“Smelled Like Pee”: People Share The Most Hyped Travel Destinations That Left Them Disappointed

Dubai. The concrete jungle, smack in the middle of the desert. Everything about this place is/feels manufactured. Everything! Well… besides the sand and the sweltering heat. It's like a giant theme park where they've borrowed bits and pieces from just about every developed country in the world, and replicated it out there in the desert on a grand, and obscenely extravagant scale. The place has always felt inauthentic and contrived, to me. Like a giant stage where performers are doing their damnedest best to put on a show, but every now and then you catch a glimpse of what's going on backstage and it leaves you aghast. After my first few visits, I resigned to staying put in my hotel, away from the theatrics of it all and out of the baking heat. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what the fuss is about this place. There is little to be seen in terms of indigenous culture, as the place has been westernised to within an inch of its life. Most of the Emiratis hardly interact with foreigners. Aside from the desert safari and the Frying Pan food tours, that let you explore the less glitzy parts of the city in the Souks (markets), there's really not much else to hold your interest.

Honestly I have never been disappointed in anywhere I have been. I just love to travel and experience different cultures and places- warts and all. I always go with a realistic view of where I’m going and what the experience is probably going to be like. I’m not going to go to Bangkok expect it to be like Singapore for example. My outlook is such that I’m not trying to travel to places that are exactly like my home countries, so I go with an open mind and heart. Thanks for the A2A.

Can you recognize this place? Many of you will find it familiar, as photos of this idyllic ancient town can be frequently seen all over travel blogs and wanderlust pages. This is Sveti Stefan , the most photographed place in Montenegro, a small European country not too far off Italy’s Adriatic coast with a steadily growing tourism sector. While organizing my road trip through Montenegro a year and a half ago, I made sure I’d stop in Sveti Stefan on my way from the airport to Kotor, the historical town where I would’ve spent my first night. What’s so disappointing about Sveti Stefan? It cannot be visited . The entire island, built some 600 years ago and a fishing village until the 1950s, is now a luxury hotel that’s only accessible to its guests who are willing to spend a minimum €773 per night, according to the current price listings. You can also visit the island by reserving a meal at its (overpriced) restaurant or by attending Sunday service in its church, but in both occasions you’ll be swiftly escorted in and out by the hotel’s personnel, without the remote chance of exploring it. The streets on the island seem to be a stunning must-see from the pictures posted online, but unfortunately, us mere mortals need to settle for a panoramic view from the beach situated across from it—where you can rent two sunbeds and an umbrella for no less than €80 per day. To me, it’s rather disappointing—if not infuriating—that a place that represents a relevant piece of cultural heritage is almost completely off limits to visitors. Worry not, though: even though the coast of Montenegro is now mostly littered with modern buildings due to the recent construction boom, you can still find ancient villages just as beautiful as Sveti Stefan that you’re free to explore and where you can enjoy an appropriately-priced meal. Perast, pictured below, barely had any visitors when I went there, and it managed to remove all the bitterness Sveti Stefan had left in me!

Los Angeles. It was full of homeless people who had no shelter to go. Some of them were crazy. One threatened my father with a knife. The streets were dirty. And it looked like the last time the municipality took care of their deteriorating tourist attractions were years ago. Streets like these are pretty common in Los Angeles. Even on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was packed with homeless people. And many streets were also very dirty. Compared to San Francisco and San Diego, it was a huge disappointment. Most of the good stuff isn't free (unlike San Francisco or San Diego). For example, Universal Studios is nice, but you have to pay for it. We ate at a Chick-fil-A near the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And it felt like we were in a ghetto. There was no indoor place to eat. There were no lights, the tables were dirty, and the average customer looked like a punk/thug. If I revisit California in the future I plan to skip Los Angeles. Only Beverly Hills was nice. Generally speaking, San Francisco and San Diego also felt safer. For example, only in LA there were people who tried to jam a CD in my hand so they could scam money of me. There were also cosplayers who wanted to take a picture and ask money for it, but they didn't bother me to be honest. But I'm sure that some locals will complain about how I missed that one building/street that was hidden between the rest of ugly buildings. Like I've read in some other reviews where people were complaining about LA being a dump. The US has apparently 550,000 homeless people. And Germany apparently has 650,000 homeless people. But the last time I visited Germany, I don't remember seeing a single homeless person on the streets.

