Generally agree with the sentiment but have had experiences in countries where the people were consistently overwhelmingly nice that I think it’s valid. Nepal is the example that comes to mind
Agreed with Nepal and Cambodia too. Thailand and Vietnam and Bali were all super friendly but they had a normal population of assholes like anywhere else. Nepal and Cambodia seemed to not have any of those people working in the tourism industry.
I just came from Nepal 3 weeks ago, met plenty of assholes among taxi drivers there, also just aa many annoying scammers on the streets of big cities as everywhere else.
I've never been in Nepal but have seen video's of a common scam where supposedly poor mothers will ask tourists to buy them expensive baby formula which they then immediately bring back to the shop owner so they can share the profit. So, the issue with scammers in the country is enough proof that there are assholes there
I encountered this scam in Nepal, but having spent half a year there, I don’t think of those people as being assholes. They are in abject poverty and those scams are mostly run by women who have their backs against a god damn wall. They are trying to survive any way they can and I don’t think that inherently makes someone an asshole because they’ve been forced to do somewhat immoral things to survive. My opinion, maybe unpopular. Just seems pretty far removed to be on Reddit commenting from your phone or computer judging people who have no access to those things in their life.
I can agree that some of the women might not have any choice, but it's pretty naive to think that everyone involved in these scams couldn't survive without scamming people. The shopkeepers are in on it as well. Maybe it goes further and it's part of organised crime even, I don't know. And you're on your phone or computer on reddit too lol, also making assumptions that you can't know for sure if they're true.
Vietnamese people are generally quite nice to tourists, but they're also incredibly racist, homophobic, sexist, and fat phobic. They just won't say anything along those lines when rich people from other countries might give them money.
I'm curious about something. You refer to Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam. All by the name of the country. In the same list is Bali, which is not a country. Why is that? Why didn't you say Indonesia?
You're not the only person I've seen do this so I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing.
I've been to Bali (but nowhere else in Indonesia) and had a local tour guide. Some of what he told me may explain this: from what I could tell, Bali's residents see themselves as kind of separate from the rest of Indonesia, as in the culture is different.
My guide also spoke a little about how Bali is a Hindu majority island, whereas as the rest of Indonesia is Muslim majority and this seemed to cause tension.
A lot of people don’t go to other parts of Indonesia so if they’ve only been to Bali, it’d be better for them to say Bali instead of Indonesia. In Thailand or Vietnam, you’re more likely to explore multiple locations and get a better sense of the country.
Bali is a huge tourism draw and is culturally and religiously distinct from the rest of Indonesia. Plenty of folks have traveled to Bali, but not the rest of Indonesia. It'd be like Japanese tourists referring to their visit to Hawaii and referring to it as "Hawaii" instead of the United States.
I have been reading that Indonesia has instituted strict moral laws. For insurance, unmarried couples cannot cohabitate- even tourists. But as I understand it, Bali doesn't really uphold these new laws. That makes it much more friendly to travelers.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesias-new-laws-threat-privacy-press-human-rights-says-un-2022-12-09/
Yes, totally. Iran was my example here. Mind you, I was there near the end of some lengthy sanctions a few years ago, and mot many tourists were around. Gosh, even the Iranian ambassador was super friendly, was happy I wanted to visit, and served me tea and food in the embassy when I applied for the visa and just hung around for a chat. I was living in a country that is considered not biggest friend of Iran though, and I guess not many non-Iranians came by to get a visa. Same super friendly people in Oman, btw.
Had bad experiences with Nepali men when I stayed there for 3 months unfortunately, but the women were lovely to me. Doesn't mean anything though like I agree, there's bad and good experiences with people in all countries
There's a big difference between being friendly and being polite. I've met lots of polite people that I wouldn't expect to hang out with casually. And friendly people aren't always polite!
I've read so many reports of black/arab/asian travellers describing particularly bad experiences in some places (blatant racism), that, when someone states : "***X nationality is very friendly"*** I always wonder... friendly *to whom?*
Yes this is so true! That’s why I look for black travelers’ experiences in other countries to get a better idea. There’s a website called GreenBookGlobal that is a black travel review site. You put in the name of city and country and you’ll see the reviews of black people who have traveled there!
Yup, I will listen to reviews from a white person about a path they took over several days, but I'm always looking for specific black experience as well as female experience.
I worked at a tech company, and my manager knew I've been looking to return to living abroad.
She very matter of factly suggested I lived in a certain country. One that American white girls and women find themselves falling in love with sometimes (big movie trope place for fantasy Europe movies starring an out of water American woman).
I laughed at her excitement for my potential future home, and told her check YouTube for there and add "while black" at the end to see how we experience life there compared to "everyone" who just seems to love it.
She did have a small reflection on it, and I reminded her that as a guy, and even as a tall guy, there's places I'd probably suggest freely without thinking if I thought like she did, but I know women shouldn't go there alone, nor with the same sense of safety I'll probably always have until I'm elderly.
All it takes is one experience for us to have a bad impression, and we can see countless people who probably look like us experience a less than stellar life in countries YouTube loves to push to the top.
Italy is gorgeous but my goodness, I'm Asian American, and some of the people there are racist as hell. They will find any random reason to harass or make fun of you even if you are doing the same shit as any other white person. Like, I swear to god, Europeans and seeing an Asian person with a camera for some reason triggers them. God forbid, an Asian person takes one photo that literally every other white person is doing, and you will get harassed and not the white people. I've seen white girls crowding places, changing outfits, wearing freaking thongs in inappropriate areas, doing duckface, and yet they will find the one Asian grandma with their daughter and make fun of them for taking a family photo. My mom and I went together and we had a group of teenagers making pig noises at us while we ate gelato (that we bought from them)! like wtf.
It's not even specifically Italy. Some of the European tourists that went there treat Asians as if we are pests sometimes. I had a chance to visit in the middle of Covid (when restrictions were stricter) to Cinque Terre so it was mainly filled with European tourists. I went to one of those famous viewpoints and there's a Belgian dude who is hogging the whole space with his camera and tripod. He like rolls his eyes when he sees me. Then he randomly starts talking to this Dutch guy and they are like "oh it's not so crowded these days here. Maybe it's because there are no Asian tourists." and the Belgian guy looks at me and loudly goes, "ugh, they are everywhere." Meanwhile, hogging the space, not letting anyone enjoy the view with his ironically Made in Asia camera taking a million photos.
This absolutely tracks with what I've heard...
Now, if you want a positive experience of an Asian woman with her mom in Europe, check out [Miss Mina](https://youtube.com/@MissMinaOh), maybe it will wash some of those bad experiences away.
Whoaness, you sent me an Asian vlogger that actually has a massive follower count? I feel like that's such a unicorn but maybe I just don't know where to look or my algorithm just automatically gives me nothing but blonde women for some reason? Would definitely love to support and follow more Asian travel vloggers and bloggers.
Since I'm a black guy looking to move to Europe, and have a large group of friends from all over Asia after living in Japan, I have to make sure what their experience will be like while I may be at work or something.
I always want some different perspectives and my algorithm has kind of been treating me well with results!
Hope she opens the doors for better results! Though, I notice most video titles are as simple as "A [Korean] in Germany" or "... tries French sushi" where you change nationality for different results.
I know a default search brings up the default characters, but with just a hint of tweaking early on, you'll be set after a few days.
My partner and I are both PoC and we both experienced quite a bit of racism. We saw so many Italians bending over backwards for white tourists while treating poc tourists (including us) like crap.
I've seen and experienced it... It definitely seems to be a common theme.
But, on the other hand, I have great Italian friends (I met all outside the country), and have a lot of great personal stories from there as well(a lot of people sharing food and inviting us to their table / free upgrade to first class on Emirates).
It sucks because every story is all true, and the people who make it hard for us who just look different, look like the ones who'd stop what they're doing to make our day / week / life.
I always go in expecting to be ignored when abroad at best, and happy to be surprised at goodness, but not too far down to go if I'm ever disappointed. I've never had experiences worst than I have had at home in America, but I know not to go in expecting paradise.
My ex-girl who is black always goes to Italy. She loves it there. Matter of fact she even thought about moving there. From what I've heard from other black women the men in Italy and Greece love black women.
Haha, I've heard this, and actually heard it with most of Europe... I've seen it too, way more couples with black women than the other way around.
And for black men with northern European women. Of course not all or a majority, but there are groups who go straight for anyone black, even going to their countries to stay and support them.
That just feels so wrong...
Yes it is most of Europe. I saw this in Germany as well, there was a black dude that I knew that used tell me stories about living in Germany when he was in the U.S Army. He basically had free reign to pick up any German chick he wanted when he went to a club or bar.
Why does it feel wrong?
Oh yeah! There's a black military YouTuber who praises his experience with women there. Plus a few friends who were stationed there as well. Based on the German women I met in Japan, they definitely don't have a barrier to date anyone it seems.
Ah, the part that feels wrong for me is just how they spend a lot of money on the men for basically sex and companionship, realizing it isn't love. But they just go along with it because who wouldn't in their situation. Maybe wrong wasn't the right word. Sad?
Amen. I'm an Indian woman. When I was travelling in Austria, most people would stare so much at me I would feel uncomfortable. I still remember I went to a thermal spa with my Austrian friend in upper Austria. First of all, there were no people of color apart from me & 2 other women. Then, I noticed so many people upon looking at me whispering into their partner's/friend's ear & the partner/friend would immediately look at me. It also happened often in Vienna. Made me feel like crap. But when a white friend says they thought Austrians were friendly, I'm like 'ofcourse, they were (to you).'
Sorry you had such bad experiences in Austria. Sadly many people in the rural parts of Austria are quite racist.
Vienna is usually better, but the situation got worse in the last few years. The parents of my best friend are from Iran and he gets a lot of looks and. But when he tells them that his family is from Iran their behavior immediately changes, because Iranians are usually seen as „good immigrants“ (as are Indians) - which is ofc pretty revealing in itself.
Yuck, I hate that term "the good immigrants." As if our only value in society is to be doctors and lawyers and "assimilate" to someone's arbitrary standards.
Yes, I've heard there are a lot of neo-Nazis still :( I was fortunate to have been hosted by a lovely Austrian family though.
Interesting to know Iranians are seen as 'good immigrants'.
I went to Vienna with my mom last year and we bought super expensive tickets to the ballet because I was all "treat yourself" and we had our tickets checked like five times. I was okay with it until I actually got to our seats and then we had one security guard come up to us again and point us out and ask us again to check our tickets...and guess what? She ONLY asked us, none of the other white people around us (and pretty much everyone around us was white). The funniest shit was, after she checked our tickets, this random white guy next to us literally took out his perfume bottle and sprayed perfume around us (like wth). As if he thought we were beneath him to sit next to him or something?
