Have you ever visited a place and told yourself I never want to come back here? Does mentioning a country or city stir the worst memories for you? A user on the forum asked, “Travelers, where do you NEVER want to go again?”
Here are some of the most notable replies.
MANILA
“I loved the other places I went in the Philippines, but Manila was awful, including the air quality, the traffic, the garbage, and the weird proliferation of air-conditioned shopping malls. Most of all, child poverty was heart-wrenching. A good wake-up call for a privileged Westerner, but not one I want again.”
PUEBLO COLORADO
“It’s perpetually a Tuesday in 1988 there. Every day.”
“Best friend lives there and says it’s one of the most boring places he’s ever lived. (He’s from Oklahoma like I am, so that’s saying something.)”
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
“Why anyone ever decided to start a city with 120 degrees and 90+% humidity daily is far beyond me.”
FREEPORT BAHAMAS
“The beaches were filthy, and I just felt like I was on a shipyard. They also have a problem with feral dogs. They were everywhere. It broke my heart to see the skin and bone dogs. I guess so many of them starve to death they cannot keep up with the body pickups. I saw too many decaying dogs to count. Seriously would NEVER go back.”
HOBBEMA, AB
“This place had such a bad reputation they changed the name two years ago, obviously not fooling anyone, guys.”
KUTA BEACH, BALI
“Had such high expectations, but there was just trash everywhere.”
“Completely agree! It was quite horrible. The street vendors would physically grab and pull you into their store, and I did not have a good experience. Other parts of Bali are beautiful.”
SOMALIA
“I went there when I was in the Navy and spent some time on the shore looking at pits full of corpses and kids with machine guns.”
LAPA, RIO DE JANEIRO
“Pick pocketers run that place. I saw one of my buddies get picked and confronted the pickpocket, hoping to get his stuff back. They proceeded to kick my ass. Just skip it.”
PATTAYA, THAILAND
“The sex tourism capital of Thailand.”
DUBAI
“I thought seeing all the skyscrapers and supercars would be fun, but I got tired in 5 minutes.”
“Long story short, I ended up unexpectedly spending eight days there. I have never been to a more vacuous, culture-deficient place. All it has is shopping, vast inequality, and oppression of the poor.”
ZIMBABWE
“Went there to see Victoria Falls. We stayed at the Victoria Falls Hotel to be within walking distance. People were standing around everywhere with just two or three carved trinkets they were trying to sell. There were no buyers. It looked like something out of a Twilight Zone show. The first thing they asked when you got close to them was if you’d sell them your shoes. No kidding, every single one.”
EAST SAINT LOUIS
“I was meeting a colleague for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in a not-terrible part of East St. Louis. Unfortunately, Apple Maps took me into a desolate neighborhood with gigantic potholes in the streets and empty lots interspersed with abandoned houses on either side. Thankfully, it was a 90°F July afternoon, and no one was out and about. I stopped in the middle of one street, looked around, saw no one, and entered the same address into Google Maps. This time it took me to the restaurant.”
WEIRTON, WEST VIRGINIA
“Weirton, West Virginia, is the same way. I went there for work a few times. It’s an old, mostly abandoned steel town. It was a happening place 30+ years ago, but now it’s all run down and grey and cloudy almost every day. I’d drive the 25 minutes to stay in Robinson, nearby Pittsburgh, so I didn’t have to stay there overnight.
Our department had rules regarding how long you were allowed to work at that plant before you had to return home or go somewhere else. We’d lost a couple of good engineers to that place.”
SYRIA
“I hitch-hiked from Alexandria to Istanbul, through Jordan and Syria, before the Arab Spring. Syria was a beautiful and historically fascinating country, naturally fertile and prosperous, with delicious food and friendly people. But it was backward, closed-minded, poor, and seedy because of a corrupt, paranoid, authoritarian government. Now it’s a warzone and a humanitarian disaster, which is far worse.”
KANSAS
“Unless I’m there to chase tornadoes, I never have another reason to go to Kansas again. It’s just a paved cornfield, and I had to drive the entire width of it. At least Iowa had wind turbines to look at.”
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Anika Jindal
Anika is a CPA and founder of What Anika Says. She shares simple and actionable frugal living, money management and money-saving tips to live a debt-free financially independent life. She has been featured on popular websites like Bankrate, Forbes, Mint ,and Authority Magazine. Byline: MSN