Have you ever been to *insert mad place*

9959

Kilmuckridge and Corpus Christi, Texas.
Great names, great people, (great scones - they pronounce them 'guns' in Texas), mad so it is and great 'craic' too.
I'm off to Llandudno next week for a five-week camping holiday with my beautiful girlfriend from Budapest returning to Hungary for the summer, can't blame her really, mad stuff.

emer_b

Rwanda, great spot, lovely gorillas.

Hainan island, China (the Chinese Hawaii), weird place, full of Chinese holiday makers swimming in the sea in inflatable rings. And Russians.
Menus available in Chinese and Russian only, made for interesting dinner time.

stateofflux

middle of nowhere in quebec in autumn stopping off at a raccoon pet farm...cute little furballs

pickarooney

Swaziland or Mozambique I suppose, or Paraguay. I'd go back to Mozambique in a heartbeat but wouldn't be too bothered if I never saw the others again.

Plazaman

LizT wrote: »

I've been to really random places in America, they're usually the most fun places

Butner, North Carolina. Talk about a hicksville central, up the main street down the same street kind of town. The nicest paranoid, xenophobic, racist pack of people you could ever meet. "Do you really talk like that?" was the most asked question off me, don't think they ever heard an accent from outside Butner.

stateofflux

beano345 wrote: »

"Around 1984 a Copenhagen-resident biker gang called Bull**** arrived in Christiania and took control of a part of the cannabis market. Violence in the neighborhood increased and many Christianites felt unsafe and unhappy with the new residents"

sounds like a veritable eden!

not any more, been there twice in the last year . seemed upmarket, safe & fashionable. they do have that elephant carlsberg though...oh yeeeah

deccurley

deccurley wrote: »

Give Reykjavik a crack, lovely spot, quality nightlife too.

It's hardly a mad place, though. Loads of people go there. Easyjet fly there now!

I haven't been anywhere off the beaten track yet. I was going to go to Kazakhstan this year but it was all too much of a faff and the flights were really expensive.

Easy Rod

Sarajevo - great city and great people. Stayed in this hostel in run by a 19 year old kid, in his family home. If more people showed up then they had room for he'd rob a mattress from one of his little sisters and fit the person in somewhere.

According to him, a great spot for skiing in the Winter apparently.

krudler

nowhere really mad but I do want to visit Prypriat, looks amazing,

Grayson

token101 wrote: »

Why not just do the old school trick of buying a globe, spinning it and seeing where your finger stops?

I've always wanted to go to the airport and get the first flight one way going somewhere.

I'd probably end up in Knock.

beano345

id love to go to black rock,nevada desert for the burning man! anyone ever been to it?

blatantrereg

I've been to Harlem and Darndale. Harlem is a lot nicer.

Boombastic

beano345 wrote: »

id love to go to black rock,nevada desert for the burning man! anyone ever been to it?

Yep, went to the burning man in 2006 for the 21st birthday , absolutely surreal experience. I would love go back again.

Mr Benevolent

Chemical Burn wrote: »

I have booked a holiday with my amazing beautiful girlfriend

I've just booked a holiday with your girlfriend too.

The Backwards Man

Stornoway in the Hebrides, it was that much fun I almost died.

In my sleep.

LizT

Plazaman wrote: »

Butner, North Carolina. Talk about a hicksville central, up the main street down the same street kind of town. The nicest paranoid, xenophobic, racist pack of people you could ever meet. "Do you really talk like that?" was the most asked question off me, don't think they ever heard an accent from outside Butner.

I love small town America

I was travelling with people from all over Europe and people from South Korea. We got some really weird looks.

robindch

Kichote wrote: »

Okpo, South Korea. Mighty spot

Amateur. I've been to Pyongyang in North Korea:

BTW, the tall building to the left is the Yanggakdo International Hotel.

bobwilliams

The most beautiful girl in the world (ie, my beautiful girlfriend) and I are going to Budapest on holiday in July Just booked it now Can't wait .. love you so much S****** Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ♥

please op tell me you're no older than 17 or 18,i'd say if she blows you out it's straight down to woodies for a good rope.