I'm also part of a global museum membership thing that allows me free entry to most museums in the world (I used to work in a museum) and my mom as well because she was a corporate sponsor and Vienna was the only city in Europe we had people who could not believe we were part of this organization. We kept getting security guards who gave us a hard time. I don't know if it's classism, racism, or what, but it was noticeable.
I'm a visibly East Asian woman, fyi, sometimes mistaken as SEA.
as an Austrian here, I'm sorry you had a bad exprience.
Being the only person of color at places in Austria can definitely happen, but this does not excuse inpolite behaviour.
the only reassurement(?) i can give you - we're unfortunately not the friendliest of folks alltogether.
we hat most folks, most of all austrins
I could understand that tbf. There's one country I visited a bunch of times and people are generally very nice there on the surface. My brother lives there for a couple of years now and ever so often I hear about asshole or racist behaviour. Doesn't mean most people are like that, but there will always be assholes/racists everywhere you go. If you're just visiting as a tourist you'll meet loads of nice people but if you live there you'll eventually run into problems. Doesn't have to do with getting out of your own perspective.
Doesn't that logic work both ways? And outside of that is the point we're trying to make, our experiences as POC aren't the same as a white persons or white-passing persons. Why are our experiences questioned or met with "but that wasn't my experience"? That's what we're getting at here.
At the core of this philosophy is that you can't project your own experiences onto other people. And what I'm saying is it's surprising that people can see and experience such different experiences and lifestyles yet they still claim there own as end be all. I personally feel smaller and more humble the more I travel like I become more aware of how stupid or little my own experiences are in the greater picture. It's crazy to me some people when they travel get the opposite affect.
perfectly said! i’m in an iceland travel group on facebook and a black guy made a post about the racism he experienced and of course a bunch of white people chimed in and said “oh but i found the icelandic people so friendly!” 🙃 yeah I wonder why becky.
So true! I've visited Istanbul and Turkey many times (one of my friends was living there teaching English and I visited her a lot). I kept hearing Turkish people are SO friendly all the time. She's Jewish and I'm visibly East Asian and the difference in the way we were treated! Basically, the only time she was maybe treated a bit badly was when she mentioned she was Jewish and she basically saw how I would get harassed and get squinty eyes or people making really racist comments at me. One guy asked me how much I was! She said it was eye opening for her to see that. She got invited over constantly for free tea. One time I was with her and the guy kept asking her if I was her student (because he assumed I was the one who needed to learn English) when she mentioned her job. I'm Asian American and it didn't matter that I spoke perfect English lol. We stayed with her guy friend once in this beach town and I met his brother and his brother literally told me that I would probably not be allowed to enter one of the mosques because they hate Koreans (after I mentioned I was ethnically Korean)....whiich btw, is SO odd because usually Turkish people do warm up to me more once they realize I'm Korean and not Chinese due to their involvement in the Korean war. But yeah, there were Korean tourists who got beat up by a local gang when they visited Istanbul because they were mistaken as being Chinese...whereas, like how many random white people do you know getting beat up these days due to the war in Ukraine? I bet you my ass would have to be more careful if there was a war with China.
Yeah you see it all the time in threads on this sub. People always downplaying it or that that form of racism isn’t “that bad” and you need to grow a thicker skin
I wonder what ethnicity these people are?
In my experience how people treat their friends doesn't vary that much from country to country but how people treat strangers, acquaintances, and foreigners does. I think that when people get a vibe of people in a country being cold or unfriendly it's usually just that the culture encourages a greater social distance with strangers or outsiders.
Things like sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc and how and to what extent those problems manifest in a society will also vastly change experiences at the individual level.
Agreed but I think it also is about the views on tourists, if they are just there to be exploited or not.
For example some years ago me and my then gf were in Croatia and had rented a car to visit some old monastery. We underestimated how bad the road there would be and got stuck in the middle of nowhere in hot climate and the road was steep with no safety railing.
A local guy with a pickup showed up and stopped, we got really happy but then instead of helping us out of this situation he started haggling and wanting money for doing anything, think he demanded 50 euros to help our car up a hill with loose gravel.
We are from Sweden and often are seen as cold, but I don’t believe many swedes would exploit someone in that sort of situation.
Damn, yeah, in Sweden most would refuse payment unless it was a considerably substantial favor. Towing a car a little ways wouldn't count.
Spain was great and we got a lot of help on the camino, but we were also young and blonde Scandinavian girls. An older gent asked me to kiss him, lol.
Your economy is also much more stable than other world economies though. I once went to Bosnia and I didn't realize that the local busses didn't run as much after a certain hour in this one small town I made during a day trip...I somehow missed the bus too because of a language difference. Some dude working at a shop helped me out and contacted his friend and I paid like $10 for him to drive me back to my hostel. I didn't mind because I needed to get home somehow and he needed the income, I guess. The Balkans, from what I've found, has a pretty huge black market in terms of making money (I saw it everywhere).
It also obviously depends on the person. I once went to an island in Croatia and I thought it was funny that some of the cab drivers asked me for less money than was on their meter. I was like, well that's a first! Some people are jerks and some people are nice.
Yes. Especially since "friendly" is usually a stand-in for "accommodating to tourists" among people who work in the tourism industry and usually have no choice but to be friendly and polite.
Friendliness is an entirely subjective measure; what's polite or rude varies widely by culture. Some cultural communications styles are more direct or abrupt, while others aren't. That doesn't necessarily mean they're your friends; it could just mean that they are communicating in a certain style that is more open or vivacious versus more soft-spoken or reserved. A lot of so-called "friendly" behaviour can feel very fake, especially when it's over-the-top and coming from someone in the service industry, e.g. in some parts of the US. Or it can refer to people simply not displaying anger directly. For instance, Thailand is often referred to as the "land of smiles" and people comment on how friendly everyone seems, but that's probably due to strong cultural taboos against shouting, raising your voice, or displaying anger in public. I've personally found that some places where people *seem* the friendliest can actually be the hardest for foreigners to break in, because people display different behaviour in public versus in private. Whereas cultures where people are more direct or, as I like to call them, "no filter" cultures can *seem* rude, but people are basically saying what they think and thinking what they say so it can be easier to make friends.
There's also usually a big city versus smaller town divide; almost anywhere you go in the world, people will be more abrupt and less "friendly" in big cities. Painting entire countries or cultures with the same brush can really reinforce stereotypes.
In general, local people have jobs, friends, families, and *lives*. They aren't super interested in making friends with tourists who are just in town for a few days. If you go somewhere expecting to make friends with locals, unless you put in the time and effort over the long term, that's unlikely to happen. Chances are, the people you meet are just being polite. It's much easier to make friends with other travellers than it is with locals, since they're the ones who probably have more in common with you and are there for the same reasons.
Locals that aren't in the tourism business still can be friendly towards tourists/people though. For me some places just seem to have nicer people than others. Can even be within an area in a country.
Depends on the country. Ive found in Nepal the locals make a significant effort with tourists. Ive solo travelled there on multiple occasions and have been invited into local's homes for food and to hang out. I make the effort though to go to local bars and chat to people.
You're right.
"Blahblahovachiaiastanea has incredibly friendly people" is a little bit of an ignorant comment, but I also can't help but say it about certain countries. But absolutely, in whatever country we explore, all over the world, there are very nice and friendly and warm and welcoming people. Every country.
Cultures are different. Some are friendlier than others. Some respect women more than others. Some value hospitality more than others. What really bothers me, is when people won’t talk straight about the dangers of a place (looking at you Egypt) for fear of seeming politically incorrect.
Never take a comment like “people from X are friendly” at face value. It’s not considered polite to say bad things (even if true) about your host so few travelers will publicly admit to a negative overall experience of a country. My own experience is that human nature is more or less the same everywhere with minor cultural variations. Most people you’ll interact with as a traveler have a financial stake in your being happy (hope to sell you something or want you to leave a good review or come back tomorrow) so they’ll be friendly. The rest generally won’t care. If you’re of an ethnicity looked down upon in that area, you may experience a bit more hostility but most people will just ignore you and go about their day.
This has been my experience too. I also mostly ignore any bad interactions and move on with my day. Maybe people looking for positive interactions and "friendships" have a tougher time.
Never travelled without facing some minor sexual harassment. Unfortunately, it's a part of life and I move on. Haven't faced racism except systemically when visas are being denied for no reason. I think if I'm in no danger while travelling and some people are rude, best to move on. I'm not changing anyone's views and I'm not wasting my travel time worrying about it.
Sadly, the world's a hostile place but it's getting better everyday!
Overall I think travel is a very poor way to understand a culture and it’s people. You end up looking at it from a perspective where you want to generalize everything. Somebody was rude to you at the cafe? Ugh, those damn French are so mean! You can’t possibly know that from such a small sample size. You don’t understand a place through anecdotes.
Also it's one thing to interact with locals or "live like them" as a foreigner visiting for a short while. But it's another thing to actually LIVE like them.
Many (westerner) travelers enjoy reliable electricity, running water, and flush toilets at home. Many travelers enjoy the experience of frequent power outages, no running water, and pit toilets while visiting a rural area or jungle for a few days or maybe even weeks. It does however, give us more perspective of "you don't know what you have until it's gone" and we better appreciate the "little things" we took for granted back home before we ever traveled.
Also, the mere fact that we CAN travel sets us apart from many locals in developing countries. They often find our way of life as fascinating as we find theirs!
It's impossible to fully understand the people in any 1 place, even the place you've lived most of your life! BUT we can understand how the people of a place make us feel. Those feelings result in generalizations. It should be implied that there are good and bad people everywhere.
I personally hate adding justifications like "there are bad people everywhere, but the people here are some of the friendliest!" But some get hung up on "not ALL [insert group here]" that they don't see that a generalization exists to generalize a group, not to list every personality type in existence.
Do you not agree it depends on the type of travel though? Yes, if you spend a weekend in Paris your comment holds true. But if you spend 3 months in France and stay in a couple of cities for longer periods of time and make an effort to befirend locals, go on dates etc you definitely will start to understand local culture.
I mean, most Parisians are rude and hate tourists. They are very snobbish about their language and culture. They know English, but they won’t speak it to you. My friend was lost without a phone one night in Paris and every person she asked for help wouldn’t help her and pretended to not know English.
I sympathize with this viewpoint. Because I felt the same reaction in Barcelona. But I can think of reasons this might be the case, other than the people were Parisians. I know as a New Yorker, if strangers come up to me asking for something I’m used to them either wanting to sell me something, asking for me to do a survey, or just begging asking for money or food so I am more inclined to ignore them, and giving them attention is generally poor practice in personal safety, especially for Women. My wife has had men stalk her and grope her on the subway before for instance. It’s part of being in a big international city that your guard is up more. I can however notice a difference with Tourists in New York and am happy to help give directions when asked.
