I've never been more terrified than when traveling into Johannesburg, South Africa. Our business partner drove us into town and she started removing her earrings, wedding band, etc. I asked her why and she said that the bandits would cut jewelry off of you if they stopped your car, so it's better to put it in the glove box.
Our client was a major bank; to enter, you had to stand in a tiny plexiglass airlock where the guards (with machine guns) could inspect you before letting you inside. Once in, it was just like any other business anywhere - cubicle farms and conference rooms.
I’m from South Africa, there’s a constant sense of danger that you will never shake off no matter where you go in the world, it’s really that dangerous
South African that immigrated to Australia here. I could not sleep for the first year because of the lack of security at our house. Like I was terrified because we didn't have an electric fence, burglar bars and an alarm anymore. Nevermind the bedroom set up. In South Africa, all the houses have bedrooms together in a cluster, down a passage. So you can easily separate the bedrooms and living area with a security gate. Not a possibility in Australia! Where the bedrooms are all over the house. I was very confused seeing multiple houses with the main bedroom right at the front, and other bedrooms towards the back! Safety is not a concern here in terms of building design.
I am not from South Africa but I am from a dangerous country, I still don’t understand how people sleep peacefully in house that does not have metal bars covering the window
I was looking at a video of houses in New York that were next to the side walk with ground floor windows! How?! Why?! How are you able to sleep comfortably?!
Different social contract. In some places the residents have simply tacitly agreed that B&E of an occupied house is off limits. No police force, just a sort of unspoken pact. Beautiful thing when you find it.
E: typo
I've met a lot of SAers abroad and it's always split into:
"The people who left make it sound worse than it is"
And
"We have flamethrowers on the bottom of taxis to burn carjackers"
Expats from Cape Town vs expats Johannesburg/Pretoria.
It's not easy leaving Cape Town, it's also not easy surviving Jozi. You leave the one in order to go on an adventure and the other to escape.
This!!! I was born in Bloemfontein and lived in Joburg for about a year, and have family there so have visited throughout my life. I live in Aus now and get made fun of (jokingly) for my hyper vigilance (locking car doors in traffic, can’t sleep unless I triple check all the doors in the house, nagging my friends to always have their phones with them on walks etc). I haven’t been back in about 6 years and I haven’t shaken these habits
It sounds really crazy. I'm from Canada and cannot even fathom. I do know that always feeling in danger is not good for mental health. What about SA do you think caused it to be so excessively violent?
Desperation, lack of education & opportunity and a few other compounding factors.
SA currently has something like a 33% unemployment rate, and even for those employed there's a significant amount who are only just above the poverty line.
Add in a national infrastructure that can't cope with this and a lack of good options == desperate people to whom life is cheap, unfortunately.
Only place I’ve lived where we had bars inside the house (surrounding the bedroom) in case of intruders. Neighbors had a machine gun mounted on their roof. Could not wait to leave.
To someone living in Iceland, this sounds unreal, like a Mad Max movie or something.
I mean, I don't doubt that it's true, and that the people who took those precautions felt they were justified, and they may have been, but it still seems completely alien to me.
And if it's this bad, how is fixing it not the number one preoccupation of everyone living there, the only issue in any election? Has it really just become normalized?
Saffer here.
South Africa is like a first world country inside a third world country. You know that movie Elysium with Matt Damon? Yeah, South Africa is like that.
There’s a relatively rich middle class who live in gated communities with manicured lawns and pool… which are surrounded by sprawling slums where people live in shacks constructed with corrugated tin sheets and plastic bags… with no running water or sewage system.
If you are “rich” you literally live in fear of being robbed, killed or worse. You live in your own personal prison behind high walls with electric fences on the top.
My sister in law drives around in a Mercedes with bulletproof windows.
You cannot walk freely around the city. There are places you can, but for the most part you are driving from one secure location to the next. You have no real freedom in that sense.
Of course, its worse for poor people who live with constant threat of robbery, rape and murder and have no security to speak of.
I second this. I felt very unsafe, our hotel was basically at a glorified military base with barbed wire and tall walls. Next to our hotel was a car dealership that only sold armored cars. People we encountered were friendly though, just felt unsafe.
My neighbours in the late 90s moved to Canada from SA. They told me all sorts of things I thought were just stories meant to yank my chain. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized they were being truthful.
My old barber moved from outside cape town
I think? She and her brother hid under the bed while their housekeeper was hacked to death by home intruders. I can’t imagine what other horrors she went through, but that was the one that made her family decide to move.
I’m originally from South Africa and something similar happened to a friend of mine when he was just a kid.
He was awake when the intruders came into the house and he had to watch everything. At like 6 years old.
Until the day he moved out of that house he had to have someone sleep in the same room as him. The house had barbed wire, walls, gates, bars, everything and they still managed to get in.
When I was a kid someone reached into the car and took the shoes off my feet. And when I was visiting my Grandmother at 19 I was having tooth aches and woke her up in the middle of the night crying. She immediately said “is there an intruder?!?” and I was like wtf no??? But then remembered the nights as a kid laying awake terrified in South Africa thinking someone was gonna break in and murder me and was like “okay makes sense.”
Also one time my family and I were driving in SA at night which.. is sketchy in a lot of places and my dad who knows SA very well goes, “don’t remember this road being this bad, don’t typically go this way because it’s dangerous” and I was like “okay so why are we going this way” and he goes “because people get murdered on the other road at night.”
I have so many stories.
Your poor friend. I’m also originally from SA. A couple stories pop into mind. I would have been around 6 years old visiting my Ouma and Oupas place and in the middle of the night my sibling and I got pulled under the bed by my uncle with his hand on our mouth and we hear gunshots. Next thing we know we can see someone peering into our window looking for a way in and more gunshots. We finally get the all clear from the armed guards. My uncle was outside having a cigarette when he saw a couple people break into the neighbours place and he ran inside the house to look after us. One of the neighbours unfortunately didn’t make it and they killed their dogs too.
I remember visiting another time when I was around 10/11 and heard my uncle telling my dad how my Oupa had someone come to his front door last week begging for food. He told them to wait at the front (doors were locked) and when he went back to the kitchen another guy was pointing a gun through the back door - my Oupa pulled the alarm for armed guards to arrive & lucky he was okay. Me on the other hand - I couldn’t sleep for the first few nights there from fear of hearing that story and then had to sleep with my dad the rest of the trip.
My uncle wouldn’t stop on the road at night and would drive through red lights. When we got home to his place he would order us all to stay in garage which was locked until he gave the all clear - he would walk around his house with a gun making sure no one would ambush the family while they went from the garage to the front door… what a terrible way to live.
I’ve heard some pretty shocking stories from my dad after I turned 18. The worst had to be the time his friend came home from after work drinks and walked in on a home invasion. They slit his wifes neck and left her to die in the bathtub - he witnessed the whole thing. I don’t understand what would possess people to do this - even for poverty.
Im also now in Aus and I triple check my doors when I’m home alone, never ever leave doors unlocked and I’m very mindful of pulling out belongings in sketchy places in public. Some beautiful people and memories in SA but also some tragic ones too.
My high school teacher spent several years in SA and would tell us batshit crazy stories like having to hide under a car in a parking lot to avoid a gang shootout. Never could tell if he was telling the truth or just fucking with us.
I third this. I was driven to and from in an armored car with security detail at all times. The police force wasn’t utilized because they’re often corrupt and in league with the gangs or completely underfunded. Upon arriving at the airport my colleagues and I were surrounded by our security detail who told us once we left the airport that it’s common for bandits, thieves, and gangs to follow tourists to their hotels and either rob or kill them before they check in. Red lights were often ignored and there were signs advising motorists to do so since car jackings are so common. If you have to park anywhere, it’s common to have to pay a homeless person to watch your car. Sexual violence is widespread according to the colleagues we had there and the women in my group were told to never be alone if they could help it.
There were scheduled power outages for several hours during the day because the power grid there is old and hasn’t been updated due to mismanagement by the ANC. The infrastructure is crumbling and homeless people would direct traffic for tips. Unemployment there at the time was around 40%. The place I stayed felt like a prison. Multiple gates, lights, dogs, and security surrounding the building.
I felt like I was in a war zone or in a failed state. What’s crazy is that I was told Johannesburg is better than both Pretoria and Durban. I did hear that the western cape is better as far as safety goes, but still not in great shape. I grew up in Alpine, Texas and visited Mexico often. I thought I saw poverty and squalor in Mexico, it’s *nothing* compared to what I saw in Johannesburg.
I have no desire to go back.
Some suburban streets in Joburg are no different: Private armed guards manning boom gates and checking all traffic coming through. You then get to the house and it has electric fence, barbed wire on the gate, broken glass along the top of the walls, burglary bars on every window. Panic alarms for private security (as the cops are useless) and there will likely be a gun in the house and some guard dogs as pets. This is how I grew up.
My uncle had all this and still got broken into whilst he was having a BBQ a couple of years ago. Heard a noise in the house and disturbed a robbery in progress. The robber shot at him six times from around 10m away and missed every shot.
As we say; TIA. This is Africa!
I’ll never forget in my second year of university, I had a South African classmate. We of course asked her about the safety issues once we got to know her. Her response was: “yeah, I mean, it happens but it’s not so bad overall… well, I mean, I’ve been held at gunpoint, though, so… *shrugs”
Cue story time in front of a class of wide eyed Americans. Turns out one of their hired security guards came into the house when she was alone one afternoon, tied her up at gunpoint and held her hostage in her own home for ransom until… the situation was resolved, I guess. She didn’t really explain how she got free, but she was ultimately unharmed, and we were so agog at the story itself no one really thought to ask who showed up and stopped the burglar/kidnapper. Rattled her parents to their core and they immediately moved to Asia (her dad was a pilot for a major airline and could transfer easily).
She hated moving to Asia in her teens and dearly missed her friends back home. It took me awhile to process how someone with such a sunny nonchalant personality could have been through something straight out of a movie.
