The friendliest country in the world, according to 10 of our writers

Last week we looked at the grumpiest countries on the planet according to our writers, now it’s time to focus on the friendliest. Trips to the following places (from our writers’ experiences at least) are likely to involve warm welcomes, impromptu celebrations, good Samaritans and perhaps even an invitation to a stranger’s wedding.

1. India

By Hazel Plush

By day seven, I’d lost count of the wedding invitations. Our tour group had partied at multiple nuptial knees-ups since arriving in Odisha, from big-budget bashes in fancy hotels to gatherings in literal mud-huts. Everyone we encountered seemed to be on their way to a wedding, and did we want to come too? We didn’t know a soul, but it sounded like fun – and soon we were bopping with the grannies.

Eastern India’s tourists are mostly domestic pilgrims, not wide-eyed families from Worcester. We discovered the magnificence of the region’s mountains and waterfalls, the might of its Jagannath Temple, and the magnanimity of its people’s spirit. Ahead of our trip, we’d been warned of pick-pockets and scams. But it became very clear, very quickly, that people weren’t after our wallets or phones – they simply wanted our company.

Everywhere we went, locals sidled up to chit-chat, to ask about our route, or just to check we were enjoying ourselves. The youngsters asked shyly for selfies with us; their elders only wanted to pass the time of day – or to invite us to the wedding of their son or cousin or niece. Warmth, friendship and fun, at every turn.

2. Germany

By Chris Moss

I’ve met many cheery people in many years of travelling around Latin America. Brazilians are optimists and almost infantile in their bonhomie. Peruvians seem to smile their way through whatever vicissitude comes their way. Partying with Mexicans is raucous and reckless and regret-free.

But, as unlikely as it sounds, I think Germans exude an almost emphatic and empathic enthusiasm, even where it’s least expected. It’s not only beery Bavarian knee-slappers. I have met chatty train guardsmen, ultra-conversational fellow campers, unpretentious bohemian Berliners, including a hilariously camp Bowie’s Berlin tour guide, and even policemen who manage to stay human when surprised by an anxious traveller.

Germany’s 20th-century woes and wrongs are well documented but those born post-1945 have confronted it and developed strategies to be better and bigger and kinder. At the bottom of many emotions there is some element of hysteria. German jollity has an edge about it and a certain forced quality – but that might be my own prejudices working to tarnish a well-intentioned weltanschauung.

Whatever the substance or degree of speciousness, Germans are adept hosts and are usually happy to meet tourists and foreigners in general. Goodness knows what they make of London.

3. Myanmar (Burma)

By Paul Bloomfield

Bewildered, I lingered on the street corner outside my Yangon guesthouse. On my first morning in the country back in 2001, I longed to explore the city evoked so colourfully by Kipling and Orwell – but the bulbous, contorted, incomprehensible numerals on passing buses made my eyes swim.

“Where are you hoping to go?” a soft voice chimed at my elbow. I turned to see a smartly dressed man, smiling gently. “Shwedagon Paya?”

Er, well, yes – Myanmar’s vastest, glitteriest pagoda.

“I’ll guide you,” offered my new friend, latching me onto the back of an already overladen bus. I clung on limpet-like as the rusty jalopy veered through the humid haze, before a tap on my shoulder alerted me that we’d arrived. Who do I pay?

“Oh, I’ve already covered it,” he nodded. “Enjoy your day.” And with that, he ambled off. No “visit my brother’s rug shop”, no “help with my English lessons”, no ulterior motive whatsoever. He was just kind.

That’s Myanmar, over and over. Few places have suffered such oppression for so long, yet are so redolent with genuine curiosity and warmth.

4. Canada

By Anthony Peregrine

I quite recently spent almost a month in eastern Canada – Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick – and don’t recall a single sneer, snarl or smirk, nor a single unpleasant word. Even the restaurateur who told us smoking was illegal on an outdoor terrace did so apologetically. “Crazy, I know,” he smiled (which I pass on unfiltered to Sir Keir’s hygiene police).

Airport security staff chatted pleasantly (imagine that), a train guard had us playing cricket on the platform with our cases and a couple of Japanese visitors, and hotel and restaurant staff invariably welcomed us as if they had been impatient for our arrival since independence. They kept this up even when I told them that their keynote dish, poutine, was essentially dog food.

I was, and remain, very old, but I’d never before been to a country where absolutely everyone seemed to like me (I don’t get that in my own family). Canadian niceness is, of course, legendary, but I didn’t expect reality to match the legend, just as I don’t expect all Welshmen to sing well. But it did.

You’ll say they have to be pleasant and help one another or they’d all perish in their vast frozen wastes. I’ll say that’s not much of a factor in Ottawa. Where, in a bar near the parliament, a group of students made space for us on their table and we had a fine old time. Have I made my point?

5. Nepal

By Sarah Baxter

There’s no one particular anecdote or notable interaction to support my claims about the friendliness of Nepal. There’s just something in the country’s high Himalayan air. A palpable, inhale-able good-natured-ness and amiability that seems to fill the gap where the oxygen should be.

I do remember how I felt the first time I visited. I arrived via Nepal’s southern land border, having spent many weeks travelling around India. Now, India is fascinating – but challenging. Especially for a young woman, taking her first steps outside the Western world.

