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

Prague. I’m not saying that Prague is a bad place. It’s not. I am definitely not saying that you (or anyone) should not visit Prague. You should. But if “disappointing” means the biggest gap between expectations and reality, Prague qualifies as my biggest disappointment. The problem is that I had sky-high expectations that I would love Prague. The city is gorgeous, very photogenic. The sights are magnificent. But I never felt like I got out into a real city. Everybody was friendly, but I felt that it that “it’s their job to friendly to the tourists” kind of friendly (which, still, is so much better than going somewhere where everyone is rude). Basically, I felt like I was visiting the Prague Pavilion at Disney EPCOT and not the real Prague. Again, the problem is that my expectations were way too high. I think I was expecting it to be the best, most interesting place I had ever been. If you go there merely expecting to visit one of the more interesting European capitals and to drink quality beer, you’ll probably have a great time. Runner-up: Yosemite National Park. But I know the problem with my trip to Yosemite. I went in the fall. That’s the wrong time of the year. There’s no water in the water falls. They’re more of a misting system that time of the year. Water spray, not water fall. Late spring in Yosemite would have been much better.

Many years ago, when I was just getting started with traveling, and hadn’t been many places yet, I was given the opportunity to visit Provincetown, a small artist community on the tip of Cape Cod. I was a seventeen year old gay boy from a relatively small town, and was excited because “P-Town” has a reputation for being a real destination for the gay community, welcoming and inclusive. Imagine my surprise when upon arriving, I found a gritty, unfriendly, unwelcoming, town playing out nearly every tired stereotype in the books. I was told (twice) to go home and kill myself because I was too ugly to ever have a life as a gay man. Told that I must be filled with self-hatred because I was authentic, athletic, masculine, and honest rather than contorted into a lacquered caricature. I stayed three hours and left, shaken to the core, honestly doubting my sexual identity and wondering what sort of life I might have if this were the only future ahead of me. The rest of the town was vaguely interesting, I guess. Over-priced, over-crowded restaurants. Shops selling $35 tee shirts. I’ve since gone back, nearly thirty years later, and found very little about the town or the population has changed. Treated like garbage and told to go home (again) when trying to order a drink at one of the gay bars there. Didn’t bother me at all, I take it stride now.

That National Zoo in Washington DC. It’s over priced and under funded. Most exhibits are closed and those that aren’t, should be.

Do you remember Angelina Jolie starrer “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”? The sequence where she escapes with an ancient artefact and jumps into a waterfall. It was filmed at Phnom Kulen in Cambodia. The location turned a travel hotspot among American and European tourists overnight. This is the actual movie scene (image credit: Amazon) I have traveled extensively to Cambodia and also lived there briefly. I have been to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) few times and it’s worth the visit. A couple of years ago I took my family to Siem Reap on holidays as I know the entire place like a local. We did an Airbnb and stayed in a beautiful independent bungalow. The local host himself was a Japanese speaking guide for Angkor Wat. I had requested for his expertise to make my family visit of Angkor Wat a memorable one, which he did. Usually, it takes 2 days to finish the entire Angkor Wat complex. We had kept a spare day to explore offbeat destinations surrounding Siem Reap. The host recommended us to pay a visit to Phnom Kulen that is about 50 kilometers from Siem Reap with 1.5 hour car drive. It is not advisable to go by Tuk-tuk and also it’s too hot out there. He narrated the story of popular Hollywood movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider being shot there at a stunning waterfall. We had already been to all the temples (inside Angkor Wat complex) where many of the movie sequences were filmed. There was no need to add anything more to that. Obviously, I wasn’t too interested, but my family was excited. I admit, the host didn’t try to oversell the location to us. These are Photoshopped image of the waterfall to lure tourists. (image credit: Google) Did you see the pictures above? They look stunning…right? The host called up a local friend of his to drive us in his A/C car. Since, I was more like a local over there, we were offered the roundtrip for $100. Usually it costs no less than $150 for other tourists. You would wonder…$150 for just about 100 kms? Cambodia has become quite expensive now. It was not like this when I used to live there. Siem Reap receives more than 2 million tourists each year. He also arranged the entry tickets that was a whooping $20 per person, so $60 in total for three of us. Locals have free entry. The depressing drive to Phnom Kulen was through barren landscape. As we were nearing the place, paved road turned into a dirt road and we were asked to produce entry tickets. I asked the car owner that why do we need to pay $20 for such bad roads. He explained to me that there was no connectivity to this place earlier and the government was not too keen either. A private company made this road by cutting a small portion of Kulen mountain. The fees are collected by them and not by the government. “Phonm” in Khmer means mountain. I could figure out that this is a tourist trap. We had already spent $160 so far and we still had to pay for our food. I had already prepared myself for an unpleasant surprise. We reached the place and there was a pagoda (buddhist temple) with sleeping Buddha on a hillock. We first climbed there and I was totally unimpressed. This was the beginning of DISAPPOINTMENT. Then we walked about a kilometer to the waterfall. There is a small waterfall and then a larger one where Angelina Jolie had jumped in the movie. There were about 100 odd steps to go down to see the larger waterfall. The steps were quite steep and covered with Algae, which makes them slippery and dangerous. The locals recommended us to go down with extreme caution as the steps terminate directly at the river and it was gushing with heavy current. My family decided to skip as it was not worth the risk in a foreign land. However, I chose the opposite as I didn’t want other travelers to fall into this trap. I slowly and cautiously went down to have a glimpse of the waterfall that lures travelers and hyped up as “The Tomb Raider Waterfall” . I spent $200 and wasted my entire day to see this waterfall. This remains in my travel diary as the costliest waterfall I have ever seen. The water was very dirty and smelly. The river is sacred for the local so they were taking bath in muddy and dirty water. It was too risky to get into the water as the current was too heavy to flush you out. I met another tourist there who was equally disappointed. He informed me that he paid $15 for the entry ticket. He also informed me that he met other tourists who have paid only $10 each. There is no way a tourist can buy the entry ticket on his own. I later on discovered that the local agents only pay $5 to the company against the printed price of $20, the balance is their profit. I could not stand there for more than a few minutes. My family asked me “how was it?”. I just said you missed the $200 waterfall. The gentleman who drove us to this place was a nice person and he too was disappointed seeing our faces. He was helpless as he too had a family to feed. The best he could do was to offer us a complimentary ride to the airport later in the evening. This was the only dark spot in otherwise our memorable holiday in beautiful Cambodia.

