So we've got this forum full of people who have been all over the world, so I want to hear from you guys about your favorite travel destinations. Places that you went to that you (and perhaps unexpectedly) had an amazing time. I'd especially like to learn about some off the beaten track places, but of course any destination is fair game. Or if there was a place you found to be completely miserable and wanted to warn people against going there, that works too!

I'll get the ball rolling. My recommendation for you guys is Raja Empat, Indonesia. I'm not going to say it's my favorite travel destination, but it's up there. If you are looking for beautiful beaches, cool wildlife, and top notch scuba diving that is still relatively untouched, then this is the place for you. If you're looking for a place that is easy to access and has 5 star accommodation (or even 2 star accommodation) this is not the place for you. It's biggest drawback or greatest asset, depending on how you look at it, is how much of pain in the ass it is get there. From Bali/Jakarta you fly to Sulawesi, and from Sulawesi you fly to the city of Sorong on West Papua. From Sorong you take a ferry to the islands. And from the ferry port you take a smaller boat to whatever island you're heading to. It's a solid 2 days of travel.



Once you get to Sorong there isn't really anything to do and it is a pretty filthy city. It does have a bunch of seafood restaurants lining the waterfront, so that's the normal way to spend the evening. Walking around the neighborhoods is also kinda fun because they hardly ever see any foreigners, so you'll get some confused looks and lots of smiles. Here's one of the many fish restuarants:



In the morning you take the ferry to the main island of Waigeo. Here you pay your $100 for marine park entry, if you haven't done so already. Assuming that you have already booked a guesthouse you should be getting picked up in a small boat from someone from that guesthouse. I had not booked anything so I talked with some random people and a few were going to a place called Nudibranch guesthouse, so I figured I'd tag along. I'm not good at planning ahead. Soon everyone had been picked up except for our small group and the owner wasn't answering his phone. Just as we were about to make alternative plans in town he showed up and we got to the Nudibranch guesthouse as darkness set in.


The boat ride.

The location was right next to a mangrove forest. Apparently they found a large crocodile in it a few months ago, so it was a little intimidating snorkeling in there with that in the back of your head.

So with the guesthouses you basically get a mattress and a mosquito net inside of a wooden bungalow. They run generators so you get a few hours of electricity at night. The host family makes you three meals a day and the quality of your meals varies greatly guesthouse to guesthouse. They'll also help you coordinate any day trips, but the level of English can be a problem. The usual cost per night was $25, which might seem steep, but apparently it's cheaper than it was a few years ago as the supply of guesthouses is now catching up with demand.


standard room


Our daily visitor. I forgot what this thing is called. Creepy looking though!


You could also take a very early morning hike to find the birds of paradise.


the locals were very friendly as well

At night you could go out to the big pier with a flashlight and as the tide went out all the aquatic animals eventually had to make their way back out to sea. We saw soooo much cool stuff this way. Stingrays, watersnakes, cuttlefish, eels, etc. Here's a wobbegong:



As Raja is growing popularity more people are building huts right out over the water. This is another guesthouse that was sadly booked up, but look at that friggen location. Perfect.




some local housing


Some beers and a sunset

Another island I visited was called Kri, which has few guesthouses on it that host scuba diving shops as well. Kri is awesome. Even if you go to Raja Empat and don't scuba dive, you still have to go to Kri. The beaches are great and the snorkeling is crazy is good. It's pretty rare to be able to have an amazing house reef just meters away from where you're sleeping, but in Raja it's totally standard. On one of our snorkeling excursions we saw like 15 turtles. Redic.

Then you still have the scuba diving!! Raja is one of the best places in world. According to one study it has the worlds largest amount of marine biodiversity. So that's saying something. The waters around here are just absolutely chalked up with fish. I didn't really see anything in Raja that I've never seen before (well the biggest stingray I've ever seen) but the first thing you notice is just how many ****ing fish there are everywhere. I got unlucky and was there during an unseasonably weird stretch of poor visibility, but I loved it anyway. I'd dive twice in the morning and then have the rest of the day to chill on the beach and explore the island. Pretty good living. If you want to do live-aboard boats in Raja its crazy expensive, but just diving from Kri was reasonably cheap, $35 or $40 per dive I think.

Also if you haven't met all the people in your guesthouse during the day, the dinners are communal, so everyone gets to know each other pretty well. It's a cool atmosphere. I met lots of friendly and interesting people here. Also on Kri you can buy beer, which is obviously a plus, but some less popular islands don't have any so it might be a good idea to stock up ahead of time!


The viewpoint on Kri




Top 5 sunset of all time



So that's about it it. And this is without any scuba diving photos! If have to think of island paradise, this is certainly what pops into my head. Visit Raja Empat before too many people find about this place! What other places do ya got for me 2p2?


ballsack tax

good thread. fantastic pictures.
'getting there' seems quite the process!

