50 Dangerous And Soul-Crushing Cities You Should Delete From Your Bucket List

Sinhaloukville, Cambodia.

I’ve been to third world cities before, and this place wasn’t the dirtiest or most dangerous. What it was, was horribly creepy.

The place is filled with ‘compounds’ containing Chinese-owned casinos - what I saw was like a building site, with new compounds being built everywhere (the shiny newness of these places contrasted with the general grubbiness outside of them). The place is really two cities in one: the hidden parts owned by the casinos, and the rest.

I knew nothing about the city - I was only there because it was the port for ferries going to the islands off the coast of Cambodia (the one I went to was lovely). However, these places gave me the creeps, even though I knew nothing about them. I just put that down to hating casinos.

Only later did I learn that these places were centres of slavery and extortion rackets, run mostly by mainland Chinese gangsters. They entice people from elsewhere (many from China itself, Thailand or Viet Nam) with promises of good jobs, but once there they are enslaved and forced to work in various kinds of online rackets. If they complain or try to escape, they risk all sorts of nasty punishments.

The local authorities are basically in the pay of the scammers … basically, China itself cracked down on criminal gangs engaged in such scams, so many of them moved here. The locals don’t like it, but are powerless to prevent it; these “compounds” essentially rule themselves, and their owners have enough cash to be immune from consequences.

Karachi, Pakistan. The harbour was disgusting and the city itself absolutely filthy. If you ever get a chance to visit Karachi, don’t.

New Delhi. The city has history, food, culture but all of that is overshadowed by the literal haze of pollution that sits above it. Flying into the airport you literally cross from sun soaked blue skyes through a dense smog. You can't breathe and the sky is constantly dim. Its really a shame.

My recommendation is if you travel to India just get out of New Delhi ASAP. The rest of the places I visited were amazing.

oilman300:

New Delhi, India. crowded, dirty, smelly, people trying to sell you overpriced souvenirs on the street & won't take no for an answer.

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. So much money wasted on empty white marble building. So much poverty.

Kandahar, Bagram, Mogadishu.

Dennis_Duffy_Denim:

The State Department or Home Office travel warnings about Somalia in general and Mogadishu in particular are wild. They actually tell you to leave DNA samples with your doctors so that your body can be identified, and they tell you to appoint a single point of contact for hostage negotiations.

Alexandria, Egypt, the most squalid place I've ever seen, shocked me.

Port Arthur -Beaumont-Orange Texas. Just swamp, chemical plants/refineries, and jails. Not much other industry, unending humidity and mosquitoes, and no real decent food that I ever found visiting there.

Raxaul, Bihar, north-east India. Been there for more than a month working in a hospital. Electricity around 6 hours a day, rivers are black and contain more plastic than water, you weren't allowed to visit anything on your own (including the surrounding villages) because they would kipnap or rob you with home-made firearms. Almost everybody lived in filth. Involuntary electrocutions coming into the hospital every day because everybody would just try to steal electricity with live wires hanging around everywhere. Every rain would flood the streets and the filth would come out of the rivers (there were no sewers). Nice people though. Except those that would threaten to [end] our midwifes or doctors because they claimed that their wife gave birth to a son, not a daughter, which happened several times in 5 weeks.

You go over the border to Nepal, just 1 mile away, voilà, paradise (not compared to anything else, but Raxaul). Concrete streets, cars, nice shops (only replica though of course), GARBAGE DISPOSAL!

Edit: Oh, and the villages around Raxaul looked like straight out of a "help hungry African children" commercial. 20 clay and straw huts, some oxen, some paths, some rice fields, children in various states of nakedness everywhere. The hospital staff sent out three or four doctors and nurses on tour each week to try and teach their children basic reading and math. Most of the inhabitants, certainly all the women had never in their life been as far away from their village as Raxaul, which was around 5-10 miles. In some villages the girls were supposedly married at 14 and had to stay in their clay hut until they gave life to their firstborn, although that's just what the veterans there told me, they didn't speak English and my Hindi was rudimentary, so I couldn't ask them.

Another edit: Extremely corrupt government and clerks in general in this State. When the Indians (very friendly and communicative, like almost all Indians, although they really seem to like lying without bad intents) on our flight to Delhi asked us where we're headed and we told them "Bihar", they were shocked and tried to convince us otherwise. We did see some of Nepal and Northern India after our visit to Raxaul and it indeed was generally much more civilized, although experiencing something like this, even for just a month, really changes your perspective on humans and what matters in life in general.

Stockton, CA.

Bankrupt, ugly city full of tweakers and violent gang members. I don’t even like stopping there for gas.

St Louis is both the best and worst city I've ever seen. The Delmar divide is real. You literally go from nice houses and buildings to dilapidated ghetto in the blink of an eye.

Not a very well thought out take, but I once stepped outside on a bus that made a stop in Shreveport Louisiana and thought right away "Hmm, I wouldn't mind if I never saw this place again".

Luton, UK.

ALA02:

Luton honestly looks like a 1960s urban planners convention that was [destroyed], leaving random pile of concrete

I haven’t visited many terrible places, so my answer is likely tame compared to others listed already, but:

Waco Texas. Brutally hot, nothing to do at all besides go to the “downtown” area which is just tourists basically worshipping at a shrine for the HGTV people that fixed up some of the houses in the area. Horrible city.

Georgetown, Guyana.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I say this as somebody who has never left the US. Dallas is the worst city I have been to. A lot of US cities are filled with potholes, crime, etc. but at least there is something redeeming about their cities. Take my native New Orleans. It floods, has constant storm issues, political corruption, and both the white collar and street crime are bad here, amongst the worst in the country. But then you have the culture here: the cuisine, the festivals, the parties, neighborhood cohesion, the want to burn down AirBnBs, everything that makes it somewhat worth it to live in New Orleans. The "Laissez les bons temps rouler" of it all. Cities like Chicago, Philly, Detroit, yes, even Atlanta have something like these going for them.

Dallas is different. Dallas is a sanitized, milquetoast bore of a city. It has a bunch of crime and all the other city problems, but nothing of value to add to the culture. Every time I have to go to Dallas I am bored out of my mind. There is nothing to do there, the city exists to facilitate Oil and Electronic company's offices. If they didn't have the Cowboys, I bet that city would create a black hole of boredom that would engulf the entire south. Sure it has art museums, music venues, but does anyone actually know what they are or somebody famous coming out of that scene? Yeah, Dallas might be a "great place to live," but it is so boring, and that's why its the worst city I have ever been to.

Can I say Hyderabad in India? Unpleasant foul smell and trash everywhere on roads.

Midland / Odessa, TX. Both are just straight up ugliest places I’ve ever seen. Scars on the face of the earth.

Naples, Italy was the dirtiest most trash filled city I have ever been to.

I live in Louisiana. Anytime I go to New Orleans I’m having to look over my shoulder nonstop, make sure I’m not hitting potholes anywhere I drive, and it smells most terrible in most areas.

But the food and music are great!

Jakarta, the air pollution makes your throat sore, traffic is ridiculous, slums and trash. Extremes of wealth and poverty in the one city. It's good points do outweigh the bad though.