Worst area you have been to?

[garygee]

Was this near an area called 'Bukit Bintang' by any chance? The night markets aren't far from it and I remember the surrounding area being full of brothels, ramshackle buildings, and dodgy-looking people (most likely drug dealers).

I don't remember 'Bukit Bintang'. This was around the corner and down the street from the Chinese Market.

 

[Cruyff14]

Surely this could be moved into best and worst areas thread.

 

[woopedazz]

The Best and Worst Areas of Melbourne, eh?

 

[HappyChappy35]

I don't remember 'Bukit Bintang'. This was around the corner and down the street from the Chinese Market.

Forgot the name of the place, this may have been the area I was trying to think of.

 

[Cruyff14]

Everything else gets mentioned in there anyway.

 

[blueboy25]

Yeah. East Hastings is pretty grim.

I was in Vancouver in June and stayed in the suburbs and had to travel through East Hastings to get to the CBD. We caught the bus a few times and there is a about a 6 block section when you cruise down East Hastings Street and some of the sights you see on that bus are unbelievable.

We didn't have anyone bother us but it is quite hard trying not to stare. Open drug deals on the street, prostitutes on every corner and just a really depressing place.

I also had a rental car for part of the trip and missed the turn off for our hotel one morning and ended up in a industrial area close to East Hastings and there was literally 2 prostitutes sharing each street corner.

 

[Slax]

Johannesburg. Cosndiering that I travelled trhough Africa from north to South the most unsettling I felt was by far in South Africa and in particular Johannesburg. This includes going through some areas i found out later to be war torn.

 

[Lionheart182]

Around the 9th Ward in New Orleans was pretty grim. Weird city, the bad areas run on streets that interject with some of the richest in the area. Rest of is was unreal though, one of the best cities I've seen.

 

[Mr_Bojangles]

Jo'burg.

yup, the outskirts are awful.

Out of the third world I'd say 76% of South East London.

 

[raven echo]

Around the 9th Ward in New Orleans was pretty grim. Weird city, the bad areas run on streets that interject with some of the richest in the area. Rest of is was unreal though, one of the best cities I've seen.

Loved New Orleans when I was there. Incredible city. French Quarter was fantastic but damn some areas of the city are so run down. We took a drive to one of the wealthier areas near the college and the difference between that area and the one where our hostel was located (a shithole of an area) were amazing.

You got amazing southern style houses in the affluent areas and then beat up weatherboard houses that look like they are one strong gust of wind from falling over in the poorer neighbourhoods.

I have to wonder how much of the damage was because of Katrina and how much of it was just like that anyway.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Tennant Creek, Alice Springs.

 

[Ron]

Wilcannia. Scary, especially at night, even worse on the day the welfare payments go through.

 

[Ed_Gein]

Bit of a surprise to read about Vancouver. Really didn't expect that. From time to time i quite like google mapping slum areas in different cities and looking up pictures and reading threads on them etc, but i don't think i've ever seen Vancouver mentioned?

New York looked really grim in the 70's and 80's i think. But they've really done well to clean the city up. One of the threads i read about, there were images taken from the 70/80's and from the same spot a photo was taken over the last 10 years or so and the transformation has been insane. From a dire slum, with graffiti and buildings falling apart to a sleek, modern look with nice looking apartments. A shame despite the money Vancouver seem to be pumping in, can't get the same results.

From memory, i haven't really been to any seedy areas like that. It comes across like the vast majority of them are in North America, maybe because they get more noteriety. lol. But it seems like the whole cities are like that when really, it's probably only certain areas that are extremely high in crime, poverty, drugs and prostitution etc..... Detroit, Buffalo, St Louis etc...

 

[davesnothere]

In Australia Daveron Park looks like a war zone in a 3rd world country and it seems every second person you see is on speed or meth ..

Overseas I found myself lost late at night in a fevela on the outskirts of a city called Fortaleza in Brazil ...I have never been as certain I would get a knife in the back or a bullet at anytime...the undercurrent of violence in places like that is something else ...its nothing personal it's just a question of people trying to survive and seeing someone European walking through the street's in the middle of the night is just too good a target to pass up ..after wondering around in circles for about an hour I found a nice quiet corner to hide in and waited about 3 hours for a cab to drive past which I grabbed and got back to where I should have been.

