Developed or developing? English speaking or not? Which is the best?

Many people have asked me whether I enjoy traveling more in developed or developing countries. This isn't really a fair question, since it doesn't take the culture differences into account. For example, Australia and Japan are similar in development, but so different in culture and the experiences I had that they're not really comparable at all.

Aside from the cultural aspects, as a traveler I've observed two main differences between the developed and developing countries; price and comfort. 

Developed country: high price and high comfort.

Developing country: low price and low comfort...or, as I'll explain later, a medium price and medium to high comfort.

I consider a country more "developed" mainly if it's just more organized and people seem to have a high quality of life. For example, Brazil has a very high GDP, but it has favelas(slums) all over Rio and has people scared about crime, so I wouldn't list it before many other countries. One cannot judge based on the GDP per capita since all of those Asian city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong would be at the top of the list.

Of course, this post and all of my opinions are based on the specific 15 countries that I visited and my own experiences there. I'll order those countries from most developed to most developing, based on my own experiences of the country, nothing official here: 

Developed - Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Argentina, Brazil

Developing - China, Peru, Thailand, Vietnam, Bolivia, India, Cambodia, Laos

Now back to the two big differences of price and comfort. Developing countries are by definition cheaper places to live and travel. Especially if you come from any developed country, your exchange rate is going to give you heaps of buying power. The glory of this cheapness, however, is contrasted by the quality of the amenities throughout the country, especially in public. The government probably won't put much effort into maintaining things used by the public, so you never know what you're gonna get with roads, police, and the like.

When dealing with a private establishment, however, even though you're in a developing country, capitalism still reigns supreme in our global world and you get what you pay for. In the developing countries with a large class divide, you can still see prices that would be the same or greater than what you would pay at home, but the quality is on par. India has a large class divide with really only the rich and the poor. You can get food on the street for a fraction of a dollar, and then you can get food in a nice restaurant for $5-$15 dollars. The nice thing is that you'll get great service for your money, and still pay only half the price of the equivalent in the USA or Europe.

Many hostel dorms in China have a going rate of about $7-25 per night now. I stayed at a place that was at the top of that range ~$25 per night, but it was an amazing place. Soft fantastic mattresses, free towels that were absolutely huge, free breakfast, just a great fun and clean atmosphere in general, and it was outfitted from a traditional Chinese hutong home. This is the same as the going rate for a regular hostel in Australia, but I got much more than I would ever get in Oz. They nickel and dime you there for towels, internet, breakfast, etc. I wouldn't call this living like a king on a dime, but it shows that you can get a lot for your money if you don't go too cheap, and you can afford it!

Because of these two differences of price and comfort as well as the culture, it's cheaper and you get more bang for your buck in a developing country, but I can't say it's more enjoyable.

A better question to answer would be, "Is it more enjoyable traveling in a primarily English speaking (usually Westernized as well) country?" This is different from asking about just a Westernized country, since even in a Westernized country in Europe there are many cultural and language differences to experience albeit a higher price. I'm not going to answer the Westernized country question since it's not really applicable to this trip.

Australia and New Zealand are primarily English speaking Westernized countries (that I'll refer to now as "Australasia"). A huge factor in my experiences there depended on their English proficiency and familiarity to my home country of the USA. Soon after I arrived, I felt like I was home...but not really.

Everyone drives on the opposite side of the road, it was winter and not summer in June. I was still traveling, but it was almost too easy. Everyone spoke English, there were a gazillion tour brochures and companies trying to get you to go on their expensive tour. The overwhelming familiarity of all the choices was back, it was almost like a reverse culture shock. I had gotten so used to everything being off and going wrong, that I wasn't sure what to do. My free Internet was gone and all the hostels were huge with heaps of people. It actually wasn't until the mid-writing of this blog post that I realized I had that reverse culture shock.

One example is that I had been traveling with a roll of toilet paper in my bag nearly my entire trip, but once I got to Australasia, I almost never used it since every public bathroom actually provided these amenities...and it stayed in my bag all the way home.

It wasn't long before I got used to the new familiarity though. I enjoyed the ease of travel where all the travel agencies told you exactly where you should go and all of them gave you the same expensive price (which meant there was little gain to haggling or looking for the lowest bidder). I had a great time meeting interesting people too, who were mostly people from other English speaking countries. UK and Irish travelers especially love to travel to Australasia, constantly complaining about their crappy weather and how much better it is in Australia (even though we had some bad rain in Oz, and NZ was cold and rainy most of my time during my winter travels). There were still out of the ordinary crazy travel experiences, but they were usually packaged up in a tour, there were no more cultural epiphanies.

It was fun though to pick out the differences between Australasia and the USA, mostly with the English language. I love the accents, but I can't really describe that without going into highly technical language specifics like diphthongs, so here's just some fun words that I encountered off the top of my head:

Australia & New Zealand:

• Arvo - Afternoon
• Boot - trunk of a car
• Mate - like when you say man, buddy, etc. (ex: Hey there, mate!)
• Candy floss - cotton candy
• Return - round-trip (so you buy a ticket return instead of a ticket round-trip)
• Tog - swimsuit
• Brilliant - cool, sweet, awesome
• When they saw something like "no," "saw," or "idea" it sounds like they add and "er" sound to the end of it so it sounds more like "noer," "sawer," and "idear." Of course it's more pronounced in certain people, but it's definitely there.

Australia only:

• Barbie - BBQ
• Thongs - flip-flops
• G-Strings - thongs

New Zealand only:

• Jandals - flip-flops
• Sweet As, hot as, *some word* as - Very sweet, very hot, etc.
• Choice - cool, nice sweet. "Hey man I traveled around the world." "Choice, dude"
• The Maori people (native NZ islanders) like calling people bros, everyone's a bro to them

With that said, I can conclude that a non-English speaking country presents you with more to discover and experience, which is what traveling is really all about. Being from an English speaking country, I'm glad I broadened my horizons and went out of my comfort zone. Take a leap, don't just go to another English speaking country that isn't that different from your own.