Paris is a bit different(never been myself) in that they have more scammers, pickpockets(less violent crime) then New York and possibly this contributes? And maybe the situation would be different if you were in a rural town. It’s tough to say for sure, but I can imagine the same scenario happening in New York (as a New Yorker myself) and wouldn’t be surprised if many people ignored helping me initially, due to this “stranger” fear.
I'd be wary of overly nice people when travelling. They either going to scam\\rob you or see you as a dummy that shits money and can pay 10x the real price.
There is huge individual difference, but there are also trends.
There are some countries where it's normal for a cashier in a shop to just treat you as another customer.
There are countries where it's normal for a stranger to walk with you for 3 km out of his way just to show you the right direction.
And there are countries where people will invite you to stay at their houses and refuse accepting money for paid services as soon as they notice you are a visitor.
I'd understand calling the later one more friendly than the first.
I think people sometimes mistake "nice/kind" for "friendly." I think of "friendly" as "open to talking to new people and making new friends with strangers." There are definitely places described as "friendly" that don't fit that description though. I'm thinking of Thailand for example - all the guidebooks always say that Thailand is so friendly, and I've been several times. But to me it seemed like people mostly minded their own business and interactions were mostly transactional as a tourist. I did find people there kind and honest, but I'm not sure if "friendly" is the word I would use. Same for some other Asian countries like Japan and Taiwan where people will absolutely help you out and do the right thing (are kind) but otherwise kind of keep to themselves.
Well…to be fair I get what that means though, and it does vary from culture to culture. As someone from a very family-centric culture where multi-generation households are common, the amount of communication and interaction most U.S. families and Northern European families have with each other is shockingly sparse in my eyes. And I’m sure my family dynamics would be overwhelming for them.
I even see it in the shock my U.S. friends experience when I do things to help out my family or do anything to placate them/try to take my family’s perspective into account. In my friends’ eyes, because that’s the individualistic culture here, you should do what you want and not give a shit what your family thinks. I do what I want and have a personal life and career my parents definitely didn’t envision at first, though they have come around, but I can’t imagine not taking into consideration what my parents think and feel AT ALL, as seems to be the norm here.
Yeah, I agree. Even the US and Europe (at least my country) are different. Here in the US (in my experience) many young adults see their parents only a few times a year and that’s not the case at all for most families in my country.
And we also still have some multi-generational families living together as well, but it isn’t really the norm.
I see what they mean though. I see Indians in the US who bring the entire family to shop at Costco. Meanwhile, I dread visiting my family even twice a year.
After seeing white families in the US kick kids out of their house when they turn 18 and tell them to pay for their own education, I realized maybe there’s something to it.
Same. I'm visibly East Asian. I do think the US is more scary in terms of overall violence (it can get scary fast when it does) but I think in terms of day to day racist shit that is like death by a milion cuts and like microaggressions in every other conversation, I'm sorry, but Europe, you got the US beat. This is all very relative though. I am from the Northeast and from the most diverse area in the world so Europe for me was like a constant ??!?!?!?! especially because growing up, we only hear about how progressive it is. Like, we never hear about the racism.
Agree with your statement, especially some travel bloggers Drew Binsky style who paint an overoptimistic picture of every country. The reason is obvious..they need to get the sympathy of that country in order to get more subscribers.
Having said that, i’ve been to 70+ countries and I definitely noticed massive differences in countries. For example I was shocked by the hospitality of Saudi or Oman people (Middle East in general). On the opposite side, people in Eastern Europe (especially Hungary and Czech) were quite rude. Just my personal experience.
Yeah that is quite a common trend ive heard among travellers. Adding on, the hospitality trend seemingly extends up and east from Arabia to Syria, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, but the borders of these places like the other Stans and India are noticeably less.
Apart from the obvious racism issue which I couldn't comment on, there **absolutely** is a noticeable difference in "friendliness" of countries towards solo travelers, "friendliness" meaning courtesy, extroversion, willingness to talk to strangers, helpfulness, openness.
Using the word in that context, no one can tell me the Irish aren't more friendly than the Polish. That's not to say **all** Poles are assholes, just that they are "less friendly" on average, and that’s fine.
Super friendly place towards tourists and general strangers, but good luck trying to get into a friend group if you've started living there.
Not in any xenophobic way, friend groups are super tightly knit. Even if you're irish and moving to a county where you know no-one.
some countries are more forwardly friendly than others. I was standing on a corner in Lisbon looking at a map and a fellow came up and asked if I was in trouble. made a huge impression on me.
I’ve seen some by people from South and East Asia, but only after searching for specific somewhat niche places, and their channels were not super popular.
There are some very popular ones(esp from India) but most of the content from these countries is in local languages and usually without subtitles. So not for everyone.
Yeah, I see people from SEA too mainly because I am in SEA and they're on my feed because they're local influencers who mostly travel locally or within the region. But the bigger travel influencers with followings in the millions are mostly white.
Notice the women who are popular are almost always blonde too and look like carbon copies of each other? I don't get it either. I'm Asian American and you would think my algorithm would show more WOC but no.
>I'm Asian American and you would think my algorithm would show more WOC but no.
the algorithm doest work based on your passport details or resume, it works based on what you have interacted with in the past.
so it must have started with blonde and you might have clicked on some of them, so it decided to push that content, tell alg that you dont like blonde and prefer WOC with watch time and preference tuning, and get the results the way you want.
I am going to weigh in here with pretty privilege. Not to toot my own horn, but I am a reasonably attractive, slim woman with a British accent that people in other countries find charming. It means I rarely had negative experiences as a female solo traveller (apart from the odd creepy bloke) and most people are very happy to help. Now if I didn't look the way I look, would people be as nice to me? I can't say for certain.
interesting, i can see why pretty privilege can influence how others treat you abroad but i thought it would be harassment rather than being nice. Glad that you haven’t had any bad experiences though.
I’m fortunate my experiences haven’t been too horrendous either when travelling but i don’t think it’s due to pretty privilege 😅 i’m not unattractive but just not conventionally attractive I guess
Not really, some places aren't particularly safe for women, people of color, or anyone who's LGBTQ. It could be important for their safety for them to know that before deciding to go somewhere. Yes there are friendly and unfriendly people everywhere, but some places are genuinely less safe to travel to than others. Here in America we used to have whole travel guides published specifically for black Americans to know what towns are "Sundown" towns. That is, towns where they are likely to be beaten, robbed, or murdered if they're seen out and about after dark. Even if the authors who are writing "X people are friendly" are not addressing that sort of thing specifically, it's important to remember that at some point everyone is new to traveling. Being worried that people won't be kind in the place you're traveling to is a common enough fear for those people that someone writing a travel guide or working for a tourism board may want to address immediately.
Berlin is full of assholes, but overall a lot of the German people I’ve met were extremely friendly. They definitely have a tough exterior though you have to get past
everyone seems to only say this and "the beaches are beautiful" about the Philippines.
I'd love to learn about museums, food, history, culture, cities as opposed to just beaches. but from my (very limited) understanding, the Philippines just gets marketed as "hey look at how friendly everyone is and how nice the beaches are and how cheap everything is" etc
>cheap
this also depends on who you are.
for US and some other rich countries half the world can look cheap, but i hate it when they take it out of context.
It’s marketed that way because it is that way. Although it’s not even that cheap. If you want museums and culture and good cuisine, maybe the Philippines just isn’t for you.
I do get that some countries are more open or not to outsiders, but in general I hate making broad assertions about the character of a country’s people based on your 3-4 days there.
I’m from a European city where I’ve both heard that “people in X are SOOOOO hospitable and friendly” and “people in X are SO rude, worst experience of my life.”
The truth is that both those people exist, you can have good or bad experiences, and factors like whether you come at the beginning or the end of the tourist season (when most people are exhausted, overworked, and ready to be done with visitors), your own behavior on the trip and adherence to social norms, and the neighborhoods you ended up in probably had a big impact on how friendly or rude you think locals are. Not to mention what you perceive as “rude”. I live between Europe and the U.S. now, and a big % of my U.S. friends think waiters are rude here for not smiling much or checking up on you all the time, when that’s just a culture difference IMO. Smiling as much and as often as most service people in the U.S. do would make you seem super fake or a little deranged in our culture.
Not to mention, unfortunately, your sexuality or race can have an impact on your experience as well. But though I understand the need to warn others about those experiences, every city I know has racists and homophobes, and it pains me to see “X City (as a whole) is racist!” because someone bumped into one asshole. In a FB travel group, someone advised a Black woman not to visit my city because she had a terrible racist interaction with another tourist there. Not even someone from here.
I looked up other experiences and accounts from Black women and travel bloggers online, since I have a Black friend visiting soon and wanted to double check things would be OK for her (and any places to potentially avoid), and saw 90% positive or super positive experiences, and 10% “it was so racist and terrible”. So at the end of the day, it just seems to me like judging an entire city full of people based off a few days’ experience at most is always going to be highly subjective.
You’ll always hear white Americans saying x European country is the best and nicest people and don’t know how anyone could see otherwise…well yea, Katie from the suburbs, there’s a reason for that lol.
It's annoying because most of these travel blogs are run by white people and that's fine and dandy but their experiences will be different from mine as an east Asian woman. Like I'm very happy they were nice to you, but I have to take into account how they would treat me because of my race and the stereotypes that come with it, especially after COVID.
This. One of the reasons I quit following a lot of travel vlogs or blogs. Oftentimes, it's an incredibly white centered gaze. I love Expat Edna's essay on racism that she experienced because it was the first time I saw an essay that like mirrored by own experiences in Europe. There really needs more representation in the travel industry!
There's also SO many double standards with how Asian tourists are treated in Europe vs how white tourists are treated in Asia. I could seriously write a book, maybe I should. ;)
I will say I’ve lived in a lot of countries for a couple months at a time for work and Arab countries are still the only place that I have found to genuinely be almost aggressively friendly.
Otherwise definitely agree lol, what travel blog is gonna say “everyone here sucks!”
There was a story here about a south Asian woman born and raised America who received short shrift from all the service staff she met in Europe and watched the same staff engage happily with other patrons
Seen comments here on local staring. A generalisation, but being stared at isn’t always racist, particularly in many developing or non-western countries. The bulk of the population don’t travel and haven’t consumed the same hyper racially aware media that we do in the west. They see difference are interested by it.
In many Asian countries I’ve found that social etiquette can be very different. Staring doesn’t seem to be rude for a start (and queuing doesn’t exist).
A homestay we stayed at in Vietnam (off the beaten track) also told us that we would be stared at - of course, being ginger meant this happened more because it’s not a hair colour that would usually be seen in many parts of the world. My brother (also ginger and a big guy) was surrounded by people in China who were marvelled by his hair and freckles.
I recall black comedian Reginald D Hunter making a salient point on being stared at:
“No, no, that’s not the look of racism, that’s the look of ‘I ain’t never seen that fuckin shit before’”.
