skoobidude

I thought that I would start a thread for "unusual places you have visited".

Between 1997-1999 I was working for a Project Management company. This included working with a team designing a plant to suit 3 new Baby Food Factories based in Russia.

This one was based in Kamyshin, just south of Moscow on the Volgar.


This was in Novokuznetsk, Western Siberia just north of Mongolia. The worst place on earth I have ever visited. Poor air quality i.e. blowing nose resulting in more soot in hankey than snot!, salty mineral water, crap food, poor hotels, sandy bath water.....
This is the final night of a weeks stay drinking loads and bonding with the people in charge of the factory. Some ex-KGB, 1 ex-Submarine commander.


Anyone else had similar experiences?

Nick

Brendan Hughes

Funded by an international organisation? I was with Tacis for six years in Russia and Mongolia.

Markus

All of the places I've been on holiday. Jenbach, Bled, Portaroze oz (sp?), Zel, Vienna, Salsburg, Bognor Regis (yes I'm serious!). Ahh, happy days.

Wish

iTrader: (2)

Barbados....... In 2000
Going to St Lucia in June, Hope its going to be just as relaxing and breathtaking.....

Jerome

Yakima Desert US Forces Training Area - absolutely huge and good fun

Anegada in the British Virgin Islands - 28 feet above sea level at its highest point!

Driving across the mountains to Las Vegas at night - seeing an entire city from a distance. You can see the light on the top of the Luxor Hotel even before you can see the city

Seeing Niagara Falls close up - its incredible how close you can get to the edge

The Twin Towers - pretty awesome memory before 9/11, but now...

Le Gouffre de Padirac, France - an amazing, not to mention deep, cave system

Kuwait City - the drivers are all absolute nutters

Iraq - pretty difficult to forget

J S W

lake louise (near banff) in canada, most beautiful place I have ever seen.

David Lock

Lagos

La Digue (Seychelles)

Wanke Game Reserve (Zimbabwe)

markr1963

Iceland - for the stunning scenery and stupid prices
La Gomera and El Hierro - stunning scenery and hardly any tourists
Mt Teide, Tenerife - stunning until all the tourist coaches turned up
Prague - great beer and oodles of history
Paris - hated it
Sears Tower, Chicago - doing the Ferris Bueller thing
Perth, WA - ace place, may even go again
A hotel near Tozeur on the edge of the sahara, Tunisia - clearest night skies I've ever seen

And while they're fresh in the mind...
Cairo - Nice museum but the city's a dump
The Pyramids of Giza - very impressive hooooge piles of stones too many fecking annoying touts trying to make you buy all sorts of cr4p
Luxor - fine temples
Edfu - horrible place saved only by the Temple of Horus
and the best IMHO
Abu Simbel - not just for the temples but for the fact they cut them into blocks, hills and all, and moved the lot 60-odd m up the slope when Aswan High Dam was constructed.

super_si

Probably seeing a space Shuttle take off and land(Kennedy Space Centre,Florida) within 3km of the lauch site. Was quite a powerful image seeing a few 1000lbs of carbon/medal leave the earth

Rob Walker

Guildford!

Chris L

LOL @ Rob - see Guildford and die

The Pyramids at Giza will always stick in my mind. It's the only place I've been that has actually made my jaw drop open. I would agree with Mark though - Cairo is a dump (the museum is fantastic) and the pollution is appalling - you would never complain about London if you've been to Cairo.

Chris

Danny B

2 months in Pattaya Beach, Thailand when I was in my early twenties
No guesses as to what I was doing 24x7

Brendan Hughes

Skipper's Canyon, New Zealand - driving along it to get to the 102m bungee jump was almost more scary than doing the jump itself.

Partying all night and seeing the sun not set in Archangelsk, Russia - freaky.

Visiting the gulag archipelago just by Archangelsk.

St Petersburg in 1993.

Gobi desert, one particular part where someone has cut narrow strips from a "landscape" book and stuck them together, maybe 1km wide and 100km long.

Racing gazelles in a Land Rover over the steppe in Mongolia.

Sukhothai and Chiang Mai (view onto Doi Suthep) in Thailand.

stormyuklondon1

ground zero for a memorial service 11/9/2002.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

the playboy bunny rooms in bangkok with ermmm a very nice lady <cough>

Markus

Mt Vessuivus (sp?) and Pompei, left me speechless.

BexTait

Flying over the Alps on the approach to Geneva, the views were awesome.
Bex

Richard Simpson

Bora Bora baby.......Tahiti was ok too!

Driving the Pacific Highway from San Francisco to LA in a Yank barge convertible was ....ummm interesting

farmer1

Pentewen sands in Cornwall.

Spoon

You know her too? Wow, she was great, I'd certainly like a re-visit.

DocJock

Belsen concentration camp.

Miles

With work I've had two trips to Nigeria, visiting our offices in Lagos and Port Harcourt. Was blown away at my first time in Nigeria at the absolute sheer scale of poverty; it really is the heart of the 3rd world and coming from the UK it was a real culture shock. Nothing worked: power was intermitant, phones a lottery, traffic in Lagos was absymal, airports slow and inefficient.

Angola was similar, but not as extreme as Nigeria. Unfortunately I missed out on a trip to Libya which would have been fascinating.

On the up side, work sent me to Perth in Western Australia for a week back in the beginning of 2002 along with a week in Dubai. I'll take the up with the down .

With my previous company I spent a month out in the UAE, based in Abu Dhabi. Which is not so unusual, but that was my first ever trip out of the UK and was a tremendous eye opener.

Mr Scoob

1. Grand Canyon
2. San Fransisco to LA on Pacific Coast Highway
3. Whitehaven Beach, Queensland

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Between Paula Evans Thighs in 1988.

druddle

Wilson Island, 2 hours off the coast from Gladstone, Queensland, Australia.

Spent 4 days there as part of my honeymoon and wow it was amazing. Snorkelling with turtles and a 2.5 odd metre shark on the reef, seeing hundreds of turtle hatchlings and waking up in what i thought was heaven 3 days in a row, yards from the clear sea.

Dave

druddle

Wilson Island, 2 hours off the coast from Gladstone, Queensland, Australia.

Spent 4 days there as part of my honeymoon and wow it was amazing. Snorkelling with turtles and a 2.5 odd metre shark on the reef, seeing hundreds of turtle hatchlings and waking up in what i thought was heaven 3 days in a row, yards from the clear sea.

Dave

Brendan Hughes

So good you went there twice?


J4CKO - there's always someone who has to lower the tone...

Reffro

Another vote for the Pyrmaids at Giza. I saw the pyramids for the first time from 20 miles away and saw how they got bigger as you approached them, incredible. But the next year I took a mate from home, we went down pyramid road from the centre of Cairo, so don't see the pyramids until you are virtually on top of them. The look on my friend's face was priceless, he just stopped talking, his jaw fell into his lap and the lights in his head went out, he was in sensory overload, that's how impressive they are...

And as for Cairo, its a wonderful city, OK its a bit hot dusty and the traffic is a nightmare, but I love the place, its certainaly more fun than London, and once you learn the rules of the road you're well away. Can't beat sailing on the nile in falucca, hand over the side drifting through the water watching the sun set.

brickboy

Lake Huron, Canada in February a few years back. It was completely frozen ... I walked so far out that I could hardly see the shore, just endless ice.

Fell through some thin stuff about 50 yards from the beach, up to my waist. Tw@t

davegtt

^^^^^what he said.

and off course the famous boundary park