But crossing over into Nepal, I experienced an instantaneous lightening; tensions suddenly lifted. It wasn’t due to any sort of over-effusive welcome or specific act of kindness. It was more a quiet benevolence of spirit that trickled across the Terai, flowed over the foothills and surged into the mountains, where life is at its hardest but the hospitality is at its most warm.

6. New Zealand

By Chris Leadbeater

Running out of petrol – or coming perilously close to it – generally constitutes a small emergency. But the location where your car begins to stutter can make all the difference.

In my case, it was the small town of Mossburn, which sits towards the rustic south end of New Zealand’s South Island. I had been driving into the evening, to glimpse the sunset on Lake Te Anau, but had miscalculated several things: the amount of gas in my tank (close to nothing at this late juncture), the number of New Zealand dollars in my wallet (foolishly, none – used up earlier on lunch), and the opening hours of the petrol station I had passed in the mid-afternoon (closed, shuttered and most certainly done for the night).

Margaret definitely did not need to help me. An elderly lady, living alone, she had popped to the local shop for groceries – and confirmed my fear that the town’s only pumps would not click back into life before morning (“It’s Alan’s wedding anniversary today. They’ve gone out for dinner”). She also definitely did not need to offer me the two canisters of petrol, for her lawnmower, stored in her garden shed.

She definitely could have retracted the offer, my predicament made her shake her head with a chuckle at this point, when I admitted that I could only pay her in euros. Instead, she refused reimbursement, and waved me on my way, with a grandmotherly admonishment not to be so ill-prepared in future.

She would later tell me that her grandson was away exploring Europe: that she hoped he would be extended the same assistance, if he needed it. This information came in the form of a Christmas card, dispatched all the way to London – written in the same tone of gentle irritation with which she had bid me farewell 10 months prior. The money that I had gratefully posted to her – in the correct currency – before flying home was, she said, unnecessary. The petrol had been a gift and she had donated the sum to a local charity. But she wished me all the happiness of the season. And just a little more common sense.

7. Ethiopia

By Sarah Marshall

A few years before civil war broke out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, I joined a multi-day hike through the Gheralta Mountains. Ironically, and heartbreakingly, it was one of the warmest, most welcoming places I’ve ever been.

After word spread that a group of “faranji” (foreigners) were in the area, we were all invited to a local wedding as guests of honour. Rice sacks were laid out as make-shift carpets, plates piled high with freshly baked injera bread, and rusty USAID tins overflowed with home-brewed tella – a gloopy, fermented tar masquerading as beer.

A fanfare of bamboo flutes and wooden lutes serenaded the bride and groom, dressed in a white veil and baseball cap. Wearing second-hand weapons like flashy Gucci accessories, men jigged around with AK47s on their backs.

It was a time for celebration. Receiving guests from so far away was considered a sign of good luck.

8. Thailand

By Kerry Walker

No wonder it is dubbed the ‘Land of Smiles’. Thailand has more than a dozen words to express different kinds of smile – and all that happiness rubs off. This is a feel-good country.

Thais are by and large a friendly, tolerant, laid-back, hospitable and peace-loving bunch – it’s encoded in their cultural DNA and expressed with a wai (a slight bow with palms pressed together).

I’ve camped with Thai families in the jungle-cloaked Khao Yai National Park, shared a sunrise picnic with Thai hikers in Doi Inthanon National Park near Chiang Mai, and been given free rides on the back of my massage therapist’s moped in the rain.

Kindness here is not just about the baht, it’s intuitive, and not once have I felt singled out as a Western tourist.

Arriving dishevelled and shattered after a 12-hour flight, one whiff of that hot air charged with smoky grills, tuk-tuk fumes and orchids and I’m back in happy land.

9. Syria

By Sean Thomas

I say this with tragic regret – it has to be Syria. Obviously this was many moons ago, before all the wars. But back then Syria was probably the most welcoming place I had ever been.

In the markets, stall-holders would insist on giving you tea, in pretty tulip glasses, and yet they really – honestly – weren’t trying to sell you anything. They just liked chatting to strangers, and in a charming, smiley way.

Locals went out of their way to offer instructions, walking you through entire neighbourhoods if you were lost. It was also safe. And a real mix of nations and peoples; yes I know about the dictators, but it seemed relaxed, happy, optimistic, which makes what came after so impossibly sad.

The niceness reached a peak in a seaside café where I got into a deep discussion with locals about Israel. Oh no, I thought, this will end badly. But it ended after two hours of well-informed debate – with more tea and beer, slapped backs, laughter – and then everyone went home. Superb.

10. Bhutan

By Amanda Hyde

Birthdays weren’t traditionally celebrated in Bhutan – some older people don’t know their birth date at all. Nevertheless, when mine fell while on assignment in the country, my two guides went out of their way to throw me a party. Outside a hotel along one of its windy mountain roads, we danced around a bonfire with at least ten random guests that they’d commandeered for the occasion.

It was just one act of kindness on a trip during which I was invited to join a family get-together at the Paro Tsechu festival and gently coaxed back to health with hot herbal teas served next to a cosy wood burner after a sudden onset of the sniffles.

Maybe it’s because the country’s Gross National Happiness Index places value on emotional wellbeing and community spirit, but though I was far away from England in every sense, I’ve never been made to feel quite so at home.