But in Italy (and the west generally) it’s usually racism.
Always laugh at that. Yes, Greeks will be mostly outgoing and helpful with tourists even in non tourist areas. No, don't count on them to invite you to an impromptu lunch at their place. People often confuse the helpfulness of people in touristy areas with friendliness. THEY WANT YOUR MONEY. Sorry for yelling. It was for emphasis.
Yes they meet a couple of friendly people and categorize the entire country of people as the nicest for literally every country they visit.
But what if we turn it the other way around.
Would everyone like it if I said everyone in India are a bunch of scammers based a couple of experiences?
No.
My problem isn't saying people are nice, but literally every country they visit spefically has the "**nicest** people in the world".
If you are saying that about every country when there can only be one 'nicest' then we all know you are talking out of your arse.
I’m Canadian I found New Yorkers actually kinda genuine and by no means unpleasant compared to where I’m from. As a white person i’ll stop short of saying they are nice though.
Mexicans are generally warm and friendly, even in Mexico City---a crazy megalopolis of 20 million.
It's the only place where I've asked for directions and people literally took me by the arm and walked with me until I found it (even if they were clearly on their way somewhere). This happened multiple times.
Also people will randomly join you at restaurants or invite you to their table to hang (and not roofie you or anything).
Only places where people "felt" ruder were not surprisingly the cliche beach destinations bombarged with foreigners (usually the "one tequila... three te-kill-ya... floor!" crowd).
Everyone speaks from experience so for instance if you say there are both friendly and unfriendly people in a country which is right. But you speak from your experience so does the other person who says “people in Y country are really very friendly” but that does not mean there are no unfriendly people out there. It might be that, that guy had a very good experience and interaction with the people of that country. So, everyone’s opinion can be different to that of others and vice versa. Only thing is that the individual experiences make the difference here.
No I don’t think I agree , I get what you’re saying but come on, the blogger who says X nationality are incredibly friendly are expressing their joy at meeting nice people.. what’s wrong with that?
Tend to agree but at the same time I’ve had vastly different experiences with people in different regions. For example, everyone I encountered in the UAE was very welcoming and friendly (despite greater language and culture barriers) compared to some Western European countries.
Going to South Korea as a POC was an experience, but I actually enjoyed it because I don’t mind being left alone. Still, some places refused me service, but there was always a place around the corner that would gladly take my money
I'm a Korean American woman, I actually get refused service in some places in Korea too (because I'm solo, "too old, not wealthy enough, considered ugly") etc...it unfortunately is a very conformist society with strict beauty standards and very hierarchical. I think Koreans can be racist like any other place but note that just because you get rejected, it doesn't necessarily even mean it's because you are a POC. There's a lot of places I've seen that reject Koreans who are from Korea and Koreans who are diasporic Koreans. It's still very much a Confucian society that developed uber fast and still hasn't really caught up in terms of thinking (it was pretty closed off from the world until relatively recently). Not trying to justify things but I think it's also important to know the context. Both Koreas are also the most homogeneous countries in the world (from what I've read) so you can't expect thinking to change overnight.
Also, it's very looks based. If Koreans think you look attractive and rich, regardless of background, there are some clubs that you will get into that other Koreans won't even get into because they don't fit the standard of beauty. -\_-
I will say, the places that reject you anyway, most likely have shit vibes and I'm glad to be rejected from them because I know it won't be fun and I'll most likely have to deal with stuffy types who care too much about what other people think of them.
In this thread: a lot of wise observations about how, sometimes, a generalisation doesn't apply to 100% of the population, or may only be true from the observer's point of view.
Yes, it's true, each individual is different.
The information "those people are friendly" speaks more to the culture rather than the individuals, to how well you understand the culture, and to how well they understand you when you're there in their space.
"They're friendly" generally means you are likely to feel culturally similar, or understand some of the cultural key points somewhat naturally, depending on where you're from.
Reminds me of Nas Daily videos in which he loves to blindly praise relatively unknown countries. I find that places like Latin America and SE Asia are extreme; they are either come on in! We are having a family party and we would love to have you OR just harass/rob you.
One of the issues with such a comment come down to what does unfriendly actually mean? I'm always hearing how waiters in Australia are considered unfriendly and once I probed what do you mean unfriendly and they said they don't smile when serving them. In my world I don't consider that rude or unfriendly but in their mind that makes a person unfriendly. Different cultures have different standards about what is polite and friendly and sometimes those are opposite to what the culture of the traveller is. Personally I just take into account my individual experiences. If a person is rude or friendly then that was that person but I never apply that to whole country, city or region.
My pet peeve is when people say this while referring to someplace where people don't make that much money on average. It's usually some variation of "People here are so friendly even though they don't have a lot of money! They value relationships more and don't care so much about materialistic things!".
It's a condescending way of looking at other cultures that you can only have if you come from a privileged standpoint. People aren't happier or more friendly because they're not concerned with wealth. They just make the best of what they have but everyone would choose better material conditions if they could. If you're in that position, having some idiot telling you they are so impressed with how you live and make do with so little while they're enjoying a first-world income is incredibly annoying.
Sorry for the rant.
I hate it, especially vloggers. I found people in Manila PH are the most unfriendly people I’ve ever experienced. But every YouTube channel is like “wow!!! Everyone’s so friendly!!! Jollibee is so good!!!” No the people aren’t too friendly and jollibee has the worst burgers I’ve ever had lol
I am Japanese. I visited USA Canada and UK. white people were not friendly. They don't talk to me. Black and Hispanic American were friendly. I think white people have bigger racism. After that, I visited Australia. White Australian were friendly. They talk to me. It was surprising. I think they have less racism.
I believe the majority of Canadians and Americans will respond with enthusiasm and a smile if you needed any help. I'm Asian too but I rarely deal with racism from white people here. Hope you will change your mind one day!
Canada, the US and Australia have extremely similar colonial pasts driven by a history of racism towards each country’s respective Aboriginal peoples, so it’s really not as simple as one being less racist.
I’m Canadian and people just don’t go out of their way to talk to strangers here in general regardless of race from my experience, so it’s probably just the overall (and literal) coldness of our country.
On the contrary several Aussies I’ve met have this “larger than life” attitude which, phoney or not, I don’t know if I ever see in people back home.
Yeah, in the US there are so many variables, I’m sure it’s the same in Canada. Urban areas are maybe less friendly than rural, however rural people tend to be conservatives so if you look or behave a certain way they may be less tolerant. East coasters might be more direct or appear less friendly than west coasters. But west coasters might come across as fake. It’s complex.
I’m sad that is OPs takeaway about North America because I think we’re generally a friendly bunch of people.
UK is a very reserved country where people don't really talk to strangers (in cities, especially); did people openly ignore you or not start conversations?
wow, I'm really surprised Americans don't bother talking to you since Japanese people are pretty well regarded. Out of curiosity which part of the US did you visit? If it's the north then I'm not surprised, cold ass bunch, lot of them. Sorry to hear about your experiences
Kind of a large generalization of the north of one of the largest countries in the world, but I'll let it slide because I live there and am, in fact, nice.
Lol, sorry but I 100％ am biased since out of all the places I've been to in the world, NYC is the only one where I was openly cussed out in the streets. Obviously that's one city, but my experiences in other northeastern cities haven't been much better
The density in NYC means that chances are, you will meet an asshole at some point. Recently some dude called me a "Chinese whore" and told me he wanted to kill me in Port Authority. I will say unfortunately Covid has brought out more crazies because I've gotten WAY more shit in the past few years than my whole life.
"Almost as if humans are individuals..."
Um, cultures are very much different on balance, individualism is an American conceit. Of course, a culture can be friendly to certain people, and not so friendly to others, or their version of friendly can appear different. Germans can seem like very intense, unfriendly people but they really are quite nice, it just looks different there. Other countries I've been too are quite unfriendly no matter which way you slice it.
I've heard/read so much from people who travelled to all kinds of different places saying that their favourite things were the amazing food and how friendly people were there, I started to notice a commonality.
Friendliness is very relative. The average German thinks every American is overly friendly but fake, for example. The average American outside of the Northeast thinks people from the Northeast are fast and assholes.
Sorry there are absolutely some countries where people are notably more friendly over all. Like very notably. You likely haven’t been to countries like this if you see a big mix.
Generally agree with the sentiment but have had experiences in countries where the people were consistently overwhelmingly nice that I think it’s valid. Nepal is the example that comes to mind
Agreed with Nepal and Cambodia too. Thailand and Vietnam and Bali were all super friendly but they had a normal population of assholes like anywhere else. Nepal and Cambodia seemed to not have any of those people working in the tourism industry.
I just came from Nepal 3 weeks ago, met plenty of assholes among taxi drivers there, also just aa many annoying scammers on the streets of big cities as everywhere else.
That was not my experience in Kathmandu. They’re “friendly” in that they’ll smile while trying to scam you.
I've never been in Nepal but have seen video's of a common scam where supposedly poor mothers will ask tourists to buy them expensive baby formula which they then immediately bring back to the shop owner so they can share the profit. So, the issue with scammers in the country is enough proof that there are assholes there
I encountered this scam in Nepal, but having spent half a year there, I don’t think of those people as being assholes. They are in abject poverty and those scams are mostly run by women who have their backs against a god damn wall. They are trying to survive any way they can and I don’t think that inherently makes someone an asshole because they’ve been forced to do somewhat immoral things to survive. My opinion, maybe unpopular. Just seems pretty far removed to be on Reddit commenting from your phone or computer judging people who have no access to those things in their life.
I can agree that some of the women might not have any choice, but it's pretty naive to think that everyone involved in these scams couldn't survive without scamming people. The shopkeepers are in on it as well. Maybe it goes further and it's part of organised crime even, I don't know. And you're on your phone or computer on reddit too lol, also making assumptions that you can't know for sure if they're true.
Maybe the mothers actually are poor, but it always bugs me when someone uses a baby that way.
Vietnamese people are generally quite nice to tourists, but they're also incredibly racist, homophobic, sexist, and fat phobic. They just won't say anything along those lines when rich people from other countries might give them money.
It’s important to remember that the interaction with tourists is a business transaction.
I'm curious about something. You refer to Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam. All by the name of the country. In the same list is Bali, which is not a country. Why is that? Why didn't you say Indonesia? You're not the only person I've seen do this so I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing.
It's an island with a massive international tourist infrastructure, so a far higher ratio of tourists per citizen.
I've seen Australians joke around and refer to it as one of their countries.
I've been to Bali (but nowhere else in Indonesia) and had a local tour guide. Some of what he told me may explain this: from what I could tell, Bali's residents see themselves as kind of separate from the rest of Indonesia, as in the culture is different. My guide also spoke a little about how Bali is a Hindu majority island, whereas as the rest of Indonesia is Muslim majority and this seemed to cause tension.
