What is the most exotic place you've ever been to?

Depends on how you define "exotic." In the early '80s I was at the Sinai Field Mission in between Israel and Egypt. Also most of the middle Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan.) Some other places that are not really "mainstream" for most Americans? Corsica. Gibraltar.

Cape Verde

In Sheboygan all seems to breathe freedom and peace and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils

Samosir - an island in Lake Toba, which is a volcanic lake in Sumatra, which is an island in the Indonesian archipelago.

Azores, Walla Walla

Ibb, Yemen.

must you end your question with a fucking preposition (for all you idiots..............to)

corrected sentence

what is the most exotic place you ve ever been?

Everyplace I've gone to is exotic, because I have never been to me.

I would also at this point exhort Billy not to be a hero.

R7 well... Don't be such an anal retentive stick-in-the-mud.

In fact, there are four main types of situation in which it is more natural to end a sentence or clause with a preposition:

passive structures (she enjoys being fussed over)

relative clauses (they must be convinced of the commitment that they are taking on)

infinitive structures (Tom had no-one to play with)

questions beginning with who, where, what, etc. (what music are you interested in?)

Sometimes I would love to see pics of DL’s grammar trolls. I am picturing: over 50, wears bow ties, loves antiques and fisting (not sure in what order).

Sahara desert in Morocco.

Swayambhunath, Nepal.

Dirt poor, endlessly fascinating and beyond exotic.

Luxor, Egypt or perhaps Tangier, Morocco. Spent a month visiting the cities and towns on the French Riviera. Petra, Jordan?

St. Louis

Charlene’s vagina. It was an absolute paradise!

Marry me, R9!

Paducah

Do me, r15!

Bora Bora.

It was perfect.

Believe it or not, Salem, Massachusetts. It is the oddest place - site of one of the most horrific episodes of religious persecution that ended in two dozen people being hanged, it now makes its living off everything associated with Wicca and witches and witchcraft. For 11 months out of the year it is a sleepy seaside town in New England, and then in October about 100,000 people stream in and turns into a cauldron of Halloween riot, culminating in a huge Witches' Ball to which you can only get tickets by lottery.

I was there, mostly by accident, during the third week in October to visit a friend who was moving back to London shortly, got the last hotel room left in the place, and came out of it in the morning to find the streets filled with Harry Potter wannabees, walking along the streets in peaked hats, cloaks, etc. The place has a wonderful art museum, the Peabody Essex, but the staff have to leave a half early during October to beat the traffic home, and they have to force people to take masks off when coming into the museum.

The Witchcraft Museum (couldn't get in because of the lines) has a statue of Elizabeth Montgomery dressed in her "Bewitched" costume outside it. But tucked away in a quiet corner of this former whaling city (which contains a remarkable blend of 18th, 19th, and 20th century architecture all crushed together), is the monument to the real tragedy and the real victims, which is sobering, indeed. I was also astonished to find out there what finally stopped the slaughter: the accusers turned their eyes toward the Governor's wife, and the Governor said, "That's it, we're done here. And it ended.

I asked the driver of an old fashioned tram car that runs through the city if the crowds and barkers and magical shops were just all commercial, or if there were real Believers amongst them, and he intoned wearily, "There are about five thousand professed Witches in New England, and most of them are in Massachusetts."

Oh, the House of the Seven Gables is there, too.

The Rev. Cotton Mather must be spinning in his tomb. It was a far more interesting visit than I anticipated.

The Kruger Park in South Africa. There is something ethereal about sleeping in a thatched rondavel on park grounds and hearing animal noises throughout the night, and knowing that you're really not ever safe from snakes, scorpions and other creepy-crawlies. I loved it!

Walla Walla

Bora Bora

Shitta Shitta

Rural japan, somewhere near Shizuoka. Japanese people informed me not to remember the name of the locale we were lodging at as no other Japanese person would recognize it.

