When you fly into Riga , take a look out of the window and you will see one great big council estate and I can not think of a better way to describe it. They absolutely hate us but love our money and are perfectly happy to use any method necessary to get it!
I have no doubt that if our stag do went around three or four pubs in one of our local UK black spots we would have found more trouble than we did in Riga. We bumped into a few groups that were boasting about the fights they had managed to get in to and the number of prostitutes they had notched up! The local women are very good looking and the local men are typically ugly. Introduce plane loads of stag parties of Brits with a load of money to blow in a weekend and you can understand why the local lads get a bit miffed about the Brits flashing their cash trying to take all their women from them.
Neither of the two points, however, excuse the Riga locals from being a complete and utter disgrace. When you enter a bar you really have little idea if it is a bar, strip club or brothel. Worse still you have absolutely no way of knowing if you are going to get ripped off or leave the joint in one piece. Walking from bar to bar is a joke! We did not meet a single group where one member of their group had not been assaulted in one way or another when walking between bars. The favourite of the locals is to hit or kick you in the head from behind so watch your back!
Take a taxi and you are no better off. The biggest thing missing from Riga, as far as a Stag do is concerned, is the Hen parties. Think of all your Stag party classics and you start to realise how important it is to have Hen parties to party with.
If you want to drink in some of the worst bars in Europe , Riga is for you. If you want to see a city so corrupted by its greed that it is prepared to prostitute itself and its women to the extent that even the staff in a 5star hotel offer to provide you with a woman for the night. Riga is for you. If you want to see a city so corrupted by its greed that it is prepared to turn a blind eye to the astonishing level of violence aimed towards its visitors, Riga is for you.
