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Hi, well, I guess I was referring to Kuta, Bali specifically.
I'm sure there are some nice places on the other side of the island.
Kuta = hell on Earth
absolute ****ehole!
solution: Nuclear strike!
If you didn't like Kuta, why didn't you leave and try out other parts of Bali? And what's this about "no women" in Bali? It's full of tourist women from around the world.
We used to go there in the early 80s...no one was there. Nusa Dua Beach Hotel...quiet, serene, gorgeous. The whole island was ours.
See, my theory is that PEOPLE ruin everything (in terms of travel). So I keep searching for more and more secluded/exclusive places to go.
Academics who study tourism discuss this. Tourism destroys the very thing tourists travel to experience. As soon as a beautiful, isolated place is "discovered", more tourists inevitably come, and eventually the place is ruined. Bhutan handles it best. They charge so much for visa and hotels (like the Soviet Union did), that the cost limits the number of tourists that can visit. So they've avoided the fate of its neighbors, like Katmandu, which attracts druggies and has turned the town into a giant ramschackle youth hostel.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
Academics who study tourism discuss this. Tourism destroys the very thing tourists travel to experience. As soon as a beautiful, isolated place is "discovered", more tourists inevitably come, and eventually the place is ruined. Bhutan handles it best. They charge so much for visa and hotels (like the Soviet Union did), that the cost limits the number of tourists that can visit. So they've avoided the fate of its neighbors, like Katmandu, which attracts druggies and has turned the town into a giant ramschackle youth hostel.
What I don't like about that is it limits the country to the rich elite, but maybe there is wisdom in that. A lot of the 'budget travellers' aren't really poor, they're just cheapskates. Some are genuine, but some are just obnoxious and annoying.
While the lack of hostels in the US was annoying, one refreshing thing was it wasn't full of cheapskate backpackers.
Academics who study tourism discuss this. Tourism destroys the very thing tourists travel to experience. As soon as a beautiful, isolated place is "discovered", more tourists inevitably come, and eventually the place is ruined. Bhutan handles it best. They charge so much for visa and hotels (like the Soviet Union did), that the cost limits the number of tourists that can visit. So they've avoided the fate of its neighbors, like Katmandu, which attracts druggies and has turned the town into a giant ramschackle youth hostel.
Even Bhutan is at risk however in trying to attract more tourists. High-end tourism can have it's own pitfalls as well--as in the end it's more of an issue for smaller, less-developed countries. The large cities of Western Europe or Asia or Latin America can handle tourists fine--since there's larger economies separate from tourism and the locals could really care less about foreign visitors. In the smaller more fragile developing nations, you have the risk where the tourist dollar is seen as an easy buck--henceforth you get more urban problems in formerly more peaceful areas because of tourism.
Though the flipside is that if you get off the tourist path in a lot of these countries--it'll be interesting and sometimes beautiful, but can be difficult sometimes because there will be little infrastructure or places to stay. You have to be a fairly adventurous traveller to really blaze your own trail if there's limited transportation or accomodations. Sometimes the best time to visit is right when an area has opened up to the idea of tourism and a few basic hotels exist---yet tourists haven't still descended on the area yet. Once you have more than 5 hostels in a town however---you can kind of predict what the next step in tourist development will be.
Wow, whoda thunk one little sentence would generate so much response? Cool!
Okay, I know NYC isn't 100% horrible and there are (possibly) worse cities. I was actually planning to give it a THIRD chance last December with a trip there on my own (instead of getting dragged around the place on foot EVERYwhere by people who didn't want to see what I wanted to see) and visit places like the Public Library, the Met, the Guggenheim, the UN Building, the Bronx Zoo, the Highline, Greenwich, etc, etc. Unfortunately I had to postpone the trip indefinitely so keep your fingers crossed I get up there one day soon. Altho that will definitely be NYC's last chance to impress me so the pressure is on!
Other than that I have to say I was hugely underwhelmed by Florida altho driving to the Keys was fun. The first time I visited Paris I was kinda "meh", but the 2nd visit was much better. Paris really is a nicer place when it's raining. And of course I love London
Avoid Midtown West and focus on the UWS, the UES and ALL lower Manhattan.
Don't miss the plazas along the Broadway as well as Bryant Park.
Central Park and Riverside Park are must-see.
The gentrified areas of Brooklyn have a small-town vibe: but you need at least one week to visit the best of Manhattan and Brooklyn... And you will finally understand why so many people love The Big Apple
New York. Crowded, claustrophobic, rude, unfriendly, noisy, polluted, over-priced and over-rated.
This would be my experience also..and luckily I didn't have to stay very long since we were on a pitstop prior to heading to France.
My husband was trying to figure out the subway ticketing system and purchase 6 tix. Line behind us was growing increasingly long and the 'effin machine wouldn't allow him to buy 6 tix at once-only singles. NOBODY that stood behind him offered any information or help. He just got angry stares and pissed off attitudes even though we were fairly obviously tourists. Later I discover the kids didn't even need tix and could just duck underneath the turnstile yet nobody said a word.
Oh, and then some weird super windstorm suddenly blew down between the skyscrapers and blasted the city with garbage, dust,grit, anything that could be lifted off the ground and pelted us and our eyes as we exited the subway. Geez.
Later, we took a train to get to our hotel--every single passenger sat on the aisle seat leaving the window seat free so nobody else could sit down (I had four kids in tow and not one person moved for us or let any of us sit).
Finally..after standing for 10 minutes trying to tell my kids to hold on so they wouldn't fall, some man offered his seats to us. It was a frustrating experience for us...and we're from San Francisco so it's not like we are naive to urban ways!
Now when I visited Paris, a similar subway problem arose- having difficulty trying to figure out how to pay for the ticketing system on the Metro, several people tried to help us just for a comparison. They went out of their way to help.
Oh, and it's not like we're naive to urban life--we're from San Francisco where I sure hope that tourists wouldn't get the same treatment by my fellow San Franciscans.
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so the pressure is on!
