@taboo:
lots of cool US landmarks like the grad canyon.
its like the elephants graveyard of grad students that walked away with meaningless degrees or career prospects in the aftermath of becoming free people.
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@noob:
Aye, but it's like going to Paris and not visiting the Eiffel tower lol.
At the same time i wouldn't exactly call standing outside the structure an experience. To me that would require actually entering the pyramids themselves.
But i guess the biggest reason is how the whole experience is completely overshadowed by the horribly busy market city behind you.
Egypt's best tourist treasures are for the most part more remote. But this isn't just aimed at the ancient architecture, but much much more. But i guess for your everyday tourist family the pyramids are kind of the limit in regards to wow factors. lol
The red sea is also worth a shot if you like scuba diving or glass bottom boats. The only thing is to pick your location right.
@Print:
Only if librarians regularly force their way into people's houses and walk out with most of their books. The British Empire justified a lot of its imperialism through such attitudes. The British Museum basically exists because of this XD
At the same time it also discovered a great deal of priceless artifacts through hundreds and hundreds of treacherous expeditions that in turn could have been responsible for the continued safety of said items. I guess the proof lays in the vast amount of history destroyed or lost to either grave robbers or new regimes hell bent on erasing the former rulers.
Im not endorsing what happened. But at the same time feel good knowing a lot of history has been safeguarded for hundreds of years because of our presence. Even more so when items are returned and enjoyed by their rightful owners.
lets us not forget the brilliance and availability of technology used to uncover a lot of information about relics in our possession. Being able to digitally restore a corroded object, or scan paintings and reveal an alternate end piece has in some cases completely reshaped history and how we've interpreted it.
Its not all bloody pillaging.
And as if we have a perfect track record at preserving our own buildings anyway. In Nottingham, where I grew up, several streets dating back to the Middle Ages were bulldozed to make way for a new dual carriageway, flanked by 60s brutalist concrete blocks. And then named 'Maid Marian Way' to try to hide this. Even one of London's proudest structures, St Pancras station, was going to be demolished in the 60s because it was seen as 'outdated' until Sir John Betjeman led a campaign to save it.
lol nobody has a perfect track record, but if it existed England would be pretty high, if not at the top of it. You just need to keep in mind is that after the war a lot of our towns and cities needed to rebuild, and for a short period overlooked the romance of the architecture to make way for something more useful, reliable and efficient.
Our laws on old structures is without doubt the biggest ball ache ever. Just about every single house I've ever lived in needed heavy planning permission no matter how large or small. And this is much much worse whenever you enter an area with a bit of history. If you ever watch the various building shows on TV you'll instantly know this to be a given.
The best example i've seen first hand was in regards to an old cinema that stood in my town center. It was an absolute mess. Boarded up and rotten as hell, but despite that, nobody could knock it down. It was either to remain the eyesore of the town or be fully refurbished. Thankfully the latter happened.
!
This is made obvious when you drive through london. Hundreds and hundreds of old beautiful houses plastered over with curry houses. Deformed yes, but not destroyed. Every now and then the local council has messed up, or someone has taken a back hander to let some huge building development through, but boy is it rare. And this is largely between the end of the war, up to the nineties.
I guess you could say your arguments out of date.
Laos has fewer tourists than either of those countries if SE Asia is your goal.
I would be going off the tourist trail so to speak, so it isn't much of an issue. But i'd be keen to see what the competition is. Anything in particular to mention about it that its neighbors don't have.
PS i also wanted to keep at least a countries distance between me and Thailand.
It's a big city thing. Londoners tend to look down their noses at the rest of the UK, for example.
Well this is some pretty high grade bullshit. Londoners are a mix of everyone. Not just Englands varying counties, but a great deal of Europe and the world too. Its a giant melting pot! You could probably look at most Londoners and see how the rest of the world will look like in a thousand years time rofl.
Joking aside; The only form of rivalry spawns from typical sports/football banter.
Any kind of possible 'US vs THEM' attitude is destroyed largely by the continuous generation of Uni students traversing the country.