The Most Underrated City I Visited
The most underrated cities are often the hardest to describe.
Every traveller seems to have that one city.
The place they almost skipped.
The place they booked three nights in and stayed for ten.
The place nobody back home talks about, but somehow ends up becoming one of their favourite memories.
During my travels, I've met plenty of people who have spent months, sometimes years, on the road.
Ask them about their favourite destination and you'll usually hear the big names.
The dream cities.
The obvious choices.
But ask them about the most underrated city they've visited and the answers shift.
You get stories shaped by encounters, unexpected advice from strangers, and moments of clarity that don’t show up in guidebooks.
So I asked six travellers exactly that.
Here’s what they said.
Da Nang, Vietnam
Emily, 28, Canada
I nearly skipped Da Nang.
Everyone I met seemed to be rushing between Hanoi, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City, so I figured there probably wasn't much reason to stop.
But a small piece of advice from another traveller made me change plans.
I was wrong.
What I thought would be a couple of days turned into almost two weeks.
The beaches were great, the food was ridiculously cheap, and life just felt easy there.
Every morning I'd grab a coffee, head to the beach and figure the rest of the day out later.
There were so many small encounters that made it feel like home for a while.
It wasn’t just a stop on a journey—it felt like a pause that gave me stability.
It’s one of the few places I’ve travelled where I could genuinely imagine living.
Almost like a dream I didn’t know I had.
Busan, South Korea
Daniel, 35, Australia
Seoul gets all the attention.
Busan deserves more of it.
I expected to spend a few days there before moving on, but it completely surprised me.
One morning I'd be hiking in the hills, the next I'd be eating seafood by the harbour, then finishing the evening on the beach.
It felt like a city that didn’t need to impress anyone.
It just quietly got better every day I was there.
The connections I made were small but real—short conversations, shared meals, simple moments that stuck with me more than any landmark.
It had this strange clarity to it.
Nothing forced.
Nothing staged.
Just life happening.
Tbilisi, Georgia
Sofia, 31, Spain
I booked a flight to Georgia without really knowing much about it.
A friend had mentioned it over a beer months earlier and I remembered the conversation when I found a cheap ticket.
That small piece of advice turned into one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Tbilisi ended up being one of those places that completely gets under your skin.
The city felt creative, a little chaotic, and full of character.
I planned to stay five days. I stayed nearly three weeks.
There were evenings where I’d sit with strangers who quickly felt like friends, talking about life, travel, and whatever came up.
Those encounters became the real album of the trip—not photos, but people.
I left with lessons I didn’t expect and a strange feeling that I’d left a version of myself there.
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Ryan, 27, England
Most people head straight to Taipei.
I did too.
But Kaohsiung was the place I couldn’t stop thinking about afterwards.
It felt relaxed without being boring.
Modern without feeling sterile.
I spent my days wandering around the waterfront, eating at night markets and drinking coffee in places I'd accidentally stumbled into.
It never felt like a city trying to sell itself.
Instead, it felt like a destination that trusted you to find your own rhythm.
There was a quiet stability to it.
Like everything was exactly where it needed to be.
Those small moments added up into something I didn’t fully understand until I left.
Porto, Portugal
Isabella, 42, Brazil
Everyone told me to visit Lisbon.
Nobody told me I’d end up preferring Porto.
There was something about it that felt more real.
I’d spend hours wandering around with no plan, finding little cafés and viewpoints overlooking the river.
It felt like every corner held a new encounter, a small connection, a reason to slow down.
I left thinking I’d probably never come back.
I was booking flights back six months later.
It had that kind of pull—like a place that quietly becomes part of your internal map of home.
Luang Prabang, Laos
Mark, 39, New Zealand
I don’t even know if it was the city itself.
I think it was the feeling.
Everything slowed down there.
The streets were quieter.
People seemed less rushed.
Even time felt different.
I arrived expecting to tick another destination off the list.
Instead, it became one of the few places I’ve genuinely missed after leaving.
There’s a kind of courage in staying somewhere that forces you to slow down.
It strips everything back to the basics.
It gave me clarity I didn’t know I was looking for.
Reading through these answers, I noticed something.
None of these travellers talked much about landmarks.
Or museums.
Or bucket-list attractions.
What they remembered were moments, encounters, and connections.
The feeling of stability in unfamiliar places.
The courage to stay longer than planned.
The lessons that came quietly.
And maybe that’s why the most underrated cities are often the hardest to describe.
They’re not always the most famous places.
They’re just the places that stay with you—long after the journey becomes memory, and the memory becomes part of your personal album.
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