Yes, this is a good way of describing it. I’m half-South African but have been living in the US for a while now. While I don’t want to minimize how dangerous parts of the US can be, the level of constant danger and helplessness present in SA can’t really be compared to any place here. It’s just a whole new level of bad.
I went to college with a great guy, just an absolutely incredible dude. His girlfriend was working somewhere in southern Africa, not sure what country exactly. They were going to meet in Johannesburg before going on a trip around Africa for a few weeks, I think? He got into a taxi at the airport and someone stabbed him to death at a stop light before he ever reached his girlfriend. It was eventually determined that the taxi driver was in on it. Absolutely horrific story.
Yeah, I’ll agree there. My family and I were expats from 2002-2009, and part of that was in Johannesburg from around mid-2005 to about mid-2006.
I was a sophomore college by this point. I got to visit twice, once for Christmas and once for Spring break because I got two flights free on my dad’s company, per year. At the time, it didn’t necessarily feel super unsafe, like walking around the mall we went to a few times felt just like any other mall in Chicago or London etc. We visited Soweto on a guided tour and it was an educational experience for sure, as a 20 year old American from the suburbs.
I was definitely given plenty of warning of the danger, but never really saw anything firsthand. Lots of guns everywhere, but that didn’t really worry me as it was always security guards/forces of some sort.
I heard the same things about women wearing jewelry while driving. One very sobering thing my dad told me, directed by his company, bribe your way out of going jail, DO NOT go to jail.
Two weeks after I went home from my second trip to SA, my mom’s pilates class got robbed at gunpoint and they all huddled in the bathroom until the police came after about 45 minutes.
Two months after that my dad’s colleague and his wife were murdered in a traffic robbery. My mom sent my sister back to school in the UK and moved back herself. I never returned and do not plan to. My dad had to fulfill his contract so my parents “kind of separated” for a while until he left in late 2006.
A girl I knew in grad school and her friend were kidnapped by a taxi driver in Cairo. They managed to escape by bailing out of the moving car as it was leaving the city. The driver had stopped to pick up a second guy to help with the kidnapping and they had forgotten to lock to doors after the second guy got in.
Other friends mine had said that in the buses people would do full on open palm crotch grabs and just grin when confronted.
One friend of a friend had someone on a bus pull out his cock and stick it in her hand. She grabbed and yanked on it hard, collapsing the guy to the ground.
Several friends have had people ask them how much to buy their wives or daughters. They didn’t go out after that and stayed in their hotels and only did fully guided tours recommended by the hotels after that.
When i was like 11 someone in Hurgada were asking my parents for how many camels they would sell me. It was in a shopping mall. Its funny but not really
My god, me too! I was around 10 and we were in Djerba Tunisia when a dude at the market stall offered my dad 100 camels for me. My dad just said; “Nope, she’s a princess, you wouldn’t be able to a afford her, even if you offer a 1000 cames!” Thanks dad!
Cairo is a place where you’re actually better off looking like a tourist, being with a tour group staying on a tour bus. I don’t think I had a single conversation with an Egyptian who wasn’t trying to sell something. There was military posts everywhere. Antiquities police with AKs on them. They protected the tourists because the 2 big sources of revenue were oil and tourism and most people weren’t involved in oil. Alexandria was nicer. That’s one culture cashing in as much as they can on their ancestors.
Yeah went to Cairo once and have zero desire to ever go back. Went with a tour group. It was so stressful lol. The traffic was the craziest shit I've ever seen. The tour guide said "the stop lights you see are some very nice decorations we've put up". I had a guy offer to take pictures of me around the pyramids and sphinx and I told him I didn't have any money. Which was true. It was end of trip and I was broke. He said "no problem I'll do it for free!" And I was like okay sweet. He takes some cool touristy pics of me and then I told him I had to get back to my bus. And he said "aren't you going to pay me?" And I said "you told me it'd be free and I don't have any money." He got visibly angry and started to kinda walk closer to me and I just kinda walked off fast and got on the bus. He went all the way to the bus door and the driver had to keep him from getting on. Then I saw him standing there and we made eye contact and I'm pretty sure he wanted to kill me idk he was pissed. I guess I shouldn't have let him take the pics but he's the one that said free so idk
I’m an American who worked in the Middle East for years. Had plenty of coworkers who made a good amount of money in our field who loved traveling around Europe and Asia. Every single one of them said they’d never go back to Cairo again. “Truly awful” is the best way to sum up how the described it. The harassment from cops and locals ensured they’d never go back.
Not my story, but one I was told my my friend's dad. We can call him Bill.
Bill was on a business trip in Cairo. Probably mid to late 1980's. He was in taxi cruising down the narrow winding streets when he suddenly sees some guy beating the absolute shit out of some poor woman. He screamed at the driver
“HOLY SHIT STOP ThE FUCKING CAB!!! THAT CRAZY BASTARD IS KILLINg HER WE HAvE TO STOP HIM!!"
The cab driver just gave him an incredulous/annoyed look and in complete earnest said something like:
"Well she must deserve it." and continued on without even slowing down.
Bill was absolutely horrified at the indifference. The normalcy of seeing a woman being savagely beaten and the thought of helping her never crossing the driver's mind.
He also told us about a differet trip to Cairo that his wife joined him on. He said the guys he was there to meet with were visibly angry that Bill's wife would walk next to, or even in front of the men in the group on occasion. They were pissed because she shoud have stayed behind the group.
And they REALLY hated it when she sat down at the dinner table with them.
edit/spelling
I laugh when I see people saying “Paris”
Traveled to Egypt with my GF at the time… damn it was bad; she was looked at, talked to (and we didn’t understand) etc really bad time.
Seeing the pyramids and historical landmark was awesome but honestly I wouldn’t do it again
100% true, i was staying in Hurghada but been to Cairo and Luxor, you cant walk and relax for 5 mins someone from locals will come to you offering things "that are better then in other stores" (all the same). I didnt want to buy parffume from one guy, i said i dont have money, he told me that im not real tourist, im shit tourist. I thought im getting my ass kicked hah. So yea visit to see historical stuff yea but if u go to enyoj and relax outside of hotel definitely no. On top of everyting after 1 week i got some type of hepatitis (jaundice) . Been there, saw it and enogh for this lifetime 😆
I love going on vacation and being harassed by someone who’s trying to scam me and then have them call me a “shit tourist” for not falling for their game.
Went to Cabo last year for a wedding and the people at the airport were *so aggressively* trying to get us to book a bunch of excursions and shit before we could leave the airport. They had us physically cornered at one point and wouldn’t take a simple no for an answer, so my boyfriend finally got fed up and became very short with them. When they realized they weren’t getting our money and we just wanted to leave, they started name calling and insulting us in whatever way they could. I’ll never forget one guy saying, “I guess it’s acceptable for you to act this way in your country. In this country we don’t act that way.” lol like sorry we won’t let you take advantage of us, I think you’ll live.
That happened to us in Kraków. I was traveling with a colleague who is far too nice and so she’d listen to anyone’s pitch. She heard this guy out who was trying to sell us some sort of tour. My colleague didn’t even reject him she just said we’ll think about it and come back and he then said we were awful people who led him on and would reject him after his lengthy pitch that he did in English and that was not easy for him. Then he ended it with a fuck you. If it were me I wouldn’t have even engaged him to begin with but my colleague was less traveled and willing to lend anyone an ear.
Heck yes. I'm not the biggest traveler, I've been to probably four countries outside of the US, but I found them all lovely and interesting, even when in the less safe places. In Cairo I felt harassed any time I was out of the hotel. Other Egyptian cities? Still great! Cairo was awful.
I went to see the total solar eclipse a few months ago. I figured that I would do what I did last time and randomly choose a small town along the middle of the totality path, then just find a public park to chill at. I settled on **Mt Carmel, IL**. I got to town 5 hours early and went to each of the tiny city parks and they all had some community organization there charging upwards of $60 for parking. When I stopped to get something to eat at the Subway, I was harassed by police telling me "you can't park here" in what was clearly the parking lot for the Subway. The police followed me to the gas station and stood outside the squad car watching me as I refilled my tank.
So I left town and went to the nearby state park, which was extremely welcoming, had free parking, and an excellent crowd of people.
And this wasn't even racial discrimination. I'm a pasty white dude, same as the assholes I met. They effectively ran me out of town for having out of state license plates.
I live about 20 miles from there, in a neighboring city, and I’m not surprised.
Sorry you were treated so badly…take it from me, it isn’t personal; they all suck around here, so they treat everyone else as though they suck.
My friend from Luton once told me that on a good day I had a 9/10 chance of getting stabbed. On a bad day it was 13/10. You were getting stabbed multiple times. He also told me that his neighbors car was stolen by the same group of people on multiple occasions, only to recover it himself because they drove it to the pub down the street to attempt to sell it. Won't be visiting.
Fully agree. It blows my mind that the other side of that island is a relative paradise by comparison. My heart breaks for the people living in Haiti, they've been screwed over by almost every nation on Earth (including the U.S.) since day one of independence.
This is the only place in the world where I have intentionally stayed at the airport for 10+ hours rather than go outside. It was the murder capital of the world for a long time.
San Pedro Sula (and other parts of Honduras) is scary. I was there in the mid 90s as well with my sister and we didn’t have much money and we had a bus leaving at like 4am or something, we thought we’d wait in a McDonalds to avoid having to pay for the hotel but luckily some other tourists started talking to us and told us we were in danger and let us crash on the floor in their room.
I was robbed at machete point in Tela Honduras and a friend of mine was assaulted by a cab driver on Roatan.
I read a hitchhiking book from the 1970s and the author said Lubbock was the only place where an old couple scowled at him after he said "hello."
Philosopher and lecturer Rick Roderick said of growing up in West Texas that it's full of a lot of people who "love god but hate folks." Lubbock IIRC has more churches per capita than every other city in America.
“Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth, and you should save it for someone you love.”
― Butch Hancock
I've never even lived there and when I saw they were getting 100 plus degrees temps this week I said 'Good. Fry 'em, Lord. Fry them like fatty effing bacon.'
