What’s the most interesting place you have ever visited?

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Ronnie Sanford

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I visited Tikal, Guatemala in the nineties. A city with a metro area over 50 miles wide with a completely different technological and cultural path as to what you see in the west. For example they had writing , mathematics (base 20) and hydraulics but didn’t have the wheel. When Guatemala settles down again I want to take my daughter and wife.
 
Without getting into the politics of the thing (although I suspect few people care now), being in Russia a few months before the August coup was a pretty interesting experience of a society going through major flux.
 
I think it would be a toss-up between Northern Italy and Indonesia. Japan might pip those but I've only been there on a brief holiday in Kyoto, so most of what I've seen from there is secondhand via other media such as Youtube.

Although undeniably European, Italy is a microcosm and very much its own place. I have fond memories of when I used to visit on a semi-regular basis (My ex used to play Bridge with a chap who lived near Lago di Como) although I haven't been in the better part of a decade. It's hard to say what stood out the most - because it was the seat of the renaissance, pretty much every town in Italy has a load of old renaissance-era churches, palazzi or other buildings from the era. Florence was a superpower at the time and we can still see its influence today.

Indonesia is .. well .. Indonesia. It's Asia, but different. Jakarta is busy, and has about 80% of the population, twice the population density and about 10% of the rail coverage of Tokyo. The traffic jams are some of the world's worst and a sight to behold. Imagine the worst traffic jam you've ever seen and then fill all the empty spaces with people on scooters - you can fit a family of 5 on a scooter there. On the other hand, the society at the street level feels much healthier than the UK. There is a real feeling of community with neighbours hanging out together and helping each other out. So much so, that we concluded that it was a better environment to raise a family than we could manage in the UK.
 
I think it would be a toss-up between Northern Italy and Indonesia. Japan might pip those but I've only been there on a brief holiday in Kyoto, so most of what I've seen from there is secondhand via other media such as Youtube.

Although undeniably European, Italy is a microcosm and very much its own place. I have fond memories of when I used to visit on a semi-regular basis (My ex used to play Bridge with a chap who lived near Lago di Como) although I haven't been in the better part of a decade. It's hard to say what stood out the most - because it was the seat of the renaissance, pretty much every town in Italy has a load of old renaissance-era churches, palazzi or other buildings from the era. Florence was a superpower at the time and we can still see its influence today.

Indonesia is .. well .. Indonesia. It's Asia, but different. Jakarta is busy, and has about 80% of the population, twice the population density and about 10% of the rail coverage of Tokyo. The traffic jams are some of the world's worst and a sight to behold. Imagine the worst traffic jam you've ever seen and then fill all the empty spaces with people on scooters - you can fit a family of 5 on a scooter there. On the other hand, the society at the street level feels much healthier than the UK. There is a real feeling of community with neighbours hanging out together and helping each other out. So much so, that we concluded that it was a better environment to raise a family than we could manage in the UK.
Money is wierd like that. The less you have the more difficult it is to separate your fate from your neighbors. No one has enough buffer to handle everything alone.
I grew up poorer and now live in a much wealthier area. People here are much more likely to hire someone vs share their time and resources. Mostly it feels like they don't want to be obligated to someone else which is unavoidable without excess money. There's a certain logic to trading money to avoid obligations but I miss some of that mutual obligations.
 
It's not exotic, but the last time I was in Norway I got to visit a mine way up north that the Norwegian resistance used to hide people from the Nazi's in WW2, and where my wife's grandmother, who passed away a couple of years ago and was a lovely soul, spent something like a year and a half during the war. History never felt closer.
 
Interesting places I've been to.

The Salt Mine near Krakow. Man that's just a crazy deep man made place with lakes and churches etc all way underground.

Similar to Tikal above, the various Mayan cities in southern mexico. To see those huge structures and realize there may be hundreds more than we haven't even found because in a relatively short period of time they have been completely covered with so much vegetation.

Venice. I mean it's a tourist trap and it's been one for hundreds of years. And crazy peoe making a whole city in a lagoon to avoid raiders.


Canada. Who else would cast the necessary rituals to pass all their violence, rage and mean-spiritedness into a waterfowl and send it on to harass their neighbors?
 