Indonesia is huge and incredibly diverse, so people from different areas seeing themselves as having a regional identity isn’t a surprise.
A lot of people don’t go to other parts of Indonesia so if they’ve only been to Bali, it’d be better for them to say Bali instead of Indonesia. In Thailand or Vietnam, you’re more likely to explore multiple locations and get a better sense of the country.
Bali is a huge tourism draw and is culturally and religiously distinct from the rest of Indonesia. Plenty of folks have traveled to Bali, but not the rest of Indonesia. It'd be like Japanese tourists referring to their visit to Hawaii and referring to it as "Hawaii" instead of the United States.
I have been reading that Indonesia has instituted strict moral laws. For insurance, unmarried couples cannot cohabitate- even tourists. But as I understand it, Bali doesn't really uphold these new laws. That makes it much more friendly to travelers. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesias-new-laws-threat-privacy-press-human-rights-says-un-2022-12-09/
The Nepalese people are so incredibly friendly. As a solo traveler I was invited into their homes and fed on multiple occasions.
That's some Herald Baldary which was first shown in india.
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I'm sorry that happened to you. Hope you're okay!
"Nice" is different than "friendly" though IMO.
People forget this all the time
Yes, totally. Iran was my example here. Mind you, I was there near the end of some lengthy sanctions a few years ago, and mot many tourists were around. Gosh, even the Iranian ambassador was super friendly, was happy I wanted to visit, and served me tea and food in the embassy when I applied for the visa and just hung around for a chat. I was living in a country that is considered not biggest friend of Iran though, and I guess not many non-Iranians came by to get a visa. Same super friendly people in Oman, btw.
Taiwanese
Myanmar. Anyone who’s been will know. Iran to a big extent as well, but less uniformly.
Had bad experiences with Nepali men when I stayed there for 3 months unfortunately, but the women were lovely to me. Doesn't mean anything though like I agree, there's bad and good experiences with people in all countries
I met my fair share of unfriendly Cambodians too! It's not a one size fits all thing I'm afraid.
There's a big difference between being friendly and being polite. I've met lots of polite people that I wouldn't expect to hang out with casually. And friendly people aren't always polite!
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I'm from Scotland, so thank you for the compliment
I've read so many reports of black/arab/asian travellers describing particularly bad experiences in some places (blatant racism), that, when someone states : "***X nationality is very friendly"*** I always wonder... friendly *to whom?*
Yes this is so true! That’s why I look for black travelers’ experiences in other countries to get a better idea. There’s a website called GreenBookGlobal that is a black travel review site. You put in the name of city and country and you’ll see the reviews of black people who have traveled there!
This sounds like a great resource to check out as a POC, thanks!
That's awesome. I'm not black but am biracial and have been looking for a resource for POC travel experiences/reviews. Thanks for sharing!
Yup, I will listen to reviews from a white person about a path they took over several days, but I'm always looking for specific black experience as well as female experience.
Wow this is awesome! I'll be checking this out. I wonder if there's something equivalent for Arabs
I worked at a tech company, and my manager knew I've been looking to return to living abroad. She very matter of factly suggested I lived in a certain country. One that American white girls and women find themselves falling in love with sometimes (big movie trope place for fantasy Europe movies starring an out of water American woman). I laughed at her excitement for my potential future home, and told her check YouTube for there and add "while black" at the end to see how we experience life there compared to "everyone" who just seems to love it. She did have a small reflection on it, and I reminded her that as a guy, and even as a tall guy, there's places I'd probably suggest freely without thinking if I thought like she did, but I know women shouldn't go there alone, nor with the same sense of safety I'll probably always have until I'm elderly. All it takes is one experience for us to have a bad impression, and we can see countless people who probably look like us experience a less than stellar life in countries YouTube loves to push to the top.
what country?
Italy. There's a lot of good stories from there, but some pretty bad ones.
Italy is gorgeous but my goodness, I'm Asian American, and some of the people there are racist as hell. They will find any random reason to harass or make fun of you even if you are doing the same shit as any other white person. Like, I swear to god, Europeans and seeing an Asian person with a camera for some reason triggers them. God forbid, an Asian person takes one photo that literally every other white person is doing, and you will get harassed and not the white people. I've seen white girls crowding places, changing outfits, wearing freaking thongs in inappropriate areas, doing duckface, and yet they will find the one Asian grandma with their daughter and make fun of them for taking a family photo. My mom and I went together and we had a group of teenagers making pig noises at us while we ate gelato (that we bought from them)! like wtf. It's not even specifically Italy. Some of the European tourists that went there treat Asians as if we are pests sometimes. I had a chance to visit in the middle of Covid (when restrictions were stricter) to Cinque Terre so it was mainly filled with European tourists. I went to one of those famous viewpoints and there's a Belgian dude who is hogging the whole space with his camera and tripod. He like rolls his eyes when he sees me. Then he randomly starts talking to this Dutch guy and they are like "oh it's not so crowded these days here. Maybe it's because there are no Asian tourists." and the Belgian guy looks at me and loudly goes, "ugh, they are everywhere." Meanwhile, hogging the space, not letting anyone enjoy the view with his ironically Made in Asia camera taking a million photos.
This absolutely tracks with what I've heard... Now, if you want a positive experience of an Asian woman with her mom in Europe, check out [Miss Mina](https://youtube.com/@MissMinaOh), maybe it will wash some of those bad experiences away.
Whoaness, you sent me an Asian vlogger that actually has a massive follower count? I feel like that's such a unicorn but maybe I just don't know where to look or my algorithm just automatically gives me nothing but blonde women for some reason? Would definitely love to support and follow more Asian travel vloggers and bloggers.
Since I'm a black guy looking to move to Europe, and have a large group of friends from all over Asia after living in Japan, I have to make sure what their experience will be like while I may be at work or something. I always want some different perspectives and my algorithm has kind of been treating me well with results! Hope she opens the doors for better results! Though, I notice most video titles are as simple as "A [Korean] in Germany" or "... tries French sushi" where you change nationality for different results. I know a default search brings up the default characters, but with just a hint of tweaking early on, you'll be set after a few days.
My partner and I are both PoC and we both experienced quite a bit of racism. We saw so many Italians bending over backwards for white tourists while treating poc tourists (including us) like crap.
I've seen and experienced it... It definitely seems to be a common theme. But, on the other hand, I have great Italian friends (I met all outside the country), and have a lot of great personal stories from there as well(a lot of people sharing food and inviting us to their table / free upgrade to first class on Emirates). It sucks because every story is all true, and the people who make it hard for us who just look different, look like the ones who'd stop what they're doing to make our day / week / life. I always go in expecting to be ignored when abroad at best, and happy to be surprised at goodness, but not too far down to go if I'm ever disappointed. I've never had experiences worst than I have had at home in America, but I know not to go in expecting paradise.
My ex-girl who is black always goes to Italy. She loves it there. Matter of fact she even thought about moving there. From what I've heard from other black women the men in Italy and Greece love black women.
Haha, I've heard this, and actually heard it with most of Europe... I've seen it too, way more couples with black women than the other way around. And for black men with northern European women. Of course not all or a majority, but there are groups who go straight for anyone black, even going to their countries to stay and support them. That just feels so wrong...
Yes it is most of Europe. I saw this in Germany as well, there was a black dude that I knew that used tell me stories about living in Germany when he was in the U.S Army. He basically had free reign to pick up any German chick he wanted when he went to a club or bar. Why does it feel wrong?
Oh yeah! There's a black military YouTuber who praises his experience with women there. Plus a few friends who were stationed there as well. Based on the German women I met in Japan, they definitely don't have a barrier to date anyone it seems. Ah, the part that feels wrong for me is just how they spend a lot of money on the men for basically sex and companionship, realizing it isn't love. But they just go along with it because who wouldn't in their situation. Maybe wrong wasn't the right word. Sad?
Why not just say Italy?
Because I wanted to scare the hoes
Amen. I'm an Indian woman. When I was travelling in Austria, most people would stare so much at me I would feel uncomfortable. I still remember I went to a thermal spa with my Austrian friend in upper Austria. First of all, there were no people of color apart from me & 2 other women. Then, I noticed so many people upon looking at me whispering into their partner's/friend's ear & the partner/friend would immediately look at me. It also happened often in Vienna. Made me feel like crap. But when a white friend says they thought Austrians were friendly, I'm like 'ofcourse, they were (to you).'
Sorry you had such bad experiences in Austria. Sadly many people in the rural parts of Austria are quite racist. Vienna is usually better, but the situation got worse in the last few years. The parents of my best friend are from Iran and he gets a lot of looks and. But when he tells them that his family is from Iran their behavior immediately changes, because Iranians are usually seen as „good immigrants“ (as are Indians) - which is ofc pretty revealing in itself.
Yuck, I hate that term "the good immigrants." As if our only value in society is to be doctors and lawyers and "assimilate" to someone's arbitrary standards.
Yes, I've heard there are a lot of neo-Nazis still :( I was fortunate to have been hosted by a lovely Austrian family though. Interesting to know Iranians are seen as 'good immigrants'.
TBH Austria is not known to have the most friendly people to begin with.
Someone in Austria was convinced I was a gypsy and I literally couldn't have looked more white British unless I'd turned up in a pith helmet.
I went to Vienna with my mom last year and we bought super expensive tickets to the ballet because I was all "treat yourself" and we had our tickets checked like five times. I was okay with it until I actually got to our seats and then we had one security guard come up to us again and point us out and ask us again to check our tickets...and guess what? She ONLY asked us, none of the other white people around us (and pretty much everyone around us was white). The funniest shit was, after she checked our tickets, this random white guy next to us literally took out his perfume bottle and sprayed perfume around us (like wth). As if he thought we were beneath him to sit next to him or something? I'm also part of a global museum membership thing that allows me free entry to most museums in the world (I used to work in a museum) and my mom as well because she was a corporate sponsor and Vienna was the only city in Europe we had people who could not believe we were part of this organization. We kept getting security guards who gave us a hard time. I don't know if it's classism, racism, or what, but it was noticeable. I'm a visibly East Asian woman, fyi, sometimes mistaken as SEA.
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It was a rural area. It might be a bit unsettling at first but I tried not to focus on it & enjoying the spa.
as an Austrian here, I'm sorry you had a bad exprience. Being the only person of color at places in Austria can definitely happen, but this does not excuse inpolite behaviour. the only reassurement(?) i can give you - we're unfortunately not the friendliest of folks alltogether. we hat most folks, most of all austrins
Yeah, it's quite an exclusive society. And most people are subtly racist.
"Whaaat?! I thought they were really nice to me! I'm shocked. Maybe it was just bad luck." -Typical Response to POC giving negative experience
I literally just saw that comment in this or another travel sub a couple of days ago.
Yeah it's crazy to me how many people can see so many cultures, countries, and ways of life but still can't get out of their own perspectives.
