Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby mikemike18 » 2015-12-27, 13:16

The number one place I want to go in 2016 would have to be Brazil. I am amazed by the physical beauty I have seen and read about, the beauty of the Portuguese language (which I am currently learning), the Brazilian culture, and the Brazilian people (I legitimately believe they are the most attractive people in the world). My aunt might take me with her this Spring, and if not, I am saving up to go there in the summertime and visit some friends. It is my current dream and I hope to visit places such as Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Fortaleza, and São Paulo. I am also trying to look for a job so I can spend most of the year in Brazil. I hope my obsession does not seem too desperate.

Other places in the world near the top of my list are Portugal (another Portuguese-speaking country), Turkey, and Morocco. But first, I need to cross Brazil off of my list.
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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Levike » 2015-12-27, 13:36

OldBoring wrote:Man, you should search for the YouTube videos “The most complex borders in the word”.

This one is close. Therefore a must.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby OldBoring » 2015-12-27, 14:01

Tenebrarum wrote:I don't see the point of a non-Viet foreigner learning Vietnamese. But if you're going to get married into a Vietnamese family*, it might make sense. Might.

*not very recommended

I don't know if I'll ever learn it to an advanced level, maybe some touristy survival sentence. I want to be able to say something more than “Xin chao, toilet”. On the other hand it's a language that I find interesting. A lot of Sino vocabulary (it's surprising how many words I can recognize). Chinese style monosyllabic words with tones. Romance-like syntax. Lots of loanwords from French and English.
Although there are foreigners living in Vietnam who learnt it (most often with Northern accent, although there's a celebrity who learnt the Southern accent quite well, I heard).

And… it's probably more likely that I take a woman away from Vietnam than marrying into her family. :silly:

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Tenebrarum » 2015-12-27, 18:21

OldBoring wrote:“Xin chao, toilet”.

Nobody actually says xin chào except for clueless tourists, so you can cut that out and simply say "Toa-lét?" Just remember that it's [ twɑː.lɛt̚ ] and not [ ˈtʰɔɪ.lɛt ], since we're French.
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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Car » 2015-12-27, 20:35

vijayjohn wrote:I think I'll try a short visit to where my relatives live before I plan on staying in South Africa for any (more) substantial period of time. :P And I don't really expect to become part of Afrikaner life given the fact that I'm not white and apartheid is not even close to dead in reality in modern South Africa.

Most Afrikaans speakers actually aren't white, though, but coloureds.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby OldBoring » 2015-12-28, 2:53

Tenebrarum wrote:
OldBoring wrote:“Xin chao, toilet”.

Nobody actually says xin chào except for clueless tourists, so you can cut that out and simply say "Toa-lét?" Just remember that it's [ twɑː.lɛt̚ ] and not [ ˈtʰɔɪ.lɛt ],

Really? I noticed in public signs “Toilet” was much more common. Occasionally I saw “Nha ve sinh”.
And I was taught to pronounce “Toi-lét” [toi.lɛt̚].
I think I usually said “Hello! Toi-lét?” :silly:
since we're French.

Colonialist!

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Tenebrarum » 2015-12-28, 4:17

OldBoring wrote:And I was taught to pronounce “Toi-lét” [toi.lɛt̚].

Who taught you that? :? :? I seriously doubt the quality of education that person has received in their life. (But then again knowing the state of education in Vietnam, I probably should have seen it coming.)

OldBoring wrote:Colonialist!

I'm all for colonialism, if that means the beautiful colonial buildings get restored in an informed manner to their former glory, the commies ruling us get hanged and/or guillotined publicly.
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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-12-28, 4:24

Car wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I think I'll try a short visit to where my relatives live before I plan on staying in South Africa for any (more) substantial period of time. :P And I don't really expect to become part of Afrikaner life given the fact that I'm not white and apartheid is not even close to dead in reality in modern South Africa.

Most Afrikaans speakers actually aren't white, though, but coloureds.

Oh well, I started studying Afrikaans as a teenager or something anyway, and if I can learn a bunch of Bantu languages, I can learn Afrikaans, too. It's not exactly a huge deal to me. I even have TY Afrikaans right here. :lol: Now Khoe and Tuu languages, on the other hand...!

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby OldBoring » 2015-12-28, 5:22

As I understand, Afrikaans is the main language spoken in the Western part of the country (where the big cities are concentrated).
So in those places Afrikaans is the lingua franca in the daily life ad in business. English is the lingua franca of the government and of the media.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-12-28, 5:27

OldBoring wrote:As I understand, Afrikaans is the main language spoken in the Western part of the country (where the big cities are concentrated).

Huh?? Most of the big cities are in the eastern part, not the western part.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby OldBoring » 2015-12-28, 5:32

Tenebrarum wrote:Who taught you that? :? :? I seriously doubt the quality of education that person has received in their life. (But then again knowing the state of education in Vietnam, I probably should have seen it coming.)

My girlfriend. She has a bachelor degree, and went mostly to Chinese schools.

I'm all for colonialism, if that means the beautiful colonial buildings get restored in an informed manner to their former glory, the commies ruling us get hanged and/or guillotined publicly.

I'm not sure if behind those beautiful colonial buildings, the general population lived well. After all, Vietnam was a exploitation colony to enrich France. Resources were taken by the French, and goods were forcibly sold to the Vietnamese population.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-12-28, 5:36

OldBoring wrote:I'm not sure if behind those beautiful colonial buildings, the general population lived well.

