hanoi, it got more modern, the overall infrastructure is still shit it just got louder, more modern and the overall vibe got worse. HongKong yeah they build some mega infrastructure but overall it feels way worse off than 20 years ago, all the positivity is gone.
Really positive:
Croatia and Slovenia in Europe (to a lower degree Poland, Czechia, Georgia and Slovakia)
Chile and Costa Rica in LatAm (Peru and Mexico to a low degree)
Botswana and Mozambique in Africa (Namibia gets the low degree plus)
Philippines and Indonesia (Here the lower degree goes to Cambodia and Laos)
The list of the way worse off or went to complete shit is way longer.
>Really positive:
>Croatia and Slovenia in Europe
How exactly? To me, the only improvement in Croatia (as a tourist) in the last 20 years is that they finished the highways; other than that, it became way more crowded, expensive, there's more party tourism, more fake "posh" bars, young people are leaving the country which is why the hotels are increasingly staffed by Nepalese and the like.
Croatia got a lot better in the "not very touristy" places wit even some very comfy new tourist destinations that keep said lower class away showing up (kinda the way Costa Rica went with high class eco tourism) while not losing their identity or going full tourism.
only in asia
Is it worth going to syria yet?
Probably Orange County California. From a tourist perspective, it's better now. A new brewery opens up about once a week. They built a massive sports complex park in Orange at the Great Park. The county built a massive interconnected bike trail system. There are five times more local restaurants than 20 years ago and the food is significantly better. Disney added the California Adventure park. The county designated a ton of land that was privately owned as a public park around Limestone Canyon. Downtown Costa Mesa has become a tourist destination. Anaheim added the Packing District. There's downtown Disney now. Huntington built Pacific City. Etc etc etc. So much new shit.
LA and San Francisco are really suffering from crime and homeless problems, but most of the cities in Orange County have done a decent job keeping things safe and investing in large projects, especially considering the massive influx of illegal immigrants. But god damn, you should see the rent prices. $2700+ for an 800 square foot 1 bedroom apartment is the norm in Irvine.
>muh microbreweries
amusing that this meme is still a thing after all those years
poland
As a Polish person, i politely disagree.
20 years ago it was cheaper than south east asia and you would be worshipped like a god if you came here, because there were almost no foreigners visiting this place.
Now it has become much more expensive, foreigners are dime a dozen and everyone only talks about politics which made meeting new people much less fun.
The infrastructure and the english level have improved, though.