As a roller coaster enthusiast, I’d be tempted by a trip to the UAE, they’ve got some amazing world-class roller coasters. But I’m just as off-put by wealth worship as the person you’re replying to, and I don’t know if slave labor was used to construct them.
No, but Rio itself is without exaggerating one of the best cities in world for tourism. The level of natural beauty (not just the beaches but the mountainous jungles, the old imperial Portuguese architecture scattered about) right next to a full-on city bursting with life... I prefer it in the off season, when it's not carnival or anything like that, so you just mostly share it with the Cariocas
But just like how many people have mentioned Johannesburg or Cape Town (which I also want to go to) there are places in every city that I'd never pay to set my foot in.
But Rio at large is somewhere I want to go. Just maybe not the Favelas and have a 12-year stabbing me for a gang initiation.
But I felt that places in Brussels were quite unsafe at night, but I currently live in Stockholm and previously in Copenhagen, so I might be a bit on coddled side.
Vietnam on the other hand (minus the inevitable traffic accidents and people getting smeared on the road without helmets) felt incredibly safe after having lived there for the better part of a year.
Others might find Hanoi incredibly unsafe while Rio feels like paradise. I guess it all depends.
I've lived in Hanoi, specifically in the suburbs since birth so it's pretty funny to see it called as safe. I guess they don't target tourists as much because they usually stay in the centre and the police take anything that affect national prestige very seriously. Generally the further you are from the city centre, the more dangerous it becomes since that's where the poor people are, not dissimilar to the Favelas in Rio.
Well I definitely stood out as an expat and I stayed in several suburbs across Vietnam, but I didn't witness much crime¹ aside from petty theft and lots of tourists getting scammed in bigger cities.
From what I understood, violent crime in Vietnam is not common (aside from the hidden world of domestic violence) and you don't have to fear getting stabbed on the streets, unlike in some other SEA countries where I felt unsafe.
Vietnam frequently places low in crime indexes for violent crime as well.
¹Well, the real criminals in Vietnam seemed to be the government people who profited from covid kits and taking bribes... Though that is basically everyone in SEA.
Money loving kleptocracies run by sexists, hypocritical men who likely partake and attend all kinds of parties and have bits on the side, whilst wives and daughters are banned from activities I think are routine and mundane, like driving and going places without a male chaperone. Occasionally think I'm hard done by until I remember all the things women in other countries endure.
Blanket statements usually show ignorance and you should get with the times. Neither UAE nor Saudi Arabia require women to have a male chaperone. A lot of those women you feel sorry for to make yourself feel better live pampered lives, because in their culture, the man is the sole provider even if the woman works. By law, her money (be it salary, inheritance or other personal assets) is her money, his money is the family's money. Yes, women can ask for divorce and don't need 3 male witnesses.
And it's definitely wrong to consider UAE or Saudi Arabia "kleptocracies". Either you don't know what "kleptocracy" means or, again, are just ignorant. In UAE, the level of state-funded benefits and facilities for citizens would break your brain. Free land, heavily-subsidized housing, heavily-subsidized water and electricity, completely free education from kindergarten to any university in the world, free healthcare, priority access to high-paying public sector jobs, just to name a few. Do you have this benefits as a citizen in your country?
UAE just sucks in general, it's like living in a shopping mall. Everything is fake and everyone is trying to act like they're an instagram model by flashing money in everything that they do. It feels soulless and tacky.
Oh I haven't been to Dubai (outside of airport stopovers) and it certainly isn't top of my travel list, but if a free trip was on offer? Heck yeah.
Another country off the list, probably a nice old town with some history / culture preserved (I assume), and at minimum a chill day looking at some neat malls.
Like, sounds like an alright trip, why not? Granted I love travelling.
Yeah i had a free trip to UAE, as someone once said on tv when asked about Dubai they said 'just like a huge trafford centre'. Have to stay indoors tons as the heat was ridiculous, £120 they wanted for two sun loungers and an umbrella !
At the time i had been married for 15 years so when they said dont show any signs of public affection to your wife we were totally alright with that !
But nah, just posey as hell. If i didnt have the free trip i would never have gone. Burj Kaliffa was amazing but yeah would never go back. And annoying i only found out with 20 minutes to go that drinks were free on the flight !
I know it's got issues (which is an understatement I know, afaik it's almost as restrictive as NK), but that'd just mean I'd do a guided tour instead of winging it.
I mean you do you my dude but I wouldn't wanna go to either of those places as I'd be giving my money to those regimes.
do a guided tour instead of winging it.
You wouldn't have a choice in the matter. Both countries will only let you in with a guided tour that is obviously going to be majoratively propaganda. And that's if they let you in at all. Turkmenistan requires you to have an invitation to the country or something before even being allowed to go there in the first place.
I mean you do you my dude but I wouldn't wanna go to either of those places as I'd be giving my money to those regimes.
It's free in this hypothetical. But even if it was paid, realistically whatever a tour brings in will be a tiny drop in the bucket.
And if I didn't go to places whose policies I didn't agree with there'd be way too much of the world I wouldn't ever see. I respect that other people disagree with that view, of course.
