Figured I drop some knowledge on a place that had several positive drive-by posts a couple years ago, but never really had serious data compiled.
ME
Early 30's, skinny fit, average looks (don't think I'm ugly),white, American. Beginner level game, emerging from Anglosphere incel/monk mode, eager to make up lost time. Stayed 2 and a half weeks in early part of 2014 summer (highly doubt anything has changed since then).
BACKGROUND
Ios is a party island in the Aegean sea, not as famous as its other counterparts (Mykonos, Rhodes) but cheaper. The island itself is quite unimpressive, with 2 major beaches and 1 small town that is the center of it all. The bars/clubs aren't even worth mentioning, there are numerous interchangeable amounts of them in the town, all little one-room dive bars or one-room dance floors. Music is all top-20 crap across the board that will make you want to blow your brains out after 2-3 days. You can scuba dive/ ride quads and dirt bikes, and visit the tomb of Homer and a crumbling Venetian castle outpost. There isn't anything to do here other then lounge around and try to bang girls. The summer months it is inhabited by a large amount of young tourists.
Accommodation is simple, just get a hotel room from one of the many similar hotels/motels/apartments in town. Don't get one too far away from the main town or you just screwed yourself staying at some homestead too far away from any action. I'd recommend against any camp sites, be smart.
I ate at a gyro place every day, 1.5 euros for a giant gyro twice a day, kept it cheap and simple. You can get better food if you like but it'll cost a little more. It doesn't pay to get groceries, ironically it's cheaper to eat out. Maybe this is because it's a small island? I don't know. Beers in bars are as low as 2 euros, cheaper to pre-game, but it won't break the bank drinking a few at the bar.
The unseen dynamics of the island life are cryptic, and unfortunately for me I only figured it out on my last couple days there. You actually sleep twice a day. The morning is spent on the beaches where I'm sure beach game comes into play. The late afternoon brings a siesta of sorts where the inhabitants sleep until about midnight, then people wake up and party until 5:00am, pass out drunk, and then wake up and nurse their hangovers on the beach the next morning.
I missed the memo on this and basically just slept in the day and did nightlife at night. It did occur to me at some point that a lot of the tourists seemed to know each other from somewhere, only at the end was the secret revealed to me "meet people on the beach, party at night".
The inhabitants can be separated in 3 groups.
The first 2 groups are made up of western student population tourists. Australian/Irish/ English/ Scandinavian/Italian (in that order of frequency). 18 to 24 yo backpacker. Dumb and loud who enjoys bars and conversations just as dumb and loud. Beach body ready. Almost uniform standard fashion across the board. Sandals, wife-beater, wife-beater over bikini for girls. This is probably a sample of the best quality you will find in the West, which is like saying it's the best of the B team (which can actually be pretty good, but it just has it's issues). Just expect horrible tattoos, horrible attitudes, groups with the embedded fat cow cockblock, with the perk of being extra slutty. I don't have to go too further into it, most of you guys have lived in this environment.
The Australian guys in particular have made me never want to visit Australia in my life. The term metro sexual just doesn't cut it, as the above sandals and wife-beater attire becomes fruity with hot pink colors, and upside-down backwards visor wearing that is copied across the board. What is wrong with this country? There is a overpowering collective culture of a particular sort of douche bag that rubs me the wrong way in a death-of-the-west sense. Coupled together with the apparent extensive gym culture in Australia and you have an army of jacked meathead metro sexual clones to compete against you. More of an obstacle then you'd think.
THE MARATHON BACKPACKER. (young tourist population #1)
Staying on the island for about 3 days, been drinking, boozing, and fucking for up to 5 months. This group is out to have fun recklessly, have heard about Ios beforehand and therefore are effected by "Las Vegas" effect. A good portion of them will drink themselves into oblivion, laying out on the sidewalk until 4:00am with puke next to them. Girls are on travel-party mode. Guys are hunting. If you are going to score a 20 min bounce back bang this is where it will come from.
