Most generous destinations?
 

Following on from the thread about beggars, which country have you visited which seemed to be the most generous to a traveller / foreigner?

Most courteous- toss up between Singapore, japan and Turkey

No doubt, I pick TURKEY.
I have never felt so welcomed and appreciated like in that Country, been there 4 times by motorcycle and I look forward to go more times.
I feel Turkey like my second home and Turkish people as my brothers and sisters.
At second place I'd put Syria, and Armenia follows at third place.

Turkey rules!!!

Pakistan, Iran and the USA, you don't often see the latter two together like that!

i realy enjoyed malawi and southafrica :)

Brazil.

Hmm, some interesting names here. Seems Turkey is a pretty friendly place. I'm a little surprised to see Malawi though, I'd have expected a lot of beggers. Not somewhere I've been - yet!

Hi,

In some places of malawi people do begg at you but not as wors as in most african countrys but malawi has got nice campingplaces too which are well organized and run by europeans. There you can realy enjoy live, talk to other travelers and dont get bothered at all.

Transafrika - Riding on a motorbike through africa part 1

Gabune was nice too but hard to get to and the beaches in Kenia are lovely but the animal parks there are with US$100 per day far too expensive. The parks in Southafrica, Namibia and Botswana have been much cheaper and i would even say nicer :)

LG, Tobi

Most definitely China.

The Chinese people - whether police, retailers, restauranteurs, hotel staff, service station attendants or just the general public - go out of their way to assist western travellers.

Considering the difficulties imposed by the language barrier I was truly astonished by the efforts they would put in to help. If I ever had any difficulties I would actively seek out the nearest police, who felt honoured to assist me.

Second to this I would have to say Russia. I was constantly helped by well meaning people I met on the road, and was invited more times to stay in local's (stranger's) homes than I have in any other country.

Pakistan in general and most of Turkey (expats included in that Dave ;)

This is exactly the opposite of what I was getting at! I was interested to know which countries the locals are most generous, not the places where you actively seek a european flavour to hide behind whist you chat to your western travelling mates! :funmeterno:

I have a feeling we're going to get a wide range of countries depending on whether a particular poster has had a good experience there. Based on where I've been helped the most I'd list Italy, Mauritania and Mali, but in all three countries help was obtained under particular circumstances.

The USA is probably where I've found the friendliest people (out of the big cities anyway) and I'm sure that's partly because I speak something close to American. China I found pretty indifferent but at least it had the plus point that the big city hustlers were not very persistent (unlike Morocco). My son, on the other hand, worked there for a year and loves the place, but then he speaks Mandarin.

For me Japan rates down at the other end of the scale. I found the people stand-offish and difficult to talk to. When we had a transport problem we were met with complete indifference, with a couple of people going out of their way to be obstructive. Of such things are prejudices made!