Kutna Hora, in the Czech Republic. I went there while staying in Prague specifically to visit the Sedlec Ossuary, a chapel built entirely of human bones, estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people.
 
Venice. I mean it's a tourist trap and it's been one for hundreds of years. And crazy peoe making a whole city in a lagoon to avoid raiders.

Did you get pestered by the twats in carnival masks?
Unfortunately I didn't know the Italian for 'Piss off or I'll chuck you in the canal.'
 
Living in Athens for four years was very interesting. I think it soured a bit at the end. We had to leave when the Air Force base was closed, and some of the nationals took to following the bus to the airport on their motorcycles throwing rocks at us.
 
Without getting into the politics of the thing (although I suspect few people care now), being in Russia a few months before the August coup was a pretty interesting experience of a society going through major flux.
I had a professor at Southern Miss that was stuck in Moscow during the coup. He tried to get to the airport in a taxi (he was rather desperate) but the taxi had to stop because the army was blocking traffic with tanks. He told the taxi driver that he would give him $500 USD cash if he could get him to the airport which was equivalent on the black market to 6 months wages. The taxi driver drove the taxi through a graveyard but got him to the airport.
 
Did you get pestered by the twats in carnival masks?
Unfortunately I didn't know the Italian for 'Piss off or I'll chuck you in the canal.'
No I didn't. I bought some from there because I actually found some I really liked. Maybe that solved it for me because if I was asked id have said "Already got one"
 
Back when I was going to school for anthropology my archeology professor took the class out to the site of a 40,000 year old paleolithic village. It was so old that when it was inhabited it was on the shores of a massive lake created by a glacial dam. It was really just a group of depressions in the middle of a field, but standing in the mere presence of something that old and undisturbed left me with a sense of awe.
 
Cambodia and Angkor Wat were stunning. Cambodia is a beautiful, chaotic but also deeply melancholy place. A real mixture of the best and the worst, visiting there as a well-off Westerner feels a bit odd, the people there have suffered so much.

20160702_160635.jpg

Thailand is nice but feels tame compared to Cambodia, Singapore is probably the most livable city for a Westerner for a whole host of reasons (lots of English speakers, A/C, a large expat population, more-or-less politically stable).

South Asia in general is such a different experience to North America, I'd probably not want to live there forever for political reasons but a few years to a decade would be interesting. Considering retiring there but of course with the knowledge that as an expat you could be kicked out or have to flee if things go south.
 
Things look like they could be going south in Thailand very soon, so I'd definitely postpone any such plans

I'd really like to do a brief tour of the Orient - but very brief. I worry most about the food, as in not having enough to eat that I am willing to eat. I doubt the menus over there are as compatible to my "no vegetables or fungi" diet as their Western counterparts
 
Things look like they could be going south in Thailand very soon, so I'd definitely postpone any such plans

I'd really like to do a brief tour of the Orient - but very brief. I worry most about the food, as in not having enough to eat that I am willing to eat. I doubt the menus over there are as compatible to my "no vegetables or fungi" diet as their Western counterparts
No vegetables or fungi? Visit Texas where we will serve you a big slab of smoked brisket or steak, all to be washed down with a Shiner Bock!
 
No vegetables or fungi? Visit Texas where we will serve you a big slab of smoked brisket or steak, all to be washed down with a Shiner Bock!


I lived in Texas, and have often said that the only thing I miss is the food


To this day I crave a good chicken fried steak, with grits, a meal that is apparently unheard of in Canada (or at least BC)
 
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South Asia in general is such a different experience to North America, I'd probably not want to live there forever for political reasons but a few years to a decade would be interesting. Considering retiring there but of course with the knowledge that as an expat you could be kicked out or have to flee if things go south.

S.E. Asia works a lot better if you're married to a local. I think it will start gentrifying over time, so it's likely to be a lot more expensive by the time I get to retire.
 
S.E. Asia works a lot better if you're married to a local. I think it will start gentrifying over time, so it's likely to be a lot more expensive by the time I get to retire.

True, my wife was born in SA and still has her citizenship so we have the option to buy land that way. Some places like Singapore and HK are already plenty expensive. The unstable political situation in a lot of places will make gentrification less likely or slower though I think.
 
I lived in Texas, and have often said that the only thing I miss is the food


To this day I crave a good chicken fried steak, with grits, a meal that is apparently unheard of in Canada (or at least BC)
I’m in Texas, I can attest.

