Originally posted by RagnorakPot, Kettle, durrty brown colour buddy 😉
Sounds about a stupid as a friend of mine
most god awful place i know is probably right behind where i live at the moment in north inner city dublin.
The kids set fire to the fence behind our flats on a regular basis.. robbed cars are test driven up and down the road once a week. There was an armed robbery two weeks ago to a pub beside us and apparently the kids who did it were practicing the getaway out the back of our flat an hour beforehand..
Its a lovely spot.
Hi, my wife is headed to Dub in a week, will warn her about the north side. My own trip to Dublin was mixed, coming from Israel via Amsterdam on my way home in the US, went for a job interview in leixlip (the Intel plant there, didnt snag the job🙁 but with mandolin in hand took a bus to Dub to try for some sessions at the pubs, the first one full of folk police teen fiddle virtuosi didnt want anything to do with an american musician so hit another pub on the other side of the river where I was welcomed with open arms, played with the band half the night, even knew half the tunes they played, a band called the
"Dingleberries" guess you know where they are from eh. The nastiest men I ran into seemed all to be British, they were as a lot, boorish and rude. (young dudes, 20's) When I left the bed and breakfast in Leixlip walking to the bus stop, started playing my mandolin strolling through a forest road and like the pied piper attracted about a dozen street waifs, the 8 to 12 set, obviously from a low class neighborhood I could see through the trees, they were playing in the trees. They were kids curious about my mandolin and one asked to try it so I let him, hoping they wouldn't just run off through the woods with it (1910 Gibson worth about 2000 bucks) I played a tune they really liked and asked me to play it about ten times! So I did and then had to leave, they were basically good kids, but when I was down the road one started to throw a rock, but a quick look back and he stopped. Now you don't run into that kind of thing everyday thats for sure.
I was in a small town in northern Thailand, dirt streets, wooden sidewalks and saw a Mormon family, all walking as if on eggshells, in single file, with looks of disgust on all their faces, like they were walking in satans parlor. My mom had converted to mormonism (shudder) and just before I left for my job in Thailand, she asked me if I would mind taking these 50 mormon bibles and giving them to the poor, unquote! I politely declined, went on to Thailand and the family I saw showed up in Bankok at the Emerald Buddha and let me explain the culture about that: Buddhist theology states the head is the most holy place on the body and the butt the lowest place, spiritually speaking. So this family shows up at the Emerald Buddha and when no-one was looking, CLIMBED UP on the head of the Buddha, while another member photographed him, he climbes down, the other guy climbs up and gets his photo, straddling the head of the Buddha, then like the true a ss holes they were, takes the film to a local photo studio, who were, BTW, Buddhist, and the photo tech sees the photos checking for quality, is totally outraged, calls the cops, the mormons get arrested, (its illegal to climb the emerald buddha)
and they get thrown in jail (a Thai jail is something to see) for six months and THEN get deported. Obviously they had not a clue as to other cultures, they must have thought they were in hell, trying to convert the poor ignorant savages to their clearly superior so-called religion.
If you want a bit of hell on earth however, it must be near the road leading down the mountain from Jerusalem, Israel straddling the border between Jordan and Israel. The road is very windy, that is to say curvie, with big trucks everywhere, you get experienced in driving on the shoulder, and going towards the Dead Sea on the Israeli side, the hills look a lot like the ones just photographed on mars, sandy, dangerous slopes full of gullies from the occasional rains, the location ot the caves of Qumron where the dead sea scrolls were found. I walked up to the caves and if you sneeze you can start a landslide, the whole mountain seems composed of mud mixed with small rocks.
Of course its 110 in the shade, (45 celsius) and generally speaking of no value except political. The Dead Sea itself is a big money maker for Israel, they have huge evaporating ponds collecting minerals like phosphorous, salt, magnesium, etc, like about 400 million a year worth, US. Then there are the resorts on the shore of the sea supposedly for health. I took a dip in the "water" and found it highly overrated! I got like one drop on my lip and it stung for an hour, like battery acid, never so happy to have found a fresh water shower on the shore! The one saving grace to the place was Masada, where the Zealots commited suicide, 900 of them, 2000 years ago rather than be turned into slaves by the romans. It was recorded by Josephus, the historian known for accurate stories. It was worth the awful drive just to see Masada. The first time I was there in 1992, had to walk up the trail up the side, which is an experience in itself. Now there is a big lift, just sit down and get carried up in comfort.
So that area around the Dead Sea has to be among the nastiest places on earth. Strangely enough, my mom lives near the Salton Sea,
a quite similar place! On the Jordan side of the sea the hills look completely differant than the Israeli side. While the Israeli side looks like a crumbling mudpile, the Jordan side had much flatter ground leading up to the hills there. Obvious differances in geology. The thing that struck me was visiting my moms place near the Salton sea and noticing the hills behind her house, looked almost exactly like the hills on the Jordan side of the Dead sea. So there are several places on earth like that, Death Valley, for instance. Now THERE's a lovely spot!
Originally posted by jimmyb270Ouch.
Feel for me then, I have the misfortune to work there, and I live within 15 miles of the place too.
It says volumes about a place when it's key attraction is a bunch of concrete fresians.
I have the misfortune to be travelling there tomorrow (for work).
Mind you, I live and work in Coventry which is about the same.
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Originally posted by elvendreamgirlhmmm, yes 10th ave in NYC is quite a dark place to be ... i won't ask about the circumstances.
Though it has already been mentioned, it bears repeating: Lubbock, Texas. Luckily, we left there before I had time to finish making the noose for my neck......
The Staten Island ferry boat landing-station at 1:45 am. very scary.
10th avenue in NYC at night (between 50th and 40th)
Most of the places I have been lost
in my travels, i've found the islands in asia to be depressing because of poor majority that live there, outside of the resorts that tourist stay.
Originally posted by chris stephensI know what you mean Chris...mad isn't it...the scots went to Blackpool for a holiday, the english went to wales (north) the slightly more well off to Benidorm lol.
well at least blackpool has hosted one extremely historic event - know what i mean wucky! fond memories i have to say but haven't been for years.
Romford in Essex. I lived there while working there for a short time. They have a shopping centre called "Liberty" and when they went to build another one close by, guessed what they called it? They called it "Liberty 2"! I never thought of shopping centres to have sequels.
Top marks to the local council for imagination.
The nightlife in Romford is even worse. A real meat market.
Slightly off-season Malta was a grim place to visit. Full of the scum of Europe (the majority British, I'm afraid) getting drunk on cheap lager and having fights. Valletta town is quite slummy, with poky little drinking hovels full of hatchet-faced gypsies who'd stab you soon as look at you.
It was all a far cry from what I'd been expecting, fed as I was on a diet of George Cross heroism...