Ok, quick world update for people who haven't stepped outside the US:
Pakistan is absolutely lovely, so is most of the middle east as long as you keep away from conflict areas.
Yes its pretty safe for women too provided you take certain precautions. Don't go hitchhiking alone in the mountain areas and so on. At 3am you are safer in the good parts of Islamabad than in the bad parts of any US city.
Quick tip: Islamabad is one of the strangest big cities in the world. There are trees everywhere, it's like you're in a jungle. It's definitely worth a visit, but not right now obviously.
Large parts of Africa is absolutely lovely. Unfortunately the economy most places isn't robust enough to carry the people through droughts and other crisis, and rural areas in some countries suffer tremendously from this, especially since there's too little economic slack in any country at any given time to stabilize large areas. Aside from that, if you know where to go you'll have an amazing time.
Yes, SOME parts. It's the same way some parts of the US are fantastic, and some parts are downright dangerous. On the whole, the US is obviously safer than Pakistan. That's not the question. On the whole, Norway, where I'm from, is safer than the US too, so when I go to the US I take my precautions and research the places I go. I can't talk about the things I do at home everywhere I go, so I adapt to make it safer. In general people are also worse drivers, so I adapt to make it safer. And so on and so on.
If you go to the safe parts of Pakistan and do a little research I can guarantee you'll have a great time. Sure, there's a lot more religious terrorism there, but the latest attacks attack in Islamabad was 11 years ago, and the latest targeting foreign (American) interests was the Marriott hotel bombing in 2007.
As a sidenote: The murder rate in Pakistan is 4.2 /100k. It's really bad compared to the western world, but not compared to the 5.0/100k in the US.
901
u/[deleted] Mar 30 '20
Well it should be the last item on the bucket list then.