What's the most off beat country you ever visited.

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:00 pm

Seriously, there are so many countries world wide that almost no westerner visits that it could make up a world of it's own.

Since it seems that most (if not all) visitor here are either from developed western countries or from developing countries in the east I thought it might be interesting to know.

What is the most "obscure" country you've been to.

For me it has to be either "Andorra", which I visited being under 10 years or my recent visit to Jordany (Petra is worth the visit alone - UNBELIEVABLY beatiful).

Obscure destinations would be one of the polynesian islands when not living there or something like that.

Please tell.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:46 pm

European people do travel a lot, don't they? Most european people I know have been into many countries.

I've went to Argentina twice, Chile and Bolivia once. Nothing really "off beat"

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:04 pm

Same here, nothing really off-beat (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and New Zealand being the "lesser known" countries I've been in, I guess).

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:06 pm

Chile or Bolivia sound "off beat" enough to me.

It's notvlike they are major tourist atrractions for anyone not living nearby...

For the record, Chile is on the list for future visit for me (on a tour featuring that and peru).

An stories about spectacular or noteworthy stuff over there?

*edit* New Zealand sounds like a must to me as well, but not that off beat indeed. Still it seems like a place everyone ought to go to once.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:13 pm

I actually went to Chile but it wasn't for tourism... I got to know Santiago a little... some friends of mine went there before me and managed to do some tourism before our meeting, so I should go ask them

Now Bolivia was really nice.

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:18 pm

btw, I am hearing lots of stories about S. America being quite unsafe for tourists. What is your take on this? I would like to travel alone or in a small group intead of organized, but stories about tourist robberies, hijacks and stuff make me doubt about it....

For the record I've excluded Brasil from my plans because bad stories...

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:42 pm

Super Laydock wrote:btw, I am hearing lots of stories about S. America being quite unsafe for tourists. What is your take on this?

Don't eat any botflies, and watch out for groups like the Shining Path*

*but they've been gone a while iirc

Really there shouldn't be much to worry about, especially if you go to a bigger country like Brazil. Colombia or Bolivia? Hell yes you'd better be scared.

qube · Post by **qube** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:03 pm

I've been to 9 countries total, but none of them "offbeat" by most people's definition. All in either N. America or Europe.

I have a strong desire to visit Tobago though, and may do so sometime in the future. Anyone been?

Post by **Shatterhand** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:25 pm

Super Laydock wrote:btw, I am hearing lots of stories about S. America being quite unsafe for tourists. What is your take on this? I would like to travel alone or in a small group intead of organized, but stories about tourist robberies, hijacks and stuff make me doubt about it....

For the record I've excluded Brasil from my plans because bad stories...

Unfortunately, I think that's true. An european on South America WILL look like a tourist, he just can't hide it. And tourist = $$$ = easy target for muggers. Here in Rio de Janeiro you certainly will want to visit our beaches, and then you will be a certaing target for the muggers. Not to mention at any tourist point you visit, there will be people trying to scam you (Taxis charging more than they should, people selling overpriced tickets to the Christ statue, this kind of stuff). Hijacks are a little too much though, I don't remember of any tourist hijacks stories around here.

In Bolivia the problem wasn't mugging (I don't think there are many of them), but people try to deceive and scam you all the time. For every 10 places I bought something, 9 would try to give me less change than it was due. Even on the damn Airport, when I tried to change Dollars for the local currency in an official place, they gave me less money than they should. A woman changing money on the streets also tried to pass me a fake 20 dollars note (and in Bolivia I do look like a tourist, and my horrible spanish doesn't help a little bit

) . The "scary" stuff like Hijacking and stuff would be true closer to the borders I guess.. if you get in the country by plane you don't have to worry about this... but I heard some crazy stories from people who took the train to get into the country.

I didn't had any troubles like those in either Chile or Argentina, and those are generally less poor countries, so I guess you would be safer there

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:59 pm

Change your money before you land in the country, maybe?

Post by **Shatterhand** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:08 pm

It's hard, you won't find people selling Pesos Bolivianos in Brazil, and it's hard to find anyone wanting to buy Real in Bolivia. The tip is to change your own currency to US Dollars and then change US Dollars to the local currency. That's what I've always did on my international trips around South America

. You lose some money on that though, but the avoided headache is worthy.

