I have been home from the last trip for more than 12 hours. Time to start planning next year’s adventure. Right now my only bright ideas are the Balkans and Central Asia (Uzbek-, Tajiki-, Turkmenistan, etc.) Any doper world-travellers with some good suggestions/must-see-before-you-die type of places? I am also armed with a copy of the “World’s Most Dangerous Places” guide if you need to refer me to a page.
Guam. As beautiful as Hawaii (or more) without the annoying tourists. I would have recommended Thailand, but due to recent climatalogical difficulties, it may be less than ideal. OTOH, they will be needing those tourist dollars ASAP.
But if what you seek is danger, then my top picks would be the Congo or Fallujah.
Assuming your friend is in Ashgabad, after you’ve visited, your best bet is to jump on a train to Turkmenbashi and take the ferry across to Baku. There’s plenty to see and do in Azerbizan.
On a side note, if you do go, you’ll be only the second doper ever to go there AFAIK.
I had an awesome time in Vietnam (just a great experience), and apparently Cambodia is lovely too. Get there quick before both are spoilt with too many partying tourists like Thailand.
South Africa - but then I’m biased that way Although if you’re trevalling in the US autumn/winter that will be spring/summer down south which is a good thing…
If you’re Jewish, Christian or Muslim, I highly recommend visiting the Holy Land, especially if you’re Jewish. I am, and just got back from Israel last weekend, and it was the most amazing week and a half of my life–by far the best. I felt totally lost before I went, and it gave my life a direction and was an amazing, spiritual, stunning, totally indescribable experience.
Even if you’re not religious, there are a lot of great things to go see and do, and it’s my personal belief that everyone in the world should see Yad Vashem, the (bilingual, for tourists like us) Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
Another great thing about Israel as a tourist destination, BTW, is that there’s enough English everywhere (it’s the country’s official third language, I believe) that you can find your way around without knowing Hebrew or Arabic.
my cousin lives in Sarajevo and she loves it there. How often can you go skiing in an Olympic venue ?? Just stay on the paths if you go hiking. Then they go to Croatia for the beaches.
But I’d go to South America. The Gran Sabana in Venezuela is supposed to be nice.
Fly into China (Beijing, I assume), make my way west through the desert, hit Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, take a ferry to Azerbaijan, from there go by train to Turkey, and from there hit Bosnia (Sarejevo) and from there go to Prague, maybe by train again. One done in Prague, fly back to the states. If I dsont have time for all of this, maybe fly into Turkmenistan, and skip Turkey and fly direct to Sarejevo.
I use Prague as my endpoint because I am hoping to work for the conference next year that I attended as a participant this year.
Obviously, this is still in the brainstorming phase.
There is something to that idea of traveling where they need the money the most- Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, et al. will probably have awesome deals…your dollar should go pretty far. When we were in Indonesia during the strong dollar days we stayed in 5-star (bellhops, ironed table cloths on our veranda, etc.) for $30/night. ‘Normal’ 3-star hotels cost us $5/night. Things might be similar in the fall. And there are tons of things to do besides drink alcohol on a beach (but that is nice too). Climbing, diving, sailing, etc.
