Out of countries I've been to, I would say Papua New Guinea. Fantastic people..

Germany.

*snicker*

I'd say other people travel to America so.

I was joking about the stereotypical American who has never left their country.

Depends on what you mean by respectful. If you mean a combination of honesty, generosity, and friendliness then the Canadians in Newfie win by a country mile.

i worked with some canadian army reservists, they were very nice; and as they were reservists when they went home they were civilians again, so canadians. i also say australians except for major 'pain' mitchell

I'm confused actually: why wouldn't military count?

Because you are interacting with them away from their country.

Hey, I'm American and been to around 50 countries, so we're not all that way. But you're right as a whole we probably average 1.1 countries visited per person, and that drops to about 1.01 if you exclude Canada and Mexico. Did you know ex-president Bush had never left the US before he became President? You know, the leader of foreign relations for the United States. *facepalm*

My vote goes to Australia, but it's a tough call - a lot of good people in the world.

I have only ever been to Germany, but the Germans were very polite. I only encountered one person there who I considered rude; and he may just have been having a bad day.

the canadian army reservists were closer to home than i was. it was indian island in washington. they were from vancouver BC

@Deinodon: Ah so no military deployed in other countries. I thought he meant any military anywhere.

+1 to Australia from me.

Yeah come to think of it the Australians and Canadians that I met overseas were quite nice as well. The Russians I have met have been quite nice too. Gotta give props to the Irish too.

@ JEccles. I note your comments regarding the people of Papua New Guinea, and with some reservations would agree with you. My reservations relate to the problems of violent criminals around Port Moresby and the excessive use of beetlenut, which contains a narcotic drug. But away from that, off in the bush, in more traditional tribal communities, provided you show respect etc, the genuine kindness, friendliness, willingness to help, to share, often from people who don't possess much in our "Western, materialistic" view of things. Two things about PNG. I firmly believe we Europeans are responsible for dividing a country that should be united and the Indonesians should get out of East PNG. Of course they won't, there's too much wealth for them in exploiting the natural resources of East PNG. It's an ironic thing, the Indonesians, imho, who threw off their Imperialist European masters then became minor imperialists themselves, and Papua is a good example of that.

The second thing was the unknown, undiscovered plant and animal life in Papua's rainforests. It's a tragedy of our collective greed that allows the destruction of ancient rainforest for woodchips and palm olive(?) plantations.
Untapped genetic biodiversity going under the bulldozer.
I also admit that Australian mining operations in PNG have environmental sins on their slates.

i m from italy traveled in half europe and 1week in US so i can t judge the most of the world. Anyway for me the portuguese are very kind, i think the worst are french but also in croatia peoples are very rude

@marze, where in italy are you from. I do agree the the french( particularly from Paris ) are the rudest.

I found Turks to be very nice people.

I struggle with France. Paris was not friendly, but compared to New York and it doesn't look any worse. Major city people just don't seem to have time for pleasantries.

Totally disagree. There are cities with massive populations that are friendly.

It's true, us Canucks are absolutely delightful.

Much like Canada, i find people form northern counties in general (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Scotland) to be pretty good in terms of being laid back and friendly. Found Vietnamese to be quite respectful in general, although i suspect as tourism continues to grow there they'll lose a bit of that charm.

Capt: I'm from Vancouver, not familiar with Indian Island but been to the base on Whitby Island a few times which assume is similar area. Wouldn't be surprised if I knew some guys who were on that ex.

Most people around the world are pretty good, to be honest. The only places I've been to where I had the distinct impression that quite a few people were going out of their way to be arseholes were Paris and Budapest.

Romania & America amazing people found France a tad rude and Mexico was scary as fuck thankfully got slight dark complexion & thus got no hassle

@ssorenn I am from Genova

As an American, I basically can't play this game. :( That's not even by choice - I simply don't have the money to do transatlantic travel like I wish I could, so my actual contact with people from other countries has been limited at best. I've traveled quite a bit within the states, but crossing the ocean is another magnitude of difficulty, is it not?

It might be interesting to open this up to comparing "which state of the United States" has polite people as well. If we'd rather not compare countries to states, that's alright with me.

My wife is from a town outside of Naples.

@ssoren. My point is that judging all of France by Parisians might be unfair. I don't want to be lumped in with New Yorkers.

fuck america
fuck military
fuck respect

@hapapop, I think the french in general are rude and conceited. The Parisians just exasperate the effects.

Well I was going to vote #1 for my country, and #2 for any country I have not actually been to and only heard of. But given the rules, I had to go with Australia as my #3.

what little insignificant european funk hole did lenpw III crawl out of?

I think lenpw III is just a sex addict based on his interest in fornicating with everything.

Indian Island is pretty much directly west of Whidbey, VI. I've never been there, but the San Juans in general are great.

Indian Island is a naval weapons station north west of seattle, north of bainbridge. i was there working an exercise to test port security. the canadians were the 'opposition force'. i was a game observer/judge.

I was at Whibdey Island for same type of joint ex, but that's going back a while.

it was 2002 or 2003, i think for that exercise.

I'm an American... but have visited England 2x, Scotland, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, Fiji, New Zealand, and Austria; and have lived 10 years in Oz... I would say the Czechian Republicans rate up there... but Aussies are cool. And Scots were great once they found out my heritage.

Oh... and I spent a few weeks in Mexico...