Shadowing Practice: My 5 LEAST Favorite Countries (After Visiting Them All) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Travel is very subjective based on your own personal travel experiences

and there are many variables that can make or break a trip such as the weather, your health, your mood, who you meet, what you eat and the things you do.

All things considered, here are my least favorite countries in the world and we start in the Horn of Africa with Djibouti.

Djibouti was one of the first stops on a three -month Africa trip

that I did back in 2018 and I can't say I loved it.

So So first of all, the visa was a, it's a visa on arrival, but when you get there, they give you a hard time and if your money isn't like perfectly square with any,

if there's any marks on it, they won't let you in.

So I had a big problem at the airport getting in.

Once I was in, walking around Djibouti, there's not a whole lot going on and there's a lot of military bases.

There's like an Italian military base, a US base, a French base, I think there's a German base.

And so there's a lot of security.

Like everywhere you go on the street, you feel like there's eyes looking at you from every direction.

So especially me, you know, walking with my camera, I was very intimidated.

Like, what's going on?

What are these people looking at?

So obviously the locals were friendly, just like in the neighboring countries of Somalia and Eritrea.

I really didn't feel comfortable.

Like I walked down certain streets and it felt very unsafe.

It was really dodgy.

Once again, you know, it's like at the time I wasn't really with a local friend.

Actually, I met a guy at my hotel and he ended up driving me around, but he wasn't like a person that I connected with that much.

Your booty or your booty?

Where you come from?

From your booty.

And truth be told, it was really, really expensive, like obnoxiously expensive.

I found the cheapest hotel that I could book in the whole city and it was 105 bucks a night.

I can't even think of another city really that is that expensive.

And it's probably because they don't get many tourists and they can just jack up the price.

Culturally, it's an interesting mix of like French speaking people

and Arabic speaking people and Somali speaking people and they just like really mix together.

So it's kind of a little bit hard to grasp.

There's a lot of like French influence with the street names

and the baguettes and the different things to eat

But the people are closely related to Somalis It was just

a hard place for me to grasp a difficult culture to figure out.

Would I give it a second chance?

Absolutely But I just can't say that it was one of my favorite countries Oh boy, Chad, man, I don't know where to start.

So it's a central African country I will link to my other video on YouTube

that I made where you guys can see like what the full story of what actually happened

but long story short met up with a local friend

and He was cool and all until we both got on separate motorcycle taxis

and we got lost from each other My phone wasn't working

and that the motorcycle taxi that I jumped on happened to be a stolen bike

So I was caught in this big police chase

and I was cutting through the dirt roads of the city

And there was a I got off the bike

and there was a huge fight that broke out on the street

and I was like people were like grabbing my shirt like wanting to kill me

and then later on I was taking pictures

and I took a picture of a little kid

which normally I get approval from the parents I didn't see the parents around

and then it turned into a huge problem and another brawl

and people were trying to literally a guy like threatened to take out a knife

and this happened several years ago I would definitely give Chad

another chance actually I heard in the north there's really interesting

festivals called the Giriwal festival where the men like dress up as women

and they put lipstick on and they try to impress women

which is really interesting so I want to go see like the more Sahel region in the Sahara part of Chad.

I'm talking about the capital of Jemena, which is where all this happened and it was just it was really rough.

At the end of the day, you know, I was trying to be calm

and I was out at a shisha place

and I walked outside to take a phone call and I stepped in a huge pile of poop, like human poop, not cow poop, like human feces.

And I actually ended up booking my flight out early because I had that bad of a time.

And this is a series of events that happened to me that I don't know how I could have avoided it actually, Not to mention like everywhere you go in Chad people kind of stare at you.

They're not that welcoming people

and it's as a traveler It's a very very very difficult place to visit Not much to do

and a place that is a little bit rough around the edges We move on to West Africa,

so I was on a huge road trip with my buddy Alvaro We started in Liberia

and we went all the way to Senegal covered about seven countries back in 2019 Great trip overall, but going through Guinea was tough.

So Kanakuri, the capital, I mean, it is a rough place.

We happened to visit during a coup.

We were visiting a mosque, which was actually really cool.

And then all of a sudden, all these police came out with shields and were like, get out of the streets, go to your hotels.

And we were just like, what is going on?

We thought we were being attacked.

And even shooting on my phone was nervous.

Okay, so we are walking now on the streets of downtown Kanakuri.

And it's a Thursday afternoon.

And it's just completely dead and we see everywhere we look we see policemen that's why my camera's right here.

Just the locals, the locals will tell on you.

Yeah, and it just feels like this is one of the most unsafe places I think, right?

That I've ever been in.

We really got to be careful, they look for any reason to...

I'm just gonna hold this one.

Yeah, I know.

The policemen are in front of me.

