I live in the US, but I've done a bit of travelling. I spent about a month in England, and all the northern European countries, and Russia. I spent about a month in New Zealand and Australia, which was fun. I also spent time in Mexico around the Mayan Riviera and a few weeks in the Virgin Islands and Jamaica.
They were just vacations, nothing to exciting. I saw the sights, met the people and basically had fun. As far as which places I liked best, I'd have to say in order of my favorite to least would be:
(1) New Zealand - One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen along with nice people.
(2) Virgin Islands - In the 2 weeks I was there I stayed on St. Thomas and visited St. Croix, and St. John. The people were nice, the scenery was great and being able to walk right out the back of the house we were staying at and go snorkeling in the crystal blue waters whenever we wanted was a plus.
(3) Australia - The people weren't always that nice, but caving deep in the Blue Mountains was fun along with exploring the rain forests close to Cairns and visiting a cool hippy town in the mountains, and scuba diving with sharks in the Great Barrier Reef was an experience.
(4) Northern Europe and Russia - The people in most of these countries were very nice. It was a cruise, so I didn't really get to see all the places that I wanted, but I did go to the capital of all the northern European Coutries and spent a few days in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was fun, but it was such a whirlwind trip being in a new country every day that it wore me out.
(5) England - This trip was fun, but it was right after the cruise through northern Europe. I stayed in London for 7 days, explored the city for about 4 of those days and then for the remainder visited the town of Bath and Stone Henge and such.
(6) Mayan Riviera - This is one of those trips that I have fond memories of since it's just a memory, but it was just an average trip while we were there. My wife and I wanted to take a special trip for our first anniversary, which was around the first part of June. The water was beatiful and crystal clear and the accomidations were nice. But everywhere we went we were attacked by hagglers which got kind of old after a few days. And since it was right after US school had been let out, we couldn't walk 5 feet without running into another drunk sixteen year old kid who'd come down for a school trip or something. We did get to see a lot of Mayan ruins and did some snorkling in a cave in a jungle which was cool, but still had a lot of tourists.
(7) Jamaica - Nothing special really. I should have saved my money on this one. Most of Jamaica is in poverty and the housing is in horrible conditions. Run down shacks are everywhere and most of them, which are made of plywood and tin have a sattilite dish sticking out the top.
Maybe I had a bit of a bad experience, but 5 minutes after I got off the plane a guy walks up beside me and sticks a bag of pot in my pocket and says, "that'll be $40." I said no thanks and gave it back. The guy at the airport that was working for the resort we were going to be staying at asked if my wife and I would each like a Red Stripe beer, he left for a second and came back with beer, I took a drink and he says, "that'll be $12, it's $6 a piece." I said "fine" and gave him his money.
It was that way for the rest of the trip, we'd just come across people on the street who didn't have anything to sell and they'd say, "I really want to sell you something, let me see what I can find and would pull out a small Jamaican coin or something and say $5. If we wanted to take a taxi back into town, which was 5 miles away, it was $15 there and $15 back. As far as I could tell, if you're an American, you're just viewed as walking greenbacks. Everyone expected a tip, a tip to get a seat at a resturant, a tip for the server of course, and a tip for the guy that calls the cab, and I wasn't going to tip the cabbie because geeez, $15 for 5 miles is good enough.