Felch Plains and Fist Creek

The Galapagos Islands. So fascinating and so fragile.

The Italian Antarctic Research Station

Lunch at Government House in Stanley, Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas

Leningrad the day they changed the name back to St. Petersburg in 1991

Easter Island

The Moon

Iceland. I spent more time in Akureyri than anywhere else, and loved it.

Lived in Somalia as a child. Two traffic lights and one elevator in the whole country.

Transylvania, Romania

The Ecuadorian Amazon

Bangladesh

Quechua communities of the high Peru Andes

Queen Charlotte islands

Sondheim's dungeon on East 48th St.

r7 must you be a waste of oxygen and food?

Vietnam

R33 You too?

[quote] Japanese people informed me not to remember the name of the locale we were lodging at

Did you comply?

[quote] Vietnam

Did you call it ‘Nam?

[quote] Lived in Somalia as a child

That must’ve been fascinating, R30. Please tell more.

Zanzibar....amazing

[quote] The Italian Antarctic Research Station

Was it adjacent to any other stations?

[quote] Lunch at Government House in Stanley, Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas

Oh no you did’n.

The Gambia

R42 Oh yes we did, ma'am.

With your governor hosting.

And I include LM as we have friends on both sides of that one.

Shaybah, Saudi Arabia. Flat-out breathtaking desert scenery.

R41

It's not near anything. The US McMurdo and British Scott bases are near each other but the Italians are at least 100 miles away.

Memphis Egypt, Koh Samui, Thailand(before it got popular)

Patagonia

Fiji

São Tome, I guess. I don't know that I would call it exotic.

Guntawang Stud Farm, I drove 20k's off a side road just to follow that magical sign.

Spinalonga ( before they had boats taking tourists there every 30 minutes)

Tipaza, Algeria

Driving from Marrakech to Ouarzazate

Goodsoil Saskatchewan

Funky Town!

The Tokelau Islands, Atafu atoll in particular.

EPCOT all the exoticism, all in one place! No muss, no fuss, no passport!

Only on an American site would Fiji be considered “exotic”.

Budapest. San Francisco in the 80s. The Rainbow Gathering in NH or Vermont White Mountains

Morocco, followed by a week with a Saudi billionaire’s son in Cannes.

[quote]I was also astonished to find out there what finally stopped the slaughter: the accusers turned their eyes toward the Governor's wife, and the Governor said, "That's it, we're done here. And it ended.

If only we could end the Trump Administration that way.

Bohemian Grove

R60, that’s the goddamn faggiest place I’ve ever been!

[quote] R20: I was also astonished to find out there what finally stopped the slaughter: the accusers turned their eyes toward the Governor's wife, and the Governor said, "That's it, we're done here.

But first, they imprisoned the Governor’s wife.

The main historic Salem burying ground has a plaque to Giles Corey, the first witch, and only man killed for witchcraft. However, he was actually executed and buried in an unmarked grave in another burial ground, not from from there. It’s away from the merchants, so people aren’t directed to that location (the Howard Street burying ground). He was a wealthy farmer, about in his 80, and his wife was also in prison for witchcraft.

They laid him down, placed a board on top of him, and laid heavy stones on the boards to get him to enter a plea. It happens that, if he entered any plea at all, the town could have confiscated his substantial wealth. Instead, with each additional stone and demand for a plea, he called out “More weight!” Eventually he was crushed to death, and his eldest son inherited his wealth. His wife was released from prison.

He haunts the Howard Street Cemetery and is usually seen at times preceding a disaster facing the city of Salem. If you go, look up in the tree in the north end of the burying ground as I have personally seen ghouls up there on a number of occasions, though not Giles. They can usually be placated with a little pot.

The Howard Street burying ground is completely neglected by the city of Salem and thereby feele more appropriately spooky.

