Infrastructure thread, guys. :)

vancouver? it pretty spectacular in north vancouver but i really struggled to find an awesome place to live in vancouver. i would rate montreal the best in canada, even with 9 months of winter. cold brutal ball frost bite winter.

Montreal would be great if there weren't french people there.

that's not racist

Montreal is rated as a great party city.
For Vancouver, as a young single (or even couple), the West End, DT, or Kitsolano are all excellent! For families, places like Delta are amazing. Tsawwassen, Ladner and White Rock are all brilliant suburban areas. Even Richmond is okay, but it lacks character.

richmond??? kits is ok, i suppose i would be much more the main street/commercial drive hippy type. montreal is the real deal for musicians and artists. vancouver is much more expensive and most of the colourful types probably cant afford to live there.

for what its worth, my top 3.

berlin
montreal
melbourne

i also rate wellington and victoria b.c. pretty highly but i haven't had a chance to live in either (yet).


Edited by inala brah: 25/8/2014 08:53:16 PM

Being french isn't a race. I'm being a bigot, not a racist. Get it right.

I'm not sorry either, my experiences with french people is that they are rude, arrogant and generally unpleasant to English speaking people. French backpackers are the only nationality of people who come to my bar, order a drink in french and then get angry with me because I don't understand them.

Cheese eating surrender monkeys the lot of them.

Parts of Richmond in BC are quite liveable. It's not far from down town Van and is reasonably cheap. Not bad for families. Commercial Drive is freaking awesome! The craft breweries on that road are sublime. Good food, good beer, and just about always good company.

Victoria BC is fantastic too. Would love to do a semester at UVic, it's a real party school apparently :lol:

Yeah look... i'm pretty close to agreeing here. Have very little time for most of the French people I've met around the globe. A few good ones, but the major have been lazy, rude and self entitled.

French Canadians ≠ French People. I've never met nicer people on the planet than the people i met in Montreal and Quebec. They were incredibly polite and actually took their time to help me learn some french when they saw i was trying to give the native language a real go. In fact, the same could be said for a lot the actual french people i met in the south of France. It was only the Parisians who were arseholes. In fact, i bet all your backpackers were probably from Paris.

French Canadians did my head for the most part. Lazy, aggressive, self entitled, stubborn.
A few good ones amongst them, but I enjoy the company of Germans far more.

My mate's girlfriend is French and all her friends are from Lyon and they're assholes.

yes french is not a race. but i think you dont understand the full meaning of racism.

french canadians - the quebecois (kabecwa) - are pretty staunchly self identified. i never had an issue with rudeness from the french in france or the quebecois.

most backpackers are pretty fucking rude though. especially australians in asia. actually aussies in europe and the americas can be pretty bad as well. i guess that its more common for aussie backpackers to treat asian people like shit.

how do you feel about the brisbane line? does that make australians surrender monkeys as well? ;)

FYI "Direct racial discrimination happens when someone is treated less fairly than someone else in a similar situation, because of their race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin"..

http://www.racismnoway.com.au/teaching-resources/factsheets/9.html

Edited by inala brah: 25/8/2014 09:33:56 PM

I'm with you about Aussies being rude. The rudest demographic I've encountered is middle aged Australian women. Particularly from Sydney. When I used to work for 1800-GOT-JUNK? Taking calls from women in Sydney was always the worst, even though we had 180 locations across North America and Australia.

WTF was 1800-GOT-JUNK?

it blows my mind seeing aussie backpackers in SE Asia carry on. ive been in shock so many times watching 18-25 year old dickheads in their singha singlets just treat locals like complete shit. its shameful. i tell people im from new zealand.

and then the older guys with their 12 year old girlfriends and hordes of hookers. fuck me it's terrible.

If toronto didn't have brutal winters it would be number 1 for mine, basically a slightly bigger and cleaner version of melbourne, and more multicultural.

Haven't done SE Asia, but Australians disgust me at times with the way they carry on. A complete lack of patience and way too much self importance.

As for older Aussie blokes who live overseas... In the Canadian ski fields, they're pretty bad. Just fucked up all the time living shocking lifestyles.

Professional junk removal company. Don't worry, when I applied for the job, I thought it was a phone sex hotline too.

have you lived there?? where did you live? i was in little ethiopia on bloor and ossington.

i struggled in toronto for a bit to get adjusted. i think the city centre is pretty dull but the inner city suburbs are alright. looking back i did better there than i thought i was doing. i was studying the whole time so its no surprise i found it a bit off. i still think montreal is a much more happening place.

i was there for rob fords downfall. that was pretty spectacular. the guy is sensationally fucked up.

Edited by inala brah: 25/8/2014 10:03:01 PM

Australians are looked at overseas the way we look at Americans. Nationalistic, arrogant, noisy, etc. Except Aussies are also rude assholes to all the locals and generally hated by everyone. I usually tell people I'm kiwi too.

The worst part is places like SE Asia where they go "nah man, the locals love us, they love how we party and are exciting". No champ, they hate you, they hate everything you are and everything you stand for, they're nice to you because they need your money. They'd kill you in your sleep if they could.

Rob Ford is a twat, an absolute twat.

Agreed about the city centre being boring. Zero culture.
The lakes up north are absolutely fantastic in the summer though. Amazing fishing.

and you can see it when you talk to locals. i really feel for the folk that live on the thai islands, they seem so jaded. if you're not buying anything from them they treat you with contempt. and it's fair enough considering what they have to put up with.

+1. Yup. Been travelling overseas and witnessed the Australian typical boorish behaviour where they complain why some Asians don't speak English. Absolute arrogance to the nth degree.

I think when you actually take time to talk to someone from any country like actual humans do they'll quickly realise you're not one of the Bintang singlet wearing fuckwits that give us a bad name, and maybe even change their perceptions a little.

how can this list be taken seriously when Adelaide is in the top 5

more a case of who paid the most for the listing

Been on holiday there, was in the inner west which is predominantly Portuguese/Italian, the city centre tries to be New York but for me ends up coming out looking like a Canadian melbourne, I will say it's more diverse, meaning walking around after 8 on a weeknight won't be 85% Chinese like in our cbd, the major ethnic areas also appear to be more authentic, various Chinatowns, koreatown, greektown etc, even Scarborough looks nice which is supposedly meant to be a dump...I must have visited the good part. All in all I was able to navigate the place with ease and I always felt cos it gave me a melbourne vibe, but that's just me.

Thailand is not called the "Land of Smiles" for nothing. If you insult them they'll still smile at you...but deep down inside they hate your guts.
I think Thaliand (especially Phuket and Koh Phagnan) has become the "New Bali".

Edited by SocaWho: 26/8/2014 09:54:35 PM

Hardly. If you go to Phuket and never leave Patong then you might get that impression. The locals there have seen the worst of western society and I end up hating Australians too every time I go there. Get two minutes outside that shit hole and things become far more pleasant. Thailand has so much more to offer for visitors that is not often appreciated by the Bogans who go there. Respect is everything in Asia and taking your time to show it to your hosts can make all the difference in your interactions with the locals. You wouldn't believe how much a smile, polite "Sawadee Krub" and a wai (thai greeting) is worth until you've lived there. Even the most basic use of Thai phrases will earn you some kudos there, especially if you are in a more rural area.