mostly just villages that are neglected by development and generally consist of run-down buildings and people walking around barefoot, dirty, and hungry like the rest of the rural third world.
It's a little impressive they've managed to maintain the standard of living that they have considering how closed off and small they are
Cuba?
edit: seriously, go to the South of Cuba. Everyone there is FUCKPOOR. The big difference between Cuba and North Korea is that Cubans are actually pretty nice (mostly really nice from my experience) to foreigners and that Castro gives a shit about his people. Still, we went after Hurricane Dennis and it was just, like, miles of grass huts along the road. The towns are all shanties, which sucks because you see all these houses that people have obviously tried to fix up and just didn't have the paint to use or whatever. There is a tonne of old machinery and stuff sitting in these big storage areas because they don't have the rubber to make new wheels or the machine parts to keep things going.
I think the saddest part of Cuba is that they have all this amazing history everywhere in the country (like it's literally country-wide) and a lot of it is just rotting away. The cities are also filled with beggars; we were in Trinidad de Cuba and we were at this ancient church because we wanted to look around, and we couldn't walk twenty feet without being asked for money. Not just asked like "please give me money" but "ok where is that money you're going to give me".
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cuban_boys.jpg HERE IS A BEAUTIFUL CHURCH except what you can't see is that it's literally fallen down already. It's got part of the facade left. They didn't even clean up the debris, it's just sitting there, rotting into nothing. The church is (was) like five hundred years old, and now there are beggars sitting on the steps waiting for someone to come along and give them things. I am not exaggerating this! Some kids tried to sell us a cell phone in town. Who knows why. Right near this olden church I found a ditch filled with trash, and pulled out a plate that had come off a Russian radio from the 1970s. I smuggled it home. edit3: just right of this picture there is the front door to the Church facade, where a lady was sitting. When she saw my dad she immediately asked for money and her son came up and asked if we had any pencils. Then he asked for money. Then he followed us around asking us for things and showing us garbage he had just picked up and telling us it was worth something (my dad is an archaeologist so no dice pal) and pretty much ruined our chances of exploring the awesome old ruin, so we left.
edit2: Cuba is a really depressing place overall, but there is very little indoctrination past "CUBAN HEROES: CHE AND FIDEL" everywhere. There isn't very much anti-Americanism (that I found anywhere, but I was mostly in the South so ???) so as a result they are more "we are great" and less BATSHIT INSANE like North Koreans are. Still, the similarities between the two are pretty crazy.
edit4: ALSO don't go to Santiago de Cuba unprepared. It is nuts! I wasn't there but when my dad went the bus was literally swamped by people pressing up against it and asking for things. Just... things. Anything. The bus driver had to slow down to like ~3km so he wouldn't run over people. If you can manage to stay out of the really poor areas it is incredibly interesting (especially for US history buffs) but it absurdly poor in the poor areas.
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