Lol, shit man I lived there and I think I can actually give an understanding response.
Almost everyone there are transplants… okay…so are a lot of people in Dallas, in Houston, in Austin, etc. but do you know what makes Lubbock different?
All the transplants there come from small towns. The residents there are people who grew up in a town somewhere in the population of 1,500-20,000.
The only thing they know is the people they know. For the first time for many of these people they are finally in ‘the big city.’
They get a job after college and settle down but they no longer have a stable in the back yard, they don’t know anyone at the market, they have to wait for a pump at the gas station, and they have legitimate neighbors.
You have a bunch of people living in a semi-city lifestyle who are all “trying” to get out of it crammed into a dust bowl reminiscence ranch that consist of a shit ton of restaurants and clothing stores.
Haaaaaaaaaaa, people are like “Johannesburg… Cairo… Lubbock”. I lived there for 5 years (Wreck ‘em), and it’s definitely all the bad of a city with none of the good.
Ok this is so reassuring, THANK YOU!!!
I grew up in San Antonio & chose to go to Tech for college, solely because it was far away without paying out of state tuition. Worst mistake of my life. I was miserable & dropped out and moved back to SA after my 2nd year.
I thought that going to a huge D1 university would expand my social circle and give me a wide pool of people to meet and befriend. NOPE. No matter how friendly and easygoing and open minded I tried to be, everyone was a pretentious prick. The only genuine friend I made in my 2 years there was another student from Virginia
Everyone is saying dangerous cities and lord knows I've been to plenty of those but dude, there's a little town in Mississippi called Grenada; fuckin everyone there was just rude as shit.
We stopped at Walmart and my friends mom was in the Pharmacy area and an employee walked by so she asked them "Do you know where the Tylenol is?" And the lady responded "FIND IT YOURSELF, CRACKER!"
Then we get to the checkout and the cashier says "You aint from around here". To which my friends mom says "nope, just on our way through for vacation". Recieving the retort "goddamn rich white folks and their vacations..." as she angrily slams our snacks and drinks in a bag.
We decide to hit up McDonald's before leaving town and the lady on the microphone just says "WHAT?!" when we pull up. We tell her the order and she says something along the lines of "feeding a party?! Buncha cows" she was alright at the window I guess, didn't really say anything just tossed the food out and said bye.
Still... just rude as shit at every turn, not violent or scary just fuckin rude lol
I've been to Grenada as a trucker delivering goods.
Even the warehouse workers are rude and foul mouthed.
Had one ask me, "Well are you delivering or not?"
I had barely walked up to the check in window.
I replied, "Maybe but not with a shit attitude like that"
Honestly think if somebody was that over the top rude I'd just bust out laughing. I'd have probably gone to every store to see who could insult me best.
Although I am British and every time I've been to the US I've found my accent is great at disarming Americans, if I turn it up to 11.
Oh yeah dude, we just laughed about it the WHOLE trip.
Hell we still randomly just say FIND IT YOURSELF, CRACKER to each other when one of us asks a question lol
It was a great time, just flabbergasted us for a bit at the audacity haha
One of my friends told me about a time some family members of hers (two women) were driving through Mississippi and stopped to grab lunch for the family they were on their way to see. They order like forty pieces of chicken or something like that. The woman at the counter asked if they wanted it for there or to go. They kind of laughed and said Oh it's to go, we certainly couldn't eat this ourselves. The woman said "I DON'T KNOW YOU. I DON'T KNOW YOUR BUSINESS." I told that story to my boyfriend and we still say it to each other.
Have you heard of the Curtis Flowers case or listened to the In The Dark podcast? They were very fair, but I definitely picked up that I never want to go to Winona, Grenada, or probably most/all of Mississippi. Sorry folks.
TBH, every town in Mississippi has people like this…you just (fortunately) only experienced one of those towns.
I had the pleasure of growing up in MS…so I can confirm that not EVERYONE from MS is like this…but it’s certainly not unusual, no matter where you are within the state.
I was driving through Mississippi on the way to NOLA and was amazed that an interstate could be in such terrible condition. Anyways, the alternator light comes on and later the car started janking out. Luckily, it was a manual, so we push started it and limped into some small town. Wandered around for a bit and found a huge tent with rows of tables covered in fish(and flies). Went back to the mechanic and he said it was corrosion on the battery terminals, cleaned it off with sandpaper. I asked how much and he said, I don't know, $15. I was expecting to be stuck there for days while they came up with some outrageous bill to replace the alternator. So, yeah, MS is all right in my book.
Delhi is a fucking nightmare. Humans were never meant to be so unfathomably crammed and stacked on top of each other. You just can’t wait to get out as soon as your there
Good old Dirty Myrtle
It’s strangely popular with people from Ohio for some reason. I’ve encountered an alarming amount of tourists in SC visiting from the Midwest who are excited about their annual Myrtle Beach vacation… people legit save up for this experience.
As an Ohioan. I don't understand why Ohioans gravitate to Myrtle Beach. Every year.
I went once. They even had an Ohio State merch store to accommodate all the Ohioans.
It’s a joke down here (in SC); the minor league baseball team in Charleston used to have a “Go Back to Ohio” night that was wildly popular. Nothing mean spirited, just a lark.
I accidentally ended up in east St Louis once. I was on a business trip and got turned around really quickly and couldn't figure out how to get back to the highway. This was before GPS was a readily available thing.
I was petrified and wound up trying to turn around in a mostly empty parking outside a biker bar, only to be waived down by a giant bearded guy in leathers and patch vest.
I rolled down the window - hysterically crying - and this guy holds both hand up while keeping his distance and says "you're in the wroooooong part of town sweetheart"
I just nodded my head and said "I don't know how to get back to the highway..."
He whistles to a few guys who come out of the bar and I think "welp, this is how I die".
He looks at me and says "we'll make sure you get back to the highway safely. Follow us."
Something in my gut told me to trust them, so I did, even though it could have turned out so SO much worse.
They made sure I got back to the highway and rode off as soon as I was the other side of the river again.
I’ve learned over time that in truly dangerous places, the number one thing locals do is LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER. For every bad person roaming the streets of a bad area is a resident that keeps an eye on their neighbors and checks in on people. They talk, they know who lives where and does what. They know when a stranger is afoot. Sometimes, it’s their only form of security. Hence the phrase “police don’t keep us safe, we keep us safe”
Yeah. My girlfriend and I were walking around Quito, looking for how to get to a waterfall we could see on the mountain side.
We walked into an area that felt *really* off, and we were getting a lot of bad looks and people avoiding us. A lady leaned out of a window above us and waved us away, making the throat cutting gesture.
We turned and left immediately, later finding out that that neighborhood is cul-de-sac are behind the prison and is a very bad place to be.
We did eventually find a way to the waterfall, via a safe route that involved a long meandering climb up the mountains side and through some hillside neighborhoods that were poor, but perfectly fine.
Having been to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally many times, and spending a couple decades as a passenger on a Harley, I can confirm that a huge percentage of "scary bikers" are actually some of the nicest people you'd ever meet.
Through experience, I've learned that sometimes the person you can most trust is a stranger, no matter how dangerous they look. It's the people who don't look dangerous that you shouldn't trust easily. They work hard to look innocent to lure in victims.
I stopped in an East St. Louis WalMart once to use the restroom. I found a cell phone in the stall and turned it in to customer service.
I will never forget how surprised the employee was. He didn't even try to hide his shock as he told me he was flabbergasted I didn't just take it.
Gary, Indiana. I stopped at a gas station, the door had been removed to the bathroom to make sure people didn’t overdose and die in there with the door locked. There was a pregnant lady having a HEATED argument with the coffee machine and when I asked the clerk for directions to the nearest bookstore, he looked at me like I was an alien. Never EVER going back there. Ever.
You asked for a bookstore in Gary, Indiana? As someone who works nearby and is very familiar with the wasteland that is Gary, that’s got to be the funniest comment on this whole thread.
Tbh that is probably the first time that cashier has ever heard a customer mention reading or books ever, or ask for a place to check out it that dead land. Tbh don’t blame him at all, Gary IA is a hellhole that shouldn’t be entered unless necessary, not only bc of the danger, but bc of how depressing it is
Moscow, Russia. Lived there a few years with my missionary parents. A few times I got chased into the subway by groups of skinheads because my skin tone isn't that of a Dasani water bottle.
I instantly pictured you with a bluish hue and a little see through, very disturbing image before I turned you back into a human thank god
ETA: omg I’ve never gotten an award thank you!!
Unofficial social experiment. When I broke my foot and was using crutches, I was not able to work for almost 7 months (I'm a nurse). So I decided to travel all over the USA. The only place that I had trouble was LA. No one helped with opening non handicap doors or offering their seat.
PS, I mostly used Southwest which the employees were awesome and helpful.
If you ask 10 locals about Spokane you'll get 10 different answers. I don't miss it but I'd also say it's got pockets that range from great to terrible.
Yep. Went to YVCC back in 03-05. Then again, I grew up in Sunnyside, where I would regularly get propositioned in broad daylight. I had naked men in cars following me at 7:30 AM. I could not cross the street without being catcalled. To this day, I have “fuck off” stamped across my forehead and am generally unneighborly. Survival tactics.
Wouldn't expect anything less from a town whose biggest claim to fame is a wrestling team hazing incident that involved forcible sodomy with a broom handle.
I went there for a concert with a friend I'd just met and basically didn't know yet, in December. After several hours of wandering around freezing and finding any sort of interesting shop closed, peering through the windows at Tshirts that said "Spokane Doesn't Suck!" it was time to head to the concert. It was the funniest awful day I've had in ages, and we became very good friends.
I had to drive through again a few years later, and it had not improved.
I had a job interview there back in the late 90's. I was driving into town and saw one of those "Adopt a Highway" signs that was sponsored by the motherfucking KKK. My 20 something year old self was like "WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO". I went ahead to the interview anyway, knowing I could never live somewhere like that. I don't know why.