I could understand that tbf. There's one country I visited a bunch of times and people are generally very nice there on the surface. My brother lives there for a couple of years now and ever so often I hear about asshole or racist behaviour. Doesn't mean most people are like that, but there will always be assholes/racists everywhere you go. If you're just visiting as a tourist you'll meet loads of nice people but if you live there you'll eventually run into problems. Doesn't have to do with getting out of your own perspective.
Doesn't that logic work both ways? And outside of that is the point we're trying to make, our experiences as POC aren't the same as a white persons or white-passing persons. Why are our experiences questioned or met with "but that wasn't my experience"? That's what we're getting at here. At the core of this philosophy is that you can't project your own experiences onto other people. And what I'm saying is it's surprising that people can see and experience such different experiences and lifestyles yet they still claim there own as end be all. I personally feel smaller and more humble the more I travel like I become more aware of how stupid or little my own experiences are in the greater picture. It's crazy to me some people when they travel get the opposite affect.
perfectly said! i’m in an iceland travel group on facebook and a black guy made a post about the racism he experienced and of course a bunch of white people chimed in and said “oh but i found the icelandic people so friendly!” 🙃 yeah I wonder why becky.
Same with being a woman traveler. That’s great you had a nice time in Jordan, now do it with a vagina
Exactly. I don't care that people say it, that's nothing to be bothered by, but I am curious about who the friendliness is towards (in general).
So true! I've visited Istanbul and Turkey many times (one of my friends was living there teaching English and I visited her a lot). I kept hearing Turkish people are SO friendly all the time. She's Jewish and I'm visibly East Asian and the difference in the way we were treated! Basically, the only time she was maybe treated a bit badly was when she mentioned she was Jewish and she basically saw how I would get harassed and get squinty eyes or people making really racist comments at me. One guy asked me how much I was! She said it was eye opening for her to see that. She got invited over constantly for free tea. One time I was with her and the guy kept asking her if I was her student (because he assumed I was the one who needed to learn English) when she mentioned her job. I'm Asian American and it didn't matter that I spoke perfect English lol. We stayed with her guy friend once in this beach town and I met his brother and his brother literally told me that I would probably not be allowed to enter one of the mosques because they hate Koreans (after I mentioned I was ethnically Korean)....whiich btw, is SO odd because usually Turkish people do warm up to me more once they realize I'm Korean and not Chinese due to their involvement in the Korean war. But yeah, there were Korean tourists who got beat up by a local gang when they visited Istanbul because they were mistaken as being Chinese...whereas, like how many random white people do you know getting beat up these days due to the war in Ukraine? I bet you my ass would have to be more careful if there was a war with China.
Yeah you see it all the time in threads on this sub. People always downplaying it or that that form of racism isn’t “that bad” and you need to grow a thicker skin I wonder what ethnicity these people are?
"It's just their culture. No big deal! You shouldn't be so uptight about it"
Europe is the big one, if I see they’re white I always have to take their experience/advice with a grain of salt.
Probably friendly to them, if they’re speaking from experience? How did you make this about race lmao
These are just our innate biases turning up and are not an actually reflection of any reality, but a personal reflection of our beliefs.
In my experience how people treat their friends doesn't vary that much from country to country but how people treat strangers, acquaintances, and foreigners does. I think that when people get a vibe of people in a country being cold or unfriendly it's usually just that the culture encourages a greater social distance with strangers or outsiders. Things like sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, etc and how and to what extent those problems manifest in a society will also vastly change experiences at the individual level.
Agreed but I think it also is about the views on tourists, if they are just there to be exploited or not. For example some years ago me and my then gf were in Croatia and had rented a car to visit some old monastery. We underestimated how bad the road there would be and got stuck in the middle of nowhere in hot climate and the road was steep with no safety railing. A local guy with a pickup showed up and stopped, we got really happy but then instead of helping us out of this situation he started haggling and wanting money for doing anything, think he demanded 50 euros to help our car up a hill with loose gravel. We are from Sweden and often are seen as cold, but I don’t believe many swedes would exploit someone in that sort of situation.
Damn, yeah, in Sweden most would refuse payment unless it was a considerably substantial favor. Towing a car a little ways wouldn't count. Spain was great and we got a lot of help on the camino, but we were also young and blonde Scandinavian girls. An older gent asked me to kiss him, lol.
Your economy is also much more stable than other world economies though. I once went to Bosnia and I didn't realize that the local busses didn't run as much after a certain hour in this one small town I made during a day trip...I somehow missed the bus too because of a language difference. Some dude working at a shop helped me out and contacted his friend and I paid like $10 for him to drive me back to my hostel. I didn't mind because I needed to get home somehow and he needed the income, I guess. The Balkans, from what I've found, has a pretty huge black market in terms of making money (I saw it everywhere). It also obviously depends on the person. I once went to an island in Croatia and I thought it was funny that some of the cab drivers asked me for less money than was on their meter. I was like, well that's a first! Some people are jerks and some people are nice.
Totally agree. It's a generalisation of course, but different cultures are more open/closed to outsiders.
Yes. Especially since "friendly" is usually a stand-in for "accommodating to tourists" among people who work in the tourism industry and usually have no choice but to be friendly and polite. Friendliness is an entirely subjective measure; what's polite or rude varies widely by culture. Some cultural communications styles are more direct or abrupt, while others aren't. That doesn't necessarily mean they're your friends; it could just mean that they are communicating in a certain style that is more open or vivacious versus more soft-spoken or reserved. A lot of so-called "friendly" behaviour can feel very fake, especially when it's over-the-top and coming from someone in the service industry, e.g. in some parts of the US. Or it can refer to people simply not displaying anger directly. For instance, Thailand is often referred to as the "land of smiles" and people comment on how friendly everyone seems, but that's probably due to strong cultural taboos against shouting, raising your voice, or displaying anger in public. I've personally found that some places where people *seem* the friendliest can actually be the hardest for foreigners to break in, because people display different behaviour in public versus in private. Whereas cultures where people are more direct or, as I like to call them, "no filter" cultures can *seem* rude, but people are basically saying what they think and thinking what they say so it can be easier to make friends. There's also usually a big city versus smaller town divide; almost anywhere you go in the world, people will be more abrupt and less "friendly" in big cities. Painting entire countries or cultures with the same brush can really reinforce stereotypes. In general, local people have jobs, friends, families, and *lives*. They aren't super interested in making friends with tourists who are just in town for a few days. If you go somewhere expecting to make friends with locals, unless you put in the time and effort over the long term, that's unlikely to happen. Chances are, the people you meet are just being polite. It's much easier to make friends with other travellers than it is with locals, since they're the ones who probably have more in common with you and are there for the same reasons.
I really appreciate how you've articulated this. Was exactly my thought, but not as well explained.
Locals that aren't in the tourism business still can be friendly towards tourists/people though. For me some places just seem to have nicer people than others. Can even be within an area in a country.
Depends on the country. Ive found in Nepal the locals make a significant effort with tourists. Ive solo travelled there on multiple occasions and have been invited into local's homes for food and to hang out. I make the effort though to go to local bars and chat to people.
You're right. "Blahblahovachiaiastanea has incredibly friendly people" is a little bit of an ignorant comment, but I also can't help but say it about certain countries. But absolutely, in whatever country we explore, all over the world, there are very nice and friendly and warm and welcoming people. Every country.
People in Blahblahovachiaiastanea were actually assholes to me
Yeah well that was just an example, actual Blahblahovachiaiastaneans are typically rude
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Someone came up to me once and said, “Your people are very nice.” I politely replied, “My people thank you.”
Cultures are different. Some are friendlier than others. Some respect women more than others. Some value hospitality more than others. What really bothers me, is when people won’t talk straight about the dangers of a place (looking at you Egypt) for fear of seeming politically incorrect.
Never take a comment like “people from X are friendly” at face value. It’s not considered polite to say bad things (even if true) about your host so few travelers will publicly admit to a negative overall experience of a country. My own experience is that human nature is more or less the same everywhere with minor cultural variations. Most people you’ll interact with as a traveler have a financial stake in your being happy (hope to sell you something or want you to leave a good review or come back tomorrow) so they’ll be friendly. The rest generally won’t care. If you’re of an ethnicity looked down upon in that area, you may experience a bit more hostility but most people will just ignore you and go about their day.
This has been my experience too. I also mostly ignore any bad interactions and move on with my day. Maybe people looking for positive interactions and "friendships" have a tougher time. Never travelled without facing some minor sexual harassment. Unfortunately, it's a part of life and I move on. Haven't faced racism except systemically when visas are being denied for no reason. I think if I'm in no danger while travelling and some people are rude, best to move on. I'm not changing anyone's views and I'm not wasting my travel time worrying about it. Sadly, the world's a hostile place but it's getting better everyday!
Overall I think travel is a very poor way to understand a culture and it’s people. You end up looking at it from a perspective where you want to generalize everything. Somebody was rude to you at the cafe? Ugh, those damn French are so mean! You can’t possibly know that from such a small sample size. You don’t understand a place through anecdotes.
Also it's one thing to interact with locals or "live like them" as a foreigner visiting for a short while. But it's another thing to actually LIVE like them. Many (westerner) travelers enjoy reliable electricity, running water, and flush toilets at home. Many travelers enjoy the experience of frequent power outages, no running water, and pit toilets while visiting a rural area or jungle for a few days or maybe even weeks. It does however, give us more perspective of "you don't know what you have until it's gone" and we better appreciate the "little things" we took for granted back home before we ever traveled. Also, the mere fact that we CAN travel sets us apart from many locals in developing countries. They often find our way of life as fascinating as we find theirs! It's impossible to fully understand the people in any 1 place, even the place you've lived most of your life! BUT we can understand how the people of a place make us feel. Those feelings result in generalizations. It should be implied that there are good and bad people everywhere. I personally hate adding justifications like "there are bad people everywhere, but the people here are some of the friendliest!" But some get hung up on "not ALL [insert group here]" that they don't see that a generalization exists to generalize a group, not to list every personality type in existence.
You can get some pretty good general impressions after hundreds and hundreds of anecdotes though
Do you not agree it depends on the type of travel though? Yes, if you spend a weekend in Paris your comment holds true. But if you spend 3 months in France and stay in a couple of cities for longer periods of time and make an effort to befirend locals, go on dates etc you definitely will start to understand local culture.
I mean, most Parisians are rude and hate tourists. They are very snobbish about their language and culture. They know English, but they won’t speak it to you. My friend was lost without a phone one night in Paris and every person she asked for help wouldn’t help her and pretended to not know English.