I hate that Denney’s doesn’t do grits anymore. Hard to find a place to eat that does Around here. Have to make ‘me at home now.
 
I really liked the area surrounding the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. Now, the museum was very nice, but the suburb around it felt peaceful and somehow at peace with itself. The cafes were cute and their food was delicious. The people there looked happy. There was a little shrine that a man was praying at and when he saw us approaching he smiled and taught us how to sit and give offerings. There were tennis courts, and even they looked nice.
 
As a westerner, it’s probably Vietnam, but I think from a broader perspective it was probably London. I stayed there at a little B&B for a few days in the mid-90s and ran all over town. Every day was something amazing related to history or culture, and I’m sure I could have explored for another month without exhausting the possibilities.
 
We were in Oaxaca in 2006 during the 2006 Oaxaca protests. it was... interesting but sad and probably not entirely safe. We visited in late july, though, so not at the peak of all the riot activity.


I took some pics. Let me see if I can find them...

DSCN5125.JPG DSCN5126.JPG
DSCN5127.JPG Teachers and other APPO protesters camping on the zócalo, the central city square.
 
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NYC in 2007. I don't think I saw more than a quarter of what Manhattan has to offer and my time there was crammed. Let alone seeing the other boroughs.For this middle aged Englander, it really was like walking onto a film set.
 
As a life long southerner, one thing I realized a few years back is that there is an easy way to make grits while being incredibly lazy: a rice cooker. Makes perfect grits every time as long as you get your proportions right.

Also, probably the most interesting place I've been is Tokyo. I don't know about any specific part of it. Just the whole place is really interesting.

And on the subject of Denny's: Seeing that there are like, a whole bunch of them in Tokyo is wild. There was one right next to a small board game store in Koenji that I visited while I was there.
 
Hmm, some of the interesting places I've been:

Bengalaru India
L'Anse Aux Meadows (viking site in Newfoundland)
Cave exploration, underground where most likely no human has ever been before
Yugoslavia and Romania before the end of communist rule (and while Yogoslavia was a single country)
 
Salisbury. The cathedral is fantastic, the Close is full of museums, Old Sarum is fascinating, and you can easily take in Stonehenge, Avebury, and the West Kennet long barrow in a day trip.
 
Salisbury. The cathedral is fantastic, the Close is full of museums, Old Sarum is fascinating, and you can easily take in Stonehenge, Avebury, and the West Kennet long barrow in a day trip.
Fun fact: there's a Magna Carta at Salisbury Cathedral, and there's usually a volunteer who can explain it at some length.
 
Salisbury. The cathedral is fantastic, the Close is full of museums, Old Sarum is fascinating, and you can easily take in Stonehenge, Avebury, and the West Kennet long barrow in a day trip.
Been a while but my best friend and I did exactly that. When we got to Salisbury it was close to evening and covered in fog. It was so eerie looking at the cathedral rising up in the fog.
 
The French Riviera in the 80s and 90s. I got to see from a child's perspective and from the vantage of various nice villas and hotels over multiple vacations. It still haunts me, but I can't afford to live there and it has changed too much for comfort anyway. Gameboy sessions by the pools, bug-hunting in the hills of Grasse, searching for Magic: The Gathering boosters in Cannes, watching French-dubbed children's anime in a tower chamber... ah well...

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Japan. I took a two-week trip there in 2008 and traveled through the country. I was in Tokyo for about a quarter of the time, and 2-3 nights in various other places for the rest of it. We were in some rural (albeit still a bit touristy) places for some of the time, which was an interesting contrast to Tokyo and Kyoto, and stayed in a mix of hotels, ryokans/traditional inns, and hostels.
 
Japan. I took a two-week trip there in 2008 and traveled through the country. I was in Tokyo for about a quarter of the time, and 2-3 nights in various other places for the rest of it. We were in some rural (albeit still a bit touristy) places for some of the time, which was an interesting contrast to Tokyo and Kyoto, and stayed in a mix of hotels, ryokans/traditional inns, and hostels.
My wife is making great progress learning Japanese. We'd like to travel there. I've grown especially enamoured with what I've seen of Hokkaido, but of course Tokyo and Kyoto are also must-sees.
 
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