Bali, Indonesia. Given all the hype surrounding it, I felt I got cheated by lot of marketing. I spent a week there. There are some really nice things there: Excellent people, Great food, very good nature(dont mean beaches per se), some volcanoes. But, overall, I left thinking there was a tremendous amount of marketing done on this place. My disappointments: Beaches are not the best. YES.If you really travel away here and there and do lot of research you might find some. But, if you instead go to Phuket in Thailand, you will get better beaches, almost anywhere. Water I felt was better in Phuket. Australian tourists: No offense meant. But, there are a LOT of them there. A bit on the heavy side when it came to drinking, enough to intrude into my vacation. Russian tourists: in Ubud: Same issue as above Hinduism: Is not a strain I know(I am a Hindu). The temples are nothing like in India and so no big art there. PLUS, they dont let you go inside the temples. Nature: is OK. Lot of other countries with better nature for sure. You spend a lot of time driving around(or being driven).

Actually, most of them. But, as I see it, there are reasons why that is the case: We overhype our tourist destinations far too much. I thought I was going to have an out-of-body experience when I see Mona Lisa. No such thing. It was a very good painting, that’s all. All touristy places these days are overrun by hordes of tourists. Thirty years ago, during my first visit to Venice, it was totally awesome. Not anymore. And now we have drunken louts on every beach. Since there are lots of tourists, tourist traps have sprung up everywhere. Thanks to the internet, these days we can read and see videos about pretty much every place on earth. If you have already seen ten videos about the Taj Mahal and know everything about its every nook and cranny as well as any tour guide ever did, you won’t be as awestruck when you actually visit it.

Barring the weather, Los Angeles was a huge let-down. I was not only disappointed; I actively hated it right down to the core of my being. I knew before I went there that the traffic and car culture was horrendous. Little did I know …

There was nothing, and I do mean no-thing, that was worth battling this harrowing clusterf*ck. No trendy restaurant, no tourist destination, no beach, nada. The pollution was off the hook on some days, so dense you couldn’t read the street sign a block away.

I saw all of the popular spots in the city. But even while I was ‘enjoying’ myself, my thoughts were on the long haul back—that egregious two-hour drive, during which time I really hoped I wouldn’t have to use the ladies’ room.

I have traveled to L.A. more times than I should have had to and do not plan a repeat trip, as in, ever. Once was enough.

Definitely “Kerala” We (wife and I) arrive at Cochin airport and got seated in a car, which eventually became our abode and transportation for the coming 10 days. I hate such kind of travel where you are chauffered around in a car. I prefer convenient and comfortable public transport, which ofcourse, is not existent in India. Cochin is just like any other big Indian city - crowded and polluted. No point staying there, so we immediately traveled to our first destination - Munnar. Ok I wouldn't lie, Munnar was good. It's a hill station with scenic views and idyllic foggy mornings, but it all went downhill from there, literally! For our next destination we traveled to allepey. Passing by the over rated spice markets, I realized that we get all of that stuff in a super market 200m from my home. Unimpressed, we headed for the backwaters. My first impression - OMG! How does one breathe here. The stinky waters, 100% humidity and constant sweat on your face makes you gasp for fresh air. Thankfully it was an overnight stay. Next morning we packed our stuff and got the hell out of there and headed for tekkedy. Tekkedy is a place where animal torture is galore. My wife, being fond of elephants, decided to queue up for one those elephant rides. We got seated and the ride of torture began, for the elephant that is. At every step the elephant got a whack on it's back. I wasnt sure what wrong had it even done. It was walking fine, following instructions and dragging atleast 500 people on it's back from 6 am to 8 pm everyday. We asked to cut short the ride and let us down. I do not accept to be part of this brutality. Shocked and disappointed we gathered the courage to continue to our next destination - Varkala beach. After arriving at Varkala, the first things we decided to get was an ayurvedic massage. As the massage started he poured like a litre of oil on me and did his usual strokes. Wasn’t sure what was ayurvedic in it. It took me longer to shower and remove all that bloody oil than the massage itself. Hungry after the massage, and tired of the super spicy and Curry based cuisines we were eating since the last one week, we decided to eat something that wouldn't burn our mouth. So we had our lunch at one of the beach shacks in Varkala. I remember eating sphagetti and my wife had some soup. What followed can only be described as an evening from hell. We had a very bad bout of food poisoning, I was puking my guts out. Good that it wasnt so bad for my wife. What followed was perhaps the longest night of my life. Fortunately we had carried medication for such situations and I was much better in the morning. Eventually, we went down to the beach and my first impression was, “thats it?” Coming from Goa, the varkala beach, with it's one kilometer stretch of brackish water and heaps of rubbish on the sides was a sheer disappointment. By this time we were exhausted and bemused. We just wanted to go back home. Anyways somehow we gathered the courage to continue to Thiruvanantapuram. Trust me, that 40 km ride felt much longer than the name. We visited kovalam beach and it was close to new years Eve. What I witnessed can only be described as the largest sausage fest on the planet. My wife wondered if there was an apocalypse on the way which wiped out every female from the face of the Earth and she stood strong as the last surviving member. To calm her nerves I ordered for some drinks and the bartender went like sir, “after 10pm no alcohol”. That's it, that very moment I snapped, I discussed with my wife and we were in unision that we needed to cut short of our trip, we had seen and endured enough! Next morning itself we changed the flights, asked the driver to drop us at the airport and got the hell out of there.

