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BoholDiver
Joined: 03 Oct 2009 Location: Canada
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 4:36 pm Post subject: The most remote/unique place you've been to |
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Please write down the most remote/unique place you have been to. Somewhere you think most people on this board have never been to, or possibly never even heard of.
I went to Lanzarote, Canary Islands with my family when I was 11. It's off the coast of Morocco. They are a colony of Spain.
I actually have bad memories of that place. The tap water was brown and it smelled. The island is expensive, UK oriented, and wayyyyyyyy too many salespeople. Most time share losers preying on kids.
Anyone else been somewhere interesting? |
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SeoulMan99

Joined: 02 Aug 2009 Location: Seoul
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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Rural Russia near the Urals. Me and my GF there at the time went to visit her grandparents. Great memories of saunas and natural life blurred between many shots of vodka. |
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Moldy Rutabaga

Joined: 01 Jul 2003 Location: Ansan, Korea
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 8:03 pm Post subject: |
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A hard thread. Whatever I write will seem very remote or ordinary depending on where you are from.
I can only say that I've very rarely met anyone else who has been to St. Pierre - Miquelon, which are small French islands off the coast of Newfoundland. Expensive, chilly, friendly, totally European with barely a trace of North American culture.
Until the next poster says they're from there! ... |
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BoholDiver
Joined: 03 Oct 2009 Location: Canada
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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I have never met anyone either who has been there.
Is it more expensive than Canada?
Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
A hard thread. Whatever I write will seem very remote or ordinary depending on where you are from.
I can only say that I've very rarely met anyone else who has been to St. Pierre - Miquelon, which are small French islands off the coast of Newfoundland. Expensive, chilly, friendly, totally European with barely a trace of North American culture.
Until the next poster says they're from there! ... |
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banjois

Joined: 14 Nov 2009
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), BC and the Tombstone Mountains in the central Yukon are both pretty spectacular, and both feel pretty cut off from the outside world. |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008 Location: Busan
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 9:55 pm Post subject: |
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Aqtau, in Kazakhstan on the coast of the Caspian. |
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blackjack

Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Location: anyang
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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Chatham islands nz 800 km from NZ pop ~600 |
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Moldy Rutabaga

Joined: 01 Jul 2003 Location: Ansan, Korea
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Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 11:00 pm Post subject: |
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Quote: |
I have never met anyone either who has been there. Is it more expensive than Canada? |
St. Pierre - Miquelon was a very odd place as I say because it was absolutely nothing like Quebec. The culture, language, currency, everything was European French. It's a small island and people are nice. Went to a bar where everyone talked to us (mostly in French, which I didn't understand much of until a few beers later, when everyone seems bilingual).
I had to have my passport stamped. Accommodation wasn't really any more than Canada, but the food was a little pricey in comparison and we mostly ate a lot of bread. The compensation was a four-liter bottle of vodka for ten dollars!
http://keneckert.com/pictures/europe/europe.html |
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drkalbi

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 3:48 am Post subject: |
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Moose Jaw |
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schwa
Joined: 18 Jan 2003 Location: Yap
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:02 am Post subject: |
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Chitral, NW Pakistan. Could be where Bin Laden hangs out! When my gf & I went there 38 years ago it was a 2-day jeep trip to get there & all the men wore kalashnikovs. Met the ruling prince who told us we were among the first westerners to ever show up there & he put us up for free in his guesthouse. The Himalayan backdrop was beyond awesome.
Or maybe a tiny island set in a lake inside a volcano in Ecuador, sorry forget the name. Slept in the only hut there. Population zero plus a few rabbits. Unique experience.
Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca. Incan ruins & one small village, zero tourist infrastructure when I landed there back in the 70s. A 3-day local festival was going on with live music & corn liquor shared from gourds & dance till you drop & wake up & start all over again. Magical.
An obscure valley in Goseong County, Korea. A Korean friend took me there a few years ago, her ancestral village the war had somehow missed. Hung out in a 200-year-old home, a living museum with original furnishings. Her sweet 90-something great-aunts still worked the fields. They told me I was the first westerner to ever set foot in their village.
I'm missing others. Nice thread theme got me reminiscing. The world's an adventure. |
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MrMr
Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Location: Korea
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 10:06 am Post subject: The most remote/unique place you've been to |
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I'm not trying to top anybody but these threads are frequented by people who like to travel and as schwa implies reminiscing is fun.
Moldy, I'm from Newfoundland so I've been to St. Pierre and Miquelon. That place is famous for smuggling rum to Al Capone during the prohibition days.
I've been to Terra Del Fuego which has lots of tourist infrastructure but is as far away from the Northern Hemisphere as you can get without going to Antarctica. I regret not going there as you could get discount prices on cruises in Ushuaia. But the plastic was pretty maxed 6 months into a trip that i told my wife was only going to be about three weeks.
I'm leaving Korea in a few weeks and going to live on Baffin Island in Northern Canada; that's about 3 hours by plane from the nearest road connected to the rest of Canada. It's the first time I've been a little worried to go somewhere. It's a little different going to a harsh and isolated environment to work and live as opposed to just travelling. |
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banjois

Joined: 14 Nov 2009
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 11:07 am Post subject: Re: The most remote/unique place you've been to |
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Ha. I can see the lights of Moose Jaw out my window at night, for the next couple of weeks. Beautiful, glamorous, cosmopolitan Moose Jaw.
MrMr wrote: |
I'm leaving Korea in a few weeks and going to live on Baffin Island in Northern Canada; that's about 3 hours by plane from the nearest road connected to the rest of Canada. It's the first time I've been a little worried to go somewhere. It's a little different going to a harsh and isolated environment to work and live as opposed to just travelling. |
Everything I've heard from people who've spent time in Nunavut has been pretty positive. I'm jealous; I've spent a lot of time in the Yukon but never got a chance to see the high arctic. I was really considering Iqaluit before I decided to go to Korea. Should be quite the adjustment, coming from Korea. I'm about to do the opposite; I've been living on Haida Gwaii the past year, and, actually, Moose Jaw does seem like a metropolis in comparison. |
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Pink Freud
Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Location: Daegu
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 1:30 am Post subject: |
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I hope you visited the spa and the "Al Capone" caves, saw a Moose Jaw Warriors game, and ate at Nit's Thai food. |
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Pink Freud
Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Location: Daegu
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 1:45 am Post subject: |
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Been to Iqualuit and Yellowknife, but since both have airports and government offices I wouldn't say either is remote.
I'd say the most remote/isolated place I've ever been would be a four day paddle E/SE of Pinehouse Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. You can floatplane in or paddle in w. canoe/kayak.
Wild blueberries by the bucketful, and the best pikerel (walleye) I've ever tasted. |
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neil537
Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Location: Incheon, South Korea
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 4:55 am Post subject: |
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I'm from a small island off the West Coast of Scotland, pop around 100 year round. 2 ferries and bus from the Mainland to get there. But it's my home.... so maybe that doesn't count.
Travelling, all my travels abroad have mainly been to large cities or popular scenic spots, although we did take a family holiday to Connemara in Ireland, that was quite remote.
In Scotland, I've been to quite a few places in the middle of nowhere, but the best was probably a visit to a light house about 15 miles offshore from Iona.
http://www.nlb.org.uk/ourlights/history/dubhartach.htm
That is probably the most isolated I've ever felt. I would not have fancied being one of the lighthouse keepers 30m up that tower in the middle of a winter storm! |
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