Scariest?

[tinaja]

What's the scariest country you have ever been to? Why?

I will start. It was Romania before the fall of communism. And I was probably too young and innocent-ish to know how scary it was.

[sophie]

East Germany, also before the fall. Crossing the border was scary. The border guards had dogs, and would do a complete sweep of the train 2 or 3 times. It was a completely foreign culture, this way of control and surveillance.

[tucano]

Venezuela, ten years ago. We only spent a few days there (crossed the border from Brazil to go to Angel Falls). Didn’t feel unsafe as such in the towns but the overnight buses were interesting. Mainly the bit where we were escorted off the bus to have our passports checked at gunpoint.

[kraken]

Turkey back in 1992 or so. My dad did some engineering work on a cruise ship and I got to join for the week long test run (yay) which meant I got to visit lots of East Mediterranean cities for a day. We were in Antalya (?), and spent the day tottering about, taking minibus transport as was locally available and popular with tourists. We got back to the boat early to discover the ship settting off as we got on board ahead of schedule, as one of the minibuses had exploded and bomb threats were issued. The last passengers were brought on board via Pilot boat as we waited outside the harbour.

[whothingie]

Germany during the Bader Minhoff gang hunt.

[tzarine]

1993
coming into moscow from the transsiberian
which was under martial law

one night we were out after curfew after hanging out w friends & got lost in the housing complex. after knocking on numerous doors, we got a fellow to escort us back to our homestay apartment. we only copies of our passports bc the originals were @ the office for a visa extension

june 4 1989
being shot @ in beijing while freelancing for ABC

[lillielangtry]

Ooh, I'm not sure I've been to a really scary country.

Ecuador was my first time out of Europe so I was apprehensive sometimes. Lima (Peru) also had its moments as far as street harassment was concerned. Egypt had potential but we were on a group tour so we were well looked after.

[HalcyonDaze]

I don't think I've been somewhere super scary.

Travelling through Belfast and seeing soldiers patrolling on the streets and also being stopped at a road block (the driver said we'd be fine as he had a nice middle class accent and a protestant name and address) was confronting, but I didn't actually feel scared.

Even walked past the broken glass left over from a minor bombing that had happened a day or so before and just assumed big car accident. Naivety can be a wonderful thing when travelling?

[tinaja]

This brings back a memory of being in Romania. My friend, a Romanian, and I were walking around at night. We encountered a man being maybe beaten (I'm not sure, sort of blocked it out) in an alley by police. My friend said, "he's probably drunk". Sort of as an excuse as we went on quickly. I recall him pulling me back onto the sidewalk before crossing the street suddenly because, he said, "party members don't always care how they drive" and being in public and him telling me quietly not to talk about certain things. But still it wasn't like getting off a plane in Jamaica in 1983 and seeing guys in army fatigues with AK47s patrolling around. Maybe just culture shock vs. danger.

[tzarine]

i just find men in full military gear swinging ak 47s unnerving

from the streets of moscow or the palacio nacional in mexico city

[ozziegiraffe]

Syria. In 1979 Qantas QF 2 from Sydney to Heathrow stopped in Damascus, as well as Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bahrain. In the other places we were allowed to get off the plane and enter the terminal, but in Damascus we were surrounded by armed military, and had to stay on the plane. Not that I wanted to get off.

[leela]

Not scary, but slightly unnerving:

Xinjiang province, a few weeks after the Urumqi riots. The internet had been closed down, as were the lines for international phone calls. And the Chinese government had sent vast numbers of soldiers in to the area. Convoys of army trucks constantly moved through the roads in the centre of Kashgar and Hotan, each with soldiers standing on the perimeter of each trunk, facing out, with guns drawn. At one point, one stopped in front of me as i stood on the pavement, waiting to cross a road. And I realised that i was literally staring down the barrel of a gun, which was pointing directly at me.

The huge city square in Hotan was, at every minute of the day, occupied by multiple troops doing drills. Purely a show of strength to try to cow the local population.

Oh, and there were many army checkpoints on the roads throughout the region. My taxi driver told me to pretend to be asleep just before we reached one of them. And on my sleeper bus journey across the Taklamakan desert at night, I was pulled off the bus to show my documents (in the pitch dark) to some soldiers at checkpoints, every hour. That was scary. I'd be asleep and they'd just board the bus, shine a torch into my eyes, and either bark at me to get off, or pull me by the arm.

[princessofpenguins]

Toss-up between Egypt (1993) and Russia (1992). Although my scariest one-off experience was in Prague in 1992...

[Oweena]

Not scary, more stressful.
Entering Syria via taxi from Jordan 2007. We had visas but our driver kept telling us the whole way there we wouldn't be allowed in because we were American.
For an unknown reason the border guards took an unhealthy interest in The Man and what his job was. He was retired (from police work) for 2 years by then but they insisted on knowing his prior job. We knew if he was honest it would mean we were denied entry, or at a minimum lead to a long interview to discuss all his different assignments. We had listed ourselves on our visa applications as civil servants. It took a long time, and he was taken into a separate space for most of that time. Being separated made it more uncomfortable, not knowing what was happening to the other.

We were eventually allowed in, and had a wonderful time. Due to their obvious sexism, they never even thought to ask what I did, and I was the one still serving as a commissioned police officer.

[riverhorse]

I remember crossing into East Berlin at the Friedrichstrasse railway station in 1984 - it was pretty stressful getting searched by guys with guns and dogs.

Only place I've stayed indoors and kept away from trouble was December 2001 in Buenos Aires. In the first weekend in was there, they went through 3 presidents, there were riots in the streets and protesters were shot outside the parliament building. The family I was staying with insisted on keeping me home out of harms way.

[mei]

I keep coming back to this thread, but can't really think of anything properly scary. got my wallet pickpocketed in Hong Kong, but that's not a scary place, it was mostly stressful trying to figure out what to do next without any money.

and I was not quite comfortable in Delhi in the evening, so didn't leave the hotel at night despite having some free time. but that was more because of disorientation of where I was in the city with no clue what was around. Indian cities were too unfamiliar for me to feel comfortable in at that time.

[Liiisa]

I've also kept coming back to this because I couldn't think of anything sufficiently scary. I've had creepy hitchhiking experiences ("I'll give you $1 if I can touch your tits" "Uh, no"), but nothing that actually scared me.

The scariest place I can think of is LA! I saw police aim guns at people there 3 times, once in traffic right in front of me on the 57 freeway, a guy darting on foot through traffic, pursued by armed police; once seen out the window of my hotel; once seen down an alley while I was driving at night in West Hollywood. But even those were more like "holy SHIT" moments rather than actually scary (for me, at least).

[sophie]

I need to add that, while East Germany (and related places in the eastern bloc) were the scariest places, the scariest incident would be getting mugged on a beach in Tanzania by a gang with machetes. It happened so quickly.. And to show how amazing parts of Africa are, it wasn't enough to make any parts of Africa 'scary'.

[tinaja]

("I'll give you $1 if I can touch your tits"

Cheapskates....grrrr.

[Liiisa]

May 9, 2017 16:31:35 GMT -5 tinaja said:

("I'll give you $1 if I can touch your tits"

Cheapskates....grrrr.

lol tinaja, I know. "Oooh - a whole DOLLAR, mister?!"

I have in the past wondered if there would have been any price point at which I might have considered such an offer. At the time I was pretty broke, but still, gross.

[tzarine]

the ride from playa to chichen itza was really scary
the driver was mad and or drunk

still being shot at by the pla was the worst
definitely not gonzo war correspondent material