CIT · Post by **CIT** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:15 pm

Weirdest country I've been to, is not far away at all, actually, but just around the corner of Germany: The Principality of Liechtenstein - a tiny (population 30,000) German-speaking monarchy in the Alps.

It takes just about 15 minutes to drive from one end of the country to another!

ROBOTRON · Post by **ROBOTRON** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:12 pm

I would have to say CANADA.

I cross over from Detroit via the Ambassador Bridge and its like another world. 99% less crime, everyone is friendly and says "eh" in every sentence. The water is much cleaner (I fish quite a bit over there) and there is much less urban sprawl and ghettos.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:56 pm

And they dump their trash on us..! Gee, swell guys :D

Shocky · Post by **Shocky** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:53 am

The craziest place I've ever been to has to be India. There is just so much madness everywhere. None of it would be even legal in Europe. Endless conmen with a thousand tricks and schemes to relieve westerners of their money (they even build authentic-looking fake tourists info offices), burning corpses, fake gurus, weird creatures roaming the streets: cows, dogs, wild boars, sheep, elephants, camels, monkeys, water buffalos, and I even saw a bear once. The traffic is total chaos without any rules. Some guys were driving around with a deformed cow on the back of their truck, I guess it was a freak show -type of attraction.

The monkeys invade hotel rooms in search of loot or just arrest tourists, search their pockets and steal their stuff. Beetles almost the size of a fist fly in the night air. Children are used as cheap labor in guest houses. Insects infest cheap hotel rooms. In the toilet there's not necessarily any water, it has to be carried from the village well. Of course, sometimes there are no toilets... Electricity, internet and gsm connection are a luxury that are not always available for days.

One guy tried to sell me a swastika-shirt and acid and then tried to spoil the movie I was going to see because he thought I was wasting his time (after I had been rejecting his deals and trying to get rid of him for the past 2 hours). In the movie theater the ticket inspector comes in 15 minutes into the movie and starts checking tickets with a flashlight. The audience (guys) giggle and whisper when a female star makes an entrance and start whistling when a male star appears.

On a train station, the "Upper class waiting room" has rats running around. By car, it's down to luck surviving the roads. Old and worn busses drive with their doors open on the edges of ravines, overloaded with people and animals (sometimes hanging outside the bus...) It's important to get a seat for a 12 hour ride, so people start running and jumping into the bus well before it has stopped moving. Sometimes the passengers are ordered out to walk across a bridge so that the bus isn't too heavy when it crosses the shoddy bridge. Garbage is just thrown out of the bus window.

In the Himalayas, the only road was destroyed by a huge landslide. After spending hours climbing up and down mountains (exhausting at 4000 m altitude) and jumping over a river to get to the other side, I find out that there are no bus connections anymore at all. Got a ride from the army guys to the next village. Got a room at some old witches house. Children were knocking on the window in the morning and laughing and yelling from a big hole in the middle of the ceiling.

And this was only a fraction of the madness, chaos and hysteria that I experienced there. "Vatika School for Genius"... "Sir, opium, hashis, music store, tabulatures" ??!.. about gf: "Did you have a sexual relationship? How many times? Do you want to marry her?"

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:04 am

Rural Texas

Limbrooke · Post by **Limbrooke** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:16 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:And they dump their trash on us..! Gee, swell guys

Not like we forced you at gunpoint to take it, eh?

I too must state Liechtenstein is the most off-beat country of visitation for myself.

Acid King · Post by **Acid King** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:25 pm

New Jersey

Michaelm · Post by **Michaelm** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:32 pm

Let's throw another tiny state in.
San Marino.

Eleven or so small castles and a lot of tourists shops.
People were tiny in the old days.
Or atleast the harnesses were

Post by **system11** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:02 pm

Russia, school trip, would have been around 1990 just as things were changing, or about to. We spent about a week there, across Moscow and St Petersburg (although it was called Leningrad still at the time).

