This is a LC thread for the people who frequent this forum to share and discuss various experiences they have had while traveling or otherwise.

Just a picture to start things off, here is a picture my girlfriend (now wife) took on our trip to Narsaq, Greenland in 2008.

Suzzer is right. A lifetime of living in America gives you an 83% chance of being a victim of violent crime (as of 1987, probably lower these days) and a 99% chance of being a victim of theft. So you're probably better off traveling.

Warning: PDF

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/llv.pdf


I'm guilty of the Western European capitals = adventure travel syndrome, but damn, do I love sitting in outdoor cafes and wandering around cities. I lived in Amsterdam for a year a long time ago now, but I've been back, and it hasn't changed that much.

Subbing! I'll type up some more thoughts when I have time, but the biggest/best trip I've taken was to Madrid and Barcelona almost two years ago. Happy to answer any questions about it...

Always been curious about Greenland. But it seems extremely expensive to get around from one place to another.

I've visited 26 of 28 EU member states including 13 in one year. That excludes European countries not in the EU. ChrisV's in the same boat when it comes to travel.

Haven't been below the equator though. Lowest latitude I've been to is Thailand.

Can we move the Braveheart comparisons here too?

This is my kind of thread. Last year my husband and I took a 3-week ski trip to Japan, which was absolutely incredible. Also, a few years ago, we went to Spain, Southern France, and Italy (in the winter. No skiing, but no crowds, either)

But my real big "life experiences and travel" thing was I did the Camino de Santiago in 2012. That's the one where you walk 500 miles across northern Spain.

AMA.

How long did that take you?

My wife and I went to northern Spain last spring and saw a fair amount of people doing the Camino de Santiago in Burgos.

34 days, with a couple of rest days. I stopped in Santiago de Compostela, and didn't take an extra couple days to walk to the coast. And I walk slow. I was running out of time and I needed my San Sebastian fix.

By the way, for those of you thinking of going to Spain in the spring/summer, please don't skip San Sebastian. it's literally the nicest beach city in Europe, and the food is the best in Spain, if not the world. But don't tell too many people. it's still europe's best-kept secret.

Im mostly a lurker here, but I have plenty of travel experience, 60+ countries, If anyone wants to get off the beaten path in asian countries, I can prob help you out

Would love to go off the beaten path (or even on the beaten path) in Asia, but it just takes so damn long to get over there from the US. Seems like anything under 2 weeks would be wasteful.

Unless you have experience dealing with and/or high tolerance for jet lag, expect basically 4-5 days wasted on any trip to Asia. So yeah, 2 weeks minimum.

Nobody I know flew to Asia and just stayed for a week. They normally were on an extended trip and hopped to a bunch of different places.

Japan is definitely on the bucket list for me. Can't believe that I didn't go there while I was in China/South Korea.

I was hoping T50 could expand a bit on this post.

I've lived in Mexico City for about 8 months and spent another 2 months traveling in various areas of Mexico (a lot in Michoacán, Querétaro, Puebla, Maya Riviera, Mérida, couple others). I've never once felt it was any more dangerous than comparable places in Europe/USA.

Granted, in Mexico City I live near Reforma and hang out a lot in Condesa/Roma Norte which are areas for foreigners, but I had a Mexican gf for 5 months and she lived in Perisur, so I spent a bit of time in areas that aren't particularly dangerous per se, but don't have many gringos.

Where in México did you feel at risk?

I'm a bit disappointed to hear your take on Central America b/c it's an area I wanted to explore a bit more, but I value your opinion. OTOH, while I was in Lima I talked to an Irish guy who absolutely loves Nicaragua.

Great idea for a thread and maybe it can serve as a place to discuss more off the radar places that noone talks about much or are deemed "too dangerous".

There's so much international travel and so much connectivity between people that it's almost impossible for a place to be off the radar unless there's next to nothing to do there.