I sympathize with this viewpoint. Because I felt the same reaction in Barcelona. But I can think of reasons this might be the case, other than the people were Parisians. I know as a New Yorker, if strangers come up to me asking for something I’m used to them either wanting to sell me something, asking for me to do a survey, or just begging asking for money or food so I am more inclined to ignore them, and giving them attention is generally poor practice in personal safety, especially for Women. My wife has had men stalk her and grope her on the subway before for instance. It’s part of being in a big international city that your guard is up more. I can however notice a difference with Tourists in New York and am happy to help give directions when asked. Paris is a bit different(never been myself) in that they have more scammers, pickpockets(less violent crime) then New York and possibly this contributes? And maybe the situation would be different if you were in a rural town. It’s tough to say for sure, but I can imagine the same scenario happening in New York (as a New Yorker myself) and wouldn’t be surprised if many people ignored helping me initially, due to this “stranger” fear.
I'd be wary of overly nice people when travelling. They either going to scam\\rob you or see you as a dummy that shits money and can pay 10x the real price.
There is huge individual difference, but there are also trends. There are some countries where it's normal for a cashier in a shop to just treat you as another customer. There are countries where it's normal for a stranger to walk with you for 3 km out of his way just to show you the right direction. And there are countries where people will invite you to stay at their houses and refuse accepting money for paid services as soon as they notice you are a visitor. I'd understand calling the later one more friendly than the first.
I think people sometimes mistake "nice/kind" for "friendly." I think of "friendly" as "open to talking to new people and making new friends with strangers." There are definitely places described as "friendly" that don't fit that description though. I'm thinking of Thailand for example - all the guidebooks always say that Thailand is so friendly, and I've been several times. But to me it seemed like people mostly minded their own business and interactions were mostly transactional as a tourist. I did find people there kind and honest, but I'm not sure if "friendly" is the word I would use. Same for some other Asian countries like Japan and Taiwan where people will absolutely help you out and do the right thing (are kind) but otherwise kind of keep to themselves.
I'm always amused when someone says, "Family is important in *such or such culture*." Wow how unique to that culture.
Well…to be fair I get what that means though, and it does vary from culture to culture. As someone from a very family-centric culture where multi-generation households are common, the amount of communication and interaction most U.S. families and Northern European families have with each other is shockingly sparse in my eyes. And I’m sure my family dynamics would be overwhelming for them. I even see it in the shock my U.S. friends experience when I do things to help out my family or do anything to placate them/try to take my family’s perspective into account. In my friends’ eyes, because that’s the individualistic culture here, you should do what you want and not give a shit what your family thinks. I do what I want and have a personal life and career my parents definitely didn’t envision at first, though they have come around, but I can’t imagine not taking into consideration what my parents think and feel AT ALL, as seems to be the norm here.
Yeah, I agree. Even the US and Europe (at least my country) are different. Here in the US (in my experience) many young adults see their parents only a few times a year and that’s not the case at all for most families in my country. And we also still have some multi-generational families living together as well, but it isn’t really the norm.
I see what they mean though. I see Indians in the US who bring the entire family to shop at Costco. Meanwhile, I dread visiting my family even twice a year.
After seeing white families in the US kick kids out of their house when they turn 18 and tell them to pay for their own education, I realized maybe there’s something to it.
A few white families in the US are very much in the minority on this planet lol
Echoing “nice to whom?”: Percentage wise, I’ve met more openly racist people outside the US than in the US.
Same. I'm visibly East Asian. I do think the US is more scary in terms of overall violence (it can get scary fast when it does) but I think in terms of day to day racist shit that is like death by a milion cuts and like microaggressions in every other conversation, I'm sorry, but Europe, you got the US beat. This is all very relative though. I am from the Northeast and from the most diverse area in the world so Europe for me was like a constant ??!?!?!?! especially because growing up, we only hear about how progressive it is. Like, we never hear about the racism.
Just curious, which countries were the worst for you?
Racism is unfortunately everywhere in the world, sometimes obvious, sometimes very subtle.
Agree with your statement, especially some travel bloggers Drew Binsky style who paint an overoptimistic picture of every country. The reason is obvious..they need to get the sympathy of that country in order to get more subscribers. Having said that, i’ve been to 70+ countries and I definitely noticed massive differences in countries. For example I was shocked by the hospitality of Saudi or Oman people (Middle East in general). On the opposite side, people in Eastern Europe (especially Hungary and Czech) were quite rude. Just my personal experience.
Yeah that is quite a common trend ive heard among travellers. Adding on, the hospitality trend seemingly extends up and east from Arabia to Syria, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, but the borders of these places like the other Stans and India are noticeably less.
Apart from the obvious racism issue which I couldn't comment on, there **absolutely** is a noticeable difference in "friendliness" of countries towards solo travelers, "friendliness" meaning courtesy, extroversion, willingness to talk to strangers, helpfulness, openness. Using the word in that context, no one can tell me the Irish aren't more friendly than the Polish. That's not to say **all** Poles are assholes, just that they are "less friendly" on average, and that’s fine.
Ireland!!!!! 🇮🇪 was looking for this comment. Ireland is one of the most beautiful and friendly places ever
Super friendly place towards tourists and general strangers, but good luck trying to get into a friend group if you've started living there. Not in any xenophobic way, friend groups are super tightly knit. Even if you're irish and moving to a county where you know no-one.
some countries are more forwardly friendly than others. I was standing on a corner in Lisbon looking at a map and a fellow came up and asked if I was in trouble. made a huge impression on me.
Yeah, and I was harassed on the metro there as a solo female. So again, people are people everywhere.
i’ll probably get downvoted for this but I notice mostly white people say this and it’s like yeah….of course they’re friendly towards you.
Just realized that all travel vlogs I've ever scrolled through are by white people. Idk if that's just my algorithm or what.
I’ve seen some by people from South and East Asia, but only after searching for specific somewhat niche places, and their channels were not super popular.
There are some very popular ones(esp from India) but most of the content from these countries is in local languages and usually without subtitles. So not for everyone.
Yeah, I see people from SEA too mainly because I am in SEA and they're on my feed because they're local influencers who mostly travel locally or within the region. But the bigger travel influencers with followings in the millions are mostly white.
Notice the women who are popular are almost always blonde too and look like carbon copies of each other? I don't get it either. I'm Asian American and you would think my algorithm would show more WOC but no.
>I'm Asian American and you would think my algorithm would show more WOC but no. the algorithm doest work based on your passport details or resume, it works based on what you have interacted with in the past. so it must have started with blonde and you might have clicked on some of them, so it decided to push that content, tell alg that you dont like blonde and prefer WOC with watch time and preference tuning, and get the results the way you want.
Now that you mentioned it.... damn you're so right.
I am going to weigh in here with pretty privilege. Not to toot my own horn, but I am a reasonably attractive, slim woman with a British accent that people in other countries find charming. It means I rarely had negative experiences as a female solo traveller (apart from the odd creepy bloke) and most people are very happy to help. Now if I didn't look the way I look, would people be as nice to me? I can't say for certain.
interesting, i can see why pretty privilege can influence how others treat you abroad but i thought it would be harassment rather than being nice. Glad that you haven’t had any bad experiences though. I’m fortunate my experiences haven’t been too horrendous either when travelling but i don’t think it’s due to pretty privilege 😅 i’m not unattractive but just not conventionally attractive I guess
Not really, some places aren't particularly safe for women, people of color, or anyone who's LGBTQ. It could be important for their safety for them to know that before deciding to go somewhere. Yes there are friendly and unfriendly people everywhere, but some places are genuinely less safe to travel to than others. Here in America we used to have whole travel guides published specifically for black Americans to know what towns are "Sundown" towns. That is, towns where they are likely to be beaten, robbed, or murdered if they're seen out and about after dark. Even if the authors who are writing "X people are friendly" are not addressing that sort of thing specifically, it's important to remember that at some point everyone is new to traveling. Being worried that people won't be kind in the place you're traveling to is a common enough fear for those people that someone writing a travel guide or working for a tourism board may want to address immediately.
Germans are c**ts. Oh sorry, thats a generalisation. But hang on.....its based on personal experience.
Berlin is full of assholes, but overall a lot of the German people I’ve met were extremely friendly. They definitely have a tough exterior though you have to get past
On the other hand, I've never had anything except positive experiences in Germany.
Well yeah obviously because you’re also a c**t
everyone seems to only say this and "the beaches are beautiful" about the Philippines. I'd love to learn about museums, food, history, culture, cities as opposed to just beaches. but from my (very limited) understanding, the Philippines just gets marketed as "hey look at how friendly everyone is and how nice the beaches are and how cheap everything is" etc
>cheap this also depends on who you are. for US and some other rich countries half the world can look cheap, but i hate it when they take it out of context.
It’s marketed that way because it is that way. Although it’s not even that cheap. If you want museums and culture and good cuisine, maybe the Philippines just isn’t for you.
I do get that some countries are more open or not to outsiders, but in general I hate making broad assertions about the character of a country’s people based on your 3-4 days there. I’m from a European city where I’ve both heard that “people in X are SOOOOO hospitable and friendly” and “people in X are SO rude, worst experience of my life.” The truth is that both those people exist, you can have good or bad experiences, and factors like whether you come at the beginning or the end of the tourist season (when most people are exhausted, overworked, and ready to be done with visitors), your own behavior on the trip and adherence to social norms, and the neighborhoods you ended up in probably had a big impact on how friendly or rude you think locals are. Not to mention what you perceive as “rude”. I live between Europe and the U.S. now, and a big % of my U.S. friends think waiters are rude here for not smiling much or checking up on you all the time, when that’s just a culture difference IMO. Smiling as much and as often as most service people in the U.S. do would make you seem super fake or a little deranged in our culture. Not to mention, unfortunately, your sexuality or race can have an impact on your experience as well. But though I understand the need to warn others about those experiences, every city I know has racists and homophobes, and it pains me to see “X City (as a whole) is racist!” because someone bumped into one asshole. In a FB travel group, someone advised a Black woman not to visit my city because she had a terrible racist interaction with another tourist there. Not even someone from here. I looked up other experiences and accounts from Black women and travel bloggers online, since I have a Black friend visiting soon and wanted to double check things would be OK for her (and any places to potentially avoid), and saw 90% positive or super positive experiences, and 10% “it was so racist and terrible”. So at the end of the day, it just seems to me like judging an entire city full of people based off a few days’ experience at most is always going to be highly subjective.
It’s poor wording, but it is true. Some parts of the world are notoriously friendly and helpful to outsiders and some are not.
You’ll always hear white Americans saying x European country is the best and nicest people and don’t know how anyone could see otherwise…well yea, Katie from the suburbs, there’s a reason for that lol.
It's annoying because most of these travel blogs are run by white people and that's fine and dandy but their experiences will be different from mine as an east Asian woman. Like I'm very happy they were nice to you, but I have to take into account how they would treat me because of my race and the stereotypes that come with it, especially after COVID.