I think I would have a very hard time believing that they did.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Tenebrarum » 2015-12-28, 6:15

OldBoring wrote:
Tenebrarum wrote:Who taught you that? :? :? I seriously doubt the quality of education that person has received in their life. (But then again knowing the state of education in Vietnam, I probably should have seen it coming.)

My girlfriend. She has a bachelor degree, and went mostly to Chinese schools.

Not sure if that's another damning evidence against the education system in Vietnam.
OldBoring wrote:
I'm all for colonialism, if that means the beautiful colonial buildings get restored in an informed manner to their former glory, the commies ruling us get hanged and/or guillotined publicly.

I'm not sure if behind those beautiful colonial buildings, the general population lived well.

I'm not talking about the people. If we're talking about quality of life, then as far as I know, people still live in squalor in the countryside as well as the cities, and children still die in 2015 from lack of medicines and the physical abuse from the "daycare centers" their parents have to leave them at in order to work from dawn til dusk in factories owned by foreigners. We still need to pay all kinds of tax, both explicit and implicit, to our overlords for nothing in return, and we still don't have any political freedom. Or decent education. Or decent healthcare that doesn't cost us our houses. Improvement?
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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-12-28, 6:26

Do you really not think anything has improved since the colonial period, though? I can't speak for Vietnam, but while India is also fucked up in so many ways, it's still a hell of a lot better than it was under the British or under our monarchs. Then again, of course, India is not a communist regime.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Tenebrarum » 2015-12-28, 6:32

vijayjohn wrote:I can't speak for Vietnam, but while India is also fucked up in so many ways, it's still a hell of a lot better than it was under the British or under our monarchs who were too often greedy as hell.

And the politicians there now are not corrupted and greedy as hell, and the poor people have stopped being unimaginably poor and the several-century-outdated social customs have magically disappeared?

How much of the progress is because India got its independence, and how much of it is simply because of the technological advancements of the 20th and 21st century and the prosperity and enlightenment they bring? Can you tell?

Sure, life should look better when you compare the early 21st century with the early 20th century. But then ask yourself - it improved thanks to what? Thanks to trading French overlords for Vietnamese overlords, in our case? I don't think that's the reason, sorry.
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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-12-28, 7:02

Tenebrarum wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I can't speak for Vietnam, but while India is also fucked up in so many ways, it's still a hell of a lot better than it was under the British or under our monarchs who were too often greedy as hell.

And the politicians there now are not corrupted and greedy as hell, and the poor people have stopped being unimaginably poor and the several-century-outdated social customs have magically disappeared?

A lot of the poor people have indeed stopped being unimaginably poor and would not have had any economic opportunities without the downfall of the occupying government. And at least now, it is possible for people to call at least some of those politicians out. Besides, I did say "India is also fucked up in so many ways," and tbh you're kind of treading on thin ice here as my grandfather would have probably died at the hands of the British and I wouldn't even exist in the first place. :P Even during the colonial period, many of the reforms that were implemented were thanks to local people who managed to get their voices heard even by the colonial government, not thanks to the government itself. When your country is occupied by another, the fact that you come from the occupied country is a real obstacle in and of itself to achieving any kind of progress within that occupied country. It's not, or at least doesn't have to be, when your country is free from that occupation.
How much of the progress is because of India got its independence, and how much of it is simply because of the technological advancements of the 20th and 21st century and the enlightenment they bring? Can you tell?

Yes, actually, I think I kind of can. However much credit people may be eager to give the British for supposedly introducing democracy to India, without independence, Indians would not have been able to elect their own leaders. Foreigners discriminated against Indians in India, not even allowing them inside, say, certain churches. Foreigners could get away with murder very easily to the point where the very idea of a foreigner being brought to trial for a crime was a joke. Dowry is illegal, and it's also possible for women whose families are forced to pay more of it than they can handle to call the police on the groom's family. Child labor has also been outlawed. Furthermore, even though anti-casteist activism had begun before independence, it was tied into the independence movement, so the enslavement of lower caste people would never have ended, and affirmative action in favor of said people would not have existed, even though in India it's actually proven to be rather effective no matter what the higher castes may say about it. Plus India's economy would never have gotten anywhere, and Indians would not have nearly as much freedom of speech as they do now. Not to mention of course that India wouldn't have had currency of its own, a constitution (written by a low caste person no less), or official languages. Or a frigging space program!

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby OldBoring » 2015-12-29, 12:45

vijayjohn wrote:
OldBoring wrote:As I understand, Afrikaans is the main language spoken in the Western part of the country (where the big cities are concentrated).

Huh?? Most of the big cities are in the eastern part, not the western part.

You're right, only Cape Town is in the West.

If what I hear about Vietnam is true, then there are some similarities with the colonial period. If during the colonial period, most of the wealth was in the hand of the French; nowadays it's in the hand of corrupt politicians in bank accounts in Switzerland, or maintain their family immigrated in Switzerland.
What I see nowadays in Vietnam is that it looks very similar to China in the 90s (except that most people own iPhones and motorbikes) . Some people are predicting that it will be like China today in 20 years. Other people say that the there's an economic crisis every 10 years and that economy isn't growing very much.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby Antea » 2015-12-29, 14:08

It's not a country, but I would like to go to Hawaii :ohwell:

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby beispiel » 2015-12-31, 22:23

South Korea. It's such a beautiful country and I really want to improve my Korean.

I've been to Germany on a few short trips before, but I would love to stay there for an extended period of time.

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Re: Which country do you want to visit absolutely?

Postby mauw » 2016-01-11, 8:54

ICELAND!! :D Have been wanting to visit it since I was 15 years old. During the past ten years I did not have the money for it, apparently. Maybe next summer, combining it with a language course there.
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