I will think about mine and try to contribute later (problem is I like to keep my favorite places secret. a sort of quiet rebellion against rick steves)

Yea, it definitely helps to have a more flexible for this one

I figure the 2p2 travel community is small enough to not cause any wild surges in any 'hidden gem' location. How bad is it that I had to google Rick Steves? It's hard to trust a guy with two first names.

that places looks amazing cardshark, don't know how you could get in the water with crocs about though

How good is your camera OP?

They said it was the first time they'd ever found one in there and hadn't seen anything since, and mangroves are cool to snorkel in, so yolo#

Umm pretty good, better than most? It came out like 6 years ago though, so it's kind of old tech at this point. It's a canon 5d mk2.

Someone sell me on a new travel destination damn it!

Great write up

I'm still somewhat irked that not a single person will contribute to this thread. 'Travel Forum' is kind of a misnomer. 'Living Abroad (mostly for cheap sex) Forum' is certainly more apt, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Great write up/pics Cardshark, my photos have a lot to be desired but ill attempt my own.

Throughout my travel experience ive rarely been disappointed with any locations ive visited, only notable location I thought was much worse than expectations was Vietnam.

At christmas I managed to get talked into a road trip through Scotland, my usual idea of travelling would be beaches, warm climate, and some degen possibilities, so its safe to say Scotland differed abit from the norm.



Somewhat similar to the planned route.

First stop was Edinburgh, great city with plenty to do, if I was to do the trip again id spend less than the allocated 4 days here, by no fault of Edinburgh's, the rest of the coast was just too good.

Car hire for 11 days was £58, pro tip: make sure the designated driver has a credit card in their name, ours didn't, and even though I had a credit card that could cover the deposit, they didnt/wouldnt accept it, forcing us to get the private insurance taking the total cost to £205!

Sadly the memory card I took most of my pics on RIP'd, so youll have to take my word for alot of it, but it seems almost every turn you stop as a new landscape/view/colour appears.

Loch Lomond:



Stopped off in Oban before getting the ferry to Skye, good chance for some whiskey tasting, its here you start to lose sense of 2017, no wifi, about 20% of the available places to say advertise on the internet, etc, alot of door knocking required if you want to get good value accomodation.

Skye:

Old man of Storr:





Yolo sheep



Met some pretty interesting characters here, including a 3 fingered man who kept insisting to shake my hand, and one man and his sheepdog who went to the bar everynight, kinda sick how under control the dog was, essentially put on a show each time.

Could have spent >a week here, each day we had to wake at about 6am in order to get everything required in before dark.

Dunnotar Castle:



Loch Ness:




As a golf fan was good to stop off at St Andrews on the way home.




Returned to Edinburgh the next day. I think most guys from the UK think that in order to have a good travel experience we need to get far away from home in order to do so, but in reality we have some pretty good trips on our doorstep.

Nice

Thanks for the write up purrretrog! Wait, are you telling me that you could have rented a car for 11 days for just over 5 pounds a day if the driver had a cc in his name?? That's crazy cheap. Even 200 pounds for 11 days seems pretty reasonable to me. Damn.

Don't sell your photo taking skills short, that photo of Old Man of Storr is top notch. The cliffs of Skye look similar to the cliffs of Moher, without the tourists.

When you say a golf fan, does that mean you actually golfed at St. Andrews?!

You set the bar pretty high.

That and although I'm pretty well-travelled, I haven't been to many obscure places. On top of that, it's hard to sell a person on a place if you don't know anything about them.

Can confirm Scotland is the best

I loved Slovenia even though I was only there for a few days. It seems to be mostly hills and forests so it looks beautiful. Im not a professional photographer like the rest of you but here is a few pics:

Lake Bled



which also had a fun bobsleigh type ride



These amazing snacks



Cool Cave tours



The Capital Ljubljana has freaking dragons and a Castle



One of the most chill and beautiful places I've been.

Yea was pretty surprised at the rental price myself, I tapped out pretty early for the extra insurance charge purely because its kinda what I had budgeted for the car anyway.

cheers , nah unfortunately arrived in St Andrews at around 2:30pm, and being January wouldnt have been able to play even if I wanted to, but was happy enough with just walking round some of the more famous holes.

Nice write up milky, been wanting to see Lake Bled for a few years now, thread has potential.

I've tried to keep my travel blog sorta-thing here up-to-date with my adventures. A pretty long read, but if you're interested, here.

The Cliffs are

Southern Africa was great, though the travel there and back sucks from the Western US.

Antarctica #2

Australian trips high up there.

In the US, pretty much anywhere out west. I was surprised how much I liked DC last year (I'm not a city person at all). Spent time in S Fla last fall, really liked the Keys and Everglades (Miami meh, just another big city).

For the bad side, that's mostly been going up north. I grew up in a small town in N WI, and now go up there around the holidays, when it's normally well below freezing. The town itself is dying, so it's pretty depressing to visit as well.

I went to Slovenia as a last second add on to my trip through the former Yugoslavia.