It'd be interesting to hear from people who visited some Micronesian Islands (Kiribati, Marshall Islands etc).

I kind of disagree with this, based on multiple trips to the US. Australia -> US is a way more brutal time adjustment than US -> Australia.

Edit: Although it might depend on whether you're an early or late sleeper. I'm a night owl and if I was to fly to Vegas right now, for instance, normal sleeping times would be like 5pm til 1am in Australian time. That is just impossible for me and takes forever to adjust to, but maybe if you're the kind of person who can go to bed at 8:30pm it's not so bad. Going the other way, when I'm acclimatised to sleeping at 5pm Australian time, it's easy for me to just stay up "late" and then "sleep in" and adjust that way.

Watching the Aussies tear it up at the rugby sevens tournament in Las Vegas atm. Such a great sport, sad it isn't more mainstream in the US.

I went to Marshall Islands 5 or 6 years ago because it was getting obvious the place was destined to disappear and I wanted to see it before it became impossible to travel there. I wish I didn't.

Don't let the pictures fool you. There is very little economic activity on the islands and unemployment is really high and quite visible.

I expected that going in but I was struck by how poor it really is. A big part of it is probably just it doesn't have a developed tourism sector so none of the poverty is hidden (like on most Caribbean Islands).

It really drove home what poverty without hope (I felt most people were just resigned, with some urbanites basically angling to go to US), by global standards, looked like. It was way worse than when I visited poor villages in Thailand. Thai farmers at least had hope their kids would do better. Marshall Islands is truly one of the saddest places I've ever visited.

And I still think people should go. To say you saw one of the most beautiful islands before it got flooded by higher sea levels if nothing else.

I've travelled extensively in Europe, especially Western Europe. I think I've been to 25 European countries. I've also travelled a lot in South East Asia, a bit in North America, and extensively in Australia and New Zealand of course. Going to do a bit of a greatest-hits of places people might not know about, maybe inspire someone to check them out.

Lofoten Islands, Norway



Most visitors to Norway go to Oslo and then get the train out to Bergen, but I crossed over from Sweden way up north and drove down the coast to Trondheim. A car is really the only way to get around up there. I highly recommend this, the best road trip I have ever done. I had a great time the whole way, a lot of memories and stories, but the Lofoten Islands were a highlight. I mean, look at the pic. Here I am nearby back in 2008:



Side note: Trondheim, which is a university town, had easily the highest concentration of stunning women I have ever seen anywhere on the planet. It was like a models convention was in town.

Bled, Slovenia



This holiday town is tucked up in the NW corner, on the edge of the Julian Alps. It's a bit of a ghost town in winter, but in summer it's easily warm enough to swim the lake. You can swim out to that church. The surrounding area provides a lot of scope for activities. Relaxing and beautiful place that a lot of people outside of Europe haven't heard of. Slovenians are welcoming. Young people can generally speak English, older people are more likely to have German as a second language.

Yangshuo, Guangxi, China



China is one of my least favourite countries I have visited (and I'm not a huge fan of SE Asia in general), but Yangshuo is like a little enclave which is quite different to the rest of China. It's very pretty and a bit of a mecca for outdoor activities - rock climbing, kayaking, that kind of thing. Also, since a lot of Westerners are attracted there, a whole bunch of English schools have sprung up. People who already know some English come from around the country to learn to be fluent. If you want to stay there long term, they will train you to be a proper classroom teacher. Alternatively, for short-termers, they will give you free accommodation and two (good, home-cooked) meals four days a week. In return, four nights a week you have two hours social speaking with a group of Chinese people. It's a great cultural experience, you can communicate with ordinary Chinese who have generally never been out of the country and are intensely curious about the outside world. It also gives an appreciation for how difficult English is coming from Mandarin.

Glacier National Park, MT, US



I've visited a bunch of parks in the US - a lot still to go - and this one is my favourite. The serenity there is incredible, it's a big, diverse park.

