The Most Dangerous Ghettos I've Been To

Note! Most of these are gonna be stock photos because I wasn't going to stick around snapping photos, especially of people staring at me.

Skid Row:

Oh the infamous Skid Row. A square neighborhood in South L.A. that always has dozens of heroin addicts and homeless people just sitting around, staring at the sun. My friends and I were touring L.A. and accidentally walked into Skid Row, and instantly turned around. When we entered the ghetto there was one guy jeering at us, and thirty seconds later we left and he yelled, "Damn, deys da same people!" So apparently he had just enough drugs that morning.



Perpignan:

Perpignan is a beautiful city in the south of France...except Saint Jacques, which is where the historic Perpignan castle. Saint Jacques has also been taken over by Roma (known as Gypsies in America because that word doesn't have the same negative connotations). Believe whatever you want politically, but after I visited the castle I accidentally took a wrong turn (something that's easy to do because Perpignan is a very old city with many confusing alley-ways and turning roads) and ended up in the Roma ghetto. There is trash blanketing the ground, starving dogs wandering the alleys, and people just stand in their doors looking at you. I was definitely scared, too scared to pull out my map and show I was a tourist. But I escaped and got to the nice(r) part of the city.

Winnipeg/Edmonton

A picture outside my hotel in Edmonton's downtown.

Winnipeg and Edmonton have been frequently ranked, alongside Regina and Saskatoon, as the 'Murder Capitals' of Canada. The funny thing though is that compared to world cities, Winnipeg and Edmonton are very safe, and most of their crime is relegated to certain neighborhoods. In Edmonton's northeast downtown there is a lot of drug activity and even signs telling you to call the police if you see prostitutes, but everywhere outside that area seems incredibly safe. In Winnipeg, the north part of town is also pretty crime heavy and when I was there, there were sirens going off pretty constantly; so the main downtown area and some of the nice suburbs were safe, but you knew there was something dangerous happening elsewhere. 

Technically I've been to some other cities which rank as the 'murder capital' of their country or area, such as Washington D.C., Glasgow, my family accidentally drove through the ghettos of Cincinnati, but in all those places I never had to walk through anything super dangerous.

And yes, I realize that these cities compared to cities in the Second or even Third world trump mine heavily. Have you guys ever visited anywhere incredibly dangerous? Any ghetto stories you'd like to share?