The Ruc people went uncontacted by the "modern" world until they were spotted by North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War. Since then, the Ruc have integrated with society to an extent, living a deliberately simple agrarian existence. But even their "modern" existence is old-fashioned, and they seem to prefer the even older-fashioned life afforded by the nearby caves where they lived before the government drew them out.
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Sure, it's sort of a Disney version of history, but it's also the closest you're going to get to the days of Colonial America. The entire historic district is a living history museum! It demands that its residents stay in character at all times, and it has gone to great lengths to preserve and restore fixtures like the Governor's Palace.
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Dayton, Pennsylvania is known for large groups of Old Order Amish communities. While the level of technology allowed in an Amish community varies from group to group, the Old Order Amish tend to be more conservative. This means that if you want a taste of old-school American farm life, you can learn a lot here.
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Hempstead County, Arkansas
Old Washington was a pioneer settlement along the Southwest trail. After the capture of Little Rock by Maj. Gen. Federick Steele, it became the capital of the Confederacy state government during the Civil War. The state park has a lot of information on the war and the state's role in it, but it also has many great programs designed to educate visitors on pioneer life. From restored vintage homes to demonstrations on making candles and blacksmithing, this place is a must-see for any history buff!
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Route 66 was one of the original U.S. Highways (inaugurated in 1926) until it was removed from the highway system in 1985. But the road, which inspired songs, a TV show, and an entire highway culture has been maintained by many of the states it ran through. It exists today as a throwback to the time of diners and roadside kitsch.
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Traveling to Dubai is very much like visiting a gleaming, high-rise, future city. Granted, it's probably the most gauche future city you could possibly imagine. But there's no denying that the clean lines and shiny surfaces resemble a lot of our more optimistic science fiction, and the whole "tallest building on Earth" thing would probably contribute, even if it isn't so shiny.
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Kowloon Walled City is an interesting place. It provides a look into our actual past and at the same time, a grim dystopian future. The city has been largely demolished—it only exists today as a museum in the ruins of a town. But at its height, the place was an overpopulated nightmare, with 3.25 million people per square mile of precious real estate.
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With gleaming, neon-lit skyscrapers set alongside traditional gardens and temples, Tokyo sets standards for the future while preserving the past. From the infrastructure miracle of the shinkansen to the avant-garde street fashion of neighborhoods like Harajuku and Ginza, it might be hard to shake the feeling that you're in a science-fiction movie.
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Singapore has the whole futuristic package: gleaming skyscrapers, clean streets, and a city that runs with mechanical precision. But it also has a dark underbelly. It's a city where the laws against vandalism are so severe that the import and sale of gum is outlawed. Its prisons are both notoriously easy to wind up in, and as antiquated in their brutality as the rest of the city is forward-thinking in its design.
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Brasilia is unique among cities. It was founded in 1960 as a grand experiment in urban planning. Masterminded by one planner, with one architect and one landscape designer for most of the public lands, Brasilia was more or less built from the ground up. From the meticulous layout of the city to the unified, stylish architecture, Brasilia looks like the sort of place you might catch a glimpse of Flash Gordon.
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