@Smudger:
i wouldn't call Europe exotic.
Exotic is subjective duder. Connecticut is exotic to Chrissie in many ways for instance. Weather, architecture, greenery, diversity etc.
Tell an American Connecticut is exotic and they'd be on the ground laughing.
It has a few places here and there, but on the whole it is quite tame. Our history, architecture, local traditions and cultures tend to give off a strong vibe sometimes. Still despite all of this it remains within the realms of normality.
So you mean like you guys are well plugged into modern globalized life.
Yeah, so is Latin America. With the same "poor rural countries are less so" ratio as Europe. Except again aside from maybe uber-native Bolivia it's a bunch of mixed transplants with barely any history, like us. Except as I said, browner, spanisher, and poorer.
As a backpacker It's not like you will ever encounter a scenario where you could break down and end up a skeleton on some god forsaken dirt track.
You mean like hiking dangers? Dude, Americans don't need to leave the country to hike in crazy places if you think that would be a reason to travel.
We have rainforests, tropical islands, volcanic wastelands, the hottest deserts in the world, arctic wastes, all manner of forests, steppe, bigassed snowcapped mountains, canyons, swamps….
When Americans leave the country it's usually not nature treks unless it's to see exotic animals lol.
I can understand why when you consider the image brazil pumps out, which in my eyes tends to overshadow its neighbours.
Brazil is a tropical Portuguese US. With an even nastier legacy of slavery.
but hey, brazil still has a lot of stuff to offer, but its spread too thin for a tourist. I guess if you want something a bit more exotic and adventurous you should head over to the north west coast and try out Columbia, Peru and Ecuador.
Exotic how though? Land? Culture? I really don't think Columbia is exotic at all for an American. The other two have the Andean Incan history going on more so. But that's way less interesting than even your history.
i get that feeling too, even though I've never been to the US. For me I wouldn't really let the varying accents override that feeling in my stomach of everything being too similar.
Similarity isn't the case unless your in the sticks or reeeeally white suburbs (why would a tourist go to either one?). The US is just a huge mash of globalized remix.
I anything you'd be frustrated and looking for a more common theme aside from English and junk food. You'd find that here and there though. The remenents of what used to be, most strongly in the South.
The only real divide would be the city life against the states bordering the mountains of the north. But that again would feel familiar to someone from Europe.
What are these mountains of the north you speak of lol
We are basically the librarians of earth.
Try "two huge empires who up and stole a bunch of shit" lol.
i can't think of much that appeals to me about that country, Even though its design and natural events/geography looks like something from a terry pratchett book. I guess what I'm saying is that it must be hard to experience it all without a lot of time and money behind you.
Iceland is an outdoorsman's paradise. That's it's tourist value for sure.
As for the towns and cities….I've heard nothing.
Reykjavik is cute and fun, it's only fault is being so alone and away from everything. But I kind of think that's how it maintains being as it is.
That's the only city lol. There are a few mid-size towns like Akureyi. But yeah, Iceland is one neat city basically attached to a whole lot of sparsely populated wilderness.
So explain Florida to me. Why would I loath it?
Florida is the chief example of the Sun Belt, which is an area of mostly year long warmth in the South and southwest of the US that's gotten a ton of people moving into it in recent decades. So it's mostly made up of very recent cheaply made condos and strip malls. Florida in particular is nothing but that, just miles and miles of condos and strip malls. All in a sort of sticky sterile warm air. The landscape is the ugliest thing I've ever seen too, you might think it's like some pretty jungle tropics place. But noooo. It's short ugly swamp plants spread across a near featureless flat wasteland. It's in a an area of air travel that usually results in deserts in other parts of the world lol, but here because of this or that it's a humid fart bubble that allows marshy shrubs to fart out of the land.
So plastic human civilization, mostly no older than the 60's at best. On an ass ugly landscape.
With obscenely retarded politics and law that seem more a product of bumbling incompetence than they do stubborn conservatism like the South proper.
It's festering with old people in retirement, and you can be killed and eaten by water dinosaurs.
I fucking hate Florida, and Disney World aside it should be cast into the sea and drowned.
Oh and thanks for the heads up with Istanbul. I know it's architecture Is visually stunning. I just can't image how else I would spend my time there.
The old buildings were cool, but I was basking mostly in experiencing this mostly modern pretty well off Muslim city. It was really neat to cross that cultural line and see what there was to see. There was a huge diverse bunch of tourists too, like the Muslim New York.
Also
the
fucking
food
was
amazing
all
of
it
I need somewhere not too morphed by heavy tourism. Something with a bit of mystery left. And I know you'll laugh at me saying this, but for me that would probably be Cambodia and Vietnam. That would be my bizarro world.
Pretty sure both of them experience plenty of tourism.
I've actually heard Oman of all places is cool to visit.
It's safe, the locals are very relaxed, and it hasn't been overdeveloped to hell like Qatar, Bahrain or UAE. And also very very unique history and culture within the Arab world.
That's my Arab country of choice for the ol' bucket list.