I still have a few paintings I bought at a place I remember as being called St Catherine's Square. Sadly the name might be mis-remembered, but it was a place all the local artists would bring their work. I got a couple of smaller paintings, then one really caught my eye - framed in old dark wood, it's an almost luminous oil painting of a church silhouette in the snow. I still remember the artist, a tall man (although I was much shorter at the time), sporting a beard and moustache worthy of a musketeer. I didn't quite have the asking price, but he sold it to me anyway. There's a slight crack in the paint now from where my parents didn't store it perfectly, but it's hanging on my lounge wall.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:06 pm

Ed Oscuro wrote:And they dump their trash on us..! Gee, swell guys

It helps that Canada is magnitudes less willing to toss it anywhere and hope it doesn't do anything nasty unlike the US.

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:11 pm

las vegas

what a plastic shithole.. im glad ive seen it but i will never visit again.

thai/malaysian border in the early 90s was pretty dodgy too.. junglepirates and military everywhere.. everyone except me and my parents had machineguns i think.

dpful · Post by **dpful** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:46 pm

another vote for las vegas

Very wierd place

Davey · Post by **Davey** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:20 pm

Aside from Canada, I've never left the country. American ignorance FTW.

ROBOTRON wrote:I would have to say CANADA.

I cross over from Detroit via the Ambassador Bridge and its like another world. 99% less crime, everyone is friendly and says "eh" in every sentence. The water is much cleaner (I fish quite a bit over there) and there is much less urban sprawl and ghettos.

Cleaner, safer, and better kept than Detroit? Impossible!

I've looked at a few websites and watched a few YouTube videos about Detroit's ghettos and old abandoned buildings. It's amazing how run down Detroit is, especially for a city that was bustling during the first half of the 20th century. Surreal, really. Personally, I've never been to any part of Detroit other than downtown, which isn't too bad (for a rust belt city, anyway).

sven666 wrote:las vegas

what a plastic shithole.. im glad ive seen it but i will never visit again.

Yeah same here. I went there once, and I'm glad I did, but I wouldn't go back unless I had a specific reason.

PaCrappa · Post by **PaCrappa** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:25 pm

Las Vegas is the lamest place in the world. I hope to never go back.

Tijuana Mexico is the weirdest foreign place I've been. I fully realize that it is in no way representative of Mexico as a whole, but it was really strange so I'm picking that one.

Unless you're going to get super detail oriented, England, Europe and Japan were imo, all basically the same as the US just with different languages and different snack foods.

The n00b · Post by **The n00b** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:52 pm

Arizona. Almost every psycho seems to find his way there. Once there they also seem to find followers.

Except for Phoenix, which is a pretty cool place.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:06 am

The n00b wrote:Except for Phoenix, which is a pretty cool place.

the guy I know who lives in Phoenix disagrees about that part

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:12 am

what a plastic shithole..

Lots of plastic tits, too!

Bonemaster969 · Post by **Bonemaster969** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:27 am

PaCrappa wrote:Las Vegas is the lamest place in the world. I hope to never go back.

Tijuana Mexico is the weirdest foreign place I've been. I fully realize that it is in no way representative of Mexico as a whole, but it was really strange so I'm picking that one.

Unless you're going to get super detail oriented, England, Europe and Japan were imo, all basically the same as the US just with different languages and different snack foods.

OMG, PLEASE tell me you're joking about Japan being the same as america! I haven't been there yet, but I've been to Munich, Prague, Salzburg, and London and personally, I think London was the only one that was the same as america. Everyday, I worry if Japan is the same crap as america (no employee rights, crappy food, american media, etc). I'm really going to be heartbroken if it is, cause there's really no other place I wanna live except Germany, which doesn't seem to be big on videogaming.

Weird that you guys don't like vegas. It's one of the only american cities I actually enjoyed, although I didn't go off the strip at all. I think I would only go back during EVO though.

Back to England. I feel like I really didn't see the UK at all. I noticed that most people I've talked to on the internet live outside of London. Do you guys have any recommendations for other big cities in England that are worth visiting?

Lately, I've been thinking about visiting North Korea. I doubt I ever will though, because of the document nightmare you have to go through to even be allowed in. Plus, it might be beyond my budget for now. But you have to admit, that's one place that's off beat!

PaCrappa · Post by **PaCrappa** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:08 am

Dude it's a consumer culture with a different language. Hurry up and buy some shit.

The End.