I have family there. Poor Uncle Levi died of TB at at 35. He coffin remnants are breaking through the topsoil. Cousin Thomas is also there. He died of apoplexy (stroke), but his widow Lydia later died of phthisis (aka, TB). Their son died at age 8 in 1858 of drowning. They have a nice well preserved tombstone, because it fell face down and therefore was not weathered.

No entrance after dark - strictly forbidden!

Myanmar; either Inle lake or the Irrawaddy delta

Meteora (North Greece). Orthodox monasteries built on top of rock pillars.

Santa Catarina, Sinai. World's oldest monastery (build in 548 CE) in a sea of Islam in the middle of fuck nowhere.

PTown In 1979. It used to be hard to get to and not to crowded.

Me.

Charlene’s made several appearances here.

I have visited 64 countries. No place is exotic now.

Fiji is exotic. Real cannibalism culture.

Don’t be ridiculous, R69. Fiji’s about as exotic as Key West. Swap middle Australia for middle America. It’s the same thing.

Although they do have kale in the salads at the Shangri La lunch buffet - I guess that’s a little exotic,

Southeast Alaska - Juneau, Gustavus, Glacier Bay - Kayaking to an uninhabited island there, watching glaciers calve and whales breach

Siem Reap.

Cambodia.

Syria.

The Maldives.

Alabama.

Alcatraz……

[quote]I have visited 64 countries. No place is exotic now.

Northeast Kyrgyzstan along the Kazakh border. Lake Issy-kul, Karakol, Chopan Ata, Balykchy.

Petra in Jordan. In such great shape. Very little weathering

Fez, Morocco.

Fiji IS exotic. Pay no attention addlepated Aussie who says it isn't.

Addlepat, Australia.

Rio de Janiero. Exotic place. Dangerous, yes, but not so if you take precautions.

Fiji is an utter shithole. The airport is vile. You drive through the worst areas to get to the port.

Bravo, r81. I was coming back from a tour of Australia and got stuck in Fiji because of a delayed plane. The tour sent us to a hotel that nobody wanted to stay in because it was crawling with roaches. The airline, Air Pacific, was the worst I have ever been on

For some reason an idiot is conflating "exotic" with "desirable."

A few: Egypt, Philippines, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia

Mount Athos

Are you a woman, R85?

Doesn't the OP's question depend on your starting point?

From the UK half of the places named on here are short haul flights and I've been to most of those several times.

Cheboygan, MI

Not to be confused, R88, with Sheboygan, WI

Has anybody here been to Easter Island?

[quote] Has anybody here been to Easter Island?

R27 has.

Somalia was not the trouble spot it later became. A sleepy place that only adopted a written alphabet in 1968. Hairdressing salons and restaurants were run by Italians, and the capital had a lovely Italian cathedral (now bombed into rubble). Maoist Chinese built an opera house. The country had been colonized by Italy and Britain so every meal came with spaghetti and tea. My father hunted for guinea fowl and boar because the local meat had no refrigeration. We went to the beach and swam in the Indian Ocean every day.

R91, ooops, missed that. R27, I've always wondered if it was worth it or a tourist trap?

Yes, r90. Well worth the trip. Ludicrously expensive, but above all, don't eat off the street vendors. A friend bought me a squid empanada which I had to eat. I became quite ill and had to spend the following day in bed watching Will and Kate's wedding. There is one doctor on Easter Island, the most remote inhabited place on Earth, and Santiago is five hours away by plane.

Moorea, French Polynesia; The Galápagos Islands; an eco-lodge in Costa Rica, we took a 10 seater airplane from San Jose to a dirt air strip, got off the plane and into a motor boat for a 1 1/2 hour boat ride on the ocean to the lodge. This place was really isolated but a wonderful experience.

Going to Zanzibar this summer, R40--any tips/advice?

Fiji has some lovely resorts but the idea is to fly into Nadi, head straight for the Shangri La or whatever then do the reverse one week later.

But “exotic”? Not at all.

R93 - we were there for a day on a cruise to Australia on the Amsterdam about 8 or 9 years ago and R93, while Santiago is five hours away by air, it's six days at sea from Valparaiso.