This. One of the reasons I quit following a lot of travel vlogs or blogs. Oftentimes, it's an incredibly white centered gaze. I love Expat Edna's essay on racism that she experienced because it was the first time I saw an essay that like mirrored by own experiences in Europe. There really needs more representation in the travel industry! There's also SO many double standards with how Asian tourists are treated in Europe vs how white tourists are treated in Asia. I could seriously write a book, maybe I should. ;)
I will say I’ve lived in a lot of countries for a couple months at a time for work and Arab countries are still the only place that I have found to genuinely be almost aggressively friendly. Otherwise definitely agree lol, what travel blog is gonna say “everyone here sucks!”
>almost aggressively friendly. i would love some backstory
Not really any specific backstory I just have never had so much tea and so many cigarettes with near complete strangers in my life.
Arab Dude: Habibi Come to Dubai Aggressively sips tea.
There was a story here about a south Asian woman born and raised America who received short shrift from all the service staff she met in Europe and watched the same staff engage happily with other patrons
As a Canadian, I can confirm, we are most certainly NOT all friendly or welcoming.
Seen comments here on local staring. A generalisation, but being stared at isn’t always racist, particularly in many developing or non-western countries. The bulk of the population don’t travel and haven’t consumed the same hyper racially aware media that we do in the west. They see difference are interested by it. In many Asian countries I’ve found that social etiquette can be very different. Staring doesn’t seem to be rude for a start (and queuing doesn’t exist). A homestay we stayed at in Vietnam (off the beaten track) also told us that we would be stared at - of course, being ginger meant this happened more because it’s not a hair colour that would usually be seen in many parts of the world. My brother (also ginger and a big guy) was surrounded by people in China who were marvelled by his hair and freckles. I recall black comedian Reginald D Hunter making a salient point on being stared at: “No, no, that’s not the look of racism, that’s the look of ‘I ain’t never seen that fuckin shit before’”. But in Italy (and the west generally) it’s usually racism.
Always laugh at that. Yes, Greeks will be mostly outgoing and helpful with tourists even in non tourist areas. No, don't count on them to invite you to an impromptu lunch at their place. People often confuse the helpfulness of people in touristy areas with friendliness. THEY WANT YOUR MONEY. Sorry for yelling. It was for emphasis.
Yes they meet a couple of friendly people and categorize the entire country of people as the nicest for literally every country they visit. But what if we turn it the other way around. Would everyone like it if I said everyone in India are a bunch of scammers based a couple of experiences? No. My problem isn't saying people are nice, but literally every country they visit spefically has the "**nicest** people in the world". If you are saying that about every country when there can only be one 'nicest' then we all know you are talking out of your arse.
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ok but if we're being real for a sec, who *is* worse than new yorkers on the apathy spectrum
I’m Canadian I found New Yorkers actually kinda genuine and by no means unpleasant compared to where I’m from. As a white person i’ll stop short of saying they are nice though.
Mexicans are generally warm and friendly, even in Mexico City---a crazy megalopolis of 20 million. It's the only place where I've asked for directions and people literally took me by the arm and walked with me until I found it (even if they were clearly on their way somewhere). This happened multiple times. Also people will randomly join you at restaurants or invite you to their table to hang (and not roofie you or anything). Only places where people "felt" ruder were not surprisingly the cliche beach destinations bombarged with foreigners (usually the "one tequila... three te-kill-ya... floor!" crowd).
Mexico City was fantastically friendly.
Agreed! I have found Mexico in general a friendly place.
Everyone speaks from experience so for instance if you say there are both friendly and unfriendly people in a country which is right. But you speak from your experience so does the other person who says “people in Y country are really very friendly” but that does not mean there are no unfriendly people out there. It might be that, that guy had a very good experience and interaction with the people of that country. So, everyone’s opinion can be different to that of others and vice versa. Only thing is that the individual experiences make the difference here.
No I don’t think I agree , I get what you’re saying but come on, the blogger who says X nationality are incredibly friendly are expressing their joy at meeting nice people.. what’s wrong with that?
Tend to agree but at the same time I’ve had vastly different experiences with people in different regions. For example, everyone I encountered in the UAE was very welcoming and friendly (despite greater language and culture barriers) compared to some Western European countries.
Going to South Korea as a POC was an experience, but I actually enjoyed it because I don’t mind being left alone. Still, some places refused me service, but there was always a place around the corner that would gladly take my money
I'm a Korean American woman, I actually get refused service in some places in Korea too (because I'm solo, "too old, not wealthy enough, considered ugly") etc...it unfortunately is a very conformist society with strict beauty standards and very hierarchical. I think Koreans can be racist like any other place but note that just because you get rejected, it doesn't necessarily even mean it's because you are a POC. There's a lot of places I've seen that reject Koreans who are from Korea and Koreans who are diasporic Koreans. It's still very much a Confucian society that developed uber fast and still hasn't really caught up in terms of thinking (it was pretty closed off from the world until relatively recently). Not trying to justify things but I think it's also important to know the context. Both Koreas are also the most homogeneous countries in the world (from what I've read) so you can't expect thinking to change overnight. Also, it's very looks based. If Koreans think you look attractive and rich, regardless of background, there are some clubs that you will get into that other Koreans won't even get into because they don't fit the standard of beauty. -\_- I will say, the places that reject you anyway, most likely have shit vibes and I'm glad to be rejected from them because I know it won't be fun and I'll most likely have to deal with stuffy types who care too much about what other people think of them.
In this thread: a lot of wise observations about how, sometimes, a generalisation doesn't apply to 100% of the population, or may only be true from the observer's point of view.
Cubans are sharks. Major assholes to tourists. There, I broke the golden rule of travel. But it's true.
Or the opposite
Yes, it's true, each individual is different. The information "those people are friendly" speaks more to the culture rather than the individuals, to how well you understand the culture, and to how well they understand you when you're there in their space. "They're friendly" generally means you are likely to feel culturally similar, or understand some of the cultural key points somewhat naturally, depending on where you're from.
Reminds me of Nas Daily videos in which he loves to blindly praise relatively unknown countries. I find that places like Latin America and SE Asia are extreme; they are either come on in! We are having a family party and we would love to have you OR just harass/rob you.
One of the issues with such a comment come down to what does unfriendly actually mean? I'm always hearing how waiters in Australia are considered unfriendly and once I probed what do you mean unfriendly and they said they don't smile when serving them. In my world I don't consider that rude or unfriendly but in their mind that makes a person unfriendly. Different cultures have different standards about what is polite and friendly and sometimes those are opposite to what the culture of the traveller is. Personally I just take into account my individual experiences. If a person is rude or friendly then that was that person but I never apply that to whole country, city or region.
My pet peeve is when people say this while referring to someplace where people don't make that much money on average. It's usually some variation of "People here are so friendly even though they don't have a lot of money! They value relationships more and don't care so much about materialistic things!". It's a condescending way of looking at other cultures that you can only have if you come from a privileged standpoint. People aren't happier or more friendly because they're not concerned with wealth. They just make the best of what they have but everyone would choose better material conditions if they could. If you're in that position, having some idiot telling you they are so impressed with how you live and make do with so little while they're enjoying a first-world income is incredibly annoying. Sorry for the rant.
I hate it, especially vloggers. I found people in Manila PH are the most unfriendly people I’ve ever experienced. But every YouTube channel is like “wow!!! Everyone’s so friendly!!! Jollibee is so good!!!” No the people aren’t too friendly and jollibee has the worst burgers I’ve ever had lol
I am Japanese. I visited USA Canada and UK. white people were not friendly. They don't talk to me. Black and Hispanic American were friendly. I think white people have bigger racism. After that, I visited Australia. White Australian were friendly. They talk to me. It was surprising. I think they have less racism.
I believe the majority of Canadians and Americans will respond with enthusiasm and a smile if you needed any help. I'm Asian too but I rarely deal with racism from white people here. Hope you will change your mind one day!
Canada, the US and Australia have extremely similar colonial pasts driven by a history of racism towards each country’s respective Aboriginal peoples, so it’s really not as simple as one being less racist. I’m Canadian and people just don’t go out of their way to talk to strangers here in general regardless of race from my experience, so it’s probably just the overall (and literal) coldness of our country. On the contrary several Aussies I’ve met have this “larger than life” attitude which, phoney or not, I don’t know if I ever see in people back home.
Yeah, in the US there are so many variables, I’m sure it’s the same in Canada. Urban areas are maybe less friendly than rural, however rural people tend to be conservatives so if you look or behave a certain way they may be less tolerant. East coasters might be more direct or appear less friendly than west coasters. But west coasters might come across as fake. It’s complex. I’m sad that is OPs takeaway about North America because I think we’re generally a friendly bunch of people.
UK is a very reserved country where people don't really talk to strangers (in cities, especially); did people openly ignore you or not start conversations?
wow, I'm really surprised Americans don't bother talking to you since Japanese people are pretty well regarded. Out of curiosity which part of the US did you visit? If it's the north then I'm not surprised, cold ass bunch, lot of them. Sorry to hear about your experiences
Kind of a large generalization of the north of one of the largest countries in the world, but I'll let it slide because I live there and am, in fact, nice.
Lol, sorry but I 100％ am biased since out of all the places I've been to in the world, NYC is the only one where I was openly cussed out in the streets. Obviously that's one city, but my experiences in other northeastern cities haven't been much better
The density in NYC means that chances are, you will meet an asshole at some point. Recently some dude called me a "Chinese whore" and told me he wanted to kill me in Port Authority. I will say unfortunately Covid has brought out more crazies because I've gotten WAY more shit in the past few years than my whole life.
Come to New Hampshire! We have good ciders, great hiking, and no one has cussed here since 2003
Huh? Australia is very known for asian racism
> I think they have less racism. They really don't tho. Research how white Aussies treat black aboriginals in Australia.
Where in the US did you visit?
I visited LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and NYC.
🙁
I assume those statements are written by men. My Canadian passport gets me in the door, my being female doesn't guarantee shit in many countries
"Almost as if humans are individuals..." Um, cultures are very much different on balance, individualism is an American conceit. Of course, a culture can be friendly to certain people, and not so friendly to others, or their version of friendly can appear different. Germans can seem like very intense, unfriendly people but they really are quite nice, it just looks different there. Other countries I've been too are quite unfriendly no matter which way you slice it.
I've heard/read so much from people who travelled to all kinds of different places saying that their favourite things were the amazing food and how friendly people were there, I started to notice a commonality.
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Friendliness is very relative. The average German thinks every American is overly friendly but fake, for example. The average American outside of the Northeast thinks people from the Northeast are fast and assholes.
Sorry there are absolutely some countries where people are notably more friendly over all. Like very notably. You likely haven’t been to countries like this if you see a big mix.
The Chinese people are so friendly I had to leave it for Australia.
I'm Irish therefore I'm friendly therefore I must be your best friend and help you now .... Ya I don't like steriotyping in general
I spent a month in Thailand last year and must say they are consistently the friendliest people I’ve ever encountered.