THE TRAVELING SLAVE WORKER BACKPACKER ( young tourist population #2)
Staying on the island for 3 months. Broke, works under the table as a hostess/host/whatever you call those people who try to coerce you to enter a bar and buy a beer. They have a far less YOLO attitude then the above demographic and have developed a college dorm high school-esque relationship with the other traveling slave worker backpackers on the island. These girls tend to drink less as they work all night and are more prone to swing into the mini-relationship during their stay on the island, filled with dawsons creek style drama "who broke up and fucked who" inside the slave worker backpacker community.
LOCAL GREEKS (population #3)
As the host tourism workforce they are magnanimous and have the patience of Buddha himself. I don't know how they do it as I was a tourist and hated tourists by the time I left. Girls? Don't even try, I'm sure it's possible but unless you're after the flag it's not worth it in both effort and looks.
OUTLIERS
Me basically, I met 1 other American. I saw 2 Russian girls, there was one Austrian guy I briefly conversed with, they both settled in the young tourist population #1 and #2 otherwise in both purpose and age. This is in a sea of hundreds to thousands of tourists.
ISSUES ENCOUNTERED
I know this can be a touchy subject. I was slightly older, early 30's versus the 22 year old median, but I'm here to give my experience and I felt like the oldest guy on the entire island by far. Seeing others playing punch-buggy will do that to you. There is only so much jumping around like a fucking idiot, standing on the bar, shaking up booze rap video style and filming yourself with your smartphone that one can take. Club game has no conversation involved, it's too loud. Having no patience for idiots cramped my vibe on more nights then one.
I can see several archetypes do well here, the beastly proto-alpha male, Lou Ferrigno physique, sit in a corner you'll eventually get propositioned by a drunk girl, the no-conversation atmosphere would work in your favor. Or be young (or at least excessively high energy) like the rest of the crowd and be able to blend into the high energy disaster fest that a club full of 19 year old westerners feel at-home in, or at least tolerate.
I used to leave my apartment at approximately midnight and stay out until the sun came up past 5:00am. I tried to approach at least 10 girls a night in a 2 and a half week period. Some nights I approached as many as 30, other nights I was beat down from a myriad of related reasons and would go as low as 4. I counted an approach as anything I did that could have led to further escalation, something as basic as seeing a girl walk by eating something and saying " that looks delicious.. where did you get that?". My first thing I'd do at midnight was walk to the center town area where there were 4 bars in a row, and I would go up to each of the 4 hosts in front of the bar. (male or female didn't matter) and asked them about their night one after the other to get into a talkative mood. It helped a lot.
Despite my meager efforts; Bangs:0
STORIES
LOUIS
One of the above mentioned hosts was a 25 year old Englishman I'll call Louis. Louis was in excellent shape, articulate, and was above average in looks, I felt that after talking to him he'd do well in most environments. It didn't take long before we both acknowledged we were both here for women. Louis was telling me how he was on Ios for a month and hated it. He had also had 0 bangs (when I heard this I couldn't help but feel some validation that it wasn't just me) His reasoning is that it's all luck and just bumping into the right girl at the right time. He recounted a story about how at 4:50am a hot little girl with big tits came up to him and propositioned him for sex indirectly. He told her to wait "right here" seating her at a table outside of the club he worked at and ran inside to tell his boss he was leaving early, his boss said "ok, just count out your money really fast". Louis said he never counted so fast in his life, glancing at the table with his fresh meat every 3 seconds. Unfortunately for Louis he wasn't fast enough, as a "carnie" as he put it, tatted up to his neck, sat with the girl, and after less than a minute of conversation and a cheek touch got her to leave with him. He was beyond salty at that, I would be too.
Louis rage-quit his job one night, last time I saw him he said he booked a flight to Thessaloniki as he had a blast there, and said it was the best place to pull Greek girls consistently.
THE TWO IRISH LASSES
Early on in my stay, at the end of one night when night turned to day, I was walking home drunk from the last bar to close. At the turn to enter my hotel, there were two blonde irish girls, a 7 and a 7.5, laying on the ground in skimpy dirty clothes talking nonsense and laughing to one another. I don't remember what I said, might have been something like " I guess that's how a good night ends!". The girls instantly warmed up to me and asked me what I was doing and they were lost, playing the dumb drunk bimbo act. I said I was going home and I'm staying right up this path. The 7.5 and the 7 responded at the same time, with the 7.5 saying they live down this street and could I take them home and the 7 asked me if I had room for them.
