- Surabaya, Indonesia. Mosque, WarTel, shanty, mosque, WarTel, shanty…
- Vladivostok, Russia. Ugly, boring, and dangerous. Not convenient to get to or from.
- Syracuse, New York, USA. Run-down and dangerous.
- Kaili, Guizhou, China. Horrifyingly polluted.
- Narita, Japan. Sketchy foreigners and nasty locals.
[quote=“WanderingDave”]1. Surabaya, Indonesia. Mosque, WarTel, shanty, mosque, WarTel, shanty…
2. Vladivostok, Russia. Ugly, boring, and dangerous. Not convenient to get to or from.
3. Syracuse, New York, USA. Run-down and dangerous.
4. Kaili, Guizhou, China. Horrifyingly polluted.
5. Narita, Japan. Sketchy foreigners and nasty locals.[/quote]
Geez, what were you doing in Surabaya and Vladivostok?!?! Not exactly top tourist attractions.
I’ve like most cities I’ve personally been to, so it’s hard to say as even the crappy ones have some features that make them interesting.
Like Manila. Some parts of Manila (Quezon City really) are dodgey, but it’s quite nice in other areas, and there are amazing restaurants in Manila, cafes, clubs, and great huge shopping malls, attractive friendly people, etc.
But some relatively awful places:
Guangzhou (but for some lovely older areas)
Lima (again, some nice areas, but the shanties are a shame, and it’s dangerous)
Bogota (wonderful very high up in the Andes city with a definate cosmopolitan flair, but very dodgey even in touristy places)
Newark New Jersey
Gaoxiung is pretty darned disgusting
Can’t think of many others. Never been to Africa, Russia, or India, though.
Surabaya girls rock! And girls from Madura!!! WOW!!!
My five would be
Lagos - Nigeria, dirty, smelly and very unsafe.
Mexico City - Mexico, pollution and filth the main problem.
Bogota - Columbia, is just plain scary.
New Delhi - India, smoke, smell, noise, to many people, beggars etc etc
Tashkent - Uzbekistan, very intimidating for a expat.
To every place there is good and bad, these places really stick out in my mind for being bad
Yes, it can be very dangerous, but it’s an amazing city nonetheless. The altitude and surrounds make it fascinating. Too bad it’s overrun with petty thieves.
Tampa, FL
Tianjin, China
I douple Guangzhou, China. Couldn’t really see any beauty there a few years ago, but maybe it has changed to the better now?
I don’t think that Wuhu, Anhui, will ever be any better though…
I haven’t been to many horrible cities, but here’s a few:
Birmingham
Gaoxiong
Palmerston North (OK it’smore of an oversized sheep=town than a city).
Cromwell (as above)
Brian
Mobile, Alabama, gives me the creeps
Parts of Bali (I hate touts, I mean really hate 'em)
Bonanza, Oregon (talk about a town full of hee-haw shitheads)
Gary, Indiana (awful pollution)
Tie: Changhua, Taiwan and Dorris, California
What are ‘touts’? And Bali’s not a city. Denpasar is nothing to write home about however…nor Kuta! If you can call it a city.
Touts was 41 across today.
[quote]
Tianjin, China[/quote]
I spent a year in Tianjin and loved it. Nice European architecture in a different style around every corner, beautiful old Chinese quarters (though they started tearing those down while I was there). A nice, spacious green campus, great food, very friendly people and not as foreigner-overrun as Beijing.
My absolute bottom place would be
Baoshan - Yunnan/China - got stuck there over Chinese New Year because the bus station closed down every time they saw us foreigners approaching the ticket office. The only “sight” was a sad, dried-up park with a couple of concrete pagodas. The empty streets were absolutely scary because we had never seen anything like that in China (my first CNY). We finally got out by sneaking out of the hotel at 5 in the morning (we had paid the night before) and getting hold of the bus driver himself who took us on for the 2-day bus trip to Jinghong in Xishuang Banna.
Iris
[quote=“Alien”][quote=“Flicka”]
Parts of Bali (I hate touts, I mean really hate 'em)
[/quote]
What are ‘touts’? And Bali’s not a city. Denpasar is nothing to write home about however…nor Kuta! If you can call it a city.
[/quote]
Touts are the irritaing peddlers that ruin your vacation when you walk around Kuta and other parts of Bali. I don’t care if they are poor, I don’t like them bothering me.
I should have said Denpasar, or parts of Denpasar.
[quote=“Flicka”][quote=“Alien”][quote=“Flicka”]
Parts of Bali (I hate touts, I mean really hate 'em)
[/quote]
What are ‘touts’? And Bali’s not a city. Denpasar is nothing to write home about however…nor Kuta! If you can call it a city.
[/quote]
Touts are the irritaing peddlers that ruin your vacation when you walk around Kuta and other parts of Bali. I don’t care if they are poor, I don’t like them bothering me.
I should have said Denpasar, or parts of Denpasar.[/quote]
Oh, I call them hawkers. But I agree, they’re the most aggressive ones I’ve encountered anywhere in Asia. And the funny thing is that the crap they try to peddle on the beaches is far more expensive than in the shops.
Beware to all Bali goers!
[quote=“iris”][quote]
Tianjin, China[/quote]
I spent a year in Tianjin and loved it. Nice European architecture in a different style around every corner, beautiful old Chinese quarters (though they started tearing those down while I was there). A nice, spacious green campus, great food, very friendly people and not as foreigner-overrun as Beijing.
Iris[/quote]
I spent a year in Tianjin and hated it. Not all the architecture in the world could compensate for the pollution and the filth. For me anyway. Were you at Nankai?
Bakersfield, California, USA
Paris, France
[quote=“iris”]
My absolute bottom place would be
Baoshan - Yunnan/China - got stuck there over Chinese New Year because the bus station closed down every time they saw us foreigners approaching the ticket office. [/quote]
Same thing happened to us in Litang, Szechan. We tried for days to get a ticket and they kept lying to us about when the bus was leaving. “Tomorrow!” Then we’d get there and NO BUS. Or “day after tomorrow”, and we’d go there and the bus had left the day before. I finally just exploded on this Han bus station chick after about five days of that shit, and got a gurgling growl from her like some kind of wild animal. It was so bizarre!
Fortunately Litang was an interesting place full of earthy Tibetans, but the food was the worst ever, and it was absolutely freezing there. I was also sick as a dog from the altitude and the flu.
We ended up in four star hotel glory (hot bath) in Chengdu after two solid days of nightmarish bus travel.
Is backwoods China still so unaccomodating toward westerners? It’s quite clear the Han didn’t want us in certain areas ten years ago, although this was not always explicitly stated.
Go travelling in China while you’re still young, people. It’s not a place for the old, intolerant, crotchety, or faint-hearted.
Word.
So it was. What’s 69 A???