We have just made a tour of Italy two months ago (from mid-September 2018) from Rome northwards to Venice and Milan, stopping at Siena, Parma, Florence, Pisa, Modena, Bologna, Cinque Terre, Como . . . Lovely country for sure, but . . . Italian stores are expensive, especially fruits, fruit juices and soft drinks. Typically they sell at €2.50 - €3.00 per 350cc of soft drink and that is outrageous in my native Hongkong, where we could buy a 350cc Coca-Cola at the equivalent of €0.60 - €0.70. Pickpockets are everywhere in just all of the tourist attractions. Laws are so lenient to those thieves that they roam around like scavengers as if stealing is legal in their country. They have almost become a part of Italian culture. One other thing that could also prevent me from visiting Italy again is that it's not free to answer Nature's Call. None of their public conveniences offer you any 'convenience' at all . They charge you €0.50 - €1.50 per visit per person. Most typically €1.00. What , toilet fee . . . Seriously ? The most bizarre fee I've ever heard of, and I gathered that it was Italy who first came up with this most absurd idea. Unfortunately it spread like a pandemic in Europe. I fear it’s now already spreading into Asia.

Cancun truly sucks. All-inclusive high-rises where American racists can avoid all contact with Mexicans, and go to an Italian, French, Chinese, Thai, Barbecue, or Argentine Grill restaurant in the high-rise, or else venture out to the exotic wonders of Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, Applebee’s, or TGIF’s. It was also illegally built through bribery on a reef that is now eroding, so you have to retreat to your hotel pool by mid-tide, because the beach disappears. The high-rises are ugly as sin. There are hardly any Mexicans or Europeans, only fat racist gringos paddling their whale-sized blubber up to a poolside bar to order their 15th really weak fake rum drink. Just…..awful! Go to Playa or Tulum or Isla Mujeres —Cancun is the tackiest resort on the planet.

Without a doubt The Giants Causeway, and I only live 30 miles from it. Dr Johnson got it right, worth seeing , but not worth going to see. Over hyped, over priced and over here. The second photo is what the crowds would be like on a slow day, looks a bit different from the photo above doesn’t it. I have been here twice and on both occasions I was disappointed. I think I went the second time to give it a chance (maybe the tide was in). No, still the same big disappointment.

I lived in London for a couple of years, so I’m no stranger to many of the capital’s most famous sights.

So, when my girlfriend visited for the first time, I took her to see Big Ben.

Well, it was her idea more than mine, but I was at least looking forward to saying “well actually, Big Ben is the name of the bell inside the tower, not the clock itself” and feeling really smug.*

*We’d already been through the whole Tower Bridge/London Bridge mixup debacle and I could see she was regretting some life choices.