So as you can see it was pretty rough shooting

and we were actually stopped by a little checkpoint guy when we were driving in Guinea because...

I don't know, he saw my camera

and thought I was taking a picture of someone

and then he came up to us and he bribed us

and we had to pay him 20 bucks and our poor driver Marlon was the one dealing with all the bribes.

Unfortunately bribery in this part of the world is really common

so it's really unavoidable if you travel as a tourist or a white person.

Other things to do in Kanakuri, well there's really not that much.

I mean just walking around just trying to stay safe

and once again in some countries it's just really hard to meet people and hard to connect and hard to shoot content.

I mean even on a phone and Guinea was one of them.

I don't really know

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if I'll give it a second chance like I I gotta

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find a really good reason to go back maybe a good story to tell

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or or a better reason than just to go So if you have any ideas, let me know in the comments below

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Brunei is a country in Southeast Asia on the Borneo island sandwiched in between

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Indonesia and Malaysia now it's an interesting place like I love Southeast Asia

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So I love you know generally the culture in that part of the world but Brunei is an unwelcoming place For me, I went into the main mosque, which is a beautiful mosque.

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It's one of the most stunning looking mosques from the outside.

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But I was kicked out for no reason.

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I took my shoes off.

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I was respecting everyone.

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I was trying to just be normal and respect the culture as I always do.

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And some guy was like in there like screamed at me to get out and was like really, really aggressive.

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And to this day, I just don't know what I did wrong.

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I just don't understand why they would be so rude to me when I wanted to visit their holy place.

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Nothing going on in the capital of Bendak Seri Begawan.

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There is a cool national park called Ulu Tembarang, which I do recommend checking out

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But I don't know I was in the capital city on a weekend

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and I mean there's no alcohol in Brunei For you know Islamic reasons, which I respect but there was no places to go hang out

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and nothing to do And I can't say the people were unfriendly I just didn't really meet

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that many people but it's not like my experiences in Chad or Guinea where the people were like actually Really rude.

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I thought the people were fine But just like getting yelled at in the mosque

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and lack of things to do in Brunei is a reason that I probably won't be visiting anytime soon Guyana, probably the least visited country in all the Americas.

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It's in the northeastern part of South America.

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It's the only English speaking country on the continent, which is pretty interesting.

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The capital of Georgetown is not a great place.

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I felt very unsafe.

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I was actually staying at a hostel in the city center, okay, of Georgetown.

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And when seven o 'clock came, the guest house lady was like, do not go outside.

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Have your dinner and come back and we're going to lock you inside.

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And that's probably the first time I've ever been told that, that I wasn't able to go outside.

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But she was just suggesting me not to go outside

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and that's because it is so unsafe and there are attacks and there's kidnappings or whatever.

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I don't know what's going on, but it's not that safe of a place.

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There's only one golf course in the country so knowing me of course I went to the golf course.

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By the way, subscribe to Binsky Golf if you're not already.

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I just launched my new golf channel where I share my adventures of golf around the world.

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But I went to Guyana and met a local caddy guy

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and took me around and it's just

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that place where you always kind of feel like you're looking over your shoulder for whatever reason.

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There's not a whole lot other to say about

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Georgetown I went to the market I went out of the market after a few minutes

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and it's one of those places

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that you just kind of stay low -key try to try to just make the best of it

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and that is Guyana this has been a hard video for me to make

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and actually I contemplated if I should make this video

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or not it's been on my list for years

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but I don't mean a badmouth countries and

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if you're from one of these countries I would love to

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go back I would love to give it a second chance I would love to try to meet new people

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and make new experiences but once again travel is subjective which means there's many things that can make or break your experience.

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In these countries, I maybe wasn't with the right people or I didn't go to the right places.

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So that's why they made my list as my least favorite countries.

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But love to hear from you guys.

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If you've ever been to these countries, if you have certain advice or feedback, please let me know in the comments below or let me know what your least favorite countries are.

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I think this is a really interesting topic for conversation because we always talk about our favorite places and our best experiences, but nobody ever talks about the least favorite.

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So with that all being said, guys, thanks for watching.

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Really appreciate it.

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And stay tuned for some more epic stories coming soon on my channel.

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A lot of Iran content coming soon.

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I just got back from Iran.

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I have a whole series coming, so stay tuned for that, and I'll see you guys in the next video.

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Peace.

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I'm Drew Binsky, and thanks for watching.

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Make sure to subscribe to this channel down there if you want to see more adventures from every country, and below you can find my second channel where I tell stories about the most inspiring people in the world.

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Also, I'm giving away for free all my best travel tips and secrets for finding cheap flights on that middle link.

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Until next time, stay safe, be spontaneous, and just go.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: My 5 LEAST Favorite Countries (After Visiting Them All) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Why Practice Speaking with This Video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

What is the Shadowing Technique?