Le peuple le plus accueillant?

A people that won’t let you use the bathroom isn’t welcoming. Back in the day, I wrote about a not-so-pleasant experience like this in my travel journal about Vietnam.

It’s like eating and sleeping—you should be able to hit pause on everything for a day or two. Unfortunately, in its amazing evolution and adaptation, nature never imagined we’d be taking rickety buses on bumpy roads for way too long...

Thank goodness, in the chicken buses I took in Guatemala, El Salvador, or Nicaragua, there were no toilets or foreign tourists! 😀

Otherwise, I’ve heard similar stories (passengers forgotten at a rest stop) in Europe—some even forget a kid at a rest stop. It’s not specific to Latin America.

But it’s true that to fully enjoy these trips, you need to master the language to understand the story told by the Honduran migrant living in Guatemala who gets on the bus to ask for money, to understand the reggaeton blasting (in a bus full of high schoolers I was offered a ride in El Salvador, the principal even asked the driver to change the song because the lyrics were so explicit), to read the macho or Bible quotes on the bus’s windshield, to understand the song of the young guy who just got on and improvises lyrics based on the passengers with a special shout-out in English to the only "gringa" passenger (me, in this case), etc... And of course, you need to speak Spanish to chat with the other passengers.

If you don’t speak Spanish and you travel like in Europe—headphones on, nose glued to your phone—then yeah, it’s better to get around on your own in a rental car.

Latin America isn’t just full of Spanish speakers. The first inhabitants, for example, often don’t speak it at all—at least, the ones I’ve met...

And what do you do if you find yourself in Zambia, the USA, Serbia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Japan, Norway, India, etc.?

Should travelers be multilingual, or just stick to the small circle of countries where they understand the language?

It’s pretty limiting. Just like only traveling by public transport.

But we’re getting way off topic—the original question was: which people are the most welcoming?

As usual, it’s a question that’s impossible to answer. After all, just as there’s more than one way to travel, there’s more than one way to experience the people of a country.

Some will love Moroccans, others Americans. The Japanese will be either vilified or adored—same with Indians. Some travelers love Hispanic vibes, others prefer Eastern European atmospheres. It’s all very personal, and the answers in this thread reflect that.

Like in Jacques Martin’s show, everyone deserves a 10—everyone’s a winner (though I’ve lost the under-35 crowd again... )

There are two remedies for the lack of toilets on buses:

Travel on foot, by bike, ski, private jet, car, or mule-back...

Or buy adult diapers...

For Indonesia, the timing was a bit special. The whole country was on the move, and Bison Futé was seeing things in dark shades.

(Still, getting traveler’s diarrhea on a bus is just plain horrific!)

In India, alternative transport solutions don’t always work. It’s hard to find a deserted spot, and just when you think you’re finally alone, an Indian guy pops out of the bush you’d scoped out...

Yes, we're getting off-topic (this thread is 10 years old!), but not that much. I forgot to mention that in Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba, lots of bus or minibus passengers I chatted with gave me their phone numbers in case I had any problems—so that’s definitely hospitality!

And when passengers talk to you and show interest instead of being indifferent, I think that’s also a form of welcome.

Even if you don’t speak the language, it’s always fascinating to observe life on these buses: people boarding with baskets full of chicks or ducks, those who aren’t afraid of anything and get on with dozens of eggs and end up making an omelet before they even get home, etc...

In Guatemala, after two months, for my last trip to the capital, I didn’t have the energy to make several changes on chicken buses, so I took a tourist shuttle where conversations always revolve around the same topics: the regions visited in Guatemala, the countries explored in Latin America, etc... And when I saw a chicken bus go by, I’d think, "I’d so much rather be in there than in this shuttle!"

But I’ll say it again—this mode of transport (very different from the modern buses you find in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, or Brazil) isn’t for everyone.

Anyway, back to the original topic: often, it only takes a traveler meeting one really nice person to generalize and say all the locals are like that—or, on the flip side, if they’re the victim of a scam or some misadventure, to generalize from that too.

But Middle Eastern people have a reputation for being very welcoming and hospitable, which comes up in this discussion a lot.

Often, it only takes a tourist meeting someone really nice to generalize and say all the locals are the same—or, on the contrary, it only takes being scammed or having a bad experience to make the same generalization.

I agree with this point.