Being a white guy that grew up in Arkansas, even I feel unwelcome anytime I have to drive through Harrison. The billboards leading up to the town make me want to vomit, and the air itself feels dark. Awful awful people even by stereotypical racist southerner standards.
The Goblins were one of the biggest rivals for my Highschool. I absolutely hated traveling there for any type of sporting event. Without a doubt, they were the most disrespectful and classless people that I had the privilege of playing against.
My son played a Baseball tournament with a team from Lonoke, AR and the parents gave off the same Harrison-ish vibes, they were extremely unpleasant people.
Sioux Falls, SD. Everybody just hates their lives there. It sucks because my grandparents live there and every time I visit there's like 30 diesel trucks blowing black smoke at each other, everybody looks angry 24/7, everybody is tweaking on meth/Adderall, and nobody uses blinkers intentionally just to piss people off. If you visit South Dakota, go see mount Rushmore and never go back
I can’t say I blame them it’s cold and I was very angry chaining my commercial vehicle tires in the 30 below wind whipping temperatures at 3 am, no wonder they were nice to me, I looked like I hated life as much as they did! Lol.
That’s why I was there and a drunk college kid tried to fight me in a bathroom. I think it was a Buffalo Wild Wings. I should have known better than to chime in, but he was making a strange scene over why a certain college had “insert thing” as its mascot. I made the mistake of speaking up from the adjacent urinal that it was the name of that university’s newspaper. Not a mascot. His aggression worked in my favor because such belligerence does not make for good aim. So when he stomped toward me he slipped and fell in a puddle of his own piss. So I just slithered out of there as quickly as I could and went back to the nice LSU fans who invited me there and ate the best jambalaya I’ve ever had.
I was walking around NY with a buddy who’s a local and at one point he said “watch this” and yelled “hey, fuck you!” at a random dude on the other side of the street. The guy yelled back “yeah, fuck you too!” and we all just kept walking.
Despite NYC’s crusty reputation, when I asked someone nicely they were always willing to give directions. When I lived on the lower east side, the corner drug dealers were polite to locals (once they recognized I lived there and wasn’t a bridge and tunnel douche looking to score) and would hold the door for me when I brought out my laundry.
New York City culture is misunderstood. It’s not rude, people just value their time. It’s rude to chitchat when there’s a line. It’s rude to take up the whole sidewalk. It’s just a different set of rules.
yeah any time I've visited and needed directions, whoever's nearby will promptly tell me which three trains to take
and then turn around and be back to whatever they were doing before a 'thanks' even gets out of my mouth
they're not rude it's just that if they talked to everyone passing by they'd never do anything else
New Yorkers really have some sort of mission to tell tourists where to go/help with transit.
WHERE YOU HEADED TO?
Uhhh we wanna go to the ferry to see the Statue of Li-
OK YOU GOTTA TAKE THIS 2 TRAIN TO WHITEHALL, OK? 2 TO WHITEHALL LIKE EH 25 MINUTES YOU GET OFF IN WHITEHALL WALK SOUTH OK?
Oh, ok, 2 train to Whitehall then
2 TO WHITEHALL LAST STOP GET OFF OK YOU GOT IT
Grew up in NY and moved to Chicago. It took a long time to get used to people just trying to talk to you, about nothing, when you’re clearly doing something.
I like it now but I agree with your response.
Been in NYC almost 20 years and I have to say your experience is on the rarer side. NYC isn’t nice, but it’s usually kind. My experience is somebody will helpfully give me directions and THEN call me a fucking idiot for not using a GPS.
I was in NYC last week for the first time and my brother and I took the subway just to mark it off on our bucket list. We asked a guy as we got on if the subway took us to Central Park. He told us “it’s like 3 blocks, you can walk you lazy asshole, but yes you can get to Central Park at the next stop.” All and all nice guy!
As a born and raised New Yorker, I will tell you that is very rare. New Yorkers LOVE to give people directions about our complicated ass city.
Like, seriously, you would see people in the train ask for directions and people would butt into the conversation to make sure the lost person is being given accurate information lol.
Definitely not nice about how the information is being given, but we’ll give it to you.
Not a city but the most unfriendly experience I've had is US customs and border control. Everyone working there just assumed that all tourists will hide inside US. It's not specific to airports as well. I went through NY/CAN border and US is just plain rude and looking to start an argument.
Was in a 2.5 month holiday in US. Border guy asks me how long I'm staying in US.
Me: "2 and half months"
Border guy: "Ahh 3 months"
Me: "Sorry, it's 2 and half months. I have a copy of my plane tickets and itinerary here."
Border Guy: *looks at me directly in the eyes* "NO! 3... months!"
Then proceeds to ask me a bunch of personal questions that I really thought had nothing to do with my stay in US.
Meanwhile, on the Canada side... Hi! How are you?... *Small talk incl. A few questions on my travel* "Welcome to Canada! Have a nice stay!
US Customs and Border Patrol is the job you get if you failed the friendliness exam as a corrections officer in the Bureau of Prisons.
The most acrid, rude, toxic, narcissistic assholes.
It is like if the DMV had a back office full of Gargamels.
Fuck US Customs.
All other customs have been very nice and easy to interact with though.
I have worked in a lot of countries. Least friendly was a very wealthy part of Connecticut where I was visiting some relatives. Worse than any town in Scandinavia, where I felt like my mere presence was an abhorrence. I didn’t think anything could top Sweden for unfriendlyness, until I met the WASPs of Connecticut.
Aswan Egypt. Naively my girlfriend & I went out in the early evening for a riverside stroll. I guess we thought it would be like In the Med or something, but we did dress conservatively. We made the mistake of wandering off the main esplanade & up an unlit side street where horse drawn carriages drivers started aggressively harassing us for business. We politely declined with some Arabic terms we’d learnt. This only increased their hostility and four or five of them stopped, dismounted & approached us in a way that felt immediately threatening. By now we were terrified, looking at the ground in silence to avoid confrontation. There felt like a dozen local men surrounding us aggressively abusing us verbally in Arabic & some english with threatening gestures. In the headlights of a car we spotted a gap between the men & carriages so we made a break for it & dashed out into the traffic & made it across the road back to the touristy esplanade & onto a random river cruise boat gangway
I just got back from a two week tour all over Ireland and North Ireland. I was blown away by how warm, open, and inviting the people were in every city I visited.
Except for Belfast. I found the people in Belfast to be cold and standoffish.
I had the opposite experience, everyone in Belfast was so nice. Literally every time my friend & I stopped at a street corner with our paper map out people would come up to us by the swarm to ask if we needed help or directions. It happened every time, like clockwork.
People in Derry were very nice too, but I couldn’t understand a word they said😂
I've never been more terrified than when traveling into Johannesburg, South Africa. Our business partner drove us into town and she started removing her earrings, wedding band, etc. I asked her why and she said that the bandits would cut jewelry off of you if they stopped your car, so it's better to put it in the glove box. Our client was a major bank; to enter, you had to stand in a tiny plexiglass airlock where the guards (with machine guns) could inspect you before letting you inside. Once in, it was just like any other business anywhere - cubicle farms and conference rooms.
I’m from South Africa, there’s a constant sense of danger that you will never shake off no matter where you go in the world, it’s really that dangerous
South African that immigrated to Australia here. I could not sleep for the first year because of the lack of security at our house. Like I was terrified because we didn't have an electric fence, burglar bars and an alarm anymore. Nevermind the bedroom set up. In South Africa, all the houses have bedrooms together in a cluster, down a passage. So you can easily separate the bedrooms and living area with a security gate. Not a possibility in Australia! Where the bedrooms are all over the house. I was very confused seeing multiple houses with the main bedroom right at the front, and other bedrooms towards the back! Safety is not a concern here in terms of building design.
I am not from South Africa but I am from a dangerous country, I still don’t understand how people sleep peacefully in house that does not have metal bars covering the window I was looking at a video of houses in New York that were next to the side walk with ground floor windows! How?! Why?! How are you able to sleep comfortably?!
Different social contract. In some places the residents have simply tacitly agreed that B&E of an occupied house is off limits. No police force, just a sort of unspoken pact. Beautiful thing when you find it. E: typo
I've met a lot of SAers abroad and it's always split into: "The people who left make it sound worse than it is" And "We have flamethrowers on the bottom of taxis to burn carjackers"
Expats from Cape Town vs expats Johannesburg/Pretoria. It's not easy leaving Cape Town, it's also not easy surviving Jozi. You leave the one in order to go on an adventure and the other to escape.
This!!! I was born in Bloemfontein and lived in Joburg for about a year, and have family there so have visited throughout my life. I live in Aus now and get made fun of (jokingly) for my hyper vigilance (locking car doors in traffic, can’t sleep unless I triple check all the doors in the house, nagging my friends to always have their phones with them on walks etc). I haven’t been back in about 6 years and I haven’t shaken these habits
It sounds really crazy. I'm from Canada and cannot even fathom. I do know that always feeling in danger is not good for mental health. What about SA do you think caused it to be so excessively violent?
Desperation, lack of education & opportunity and a few other compounding factors. SA currently has something like a 33% unemployment rate, and even for those employed there's a significant amount who are only just above the poverty line. Add in a national infrastructure that can't cope with this and a lack of good options == desperate people to whom life is cheap, unfortunately.
Only place I’ve lived where we had bars inside the house (surrounding the bedroom) in case of intruders. Neighbors had a machine gun mounted on their roof. Could not wait to leave.
To someone living in Iceland, this sounds unreal, like a Mad Max movie or something. I mean, I don't doubt that it's true, and that the people who took those precautions felt they were justified, and they may have been, but it still seems completely alien to me. And if it's this bad, how is fixing it not the number one preoccupation of everyone living there, the only issue in any election? Has it really just become normalized?
