Oman, is the friendliest country I have been to in the Middle East.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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Thailand and Vietnam have such kind and welcoming people. I am constantly impressed by the gestures I see.
Just today me and my girlfriend were standing on the side of the road in Thailand waiting to cross. There was no crosswalk nearby but cars saw that we wanted to cross and stopped both lanes for us go. We did not signal in any way or step into the street. They just saw people in need of something that they could help with. Nobody behind them honked or became impatient.
There are so many more examples…
I’m American.
I feel like it matters what race you are :(
My [white] friend has touted some of the friendliest places, but me being Korean...nope. A large number of places are very cold and passive-aggressive.
That said, not typically violent like America, but still not exactly welcoming.
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Vietnam, Thailand, India, Guatemala, Taiwan is a good call.
in Vietnam, someone literally ran out of their house while I was stopping to adjust my headphones in order to invite me to breakfast at his home.
he had a tiny orchard in his front yard and we shared mango, dragonfruit and pancakes.
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Taiwan for sure. What lovely people.
How about China? That's one country I want to see
I very much think so
china is too big to generalize I think, but Taiwan is very nice
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Finland and Chile, definitely.
They're also astonishingly similar.
Chileans are like the Scandinavians of South America.
Regarding the people, disregarding officials and leadership? Iran. Such lovely, welcoming people.
Really depends on the skin color of the person visiting and where they are visiting in that country. A non-white visiting most West-European cities will be mostly fine, but if they go out to the country-side, things can be very different.
I watched a documentary of an Indian boy adopted to a Swiss family who then went back to India to visit. He had a terrible time in Switzerland due to racism and nearly as an awful time in India, because he couldn't speak the language and people thus assumed he was a Pakistani spy.
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Germany is very nice, most people I met were more than happy to help my with practicing my German
Most friendly: Namibia probably.
Least friendly: UK.
Some context: Live in Scandinavia, and been in all those countries. Other countries I've been to: Chile, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium (technically, walked across the border from Netherlands), Austria, South Africa, Zambia, Kazakstan.
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Germany definitely, France second. Egypt and Canada.
France is actually quite nice the further you move away from Paris. Met some amazing folks in Breton.
People in the very south of France ar super nice from my experience. One thing to know about french people is that they don't like to speak anything but french, even if they could.
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For that to be really interesting you should state your own nationality.
for me American
Canada for sure, but I have friends there
I live in the US and have been to Canada, Mexico, Ireland and Germany.
Only one of these places have I ever been randomly called a faggot from a moving vehicle while just minding my own business on more than one occasion, and it wasn't any of the countries I don't live in.
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Japan, China and the UK were the friendliest I've been so far. I'm German.
Where did you visit in the UK?
Because I live here and I disagree. If it was London (as it usually is) then I'm really going to laugh.
Aside from London (where I didn't really talk to anyone but my sister who lives there), I spent 2 weeks traveling solo by train around England, staying in Bath, Shrewsbury, York and Scarborough and visiting some of the surrounding towns and villages. I'm sure it helped that it's a country where I have a good grasp of the local language unlike, say, Italy, where I could barely make myself understood. But I had lots of random friendly conversations with strangers in the UK and no negative experiences at all. Way more friendly than the average German for sure.
Big-city people are generally less friendly, so I do believe you that it's a different matter for London. It's the same for e.g. Tokyo, where people are way more cold than in the rest of Japan. And I guess you get a different perspective as a local than as a visitor. Several people in this thread have mentioned Germany, which does surprise me as a German.
Understandable. I went to New York expecting it to be an urban hell. People in Manhattan were more pleasant and friendly than London. I guess the short term visitor experience will also be very different.
Philippines
I'm Aussie. For me friendliest countries probably Taiwan, Ukraine and Canada
For me it's actually Australia. Except on Australia day, that was weird as fuck to be honest.
Syria
Sudan, definitely. (And I've visited well over 50 countries.)
I don't know how to parse this question and it makes me wonder about humanity at large.
Like, what's "being friendly" when assessing entire countries? How do you measure it? Does it apply just to strangers or is it related to having friends there? Does this require you not finding that unsolicited conversation is borderline assault? Because I'm afraid I can't do that. Is it an institutional thing? I almost got deported from Canada once, so from that baseline I'm pretty sure I couldn't agree with a lot of responses below.
Does this require you not finding that unsolicited conversation is borderline assault? Because I'm afraid I can't do that.
Are you serious?
I am slightly facetious and mildly hyperbolic.
But yes, I absolutely hate strangers forcing conversation on me. I find few things more grating and hostile than landing in a foreign country horrendously jet lagged and having a "friendly" cabbie try to extract my life story from me while telling me about their mortgage payments or whatever.
I once had someone in the US just sit at our bar table unprompted and strike up a conversation and I saw my life flash before my eyes. That's what psycopaths do. It's like getting punched right in your social anxiety with spiky brass knuckles.
Now that you explain it I understand and actually agree in some situations like your taxi example.
However, once I’m out doing tourist things I want to meet locals and other travelers and share stories, tips, or local lore. Meeting people in this way has allowed me to discover new places that or perspectives that I would never experience otherwise.
To each their own I suppose.
You can meet people online, I would be very wary as a tourist, most folks will only talk back if they get value from it, like assault, robbery or your blood🦇
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