I've thought about this a lot and why I didn't play my hand better, but I instead answered the take them home question reflexively, the other more higher-chance-for-sexual-activity topic died and never came back up. The walk wasn't long and the girls were still receptive to me, the 7 was begging me to text her tomorrow. The next day I texted both of them, radio silence. I saw them out a few days later and a wave was all I got.
Was it my inner beta instinctively sabotaging me? Probably. If I could do it again I'd do things differently, all I can do is learn from it and I definitely did.
CONCLUSION
14 days in Ios, strike out.
I'm glad I went as it helped me close the book on several itches I've had, namely island life and the high octane 19 year old LETS FUCKIN PAAARTTYYY crowd. I have no interest in either of them. I've outgrown that scene and as far as living on an island goes, it's like living in a small town you can't easily escape.
I won't be going back to Ios. But knowing what I know, if I hypothetically was going back; I'd do a steroid cycle and hit the gym for a year beforehand hard. Going with a group of friends might help too. The quality is there to just about make the trip worth it, but as I mentioned above, I feel the place caters to a few archetypes and I'm not one of them.
ME
Early 30's, skinny fit, average looks (don't think I'm ugly),white, American. Beginner level game, emerging from Anglosphere incel/monk mode, eager to make up lost time. Stayed 2 and a half weeks in early part of 2014 summer (highly doubt anything has changed since then).
BACKGROUND
Ios is a party island in the Aegean sea, not as famous as its other counterparts (Mykonos, Rhodes) but cheaper. The island itself is quite unimpressive, with 2 major beaches and 1 small town that is the center of it all. The bars/clubs aren't even worth mentioning, there are numerous interchangeable amounts of them in the town, all little one-room dive bars or one-room dance floors. Music is all top-20 crap across the board that will make you want to blow your brains out after 2-3 days. You can scuba dive/ ride quads and dirt bikes, and visit the tomb of Homer and a crumbling Venetian castle outpost. There isn't anything to do here other then lounge around and try to bang girls. The summer months it is inhabited by a large amount of young tourists.
Accommodation is simple, just get a hotel room from one of the many similar hotels/motels/apartments in town. Don't get one too far away from the main town or you just screwed yourself staying at some homestead too far away from any action. I'd recommend against any camp sites, be smart.
I ate at a gyro place every day, 1.5 euros for a giant gyro twice a day, kept it cheap and simple. You can get better food if you like but it'll cost a little more. It doesn't pay to get groceries, ironically it's cheaper to eat out. Maybe this is because it's a small island? I don't know. Beers in bars are as low as 2 euros, cheaper to pre-game, but it won't break the bank drinking a few at the bar.
The unseen dynamics of the island life are cryptic, and unfortunately for me I only figured it out on my last couple days there. You actually sleep twice a day. The morning is spent on the beaches where I'm sure beach game comes into play. The late afternoon brings a siesta of sorts where the inhabitants sleep until about midnight, then people wake up and party until 5:00am, pass out drunk, and then wake up and nurse their hangovers on the beach the next morning.
I missed the memo on this and basically just slept in the day and did nightlife at night. It did occur to me at some point that a lot of the tourists seemed to know each other from somewhere, only at the end was the secret revealed to me "meet people on the beach, party at night".
The inhabitants can be separated in 3 groups.
The first 2 groups are made up of western student population tourists. Australian/Irish/ English/ Scandinavian/Italian (in that order of frequency). 18 to 24 yo backpacker. Dumb and loud who enjoys bars and conversations just as dumb and loud. Beach body ready. Almost uniform standard fashion across the board. Sandals, wife-beater, wife-beater over bikini for girls. This is probably a sample of the best quality you will find in the West, which is like saying it's the best of the B team (which can actually be pretty good, but it just has it's issues). Just expect horrible tattoos, horrible attitudes, groups with the embedded fat cow cockblock, with the perk of being extra slutty. I don't have to go too further into it, most of you guys have lived in this environment.