Having been to 121 countries on all 7 continents, over 250 UNESCO world heritage sites, and all 50 states, I’ve had the occasional disappointment.

One that comes to mind immediately is Dubai.

The whole city seemed to focus on excess; high-end shopping, outlandish cars, and amusement parks, and ATMs that dispense gold, but virtually no cultural attractions. The beaches were not swimmable due to the poisonous sea snakes. The immigrant workers were horribly treated and often died on the job due to the heat.

On the other hand, I loved Abu Dhabi, which was full of cultural attractions.

My first visit to the US was in '99. I stayed in Miami for a few days, a conference, but with lots of free time. I went to South beach, and immediately fell in big time love with the place. In as much as the art deco buildings were in such bad shape.,it was a wonderful felling to soak up the atmosphere, I felt like I was back in the 40's or 50's, time travel. There were no tourist traps, I found many locals just willing to have a nice conversation with a foreigner, I guess they were not used to visitors anymore. There was almost no traffic, the beach wasn't crowded, and I found some nice places to eat. I recall a Jewish Deli, Wolfies, so 50's. Also, a place with the best lemonade I had in my life, on Lincoln Road. Also, a store selling those Duralex glasses in any shape you can imagine. Fast forward to 2010, I'm back in Miami. Oh my, I didn't recognize anything. I had to fight my way in the crowded streets, only to find the restaurants were no more, replaced by trending fashion shops catering to the tourists. Lots of traps, like shops showing “antiques” surely made in China. I never saw so many people doing nothing, because there was nothing to see or do. I guess they were there only because they were told it was “the place to be seen”. As for the art deco buildings, I'm not sure, but it seemed they got a coat of paint on the outside, nothing more.

For me it was hands down - This is Plymouth Rock. From what I read and heard when I visited it back in 1999, was that the ‘pilgrims first touched this rock’. This could very well be hearsay that the locals may have spread, as there is really no proof to support that claim. Even the date was carved more than a century after the pilgrims arrived. This is the enclosure for this singular rock … I saw nothing note worthy of it being a major tourist attraction by itself. It seems to be more like a marketing gimmick than a historical tribute! Now, it would have been an entirely different case if the rock was an exhibit in a museum. But to dedicate an entire monument to this single rock was just mind blowing to me! Now compare that to another rock! This famous rock is the Hope Diamond! Even this is in the Smithsonian museum in Washington D.C. A third ‘rock’ that is not held, and cannot be held, in a museum … This is the Kailashnath Mandir, Ellora in Maharashtra, India - ‘ A megalith carved out of one single rock ’! This temple was painstakingly carved top to bottom from a single ‘rock’!

Hawaii Waikiki - like a shopping Mall with cars driving thru Tourist rip-offs. The levels they will go to are extreme. Our hotel offered $800 (family of 4) day trip to Pearl Harbour - we only said “No” because the only leave time they could offer was 5.45am (Heck - We are on Holiday). So instead we rented a car (V8 Camaro - $100 for the day) to drive around the island - we thought we could drive past Pearl Harbour to see what we could see. When we arrived at Pearl Harbour - the entry tickets were free (1000 tickets a day are free - but they are only $10 each anyway). It is an amazing trip - absolute world highlight. However, we almost missed out on doing it because of the incredible rip-off approach Food. In Hawaii we experience some of the WORST food ANYWHERE in the world (I have experience here - I have traveled all over the world including some third world places where access to good food produce is quite limited & maybe a bit suspect)

Fiji. Not the place I ímagined and the food is dreadful. Marseilles, France. Dirty and noisy but at least the food is good. Kuta, Bali. Just don’t … Lagos, Nigeria. Not really a tourist town but certainly a place to avoid. Mumbai, India. Same as Lagos but at least here there is cricket.

It’s an interesting question, and I suppose most people have been to places that they were primed by tourist propaganda to really swoon over and found them to be OK, but not exactly life-altering. I think that is just the nature of travel. In my experience the Taj Mahal and the pyramids probably fell shortest from my expectations, but the list of places and things I have seen that were nice but fairly forgettable is much, much longer. It’s a lot easier to recall the places and things that made you say spontaneously “ohmygod!” when you first saw them, because the reality was greater than your expectation. I can come up with those easily: the Grand Canyon, Cologne Cathedral, and the swinging of the botafumeiro in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. These are the things I walked away from feeling that I had been changed somehow…and isn’t that the reason for travel in the first place?