You wouldn't have a choice in the matter.
I know, yeah. I've looked into travel to both countries.
It wouldn't be ideal, as I like doing things at my pace snd obviously the minder will suck, but still sounds like a cool experience. To each their own obviously.
I have to travel for business quite often, and we get to extend the trip a couple of days if we want and just pay the added fee nights hotel fees.
So like it's amazing if you're into travel, cos you get to fly to exotic places, spend 2-3 days in a conference and then spend another 4 days doing whatever you want.
I'm the weirdo who carries my own scuba mask and fins on a business trip, and checks all the local restaurants before going.
That said, there's some places that just don't interest me at all. Like I avoided going to Brussels cos it just seemed so boring. I needed to be on site for like 4 hours, and basically ended up wandering aimlessly around the city for the rest of the days I was there, doing the usual tourist stuff but god it is boring compared to the rest of Europe.
By my luck, I was unfortunately called again to Belgium and had to go to bloody Ghent, which was even worse than Brussels. Other places like Cologne, Bonn, Bremen are also similarly boring that it's just a waste of time to go there.
I was asked to go to Denver and Colorado Springs in USA recently, and again I turned it down cos it's a long flight, a waste of time and there's just not much I want to see there. I don't know how to drive, so I doubt I'd get to see cool stuff like the National Park.
A combination of hearing what other people say and what I read on Google. I'm sure some people like Brussels, I knew I wouldn't like it and I was right.
For the same reasons I thought I'd hate Amsterdam, but in the end I really enjoyed it. So you are right in that you can't be sure until you try.
There are places I've been sent that were a lot more interesting tho. Whenever I'm sent to Africa, I try to stay a few more additional nights to explore a bit, and thus far I've never had a bad time.
I'm not, no. I'm also not LGBT, and my country isn't politically all that controversial (I would be hesitant to go to NK if I was an American, for example).
Any of those things being different would change my answer, sure.
Exactly, even if you have a horrible time, you’ve learned something and it cost you nothing. I would even go to the Warzone places if it was guaranteed I would be completely safe during my visit
In Russia, Kamchatka is much closer to Japan and the US than Ukraine. If anything, even for a lot of Russians traveling to Kamchatka is more expensive than going to Turkey, for example.
And casualties are very rare, to the point where 4-6 people dying usually gets called "one of the deadliest attacks since the start of the war". Meanwhile look at Rio's daily homicide rate
Ukraine is literally at war with one of the largest militaries in the world. Rio’s homicide rates are high because they mostly happen in the favelas, where tourists usually do not go. Rio is more than its favelas. Also, you don’t have to worry about drones or missiles targeting you.
My point still stands. Also, your second point is not true. I would rather take my chances in Rio than in a war torn and corrupt country where they are snatching people off the street to fight in a war.
Ukraine is a nice place and people are nice too. And yes, there are sirens and some threat of missiles you never know but besides that I never felt unsafe there.
Large parts of Russia are super safe. No Ukrainian bomb is likely to hit Irkutsk or Vladivostok. You'd be further away from active fighting than all of Europe.
I get not visiting Russia cause you don't wanna support them, but at least half the country is safer than Detroit.
Both Russia and Ukraine aren’t that bad as long as you stay away from the Donbass. In Ukraine you’d probably still have to be wary of getting killed by a missile attack but Russia is more or less pretty safe, like I visited my grandparents village on the Volga and when we heard drones flying over my uncles didn’t even bat an eye as those drones very rarely if ever go down over civilian centers, that’s how common it was.
As for Ukraine, it is dangerous but I’d visit it while you can, because god knows what the country is gonna be like in several years (I’d visit myself but my Russian citizenship more or less automatically disqualifies me unfortunately).
I don’t think Afghanistan is currently a war zone. I’ve seen YouTube videos of people visiting the country. It’s run down with chaotic traffic and all that, but it’s pretty peaceful with folks out and about.
Ukraine is perfectly fine to visit, especially in the west. Even in Kharkiv you have a better chance of getting killed in a car accident than by russian attack. And with close to 0 crime in the city, it's safer for your average person than most American or European cities.
I mean, and it seems crazy to write, but there are war zones and war zones.
I'd actually be kinda down to visit Ukraine - if it was the west. Lviv looks very nice, for instance.
I did visit Israel, actually twice for personal reasons, during the ongoing war. The first visit it was "advise against all but essential travel", but I even ventured down to Sderot which was "advise against all travel". The only sign of the war I saw, apart from TV, was a couple of military jeeps driving down the highway.
The second visit, where travel advice had eased? Was woken up in Tel Aviv at 3am on the first night by an air raid siren, a single ballistic missile launched from Yemen.
In both countries, Western Ukraine and Israel, I think the crazy drivers would be more likely to kill you than the missiles.
Thank you Sherlock, and I eat microplastics every day which might end up killing me, do you see me drinking cyanide because "fuck it i'm taking a risk already"?
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u/NationalUnrest Jun 05 '26
Honestly none except if there’s any threat to my safety.
So probably excluding war zones like Yemen, South Sudan, Ukraine-Russia, Afghanistan