 

[CLUBMEDhurst]

South Yarra, the area's populated by f***wits

 

[blueboy25]

Bit of a surprise to read about Vancouver. Really didn't expect that. From time to time i quite like google mapping slum areas in different cities and looking up pictures and reading threads on them etc, but i don't think i've ever seen Vancouver mentioned?

Google East Hastings, Vancouver and there are a few stories on the history of the area

 

[stmookeyj]

The most nervous I've been was sitting in the train home from Parramatta (after watching an NRL game at Parramatta Stadium) earlier this year (had to travel through Redfern amongst other places, then walking through the tunnels linking the platform with the main entrance to Sydney Central station. The trip there was OK, happened during the tail end of peak hour so I figured with so many on the train it would be reasonably safe, but I was always worried about the return trip. I'm usually though on the lookout when walking through the big cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide) at night.

Generally though I feel pretty safe in most areas, maybe it's something to do with my indigenous heritage.

 

[Catfish Alley]

Yep, another vote for East Hastings in Vancouver here. I drive through their fairly regulary and you see some crazy stuff. You've got to be careful driving because some drugged up person will stumble out in front of you. It is amazing how they keep it contained to just a few blocks. You walk a little further in another direction and you're in Chinatown or the touristy Gastown. You get homeless people moving their because Vancouver has a much more temparate climate that most of Canada. In fact, a former Premier of Alberta handed out one-way tickets to the homeless to get rid of them from his Province.

Anyway, as I said, it is contained to one area. Don't let it turn you off Vancouver because it's a great place

 

[Caesar]

Wilcannia. Scary, especially at night, even worse on the day the welfare payments go through.

Yup. Used to spend a few days there once a year for work. Every year we had our place broken into.

Brewarrina is pretty bad as well.

 

[Copernicus]

West side of Atlanta. Atlanta is a pretty weird place - segregated pockets of wealth and poverty can be found pretty close to each other, but I've never seen decrepitude on the order that exists in areas of the west side anywhere else. Burnt out or abandoned houses everywhere, and just a generally uneasy vibe. The thing is that it's so much safer now than it was in the 80s that it's not funny, but there are still places you wouldn't go by yourself at any time of day in the inner city of Atlanta.

There are some areas in the region around Bankhead Hwy and Hollywood Rd that look like war zones. Literally, entire apartment complexes that have been abandoned and razed bit by bit, junk everywhere, unpaved dead end roads with little but shacks lining the road. It is pretty surreal.

 

[dales.girl38]

Definitely Tijuana and the general California/Mexican border area, I was only 11 at the time though so I scared easily.

 

[sabre_ac]

Had a big night out in Vancouver and decided with a group of mates to walk East Hastings, crazy how they have siphoned all the homless and drug addicts down that one street. As mentioned prostitutes and homeless people everywhere, some parts felt like one big recycling plant.

 

[Plugger35]

Definitely Tijuana and the general California/Mexican border area, I was only 11 at the time though so I scared easily.

It's a bit of an eye opener crossing the border into Tijuana and suddenly being in a third world country. There was a bunch of mexican kids that swarmed all over us begging for money as soon as we crossed the border, even when we got in our taxi they were still banging on the windows which freaked us out a bit. I didn't find Tijuana itself that bad though apart from kids begging on the streets and people trying to hassle you to buy stuff from their shops but they leave you alone if you ignore them, I never felt threatened for my safety there.

 

[alex_is_on_fire]

The Port Adelaide train station at night time that is near Grand Junction Road.

Don't know what it is but being up above the road makes it a bit freaky.

Overseas, lets try Compton in South central LA, where every building had bars over the windows and the doors had metal bars across them or Downtown LA

 

[jefffff34]

Tenderloin, San Francisco.

Got offered the chance to zip up the fly of a homeless person, after he had just urinated on a wall.

I said "no thank you".