We saw but didn't spend any time in Hanga Roa, the island's single city, apart from disembarking and re-embarking the tenders from the ship, spending all day seeing the different groupings of Mo'ai around the island as well as the quarry where the statues were sculpted. Almost half the island is a national park and the stories are amazing. One of the things they made a big deal about - and rightly so - is how the statues are deteriorating from the effects of everything from wind and water to bird shit, lichen, and seeds getting inside the surface because as solid as they look from a distance, the rock they're made of is very porous.

The whole place - it's smaller than DC - is so far from anywhere it's mind blowing. The Mo'ai make you think about what it took the people who built them just to get there across 1000 miles of open ocean from Polynesia, let alone carve and then move them (some are 8 miles from where they were quarried) and what they meant to them. One thing I hadn't known - they all face inland with their backs to the sea. The Rapa Nui people saw themselves as the only people in the world, so they weren't worried about invaders. They thought of the Mo'ai as representatives of (or of the spirits of) their ancestors placed in such a way as watch over them in their villages.

Most people get there by plane and there are hotels, but we were so busy trying to see it all in a day (and so glad to get off the ship, even though the seas during the crossing were as smooth as a mill pond) that I can't say much about the island. The tour was great, especially hearing from some of the archaeologists (from USC or UCLA - I can't remember which but they were from LA) about their work. It's a mysterious place, if also a lovely one, but I think it'd be a very lonely place to spend more than a few days unless you had a reason, like the researchers did, to be there.

Oops, the second R93 should be R94.

CERN in Switzerland

Kazan, Tatarstan, russia

R40, beaches, beaches and more beaches. The Stone Town is also amazing.

Wonderful post, R98. Thanks for the tips and info!

Kemerovo, Russia

[quote]Santiago is five hours away by plane.

Is he hot? Does he do outcalls?

If they are to be believed on the Brick and Mortar thread, the most exotic place a lot of them have been is Water Tower Place in Chicago.

Sitges, Spain and Santorini, Greece. Kauai, Hawaii was also gorgeous.

Iceland

I went to Transylvania.

Boston. I live in India.

Transylvania is the nicest, most comfortable part of Romania.

Okavango delta, Botswana

Houston, Texas.

[quote]Transylvania is the nicest, most comfortable part of Romania.

Not in 1981. The train station men’s room consisted of a concrete wall and a trench.

Isle of Capri

R115, is that near the Isle of Greece?

Darfur International House of Pancakes.

Saskatoon.

R117, did they actually have any pancakes.

R7Cool your jets Professor Corey

R7’s ass!

Bhutan

You ve, r7 ?

Looks as though the self appointed DL Grammarian forgot the apostrophe in the word "you've" !

Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert, in Namibia.

Just adjacent to the centre of "Nowhere" on the map. Stunning, otherworldly scenery.

R124, did you visit the skeleton coast in Namibia? I've always wanted to go there.

[quote]Zanzibar....amazing

Do you, by any chance, have an identical cousin?

[quote] The train station men’s room consisted of a concrete wall and a trench.

I'm sure you managed to get some action there anyway.

I liked in [italic] True Blood [/italic] when a vampire described a Latvian as tasting like they used to before the industrial revolution.

(Actually, Latvia like the rest of the USSR’s allies are all probably impossibly polluted.)

I went across a rope bridge in Honduras.

Most exotic would be a very upscale riverboat safari down the Chobe River in Botswana

Me...No, no I've never been to me! I meant to say Bermuda! I've been to Bermuda!

Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Established in the 6th Century BCE. Absolutely magical.

Moscow and Leningrad in the middle of winter.

Myself.

Charlene makes yet another appearance.

Rural China to stay with a British scholar and hike on a forbidden part of the unrestored Great Wall.

