The Worst Place on Earth

[Ryoki]

Inspired by feedback's comment in the Boston Bombings thread; what is the Worst Place you've Ever Been?

Mine would be Dubai, which is clearly a winner on many fronts. I've never been in a city where you weren't supposed to walk, anywhere. Seriously, the city is designed in a way that not just discourages walking, it flat out makes it impossible. Everyone (except for poor people) moves from place to place in airconditioned bubbles, cars, tunnels, what have you. With reason, because it's so goddamn impossibly hot that your brain melts after 3 minutes outside. We still tried, we'd see a building some 300 meters away and were like 'Ok here we go, do you have your water bottle? Yes? Let's go!' and then halfway the water bottles were suddenly empty, the way turned out to be blocked with huge cleverly camouflaged walls of concrete, we had half a heat stroke and barely made it back to an airconditioned building.

Then there's the locals, who are such huge cunts it made my head explode. The blatant racism against untermenschen like Filipino's and Paki's (who do all the manual labour), the way they treat their women (like Saudi's, you see the poor fat creatures in black heat absorbing burkas emitting a tremendous sweaty stench stumble 6 paces behind their men who are clad in white, light clothing), the way they have no culture (the whole place was a desert a few decades ago, there's no old anything), the way they flaunt their richness in a totally tastless way (look, we have ROLEX CLOCKS, everywhere! And check out this godawful ugly thing made out of GOLD! Isn't it shiny and a symbol of how enlightened we are?)

The locals don’t work, they just spend their money in places like the Largest Mall on Earth and The Most Expensive Nighclub ever. Any management level work is delegated to Westerners, who go there for the money, work for maybe two years and then fuck off again because noone in their right mind wants to live there. The salaries offered are huge, i spoke to one girl who was offered a car with driver, a villa, 3 months of vacation per year and twice what she earned in London if she’d sign for a year. She did, thinking of that delicious paycheck, then became crazy after 3 months and left.

Any work below management level is delegated to brown people from destitute nations who are treated horribly; passports are taken away when they enter the country and they’re forced to work to earn it back. They live in compounds far removed from the center and have to spend any money they earn in company stores. Most of em are completely stuck, it’s almost slave labour. The Dubaians are totally okay with this, when i made a comment about how ugly this was one of them became offended and told me European nations did the same a century ago.

It was goddamn horrible, it really was. I was only there for 24 hours, we spent the last 7 of em in the airport because Dubai is so completely soulless it's better to wait and sleep then see anything. By the way, the airport is fucking shit as well, terrible design.

If any city deserves to be nuked on general principles, it's Dubai.

[LawL]

So you didn't like it?

[Ryoki]

Naw man, fuck that place

You travel a bit don't you, got a story then...?

[Don Carlos]

My uncle worked there for 2 years and said the same thing....

[phantasmagoria]

I heard stories from folks that did the Asian Games ceremonies in Doha about how when they were quickly erecting all the posh new accommodations and the stadiums the local construction companies were using the immigrant workforce. Most of the structures were constructed in reinforced concrete that was poured into vast wooden clad molds in situ and you know how hot it is out there, so this concrete was setting almost instantaneously, not to mention it's an exothermic process anyway. So yeah, there was no health and safety, no coded scaffolding and definitely no union and the majority of the workforce was untrained and obviously accidents happen. If one of the little Filipinos fell into the concrete as it was being poured then they just left him there and carried on pouring...More often than not, because there was no proper rescue equipment, anyone who tried to help the victim just fell themselves so they just carried on. It's ironic to think all these skyscrapers and grandiose structures in the Emirates have the bodies of the untermenschen entombed within them.

The worst place I've ever been to is Sao Paulo. It's not as hot as Dubai but it's dirtier and much, much bigger. Until you go to somewhere like this or Mexico city I don't think you can comprehend how vast they are. I was in near the top floor of my hotel and as far as I could see were skyscrapers. There didn't seem to be any order or districts either, it was just endless, endless grey and brown. It also fucking stank, all the rivers were thick and brown.

Also, the disparity between the rich and the poor is as depressing as you imagine it is. We were in a rich area, our hotel had a guard. It's recommended that you drive everywhere (for safety) and we mostly did because there wasn't anything interesting to see anyway. On the way to work we commuted through some affluent areas which consisted of huge, huge, detached faux Victorian houses surrounded by acres of garden enclosed within a 15ft wall with a guard posted outside with a shotgun or an assault rifle. Juxtaposed with this was our journey through the jungle (wow, btw) to a beach (not so wow). On the way out of Sao Paulo we went through the favelas and there must have been a thousand people living in the same square footage as one of these rich houses.

Also, the Sao Paulans don't fucking go out, they have no recreation. We could find hardly any nice bars or restaurants. They were mostly either extremely expensive yuppy joints or deep fried fast food holes. This wasn't exclusive but for a city this size you'd expect there to be a lot more. Basically they go to work and then they go home and they repeat. Sometimes they go to a shopping centre. There's no culture either. The theatre we were working in was in a shopping centre ffs.

Cool thunderstorms tho.

[scared?]

If u can't walk 300 yards in heat u deserve to die...

[Ryoki]

Not just plain old heat goof, 56 degrees of killer shit that just slays you, it's totally undoable. Maybe it's because i'm a north european and i'm not used to it, anything above 40 tends to destroy me. But 56 is the hottest i've ever experienced and i hated every second of it.

And yes phant, i heard similar stories about south america, it's what keeps me from wanting to go there. Too many people, too much inequality, too much pollution. It would just depress the hell out of me

[scared?]