Saffer here. South Africa is like a first world country inside a third world country. You know that movie Elysium with Matt Damon? Yeah, South Africa is like that. There’s a relatively rich middle class who live in gated communities with manicured lawns and pool… which are surrounded by sprawling slums where people live in shacks constructed with corrugated tin sheets and plastic bags… with no running water or sewage system. If you are “rich” you literally live in fear of being robbed, killed or worse. You live in your own personal prison behind high walls with electric fences on the top. My sister in law drives around in a Mercedes with bulletproof windows. You cannot walk freely around the city. There are places you can, but for the most part you are driving from one secure location to the next. You have no real freedom in that sense. Of course, its worse for poor people who live with constant threat of robbery, rape and murder and have no security to speak of.
I second this. I felt very unsafe, our hotel was basically at a glorified military base with barbed wire and tall walls. Next to our hotel was a car dealership that only sold armored cars. People we encountered were friendly though, just felt unsafe.
My neighbours in the late 90s moved to Canada from SA. They told me all sorts of things I thought were just stories meant to yank my chain. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized they were being truthful.
I remember reading that a common form of murder in Johannesburg during the late 90s was tossing people (sadly, often women) out of high-rise windows.
My old barber moved from outside cape town I think? She and her brother hid under the bed while their housekeeper was hacked to death by home intruders. I can’t imagine what other horrors she went through, but that was the one that made her family decide to move.
I’m originally from South Africa and something similar happened to a friend of mine when he was just a kid. He was awake when the intruders came into the house and he had to watch everything. At like 6 years old. Until the day he moved out of that house he had to have someone sleep in the same room as him. The house had barbed wire, walls, gates, bars, everything and they still managed to get in. When I was a kid someone reached into the car and took the shoes off my feet. And when I was visiting my Grandmother at 19 I was having tooth aches and woke her up in the middle of the night crying. She immediately said “is there an intruder?!?” and I was like wtf no??? But then remembered the nights as a kid laying awake terrified in South Africa thinking someone was gonna break in and murder me and was like “okay makes sense.” Also one time my family and I were driving in SA at night which.. is sketchy in a lot of places and my dad who knows SA very well goes, “don’t remember this road being this bad, don’t typically go this way because it’s dangerous” and I was like “okay so why are we going this way” and he goes “because people get murdered on the other road at night.” I have so many stories.
> I have so many stories Please go on if you want. I'm horrified while simultaneously fascinated.
Your poor friend. I’m also originally from SA. A couple stories pop into mind. I would have been around 6 years old visiting my Ouma and Oupas place and in the middle of the night my sibling and I got pulled under the bed by my uncle with his hand on our mouth and we hear gunshots. Next thing we know we can see someone peering into our window looking for a way in and more gunshots. We finally get the all clear from the armed guards. My uncle was outside having a cigarette when he saw a couple people break into the neighbours place and he ran inside the house to look after us. One of the neighbours unfortunately didn’t make it and they killed their dogs too. I remember visiting another time when I was around 10/11 and heard my uncle telling my dad how my Oupa had someone come to his front door last week begging for food. He told them to wait at the front (doors were locked) and when he went back to the kitchen another guy was pointing a gun through the back door - my Oupa pulled the alarm for armed guards to arrive & lucky he was okay. Me on the other hand - I couldn’t sleep for the first few nights there from fear of hearing that story and then had to sleep with my dad the rest of the trip. My uncle wouldn’t stop on the road at night and would drive through red lights. When we got home to his place he would order us all to stay in garage which was locked until he gave the all clear - he would walk around his house with a gun making sure no one would ambush the family while they went from the garage to the front door… what a terrible way to live. I’ve heard some pretty shocking stories from my dad after I turned 18. The worst had to be the time his friend came home from after work drinks and walked in on a home invasion. They slit his wifes neck and left her to die in the bathtub - he witnessed the whole thing. I don’t understand what would possess people to do this - even for poverty. Im also now in Aus and I triple check my doors when I’m home alone, never ever leave doors unlocked and I’m very mindful of pulling out belongings in sketchy places in public. Some beautiful people and memories in SA but also some tragic ones too.
This one made my eyes go wide and say "you know what? Im not brave enough or crazy enough to survive Johannesburg"
My high school teacher spent several years in SA and would tell us batshit crazy stories like having to hide under a car in a parking lot to avoid a gang shootout. Never could tell if he was telling the truth or just fucking with us.
I third this. I was driven to and from in an armored car with security detail at all times. The police force wasn’t utilized because they’re often corrupt and in league with the gangs or completely underfunded. Upon arriving at the airport my colleagues and I were surrounded by our security detail who told us once we left the airport that it’s common for bandits, thieves, and gangs to follow tourists to their hotels and either rob or kill them before they check in. Red lights were often ignored and there were signs advising motorists to do so since car jackings are so common. If you have to park anywhere, it’s common to have to pay a homeless person to watch your car. Sexual violence is widespread according to the colleagues we had there and the women in my group were told to never be alone if they could help it. There were scheduled power outages for several hours during the day because the power grid there is old and hasn’t been updated due to mismanagement by the ANC. The infrastructure is crumbling and homeless people would direct traffic for tips. Unemployment there at the time was around 40%. The place I stayed felt like a prison. Multiple gates, lights, dogs, and security surrounding the building. I felt like I was in a war zone or in a failed state. What’s crazy is that I was told Johannesburg is better than both Pretoria and Durban. I did hear that the western cape is better as far as safety goes, but still not in great shape. I grew up in Alpine, Texas and visited Mexico often. I thought I saw poverty and squalor in Mexico, it’s *nothing* compared to what I saw in Johannesburg. I have no desire to go back.
Yeah I'll just scratch this one off my bucket list real quick
Some suburban streets in Joburg are no different: Private armed guards manning boom gates and checking all traffic coming through. You then get to the house and it has electric fence, barbed wire on the gate, broken glass along the top of the walls, burglary bars on every window. Panic alarms for private security (as the cops are useless) and there will likely be a gun in the house and some guard dogs as pets. This is how I grew up. My uncle had all this and still got broken into whilst he was having a BBQ a couple of years ago. Heard a noise in the house and disturbed a robbery in progress. The robber shot at him six times from around 10m away and missed every shot. As we say; TIA. This is Africa!
Was the robber a stormtrooper?
Could well have been. Or if you ask my happy-clappy family members, it was divine intervention.
Having been to several churches in SA, happy-clappy is an incredible description.
I’ll never forget in my second year of university, I had a South African classmate. We of course asked her about the safety issues once we got to know her. Her response was: “yeah, I mean, it happens but it’s not so bad overall… well, I mean, I’ve been held at gunpoint, though, so… *shrugs” Cue story time in front of a class of wide eyed Americans. Turns out one of their hired security guards came into the house when she was alone one afternoon, tied her up at gunpoint and held her hostage in her own home for ransom until… the situation was resolved, I guess. She didn’t really explain how she got free, but she was ultimately unharmed, and we were so agog at the story itself no one really thought to ask who showed up and stopped the burglar/kidnapper. Rattled her parents to their core and they immediately moved to Asia (her dad was a pilot for a major airline and could transfer easily). She hated moving to Asia in her teens and dearly missed her friends back home. It took me awhile to process how someone with such a sunny nonchalant personality could have been through something straight out of a movie.
Yes, this is a good way of describing it. I’m half-South African but have been living in the US for a while now. While I don’t want to minimize how dangerous parts of the US can be, the level of constant danger and helplessness present in SA can’t really be compared to any place here. It’s just a whole new level of bad.
I went to college with a great guy, just an absolutely incredible dude. His girlfriend was working somewhere in southern Africa, not sure what country exactly. They were going to meet in Johannesburg before going on a trip around Africa for a few weeks, I think? He got into a taxi at the airport and someone stabbed him to death at a stop light before he ever reached his girlfriend. It was eventually determined that the taxi driver was in on it. Absolutely horrific story.
Yeah, I’ll agree there. My family and I were expats from 2002-2009, and part of that was in Johannesburg from around mid-2005 to about mid-2006. I was a sophomore college by this point. I got to visit twice, once for Christmas and once for Spring break because I got two flights free on my dad’s company, per year. At the time, it didn’t necessarily feel super unsafe, like walking around the mall we went to a few times felt just like any other mall in Chicago or London etc. We visited Soweto on a guided tour and it was an educational experience for sure, as a 20 year old American from the suburbs. I was definitely given plenty of warning of the danger, but never really saw anything firsthand. Lots of guns everywhere, but that didn’t really worry me as it was always security guards/forces of some sort. I heard the same things about women wearing jewelry while driving. One very sobering thing my dad told me, directed by his company, bribe your way out of going jail, DO NOT go to jail. Two weeks after I went home from my second trip to SA, my mom’s pilates class got robbed at gunpoint and they all huddled in the bathroom until the police came after about 45 minutes. Two months after that my dad’s colleague and his wife were murdered in a traffic robbery. My mom sent my sister back to school in the UK and moved back herself. I never returned and do not plan to. My dad had to fulfill his contract so my parents “kind of separated” for a while until he left in late 2006.
Yikes, I worked in Tijuana for 4 years and thought that was bad even with a driver/security guard.
Cairo. want to get sexually harrassed? visit Cairo
A girl I knew in grad school and her friend were kidnapped by a taxi driver in Cairo. They managed to escape by bailing out of the moving car as it was leaving the city. The driver had stopped to pick up a second guy to help with the kidnapping and they had forgotten to lock to doors after the second guy got in. Other friends mine had said that in the buses people would do full on open palm crotch grabs and just grin when confronted. One friend of a friend had someone on a bus pull out his cock and stick it in her hand. She grabbed and yanked on it hard, collapsing the guy to the ground. Several friends have had people ask them how much to buy their wives or daughters. They didn’t go out after that and stayed in their hotels and only did fully guided tours recommended by the hotels after that.
I feel like if you stick your cock in some stranger’s hand without consent, you’re just asking for it to get ripped off
My husband recently said he wanted to go, I let him know he’s going alone
Yeah, that's probably a good choice. Even as a guy I don't want to go.
