Most of us plan our holidays around TripAdvisor reviews, flight prices, and whether the hotel has a pool. Drew Binsky plans his around something slightly different. The 34-year-old American content creator has spent the last decade traveling to every single country on the planet, including North Korea, Afghanistan, and a handful of places that most travel agents would refuse to book for you on principle.
His YouTube channel has racked up 5.7 million subscribers and over a billion views, which tells you that people are very interested in watching someone go to the places they themselves would absolutely never go. And now, after a decade of doing exactly that, Drew has ranked the five destinations that actually scared him. Genuinely scared him. And the list does not disappoint.
Most travelers chase sunsets, but one vlogger set off chasing passport stamps from every country in the world
Image credits: drewbinsky / Instagram
But some countries proved even too much for him to handle, leading him to list the top five most dangerous cities that he would never revisit
Drew's travel career started the way a lot of great stories do, with a semester abroad. In 2012, he went to study in Prague, visited over 20 countries while he was at it, and got bitten by the travel bug. He moved to South Korea to teach English and launched a blog called The Hungry Partier.
The rest, as they say, spiraled gloriously out of control. Along the way, he has set two world records, visiting 12 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in a single 24-hour period in 2016, and completing the fastest-ever regulated suitcase pack. Not the most conventional CV, but it appears to be working.
Mogadishu, Somalia
Image credits: AMISOM Public Information / Flickr (not the actual photo)
Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, took the top spot without much deliberation. Drew described it as a city with no rules and no laws, one where simply stepping outside your hotel requires a military escort, armed convoy vehicles front and back, and a group of soldiers in bulletproof vests actively scouting the route ahead of you.
Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda offshoot, has a significant presence in the city, and the atmosphere that it creates is one of constant, unrelenting threat. On his last visit, Drew had gone to meet a friend at the Hyatt Hotel, which is now just rubble. "It's just very, very scary and very unfortunate," he said. Of all the countries he has visited, and there are 197 of them, Mogadishu sits alone at the top of the list.
Conakry, Guinea
Image credits: uruguay-panama / Flickr (not the actual photo)
Conakry, the capital of Guinea, earned the second spot, and Drew's description of it is not exactly a tourism brochure. He was stopped by police within ten minutes of leaving his hotel, got caught up in an active coup attempt, and described the general experience of being there as a "complete mess."
Kandahar, Afghanistan
Image credits: Asmatullah Kharoti / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Kandahar, Afghanistan, came in third. As the historical stronghold of the Taliban, the city has operated under an intense atmosphere of control for the better part of 25 years. Drew found the ancient markets fascinating, but even there, something sat differently. He made it clear that he loves Afghanistan as a country. Kandahar is simply its own category.
Port Au Prince, Haiti
Image credits: Heather Suggitt / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Port-au-Prince, Haiti came in at number four, and the story Drew tells about it is the most personally harrowing on the list. He entered a gang-controlled area near the airport with a local guide and found himself in a situation that escalated quickly with armed men controlling the territory, demanding payment, weapons being pointed in his direction.
Tripoli, Libya
Image credits: Steven Damron / Flickr (not the actual photo)
Rounding out the list at number five is Tripoli, Libya, where Drew's 2018 visit involved falling asleep to the distant sounds of artillery. Walking the streets came with constant police attention from officers wholly unaccustomed to foreign visitors. He did note that Tripoli has reportedly opened up considerably in recent years, and that he hopes to go back. That sentiment is honestly heartwarming.
Image credits: Saacid Ahmed / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
When it comes to unaliving numbers, the three most dangerous cities in the world are all located in Mexico, but people are still packing their bags and happily visiting Cancun for spring break. Sadly, the cities on Drew’s list are suffering deeply amid socio-economic turmoil.
By crime index, his evaluation of Port-au-Prince seems to check out, and it is followed by Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Pietermaritzburg, and Johannesburg in South Africa. Different metrics, different lists, but Haiti keeps showing up near the top of all of them.
What makes all of this bittersweet is that several of the countries on Drew's list are, beneath the instability, strikingly beautiful. Somalia has some of the most untouched landscapes in the entire Horn of Africa, with pristine white-sand beaches, coral reefs, and ancient archaeological ruins that have barely been studied because so few people can safely get there.
Afghanistan, for its part, is home to the cobalt-blue Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif and the extraordinary travertine lakes of Band-e-Amir National Park. These are not places that lack beauty or history or cultural richness. They are places where the gap between what they could be for travelers and what they currently are is almost painful to sit with.
Which place have you ever traveled to that made you rethink your decision very quickly? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Watch the full video here:
Commenters appreciated his honest review, but said they will stick to the well-trodden path instead