What's 56 c? Cuz I have been in 120f for hours on end...I didn't died...

[Ryoki]

56C would be 132 degrees in your obsolute, inaccurate, fundamentally stupid measurement model says Google.

This isn't about heat though, it's about the Worst Place You've Ever Been. Got a story goof? Texas doesn't count, i know we all call it a shithole and for a first world country it certainly is, but it ain't got nothing on some other places in the world.

[scared?]

Still...300 meters and u almost died? Pussy alert!...

[GONNAFISTYA]

I guess I've been lucky as there are a few cities I could list that are "worst shithole on Earth" but the people there are golden. Conversely I've been to some pretty sweet places where the people are such cunts I'd piss on them if they were on fire simply for the chance to piss on them.

[SoM]

going by your topic title, it's obviously Texas

[Mat Linnett]

You know, I've been to a lot of places many people would consider nasty, but I've always cherished the experiences, so saying which was "Worst" is difficult.
But I suppose it would probably have to be Cairo. The place was a wild experience, with insanely invasive begging, the worst driving I've ever experienced and horrendous attitudes towards women. But those things weren't anything out of the ordinary compared to other places I've been; when you've been to a few poorer countries, you begin to learn what to expect.

No, what made it the "Worst" was the smell.

I knew it was bad when our plane landed and we could already smell Cairo. Cairo is TWELVE MILES from the airport.
In school, we learn that the Nile is the lifeblood of this desert city, almost a miraculous jewel that cradles the birthplace of civilisation.
What you realise when you're there is that the Nile delta is so fertile because the Nile itself is a putrescent stinking river of fertiliser.
The smell is ever-present and pervasive, so much so that even laundered, it came home with the luggage, which we subsequently had to burn.

Nice place, shame about the stink.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Dryden, Ontario, Canada. The whole town is wrapped around a sulfur mine...worst smell ever.

[scared?]

Lol poor countries...

[shadd_]

Dryden, Ontario, Canada. The whole town is wrapped around a sulfur mine...worst smell ever.

Huh? There isn't a sulfur mine in Dryden. There is a pulp and paper mill though that stinks depending on wind direction.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Ah ok...I've only been there twice (passing through) and I was told it was a sulfur mine...which I believed due to the entire town smelling like rotten eggs.

[scared?]

Lol Gonnafagya is prolly full of shit and lives in some shithole in America...

[GONNAFISTYA]

You're half-way correct...I live in a shithole in Canada/Quebec.

[seremtan]

i've been to a few places i thought were shitvilles at the time - Hemel Hempstead (UK), Westport (NZ), Pezinok (nr Bratislava in Slovakia) - but they sound like paradise on earth compared to Dubai/Cairo

[phantasmagoria]

Hemel Hempstead

Watford is ten times worse than Hemel.. Watford town centre is so horribly depressing and bleak, it's a shining example of what a badly placed shopping mall can do to local businesses in a town. It's just fucking dead.

[feedback]

Never been to Dubai, but every single person has described it in exactly the same way as ryoki, giving me no intention ever of visiting. I've dealt enough with arab guido cunts.

[obsidian]

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia is a nice place these days, friendly people, good food, a pint of beer for $1, and entertainment can be found at every street as you try to dodge the scary as fuck traffic because there are no traffic lights in the entire city. Well, not sure about that last one. I'm not even sure which side of the road Cambodians are supposed to drive on, the right side is merely a suggestion.

Nice as it is now, the place is still wrought with the scars of Pol Pot's genocide. There are no shortage of victims in the streets, people without limbs and acid burn victims. Those are of course, the lucky ones. There are fields of mass graves outside of the city filled with thousands of skulls. Victims were made to dig mass graves, following which they would be lined up by the edge and their heads smashed with a club. If the impact didn't kill the victim, they were simply pushed in and buried alive. Entire families are buried there, they even have a special pit just for babies.

I visited an old high-school, which the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison for "people of interest". If they dragged you off to that prison, don't worry, you didn't have to stay very long. Their idea of imprisonment was to lock you to a bed with iron manacles, beat the shit out of you, slice you up, smash your bones and leave you rotting until you died. The classrooms are empty now except for the rusting iron frame of a bed, but even now you can see the awful stain of blood on the floor tiles under each bed that just won't wash out even after 30 years.

Out in the courtyard, were three vats filled with the worst fetid shit imaginable (not to mention the guts of people they just killed). They would sting people up on poles and leave them there until they passed out and then drop them into the vats. It's their idea of sleep deprivation and interrogation. The place is now a museum, so there are piles of skulls and a massive mound of bloodied clothes behind glass. On walls are displayed the written reports and "confessions" of many victims.

The worst part is that all that death seemed all so completely pointless, it wasn't as if there was some civil war or even ethnic cleansing. There was no distinction between murderer and victim, in many cases murderer and victim were neighbours from the same village or even members of the same family. It was simply kill or be killed and all for what? To satisfy a mad man's ambitions and paranoia. Phnom Penh is a nice place today, but it would have easily qualified as the worst place on earth between 1975 and 1989. In the span of 4 years, over 2 million Cambodians were murdered. One of the Khmer Rouge's slogans: "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.”

[feedback]

The cambodian genocide started as a kind of farmer/ethnic khmer thing but ended up as more communist purge insanity

[Captain]

lol no you magnificent moron, Pol Pot and his Khmer goons had full support from the US after the yanks got their asses handed to them in Vietnam. The ethnic purge was another glorious example of Western democracy at work.