Although rugby isn't popular in my area of the country, I used to play what is officially just called "touch", which is a non-tackle form of rugby. It's only 6 a side and plays very fast, like rugby sevens. It can be played mixed, which makes it one of the best social sports out there imo. Unfortunately I really did a number on my left leg while playing it and can't play anymore, which sucks. I'd go so far as to say that if I could change one thing about my life, it would be to be able to play again.

Did you take those pictures? Honestly, I only use a smartphone and dgaf about PhotoShop. Anything I post will look like crap compared to that.

Decades of eugenics does have its benefits.

Nope, none of them. My friend took the one of me, I just google searched the others. I'd have photos of them somewhere, but when it's from like 2008 I can't be bothered digging them out.

This seems like a good time to plug the camera on the Pixel 2 though. **** is black magic, I highly recommend it. You just point at at things it has no business being able to photograph and press the button and somehow it works. So here's a few recent ones I did take, point and click.

Nelson, New Zealand



Union, Washington.



My backyard.

Can confirm pixel 2 camera goat

I'm missing a good lot of my photos from my trips in East and SE Asia. I lost my photos in Beijing when the camera I had ended up getting fried. But others were definitely uploaded somewhere. I haven't found them yet. Granted, there wouldn't be a whole lot of them as I wasn't a shutterbug back then but it'd still be nice to have.

I've had to dig around looking for old image hosting accounts that I hadn't touched in years to find my pictures of a few trips in Europe. It was great to find some photos that I thought were gone for good are still around. I thought my photos of Poland were mostly gone as the phone that stored the pictures bricked. But apparently Google Photos had them.

The old photos are unlabeled or poorly taken. So I have photos that are great but I have no idea of the context or horrible looking photos that appear to have been taken by somebody with Parkinson's Disease.

Overall, everybody here is pretty well-traveled. I'm not really sure what I can add that people haven't seen before.

My travel basically just consists of a couple trips in the US/Mexico per year so nothing really special but since people posted some pics I thought this was a cool one i took in the Pololu Valley, Hawaii a couple weeks back.

Wish I could take month long trips like everyone in this forum seems to do but that isn't possible with my job or my wife's job. She could possibly make it work by working remote for part of the trip, not an option for me though.

Ehh there's def some places that are off most people's radar, usually because they're in PITA locations.

At least in Asia there's a quite a few places that I really liked in the last couple of years that felt relatively undiscovered.

Kyrgyzstan - fantastic country, amazing for hiking, insanely cheap, interesting mix of asian + russian culture, yurts everywhere, visa on arrival, surprisingly well set up for tourists etc. Uzbekistan is interesting also, and they just started doing visa on arrival last year. Before that it, was a real hassle to get a visa.







Raja Empat, Indonesia. One of the most picturesque island chains you'll ever see, perfect for scuba diving and snorkeling, it has the highest amount of marine diversity in the world, you stay in family run homestays bungalows, some of the bungalows are built sitting out over the water, white sand beaches all around etc. Also has birds of paradise to see and these strange looking marsupials called the cuscus that wander around. Out of all the beach locations I've been to in the world, this is the closest thing to paradise I've ever seen, even if you sleep on on a mattress on the ground and there's no wifi. I'm hoping too many people don't find out about this place!









El Nido and Coron, Philippines. Has the gorgeous karst formations like Thailand but way less people. Also has fantastic scuba diving and snorkeling, some underwater caves than you can only visit at low tide, easy to rent a scooter and explore, decent party scene on the beach. I think some popular instagrammers have started to catch onto this is one in the last year or two though, so getting more popular quickly.








Guizhou, Yunnan, and Sichuan in China. Major Language barrier, but some absolutely stunning mountain scenery, fascinating minority cultures, great hiking and climbing opportunities, really good food, and in W Sichuan you can experience Tibet without having to book a tour inside the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region).










So you certainly can still find some pretty neat, pretty untouched spots around, it just takes some work to get there usually.