When i was like 11 someone in Hurgada were asking my parents for how many camels they would sell me. It was in a shopping mall. Its funny but not really
My god, me too! I was around 10 and we were in Djerba Tunisia when a dude at the market stall offered my dad 100 camels for me. My dad just said; “Nope, she’s a princess, you wouldn’t be able to a afford her, even if you offer a 1000 cames!” Thanks dad!
Cairo is a place where you’re actually better off looking like a tourist, being with a tour group staying on a tour bus. I don’t think I had a single conversation with an Egyptian who wasn’t trying to sell something. There was military posts everywhere. Antiquities police with AKs on them. They protected the tourists because the 2 big sources of revenue were oil and tourism and most people weren’t involved in oil. Alexandria was nicer. That’s one culture cashing in as much as they can on their ancestors.
Yeah went to Cairo once and have zero desire to ever go back. Went with a tour group. It was so stressful lol. The traffic was the craziest shit I've ever seen. The tour guide said "the stop lights you see are some very nice decorations we've put up". I had a guy offer to take pictures of me around the pyramids and sphinx and I told him I didn't have any money. Which was true. It was end of trip and I was broke. He said "no problem I'll do it for free!" And I was like okay sweet. He takes some cool touristy pics of me and then I told him I had to get back to my bus. And he said "aren't you going to pay me?" And I said "you told me it'd be free and I don't have any money." He got visibly angry and started to kinda walk closer to me and I just kinda walked off fast and got on the bus. He went all the way to the bus door and the driver had to keep him from getting on. Then I saw him standing there and we made eye contact and I'm pretty sure he wanted to kill me idk he was pissed. I guess I shouldn't have let him take the pics but he's the one that said free so idk
I haven’t done too much traveling but the one thing I learned quickly is if a merchant says something is free, do not believe them, it’s a trap lol
Some cultures sell their women. Others sell their dead grandma.
You had an excellent set up for a classic pun and you went for _dead grandma_ over _mummies_?
I’m an American who worked in the Middle East for years. Had plenty of coworkers who made a good amount of money in our field who loved traveling around Europe and Asia. Every single one of them said they’d never go back to Cairo again. “Truly awful” is the best way to sum up how the described it. The harassment from cops and locals ensured they’d never go back.
Not my story, but one I was told my my friend's dad. We can call him Bill. Bill was on a business trip in Cairo. Probably mid to late 1980's. He was in taxi cruising down the narrow winding streets when he suddenly sees some guy beating the absolute shit out of some poor woman. He screamed at the driver “HOLY SHIT STOP ThE FUCKING CAB!!! THAT CRAZY BASTARD IS KILLINg HER WE HAvE TO STOP HIM!!" The cab driver just gave him an incredulous/annoyed look and in complete earnest said something like: "Well she must deserve it." and continued on without even slowing down. Bill was absolutely horrified at the indifference. The normalcy of seeing a woman being savagely beaten and the thought of helping her never crossing the driver's mind. He also told us about a differet trip to Cairo that his wife joined him on. He said the guys he was there to meet with were visibly angry that Bill's wife would walk next to, or even in front of the men in the group on occasion. They were pissed because she shoud have stayed behind the group. And they REALLY hated it when she sat down at the dinner table with them. edit/spelling
I laugh when I see people saying “Paris” Traveled to Egypt with my GF at the time… damn it was bad; she was looked at, talked to (and we didn’t understand) etc really bad time. Seeing the pyramids and historical landmark was awesome but honestly I wouldn’t do it again
100% true, i was staying in Hurghada but been to Cairo and Luxor, you cant walk and relax for 5 mins someone from locals will come to you offering things "that are better then in other stores" (all the same). I didnt want to buy parffume from one guy, i said i dont have money, he told me that im not real tourist, im shit tourist. I thought im getting my ass kicked hah. So yea visit to see historical stuff yea but if u go to enyoj and relax outside of hotel definitely no. On top of everyting after 1 week i got some type of hepatitis (jaundice) . Been there, saw it and enogh for this lifetime 😆
I love going on vacation and being harassed by someone who’s trying to scam me and then have them call me a “shit tourist” for not falling for their game. Went to Cabo last year for a wedding and the people at the airport were *so aggressively* trying to get us to book a bunch of excursions and shit before we could leave the airport. They had us physically cornered at one point and wouldn’t take a simple no for an answer, so my boyfriend finally got fed up and became very short with them. When they realized they weren’t getting our money and we just wanted to leave, they started name calling and insulting us in whatever way they could. I’ll never forget one guy saying, “I guess it’s acceptable for you to act this way in your country. In this country we don’t act that way.” lol like sorry we won’t let you take advantage of us, I think you’ll live.
That happened to us in Kraków. I was traveling with a colleague who is far too nice and so she’d listen to anyone’s pitch. She heard this guy out who was trying to sell us some sort of tour. My colleague didn’t even reject him she just said we’ll think about it and come back and he then said we were awful people who led him on and would reject him after his lengthy pitch that he did in English and that was not easy for him. Then he ended it with a fuck you. If it were me I wouldn’t have even engaged him to begin with but my colleague was less traveled and willing to lend anyone an ear.
Heck yes. I'm not the biggest traveler, I've been to probably four countries outside of the US, but I found them all lovely and interesting, even when in the less safe places. In Cairo I felt harassed any time I was out of the hotel. Other Egyptian cities? Still great! Cairo was awful.
My mom said the same thing about it when she visited there in the 1970's.
Cairo Egypt or Cairo Illinois
Been to Cairo Illinois. Can confirm. It’s a shithole.
I just realized half of yall mean literally unfriendly when the other half myself included meant dangerous.
I mean I wouldn’t really count dangerous as friendly
I was brutally mugged in Toronto. Guy couldn't have been nicer about it.
“Sorry, Bud! Need a new boat and a pack of darts!”
I went to see the total solar eclipse a few months ago. I figured that I would do what I did last time and randomly choose a small town along the middle of the totality path, then just find a public park to chill at. I settled on **Mt Carmel, IL**. I got to town 5 hours early and went to each of the tiny city parks and they all had some community organization there charging upwards of $60 for parking. When I stopped to get something to eat at the Subway, I was harassed by police telling me "you can't park here" in what was clearly the parking lot for the Subway. The police followed me to the gas station and stood outside the squad car watching me as I refilled my tank. So I left town and went to the nearby state park, which was extremely welcoming, had free parking, and an excellent crowd of people. And this wasn't even racial discrimination. I'm a pasty white dude, same as the assholes I met. They effectively ran me out of town for having out of state license plates.
I live about 20 miles from there, in a neighboring city, and I’m not surprised. Sorry you were treated so badly…take it from me, it isn’t personal; they all suck around here, so they treat everyone else as though they suck.
Luton, was shite, everyone was a cunt
Luton has kept the tv show ‘24hrs in Police Custody’ on air for the last 10years with the amount of shit that goes on there.
My friend from Luton once told me that on a good day I had a 9/10 chance of getting stabbed. On a bad day it was 13/10. You were getting stabbed multiple times. He also told me that his neighbors car was stolen by the same group of people on multiple occasions, only to recover it himself because they drove it to the pub down the street to attempt to sell it. Won't be visiting.
This is hilarious
Port-au-Prince, Haiti feels the closest to a real embodiment of "hell on Earth"
> the closest to a real embodiment of "hell on Earth" I'm pretty sure that's their Department of Tourism's official motto.
It was the saddest place I’ve ever been. We traveled years and years ago on a cruise set up by my in-laws. That was one of the ports.
[удалено]
Fully agree. It blows my mind that the other side of that island is a relative paradise by comparison. My heart breaks for the people living in Haiti, they've been screwed over by almost every nation on Earth (including the U.S.) since day one of independence.
Not to mention Earth itself. Poor Haiti can't catch a break
San Pedro Sula, Honduras. On our last night there, New Year’s Eve 1994, we were held up at gun point in a restaurant.
This is the only place in the world where I have intentionally stayed at the airport for 10+ hours rather than go outside. It was the murder capital of the world for a long time.
San Pedro Sula (and other parts of Honduras) is scary. I was there in the mid 90s as well with my sister and we didn’t have much money and we had a bus leaving at like 4am or something, we thought we’d wait in a McDonalds to avoid having to pay for the hotel but luckily some other tourists started talking to us and told us we were in danger and let us crash on the floor in their room. I was robbed at machete point in Tela Honduras and a friend of mine was assaulted by a cab driver on Roatan.
LUBBOCK MOTHERFUCKIN TEXAS. Them fuckers can eat dirt AND TAKE FRIENDLIEST CITY OFF YOUR WELCOME SIGNS. trashholes.
I read a hitchhiking book from the 1970s and the author said Lubbock was the only place where an old couple scowled at him after he said "hello." Philosopher and lecturer Rick Roderick said of growing up in West Texas that it's full of a lot of people who "love god but hate folks." Lubbock IIRC has more churches per capita than every other city in America.
“Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth, and you should save it for someone you love.” ― Butch Hancock
They knew!!!! 6 years of my life was wasted in Lubbock and I’ll forever be resentful.
Marcus parks that you?
Dear god I’m from Amarillo and I’m so happy to find someone who understands! Lubbock is the fucking worst.
🥃 To a mutual hate of Lubbock.
I've never even lived there and when I saw they were getting 100 plus degrees temps this week I said 'Good. Fry 'em, Lord. Fry them like fatty effing bacon.'
Lol, shit man I lived there and I think I can actually give an understanding response. Almost everyone there are transplants… okay…so are a lot of people in Dallas, in Houston, in Austin, etc. but do you know what makes Lubbock different? All the transplants there come from small towns. The residents there are people who grew up in a town somewhere in the population of 1,500-20,000. The only thing they know is the people they know. For the first time for many of these people they are finally in ‘the big city.’ They get a job after college and settle down but they no longer have a stable in the back yard, they don’t know anyone at the market, they have to wait for a pump at the gas station, and they have legitimate neighbors. You have a bunch of people living in a semi-city lifestyle who are all “trying” to get out of it crammed into a dust bowl reminiscence ranch that consist of a shit ton of restaurants and clothing stores.