The Eiffel tower in Paris. Lots of people told me to not bother with it, that there are better things to do in Paris. I should have listened to them. We spent more time waiting in line to see the Eiffel tower than actually being on top of it. The top is full of people, and the view is not that great - Arc de Triomphe has a much better view from the top. Having a croissant with tea on the grass in front of the Eiffel tower was lovely though.

As a native New Yorker I would say most of the tourist traps of NYC are a let down aside from Broadway. Now being a native to the state, you tend to skip the tourist stuff most of your life because you already know the pros and cons of them. So up until being a freshman in college, I had never been to the top of the Empire State Building. One of my best friends who left NY to go to college in NC had one of his friends from school visiting over the summer. He had never been to NYC and wanted to do a bunch of tourist stuff. Totally understood and we went down to the city and had an overall great day except for the Empire State Building. Basically you pay way too much to wait online for up to 2 hours to go to the top of a building and come back down. The view is good, but not worth the wait. Definitely a let down.

Pamukkale, Turkey in 2003. Generally speaking, tourist destinations ought not to be on the travel schedule as they almost always are disappointments.

I wouldn’t say “disappointed” but maybe wasn’t as expected. Brussels. It felt like a soulless city. I like to spend the first two days without a solid plan or an activity when traveling, just to walk around and discover places naturally and connect to the city and its people. I just couldn’t connect with Brussels and people seemed so distant. However, I enjoyed the royal museum of fine art of Belgium very much. I visited Bruges afterwards and fell in love with it. Marseille. Although the city itself is unique and charming in a way, but there was this vibe I didn’t feel safe during my 5 days trip, it kind of ruined it (I was stressed trying to stick into touristic areas for my own safety) I visited the city with my sister, stayed at Airbnb apartment with our host at the Boulevard Chava. One of the things I noticed is that the city lacks feminine vibe or energy, I didn’t see many women working in restaurants, cafes and bars like other cities around France, or walking by a group of local youthful women enjoying their time after sunset in places other than Marseille’s old port/touristic places. The city gave us a strange vibe. Many danger alerts, on the second day during daytime we walked into a street randomly, some men were spitting on a police car from their windows/balconies and seemed like they were cursing them in French. Obviously the city is divided and controlled by gangs (we’ve noticed that more than once) however someone told us that it’s dangerous to gang members mostly, they don’t harm tourists or locals (as I understood) we were never threatened or felt threatened in a direct way. Another incident I witnessed with my sister: we went to a coffee shop around 9–10am, we were drinking our coffee outside, then out of a sudden a man walking by the cafe was attacked by another man, they started fighting violently, the attacker took a chair from the same cafe and started to hit the other guy with it until he fell on the floor, then the attacker walked to his motorcycle and took out an expandable baton, the other guy ran off and he ran after him, police seemed to be close. (The attacker figured that out while running by others giving him signals) then a random man (they must know each other) got out of a shop and took the baton, I think to hide it in case the owner got arrested. My sister ran inside the coffee shop thinking he took out his gun while I froze on my seat. I couldn’t move. Afterwards we decided to get back to the apartment right after sunset until we leave the city just to stay on the safe side. It was in October 2018, maybe the crime rate was higher than usual or maybe the areas we stayed at were not very safe. We went to Calanque de Sugiton in Marseille and it was astonishing. (Two reasons why we decided to visit Marseille: The Count of Monte Criso film has a special place in our hearts, it’s one of those films we rewatch together on a plan-less weekend. And of course, the Calanques: I don’t regret visiting Brussels and Marseille, but maybe we should have stayed for less than 3 days.

I mean…it was pretty…

…but the Riverwalk in San Antonio did not live up to the hype. First off, it was kinda crowded in the central area where all the restaurants were.

And many of the eateries were just big chains that you can find in any shopping strip in America

Good luck getting on the water taxis.

I'm an old guy, so perhaps that colors my judgement. (that’s not me in the pic!)

But I think that even as a young man, I would have said: Meh. It ain't all dat.

St Petersburg, Russia. I visited as part of a two-week Baltic Sea cruise. It was an overnight port. Americans can’t just hop off the ship in Russia and go exploring. You need to get a tourist visa to do that, and that’s nearly impossible to obtain since Russia invaded Crimea (three months prior to my visit). Otherwise, you’re only allowed ashore if you are with a registered tour group. And the tour groups, we learned the hard way, are herded through the city’s tourist attractions like cattle. And because of the Siege of Leningrad in World War 2, most of the attractions you’re shuffling through were totally destroyed; you’re just looking at approximate reconstructions of them from the past seventy years or so. Our second day was supposed to include multiple points of interest, followed by a lunch and an afternoon tour of the Hermitage art museum. But traffic around that city forced us to sit starving on that bus for hours, and consequently made us come very close to the nightmare of the ship leaving without us. I have no positive memories from my two days in St Petersburg.