Tunisia. I spent a week there last month. I'm a travel writer/photographer/videographer and have spent the past 6 years traveling to a LOT of crazy places and done a lot of stupid things, but I've never felt more out of my element anywhere like I did in Tunisia. Like, once I flew into Haiti in the middle of a country-wide political riot, and still I had never experienced this level of unease.

I discussed this on a different thread a few weeks ago, but the main issue is that Tunisia took a huge hit to its tourism income after the terrorist attacks that targeted tourists last year (mass shooting on a beach in Sousse and a museum bombing in Tunis). It was like visiting ghost towns, really eerie. And as a result people who rely on tourism for money are desperate to capture income from the few foreigners who are still willing to travel there. Paradoxically there's a lot of anger against tourists though. Pretty much everyone we met tried to con us somehow. Even the driver I hired to take us somewhere sold us out and we ended up on our own in the middle of nowhere.

Also, as a young woman, I have to say this is the one place I've been that I'm not sure I would travel alone. I had my boyfriend with me on this trip, which was an exception as historically I've mostly done solo traveling. I kept my hair covered which helped, but I speak French and my boyfriend doesn't so I had to do all the talking. I noticed people were really taken aback that I was communicating on our behalf, whereas culturally it should have been him.

As for the impact it had on my life, I guess it just really opened my eyes to the hatred that some parts of the world have for Europeans/Americans. And after being there and talking to people, I sort of understood it - here you have tourists flocking by the millions in every year to overcrowd the beaches and drive prices up, but meanwhile it's nearly impossible for a Tunisian to leave the country if they want to pursue a better life somewhere else. Of course this is really oversimplified, but it definitely made me appreciate the power of my American passport.