I have just got back from a 5 day trip to Latvia and am now in recovery mode. At the moment this involves trying to de-tox by drinking water and eating celery, though this is not working so well...
Riga is a brilliant city however - full of contradictions. On the bad side, the influx of stag-do's into the country as assisted by Ryanair's cheap flights (I may prepare an entire blog post about my feelings for Ryanair) has meant that the city is full of sleazy joints where attractive women feign interest in you to trick you into buying £500 bottles of champagne. The hostel I stayed at has a whole list of clubs and bars that 'you cannot go into or you WILL be robbed'.
This has led to a bit of bad blood between the Latvians and the English and we struggled a little bit to get to see the real city. We weren't helped by the fact that there were seven of us, and we were drinking, and we were loud!
I have kind of decided that I will try to veto foreign stag do's arranged by my mates, as I really think it can affect a place.
On the good side we did managed to do some cool things, like get ourselves into a Latvian nightclub on the 6th floor of some old soviet bloc concrete building, we had some great food and managed to get out of the city to some of the beach resorts which were absolutely fantastic. And unlike when we went to Prague 5 or so years ago, we managed to completely avoid the stags (except in the airport), and by Monday the stags had all disappeared. So it can be done!
Riga is beautiful and boasts some of most beautiful people you will ever see anywhere (and I've been on a fair few different continents). Just don't go where the stag do's do.
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we once had kids from Riga as guests at my parents home. One of the little things I remember was that when they saw the honey pot they really drowned their bread with it.
And we still got a beautiful leather wallet from Riga I think.
The big differences in a city like you mentioned is a thing that probably can't be avoided in poor countries, although if you look hard enough it can be found in western Europe too I guess on a smaller scale.
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