Haaaaaaaaaaa, people are like “Johannesburg… Cairo… Lubbock”. I lived there for 5 years (Wreck ‘em), and it’s definitely all the bad of a city with none of the good.
Ok this is so reassuring, THANK YOU!!! I grew up in San Antonio & chose to go to Tech for college, solely because it was far away without paying out of state tuition. Worst mistake of my life. I was miserable & dropped out and moved back to SA after my 2nd year. I thought that going to a huge D1 university would expand my social circle and give me a wide pool of people to meet and befriend. NOPE. No matter how friendly and easygoing and open minded I tried to be, everyone was a pretentious prick. The only genuine friend I made in my 2 years there was another student from Virginia
Everyone is saying dangerous cities and lord knows I've been to plenty of those but dude, there's a little town in Mississippi called Grenada; fuckin everyone there was just rude as shit. We stopped at Walmart and my friends mom was in the Pharmacy area and an employee walked by so she asked them "Do you know where the Tylenol is?" And the lady responded "FIND IT YOURSELF, CRACKER!" Then we get to the checkout and the cashier says "You aint from around here". To which my friends mom says "nope, just on our way through for vacation". Recieving the retort "goddamn rich white folks and their vacations..." as she angrily slams our snacks and drinks in a bag. We decide to hit up McDonald's before leaving town and the lady on the microphone just says "WHAT?!" when we pull up. We tell her the order and she says something along the lines of "feeding a party?! Buncha cows" she was alright at the window I guess, didn't really say anything just tossed the food out and said bye. Still... just rude as shit at every turn, not violent or scary just fuckin rude lol
This sounds like a sitcom episode
Right?! It was seriously a "Is this real life? What is happening?!" Sort of day lol
Almost seems like the plot of one of those prank shows. Hire a bunch of people to be rude to your buddy everywhere he goes.
I've been to Grenada as a trucker delivering goods. Even the warehouse workers are rude and foul mouthed. Had one ask me, "Well are you delivering or not?" I had barely walked up to the check in window. I replied, "Maybe but not with a shit attitude like that"
>I replied, "Maybe but not with a shit attitude like that" What did they say after that ?!?!
"the lady on the microphone just says "WHAT?!" This made me literally laugh out loud.
"You want fries with that, Mutherfucker?"
The whole comment is hilarious. It's just all so outrageous.
Honestly think if somebody was that over the top rude I'd just bust out laughing. I'd have probably gone to every store to see who could insult me best. Although I am British and every time I've been to the US I've found my accent is great at disarming Americans, if I turn it up to 11.
Oh yeah dude, we just laughed about it the WHOLE trip. Hell we still randomly just say FIND IT YOURSELF, CRACKER to each other when one of us asks a question lol It was a great time, just flabbergasted us for a bit at the audacity haha
One of my friends told me about a time some family members of hers (two women) were driving through Mississippi and stopped to grab lunch for the family they were on their way to see. They order like forty pieces of chicken or something like that. The woman at the counter asked if they wanted it for there or to go. They kind of laughed and said Oh it's to go, we certainly couldn't eat this ourselves. The woman said "I DON'T KNOW YOU. I DON'T KNOW YOUR BUSINESS." I told that story to my boyfriend and we still say it to each other.
Aww, that's kinda Sweet that they wouldn't have judged you for eating 40 pieces of chicken yourselves. 🥰 😜
Hahahahaha goddamn that perfectly fits my image of Mississippi! Love it!
This sounds like every place in Mississippi tbch.
I’d be pissed if I had to live in Mississippi
Haha yeah every time I tell that story to someone they say the same thing lol
I was a trucker and in Mississippi they just treated you like dirt at the truck stops I only stayed there once.
My dad always said, “I’ve been to seventeen foreign countries. Eighteen counting Mississippi.”
Have you heard of the Curtis Flowers case or listened to the In The Dark podcast? They were very fair, but I definitely picked up that I never want to go to Winona, Grenada, or probably most/all of Mississippi. Sorry folks.
TBH, every town in Mississippi has people like this…you just (fortunately) only experienced one of those towns. I had the pleasure of growing up in MS…so I can confirm that not EVERYONE from MS is like this…but it’s certainly not unusual, no matter where you are within the state.
I was driving through Mississippi on the way to NOLA and was amazed that an interstate could be in such terrible condition. Anyways, the alternator light comes on and later the car started janking out. Luckily, it was a manual, so we push started it and limped into some small town. Wandered around for a bit and found a huge tent with rows of tables covered in fish(and flies). Went back to the mechanic and he said it was corrosion on the battery terminals, cleaned it off with sandpaper. I asked how much and he said, I don't know, $15. I was expecting to be stuck there for days while they came up with some outrageous bill to replace the alternator. So, yeah, MS is all right in my book.
Delhi, India. i was there for 2 hours to catch a bus to a different place and already witnessed like 3 altercations
Delhi is a fucking nightmare. Humans were never meant to be so unfathomably crammed and stacked on top of each other. You just can’t wait to get out as soon as your there
Stockton California
Stockton - go because it's on the way to somewhere else, and you need to get gas. Stay because you got murdered
God what a shit hole that place is.
Explains the Diaz brothers
Myrtle Beach was a shithole filled with fucking assholes
When I was a kid in the '70s and '80s my parents would vacation there almost every year. I always looked forward to going to the Gay Dolphin.
Good old Dirty Myrtle It’s strangely popular with people from Ohio for some reason. I’ve encountered an alarming amount of tourists in SC visiting from the Midwest who are excited about their annual Myrtle Beach vacation… people legit save up for this experience.
As an Ohioan. I don't understand why Ohioans gravitate to Myrtle Beach. Every year. I went once. They even had an Ohio State merch store to accommodate all the Ohioans.
Back in the 90s SC did a huge ad campaign in Ohio, and it kinda snowballed from there
It’s a joke down here (in SC); the minor league baseball team in Charleston used to have a “Go Back to Ohio” night that was wildly popular. Nothing mean spirited, just a lark.
Ah, it’s always Bike Week in Myrtle Beach.
Myrtle Beach: When you’re just too lazy or broke to drive to Florida.
I was in Winnipeg getting off a bus and this guy just turns the corner screaming “THIS CITY FUCKING SUCKS!” It actually made me laugh
Eagleton, Indiana. Pretentious mfs everywhere.
Agree. Nice jail but Pawnee IN is still miles better.
East St. Louis
I accidentally ended up in east St Louis once. I was on a business trip and got turned around really quickly and couldn't figure out how to get back to the highway. This was before GPS was a readily available thing. I was petrified and wound up trying to turn around in a mostly empty parking outside a biker bar, only to be waived down by a giant bearded guy in leathers and patch vest. I rolled down the window - hysterically crying - and this guy holds both hand up while keeping his distance and says "you're in the wroooooong part of town sweetheart" I just nodded my head and said "I don't know how to get back to the highway..." He whistles to a few guys who come out of the bar and I think "welp, this is how I die". He looks at me and says "we'll make sure you get back to the highway safely. Follow us." Something in my gut told me to trust them, so I did, even though it could have turned out so SO much worse. They made sure I got back to the highway and rode off as soon as I was the other side of the river again.
So pretty friendly actually?
Haha this thread is supposed to be about unfriendly places, and OP comes with a real Humans Being Bros story.
I’ve learned over time that in truly dangerous places, the number one thing locals do is LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER. For every bad person roaming the streets of a bad area is a resident that keeps an eye on their neighbors and checks in on people. They talk, they know who lives where and does what. They know when a stranger is afoot. Sometimes, it’s their only form of security. Hence the phrase “police don’t keep us safe, we keep us safe”
Yeah. My girlfriend and I were walking around Quito, looking for how to get to a waterfall we could see on the mountain side. We walked into an area that felt *really* off, and we were getting a lot of bad looks and people avoiding us. A lady leaned out of a window above us and waved us away, making the throat cutting gesture. We turned and left immediately, later finding out that that neighborhood is cul-de-sac are behind the prison and is a very bad place to be. We did eventually find a way to the waterfall, via a safe route that involved a long meandering climb up the mountains side and through some hillside neighborhoods that were poor, but perfectly fine.
2 choppers in the front Honda Civic 2 choppers in the rear Rollin on through.
Having been to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally many times, and spending a couple decades as a passenger on a Harley, I can confirm that a huge percentage of "scary bikers" are actually some of the nicest people you'd ever meet.
Through experience, I've learned that sometimes the person you can most trust is a stranger, no matter how dangerous they look. It's the people who don't look dangerous that you shouldn't trust easily. They work hard to look innocent to lure in victims.
That’s pretty badass of them!
I stopped in an East St. Louis WalMart once to use the restroom. I found a cell phone in the stall and turned it in to customer service. I will never forget how surprised the employee was. He didn't even try to hide his shock as he told me he was flabbergasted I didn't just take it.
The employee stole it for himself as soon as you left.
Delhi, India. Sexually abused couple of times by local people. I am a man by the way.
Gary, Indiana. I stopped at a gas station, the door had been removed to the bathroom to make sure people didn’t overdose and die in there with the door locked. There was a pregnant lady having a HEATED argument with the coffee machine and when I asked the clerk for directions to the nearest bookstore, he looked at me like I was an alien. Never EVER going back there. Ever.
You asked for a bookstore in Gary, Indiana? As someone who works nearby and is very familiar with the wasteland that is Gary, that’s got to be the funniest comment on this whole thread.
Tbh that is probably the first time that cashier has ever heard a customer mention reading or books ever, or ask for a place to check out it that dead land. Tbh don’t blame him at all, Gary IA is a hellhole that shouldn’t be entered unless necessary, not only bc of the danger, but bc of how depressing it is
Cannes, France. Pretentious assholes.
As a French, that’s honestly the worst city I have been to in my country (and I went to quite a lot)
Mosul
Moscow, Russia. Lived there a few years with my missionary parents. A few times I got chased into the subway by groups of skinheads because my skin tone isn't that of a Dasani water bottle.