Did not disappoint.

Eh, I misspoke. The point of thread is just to recommend a place you really liked to the rest of the forum and do a little write up on it. That's all! Doesn't matter if it's obscure or not. Hell, former Yugoslavia is much more obscure to me than all these SE Asian countries.

Slovenia is certainly a place I know next to nothing about! If you had more time, how long do you think you would have wanted to stay there? I heard they have live poker there, do you know if that's true?

Yea I flew Joburg to Dubai to Chicago last year. That's a 9 hour flight plus a 14 hour flight. Ugh. But somehow it was less than $500 on Emirates, and I love flying Emirates.

Nothing too groundbreaking here, as my profile is just some slightly lesser known locations in Southern France, and I hesitate to post pics after seeing OP's, but here goes. I'm not a super experienced traveler as I've only been to USA/Canada, NZ/Australia, Uruguay, and 10 or so countries in Europe, but I love France (and mostly Europe in general).

Travel Destination I love: Southern France (except Marseille)
Travel Destination I hate: Marseille

Roman arena in Arles. Cool little city that inspired Van Gogh:


Pont d'Avignon. Another cool city that once was the homes of several Popes:


Le Palais des Papes (The Palace of the Popes) in Avignon:


2 photos of Èze, a little medieval village near Nice:



The Pont du Gard between Nîmes and Avignon. The infamous Rick Steves calls it "one of the most remarkable surviving Roman ruins anywhere":



The calanques next to Cassis and just south of Marseille:



Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence:


Place de la Comedie in Montpellier, I really love this city and am thinking of moving there after I'm finished here in Lyon:


Saint-Paul-de-Vence, another little medieval village near Nice:


This isn't even getting into some of the more obvious destinations on the Côte d'Azur (Nice, Monte-Carlo, Cannes, etc.) and I've only visited about half of the places I really want to visit. Some of the others include Carcassonne, Orange, Les Baux-de-Provence. The region seems to be littered with an endless supply of great towns, villages, and cities.

As for Marseille, I just found the city to be way too dirty/smelly (even by French standards), although the Port is very cool, Notre Dame de la Garde, and the Panorama views from Notre Dame are some of the best I've seen, but in traversing the neighborhoods, I didn't find any I really liked and the whole city is just a bit depressing and I wanted to get out ASAP.

Some locations of note:

Sorry, not much of a write-up, but here's some destinations that were better/worse than I expected...

Better
1) Austria
2) Bahamas
3) Florida

Worse
1) Rome
2) Athens
3) Penang

There were certainly some nice shots in there, I especially liked the one with the little walled village up on the hill. Do you speak any French? Do you recommend learning just super basic French before visiting?

Just curious, how'd it happen that Uruguay is the one country in SA you've been to? That one seems a little odd.


I agree with Penang. It's famous for it's street art!! which is like the most mediocre street art in the world. Langkawi was pretty weak too.

I'm worried that if I travel to the hotspots in Europe I'm going to quickly grow tired of all the old buildings and castles and being around a million tourists, plus the prices. Maybe those places in Southern France would be more up my alley. Or Eastern Europe.

Thanks. I actually just bought a Udemy course for photography so I can learn what I'm doing a bit and am thinking about upgrading to a real camera.

Right now, I'm close to fluent in French, but at the time I visited those places, I wasn't quite conversational. Obviously it can't hurt to learn, but I think you could manage in all but maybe those tiny medieval villages with English.

It was my first foreign country, so I like to think that I'm one of the few Americans who can claim Uruguay as my first trip abroad. It was back in the golden days on PokerStars when I used VPPs to buy into an LAPT event there.

I'm not sure how your level of travel experience compares to mine, but I hadn't visited Europe until late 2015, and I've seen tons of old buildings and castles since then, and I still love them.

France is also quirky about when and where they like to visit, and even daily routines. For example, I visited Paris in November and the weather wasn't quite terrible yet and I felt like it wasn't too packed. I noticed Le Louvre is open late on Wednesdays, so I visited at 7PM (not a "French" thing to do), so I basically had it to myself and could instantly walk right up to the Mona Lisa if I wanted. I visited a lot of the Southern French cities in Fall (usually they are packed in Summer), and I was shocked that Nîmes was basically empty, because I love that city. Avignon, Arles, etc. weren't at all busy either.

I'm a Europe n00b, I've only been there for a weeks when I was 22 (I'm 31 now) and it was mostly to party in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin and Galway. I'm pretty well traveled, but mostly the Americas, Africa, and Asia. I hate overly touristy places, but at least in Asia you can usually avoid the masses by waking up early and getting there around sunrise. I'm not sure if that's the same in Paris, Athens, London, Rome, etc.

Main reason I didn't like Rome and Athens is because it felt dirty there. You sort of expect it if you are in some Asian country, but not in those locations.

That is some solid Roman architecture.

Probability of visiting some Frenchmen in the not so distant future has increased!