Abu Simbel, 1150 kilometers south of Cairo

Geothermal pools in Hokkaido Island, Japan

Zorzor, Liberia, West Africa

Great Rift Valley, East Africa

South Bend. It sounds like dancing.

Oman

I love this thread...

For me? Crete. I loved it.

R139, is that the Isle of Greece?

Honestly all of these exotic places - except Easter Island - don’t interest me. Just because they are remote or rarely visited doesn’t make it attractive - for me. I’ll take Tokyo, Rio, China before a single landmark/interesting place in the middle of nowhere.

Kansas City. Everything's up-to-date there.

R141, not even for scenery?

I feel like there is spectacular scenery that is similar in a lot of places. Kathmandu is probably beautiful mountains - but the Alps and Rockies have equally spectacular beauty. Lakes, mountains and beaches of beauty exist in many places - not sure there is ONE that is so uniquely beautiful that it is worth an individual trip.

Open to experiences. Any thoughts on places that are so uniquely, exotically beautiful that they bear no resemblance to any place else on earth?

The Sahara is perhaps the only place I can think of. (But then I was able to drive to Death Valley / desert in CA to get a desert experience without driving a dune buggy for days. )

The traditional Mare Can answer to that is the Everglades, but that's not really true either R144.

R144, I see your point. We are lucky here in the US to have such diversity of landscapes and geography, but one thing we don't have here is jungle. The amazing wildlife and scenery of the Amazon is worth checking out. No tropical beaches either, if that's something you're into.

Personally, I love ruins and pyramids, and we don't really have much of an equivalent here.

There is jungle in Hawaii, r146.

And we do have the rainforest in the Olympic Peninsula--enchanting, gorgeous--not to be missed!

^Touche. But I want to see monkeys and sloths. I still have never been to Hawaii.

R148, Olympic is gorgeous. Probably the most verdant green place in the entire US. No humidity either.

I visited Olympic National Park after having spent three nights in Sequim while sussing out potential retirement places--as I was driving away from Sequim, EVERYONE was waving along the road, wishing me a good trip & "hurry back soon!"--I was almost in tears! That, plus the beautiful setting, made it into our top choices, but I think we're headed back east, Lancaster county, Asheville/similar :(

R141 in that case, try Sossusvlei.

Drive from Windhoek. Don't fly in.

While a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Northern Nigeria near the border with Niger, I hung out with Fulani tribespeople out in the bush. It was the early 90's and I had all this Guatemalan woven stuff (belt, wallet, backpack) - they really liked this stuff and I gave them all of it.

Karachi, Pakistan. Filth all over. The smell of unwashed bodies, raw sewage and garlic. Gross.

The Strip, Las Vegas. They had shows with tigers...real ones too.

R153 - you summarized exactly why I have minimal desire to go anywhere “exotic”. Call me a priss - but I’ll pass on the Third World “adventure”. My parents immigrated to this country to get away from that shit. I like my First World life and luxuries, thank you - and I’m not going to spend thousands to “experience” how poor people in undeveloped countries live. A beautiful landscape maybe - but no “exotic” Third World slum cities.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada

The Galapagos -- otherworldly.

The Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

A salt plain in the Australian Outback.

We wanted to use it as a background for one film sequence because it looked so alien. We had been told there was an abandoned telecommunications station there with facilities we could use, and which was minded by a lone guard. So after flying in to the nearest airport, and then driving several hundred miles, including this burning white salt plain - as white as snow - we come to the gate of the station and buzz the speaker and a deep gruff voice says they'll come and get us. Five minutes later in the shimmering heat we see this jeep approaching the gate. And out jumps this huge dog and a stocky figure that's hard to make out in the rippling heat. But as they come closer it turns out to be the biggest butchest diesel dyke you ever laid eyes on. With a thickest moustache I've ever seen on a woman. And she lives there, with just her dog for company, hundreds of miles from anything. It was real Mad Max stuff. Perhaps she's on DL! Nan?!

The Namib Desert. Like being on the Moon.