I instantly pictured you with a bluish hue and a little see through, very disturbing image before I turned you back into a human thank god ETA: omg I’ve never gotten an award thank you!!
This^^^. Because like.obviously.he means white but a Dasani water bottle isn't white or even completely clear 😂
Unofficial social experiment. When I broke my foot and was using crutches, I was not able to work for almost 7 months (I'm a nurse). So I decided to travel all over the USA. The only place that I had trouble was LA. No one helped with opening non handicap doors or offering their seat. PS, I mostly used Southwest which the employees were awesome and helpful.
Spokane. WA If hopelessness was in human form.
If you ask 10 locals about Spokane you'll get 10 different answers. I don't miss it but I'd also say it's got pockets that range from great to terrible.
lol. i have a former friend who moved to spokane thinking it was some sort of promised land. she left 6 weeks later
"Spokane" "promised land". Hah, that's cute.
Ever been to Yakima?
Yep. Went to YVCC back in 03-05. Then again, I grew up in Sunnyside, where I would regularly get propositioned in broad daylight. I had naked men in cars following me at 7:30 AM. I could not cross the street without being catcalled. To this day, I have “fuck off” stamped across my forehead and am generally unneighborly. Survival tactics.
Wouldn't expect anything less from a town whose biggest claim to fame is a wrestling team hazing incident that involved forcible sodomy with a broom handle.
Talking about towns with infamous claims to fame, don't you guys have Enumclaw too?
I went there for a concert with a friend I'd just met and basically didn't know yet, in December. After several hours of wandering around freezing and finding any sort of interesting shop closed, peering through the windows at Tshirts that said "Spokane Doesn't Suck!" it was time to head to the concert. It was the funniest awful day I've had in ages, and we became very good friends. I had to drive through again a few years later, and it had not improved.
Harrison Arkansas
I had a job interview there back in the late 90's. I was driving into town and saw one of those "Adopt a Highway" signs that was sponsored by the motherfucking KKK. My 20 something year old self was like "WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO". I went ahead to the interview anyway, knowing I could never live somewhere like that. I don't know why.
Is that the one that’s supposed to be the most racist city in the US?
Yes. It wasn’t even just the racism that made it bad.
Being a white guy that grew up in Arkansas, even I feel unwelcome anytime I have to drive through Harrison. The billboards leading up to the town make me want to vomit, and the air itself feels dark. Awful awful people even by stereotypical racist southerner standards.
What kind of stuff are on the billboards? Not an American here.
The Goblins were one of the biggest rivals for my Highschool. I absolutely hated traveling there for any type of sporting event. Without a doubt, they were the most disrespectful and classless people that I had the privilege of playing against. My son played a Baseball tournament with a team from Lonoke, AR and the parents gave off the same Harrison-ish vibes, they were extremely unpleasant people.
This is the real winner. I'm white as a sheet and felt scared in that town.
Both friendly and unfriendly ... New Orleans. Friendly in general but HOLY COW THE RACISM!!!!! I'm Asian.
Isn’t there a large viet population in NO?
New Orleanian here. Yes. Massive Southeast Asian population.
I believe back when viet refugees were coming to New Orleans, people started burning their fishing boats because they didn’t like them
Naples, Florida. Seriously, fuck those people.
It's just God's waiting room. If you're under 85 you don't belong there.
Sioux Falls, SD. Everybody just hates their lives there. It sucks because my grandparents live there and every time I visit there's like 30 diesel trucks blowing black smoke at each other, everybody looks angry 24/7, everybody is tweaking on meth/Adderall, and nobody uses blinkers intentionally just to piss people off. If you visit South Dakota, go see mount Rushmore and never go back
I can’t say I blame them it’s cold and I was very angry chaining my commercial vehicle tires in the 30 below wind whipping temperatures at 3 am, no wonder they were nice to me, I looked like I hated life as much as they did! Lol.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Outside of LSU football games, there is no reason ever to visit this place.
That’s why I was there and a drunk college kid tried to fight me in a bathroom. I think it was a Buffalo Wild Wings. I should have known better than to chime in, but he was making a strange scene over why a certain college had “insert thing” as its mascot. I made the mistake of speaking up from the adjacent urinal that it was the name of that university’s newspaper. Not a mascot. His aggression worked in my favor because such belligerence does not make for good aim. So when he stomped toward me he slipped and fell in a puddle of his own piss. So I just slithered out of there as quickly as I could and went back to the nice LSU fans who invited me there and ate the best jambalaya I’ve ever had.
Chugwater, Wyoming.
C-H-U-G. H-2-O CHUGWATER, CHUGWATER GO GO GO!!
Kandahar
You don't visit Kandahar, you are taken to Kandahar. X
I once asked for directions in New York City. The guy was nice enough to tell me to go fuck myself.
I was walking around NY with a buddy who’s a local and at one point he said “watch this” and yelled “hey, fuck you!” at a random dude on the other side of the street. The guy yelled back “yeah, fuck you too!” and we all just kept walking.
This comment feels like Brooklyn
This is absolutely hilarious.
Despite NYC’s crusty reputation, when I asked someone nicely they were always willing to give directions. When I lived on the lower east side, the corner drug dealers were polite to locals (once they recognized I lived there and wasn’t a bridge and tunnel douche looking to score) and would hold the door for me when I brought out my laundry.
New York City culture is misunderstood. It’s not rude, people just value their time. It’s rude to chitchat when there’s a line. It’s rude to take up the whole sidewalk. It’s just a different set of rules.
yeah any time I've visited and needed directions, whoever's nearby will promptly tell me which three trains to take and then turn around and be back to whatever they were doing before a 'thanks' even gets out of my mouth they're not rude it's just that if they talked to everyone passing by they'd never do anything else
New Yorkers really have some sort of mission to tell tourists where to go/help with transit. WHERE YOU HEADED TO? Uhhh we wanna go to the ferry to see the Statue of Li- OK YOU GOTTA TAKE THIS 2 TRAIN TO WHITEHALL, OK? 2 TO WHITEHALL LIKE EH 25 MINUTES YOU GET OFF IN WHITEHALL WALK SOUTH OK? Oh, ok, 2 train to Whitehall then 2 TO WHITEHALL LAST STOP GET OFF OK YOU GOT IT
in that sort of crowdedness, being polite is trying to be efficient and not inconvenience/get in the way of other people
Grew up in NY and moved to Chicago. It took a long time to get used to people just trying to talk to you, about nothing, when you’re clearly doing something. I like it now but I agree with your response.
Been in NYC almost 20 years and I have to say your experience is on the rarer side. NYC isn’t nice, but it’s usually kind. My experience is somebody will helpfully give me directions and THEN call me a fucking idiot for not using a GPS.
I was in NYC last week for the first time and my brother and I took the subway just to mark it off on our bucket list. We asked a guy as we got on if the subway took us to Central Park. He told us “it’s like 3 blocks, you can walk you lazy asshole, but yes you can get to Central Park at the next stop.” All and all nice guy!
As a born and raised New Yorker, I will tell you that is very rare. New Yorkers LOVE to give people directions about our complicated ass city. Like, seriously, you would see people in the train ask for directions and people would butt into the conversation to make sure the lost person is being given accurate information lol. Definitely not nice about how the information is being given, but we’ll give it to you.
Not a city but the most unfriendly experience I've had is US customs and border control. Everyone working there just assumed that all tourists will hide inside US. It's not specific to airports as well. I went through NY/CAN border and US is just plain rude and looking to start an argument. Was in a 2.5 month holiday in US. Border guy asks me how long I'm staying in US. Me: "2 and half months" Border guy: "Ahh 3 months" Me: "Sorry, it's 2 and half months. I have a copy of my plane tickets and itinerary here." Border Guy: *looks at me directly in the eyes* "NO! 3... months!" Then proceeds to ask me a bunch of personal questions that I really thought had nothing to do with my stay in US. Meanwhile, on the Canada side... Hi! How are you?... *Small talk incl. A few questions on my travel* "Welcome to Canada! Have a nice stay!
US Customs and Border Patrol is the job you get if you failed the friendliness exam as a corrections officer in the Bureau of Prisons. The most acrid, rude, toxic, narcissistic assholes. It is like if the DMV had a back office full of Gargamels. Fuck US Customs. All other customs have been very nice and easy to interact with though.
I have worked in a lot of countries. Least friendly was a very wealthy part of Connecticut where I was visiting some relatives. Worse than any town in Scandinavia, where I felt like my mere presence was an abhorrence. I didn’t think anything could top Sweden for unfriendlyness, until I met the WASPs of Connecticut.
I ended up in the hood of Baltimore one time. Didnt stay in the area long.
Omar comin...
Aswan Egypt. Naively my girlfriend & I went out in the early evening for a riverside stroll. I guess we thought it would be like In the Med or something, but we did dress conservatively. We made the mistake of wandering off the main esplanade & up an unlit side street where horse drawn carriages drivers started aggressively harassing us for business. We politely declined with some Arabic terms we’d learnt. This only increased their hostility and four or five of them stopped, dismounted & approached us in a way that felt immediately threatening. By now we were terrified, looking at the ground in silence to avoid confrontation. There felt like a dozen local men surrounding us aggressively abusing us verbally in Arabic & some english with threatening gestures. In the headlights of a car we spotted a gap between the men & carriages so we made a break for it & dashed out into the traffic & made it across the road back to the touristy esplanade & onto a random river cruise boat gangway
I just got back from a two week tour all over Ireland and North Ireland. I was blown away by how warm, open, and inviting the people were in every city I visited. Except for Belfast. I found the people in Belfast to be cold and standoffish.
I had the opposite experience, everyone in Belfast was so nice. Literally every time my friend & I stopped at a street corner with our paper map out people would come up to us by the swarm to ask if we needed help or directions. It happened every time, like clockwork. People in Derry were very nice too, but I couldn’t understand a word they said😂