Auldloon

Riyadh Saudi Arabia. Saudi's are horrid.

Plazaman

LizT wrote: »

I love small town America

Lynchburg Tennessee is a lovely spot. Is it just a town square and that is it, but a gorgeous diner there and lovely people. On the upside it has the Jack Daniels factory to keep it in business with tourists but on the downside Moore County is a dry County so you can't even taste a drop of JD within a 20 mile radius of the place it's made.

LizT

Plazaman wrote: »

Lynchburg Tennessee is a lovely spot. Is it just a town square and that is it, but a gorgeous diner there and lovely people. On the upside it has the Jack Daniels factory to keep it in business with tourists but on the downside Moore County is a dry County so you can't even taste a drop of JD within a 20 mile radius of the place it's made.

I was near there, didn't go though. We camped in a small town on the Alabama/Tennessee border. The locals used to drive across the border to Alabama to buy Jack Daniels, made zero sense to me.

Paramite Pie

I went trekking in Peru, in the Urubamba mountains in the Sacred Valley. It's not that far from the touristy stuff but is very isolated since you can't drive there and we hiked for almost 2 weeks camping in some very scenic spots.

Quechua was more widely spoken than Spanish in the 'villages' we passed through... we saw thatched cottages with no running water, electricity.. living only on subsistence farming etc.. it looked alot like Ireland would've hundreds of years ago.

They even cooked for us in a pit dug in the ground (like a fulacht fia). Before the food was eaten we would toast to 'mother earth' by everyone pouring some wine on the ground and drinking the rest. Afterwards we had a few shots of some kind of spirit (tasted like Sambucca) to kill any germs to lessen the risk of food poisoning.

There were people still living in the mountains at altitudes of 4100 ft (we hiked to 4500ft) whereas Machu Picchu is 'only' 2500ft.

We were the only tourists these people had seen all year because of the difficult terrain despite our geographical proximity to well known tourist sites...

dj jarvis

Hitched hiked from Dublin port , via the UK - France - Belgium - Holland -Germany - Poland and onto the Belarus border with Russia.
It took 3 weeks , done some festivals along the way,
And this was only a few years after the wall came down - Place was rough to put it mildly - but have to say the further east i went , the nicer the people got.

Might not be a exotic location but was a change of scenery from Ireland.

Praetorian Saighdiuir

kaimera wrote: »

Chad
Sierra Leone

****holes. don't bother going.

oh, and **** Nigeria as well

Ditto!

I wont even look at them on a map anymore! Absolute ranch!

bnt

I've been to Hillbrow in Johannesburg (South Africa) several times, but (to be fair) it wasn't that mad when I was there: my last visit was in 1991.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRaJka_1l28

It used to be the most interesting part of Jo'burg with nightclubs, guitar and records shops, funky food, and so on. The video touches on what happened later in the 1990s, though it's a bit PC about it: apartment buildings "hijacked" by gangs, some local, some from other African countries such as Nigeria. There have been signs of a turnaround in recent years (example).

travis1976

I've been to Dojč in Slovakia. Modern town but the outskirts are like something out of Hostel, bad roads, houses with bars on the windows, real bad vibe in the bars. Interesting though.

Balmed Out

I have found that in general the more off the tourist radar a spot is the better the reason for being off the radar. Its either crap or getting there is so difficult as to not be worth it.

FTA69

I was in Kurdistan once i.e. eastern Turkey. Easily the maddest gaff I've ever been, and I don't mean "mad" in the loveably fun-crazy sense; rather mad in the sense you've an odds-on chance of being kidnapped and never seen again. The place is wracked with political conflict and on a local level there's more bandits and armed clans (often one and the same) than you can shake a Kalashnikov at.

I'm off to Palestine after the summer which should also be an unmitigated barrel of giggles.

Seachmall

Malelane in South Africa.

Using the bus and stopping in Matsulu was an experience for sure. It was an honour being the first white person some of the local children had ever seen.

And there are some of the most beautiful views in the world on that bus route.

Celly Smunt

Off to Tehran to a friend in October myself.Ive never been that far into the middle east but apparently its safe and the people are nice.