Only I couldn’t see Big Ben. It’d been a while since I’d been back, but I was fairly sure I hadn’t forgotten the location of everyone’s favourite clock.*

*Actually, Big Ben is the bell.

Then I had a closer look at that ugly ass tower covered in scaffolding and realised that this eyesore was the horological horror itself.

“Actually it’s the bell inside the tow”—”I’M LEAVING YOU”

So yeah… we looked at it for a couple of minutes, concluded it was indeed a bit shit, and walked home to the sound of ambulance and police sirens serenading us to sleep in our poky little hotel.

Don’t miss London too much, to be honest.

America. Some years ago I crossed the Canadian/USA border at Niagara and proceeded to drive to Buffalo. I naively imagined that any place called Buffalo would carry some of the old West legacy. Not to be. Instead I found a rusting, depressed, poverty-stricken, working class city with nothing to endear it to anyone. I promptly went back to Canada.

Florence, Italy. This is the most overrated tourist spot that I have ever visited. When we were given the choice to visit anywhere we wanted with a pretty large budget, we narrowed it down to Italy. It seemed like a staple, everybody has been there, right? When we arrived, however, we were immediately filled with regret (At least where we stayed in Florence). Really, the only thing to do is walk around miles and miles in squares (the way the city is designed, you are constantly turning back to where you just came from) or buy tours. We did both of these things and were disappointed with the results. Since the area is so tourist developed, you can’t really see what life is like for residents, which is what we really wanted to discover on our trip. The walkways of Italy are rather dull and are filled with tourists, to the point where it’s actually bothersome to be surrounded by people. In addition, the roads and walkways are the same things and they are often one lane, so it might not be best to take your young children along with you. We booked a tour to Siena, Pisa, and Cinque Terre (the only place I would recommend - the sea is beautiful from that area), and it was clear that it was not worth the money. It was very, very expensive- 80 euros per person. We were cramped in a tour bus with little capacity and the drive was long (which I don’t blame them for). The tour company was clearly a small, family-owned business (like most in the area) and the workers were not very professional. The idea was that we were supposed to receive historical talks about places that we passed along our drive by the tour guides, who gave translations in both English for the majority of us and Portuguese for some others. However, our guide was not able to explain anything and was very confused about the area, even though she grew up there. Maybe it was just because English was not her first language and she couldn’t find the right words, but I still don’t find this an excuse as when we took a tour in Amsterdam, everybody spoke English fluently despite their accents and Dutch tongues. Enough said about the company, Siena and Pisa weren’t interesting either. Siena had a lot of history and I liked that you could actually see how people of Siena lived- but it was ruined by the tourists and the hundreds of tours that would visit day to day. It seemed that our tour group couldn’t walk for 5 seconds without bumping into another from a different company! Pisa was much worse. The only thing you can see there is the tower, which really isn’t all that interesting at all. A bunch of random tourists are trying to take a picture where they “hold up,” the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and somehow you always end up bumping into one of them. We also booked a tour in Florence itself to explore the inside of the Cathedral, but it was done by a very sketchy company and we were almost sure we had been scammed until we actually took the tour. The outside was tourist-and-seller full, so you couldn’t really stop and think at the moment when you’re being questioned by a pushy Italian businesswoman. You see, there were these random people walking around with flyers, and they would come up to you and talk to you about taking a tour, mentioning “exclusive deals.” Since tickets had been sold out, we decided to go with it and just give it a shot. A couple minutes later, we were walking inside. It was really nothing spectacular. If you want some real history in a church, go to England or Ireland or Spain or Portugal or France, not Florence. Now, what to take away from this? If you go to Italy, go somewhere authentic, don’t fall for the big names! The whole time in Florence and Siena and Pisa, we were thinking where are the Italians? I recommend a spot called Cinque Terre that I wish we could have initially booked our trip from. The beautiful Mediterranean, the authentic food, the Italians themselves, of course, and just the overall joy! Loved it there, very reminiscent of Portugal or Spain’s coast/islands. Edit: I see some people thinking that I’m complaining about having to walk- which is completely crazy! I’m sorry if it came across that way, but after years of visiting European cities walking was absolutely no problem to me. What I was saying is that there was really nothing interesting during the walk, as it was congested and filled simply just circles and circles of the same thing. A lovely long stroll in London, Oslo, Copenhagen, Madrid, or Porto would not have been a problem for me. Oh, and yes, David Wright, I really was! lol, we don’t typically go for tours but this time we didn’t really have methods of transport to some of the major hotspots expect for those tour buses themselves. But there were a lot at that one time :P