← Quora archive  ·  2013 May 16, 2013 07:49 AM PDT

Question

What country do you least want to visit? Why?

Answer

A good way to ask the question seriously is to ask: where would you pay to go, where would you go only if it it were free, and where you would go only if you were paid to.

  • I'd pay to go to: any pleasant tourist destination. Sadly, my deep wanderlust has now been dead for years, I don't really go to places. I only leave wherever I am for a break/recharge, so traditional "getaway" destinations rather than "go to" destinations. Like Tahiti, Peru.
  • For free (travel, room and board paid for by somebody else), I'd basically be interested in going anywhere. Almost every place is interesting for a few days if you don't have to pay for it and somebody else takes care of most of the tedious arrangements. Dubai, much of Europe.
  • "I'd have to be paid to go" -- any active war-torn, crime-ridden or disease-torn country where there is a non-trivial risk of getting killed or badly ill starting the moment you land. So like a third each of Africa and South America, though I don't know which thirds. There was a time, I'd have considered those risks "adventures" and taken those things on. Also any place with seriously burdensome paperwork to get into. Though now with a US passport, very few places are like that. The US itself is one of those places, but in my 20s I had the energy to get past the immigration barrier. I wouldn't do it now I think.

Oddly enough, racism, poverty etc. are not deterrents for me. So long as I can expect to get safely in and out, I can deal with the rest. Things like racism/poverty can actually be kinda enlightening to briefly experience, though I wouldn't want to experience it for a lifetime. Helps you expand your mind in specific ways.