The Australian guys in particular have made me never want to visit Australia in my life. The term metro sexual just doesn't cut it, as the above sandals and wife-beater attire becomes fruity with hot pink colors, and upside-down backwards visor wearing that is copied across the board. What is wrong with this country? There is a overpowering collective culture of a particular sort of douche bag that rubs me the wrong way in a death-of-the-west sense. Coupled together with the apparent extensive gym culture in Australia and you have an army of jacked meathead metro sexual clones to compete against you. More of an obstacle then you'd think.
THE MARATHON BACKPACKER. (young tourist population #1)
Staying on the island for about 3 days, been drinking, boozing, and fucking for up to 5 months. This group is out to have fun recklessly, have heard about Ios beforehand and therefore are effected by "Las Vegas" effect. A good portion of them will drink themselves into oblivion, laying out on the sidewalk until 4:00am with puke next to them. Girls are on travel-party mode. Guys are hunting. If you are going to score a 20 min bounce back bang this is where it will come from.
THE TRAVELING SLAVE WORKER BACKPACKER ( young tourist population #2)
Staying on the island for 3 months. Broke, works under the table as a hostess/host/whatever you call those people who try to coerce you to enter a bar and buy a beer. They have a far less YOLO attitude then the above demographic and have developed a college dorm high school-esque relationship with the other traveling slave worker backpackers on the island. These girls tend to drink less as they work all night and are more prone to swing into the mini-relationship during their stay on the island, filled with dawsons creek style drama "who broke up and fucked who" inside the slave worker backpacker community.
LOCAL GREEKS (population #3)
As the host tourism workforce they are magnanimous and have the patience of Buddha himself. I don't know how they do it as I was a tourist and hated tourists by the time I left. Girls? Don't even try, I'm sure it's possible but unless you're after the flag it's not worth it in both effort and looks.
OUTLIERS
Me basically, I met 1 other American. I saw 2 Russian girls, there was one Austrian guy I briefly conversed with, they both settled in the young tourist population #1 and #2 otherwise in both purpose and age. This is in a sea of hundreds to thousands of tourists.
ISSUES ENCOUNTERED
I know this can be a touchy subject. I was slightly older, early 30's versus the 22 year old median, but I'm here to give my experience and I felt like the oldest guy on the entire island by far. Seeing others playing punch-buggy will do that to you. There is only so much jumping around like a fucking idiot, standing on the bar, shaking up booze rap video style and filming yourself with your smartphone that one can take. Club game has no conversation involved, it's too loud. Having no patience for idiots cramped my vibe on more nights then one.
I can see several archetypes do well here, the beastly proto-alpha male, Lou Ferrigno physique, sit in a corner you'll eventually get propositioned by a drunk girl, the no-conversation atmosphere would work in your favor. Or be young (or at least excessively high energy) like the rest of the crowd and be able to blend into the high energy disaster fest that a club full of 19 year old westerners feel at-home in, or at least tolerate.
I used to leave my apartment at approximately midnight and stay out until the sun came up past 5:00am. I tried to approach at least 10 girls a night in a 2 and a half week period. Some nights I approached as many as 30, other nights I was beat down from a myriad of related reasons and would go as low as 4. I counted an approach as anything I did that could have led to further escalation, something as basic as seeing a girl walk by eating something and saying " that looks delicious.. where did you get that?". My first thing I'd do at midnight was walk to the center town area where there were 4 bars in a row, and I would go up to each of the 4 hosts in front of the bar. (male or female didn't matter) and asked them about their night one after the other to get into a talkative mood. It helped a lot.
Despite my meager efforts; Bangs:0
STORIES
LOUIS
One of the above mentioned hosts was a 25 year old Englishman I'll call Louis. Louis was in excellent shape, articulate, and was above average in looks, I felt that after talking to him he'd do well in most environments. It didn't take long before we both acknowledged we were both here for women. Louis was telling me how he was on Ios for a month and hated it. He had also had 0 bangs (when I heard this I couldn't help but feel some validation that it wasn't just me) His reasoning is that it's all luck and just bumping into the right girl at the right time. He recounted a story about how at 4:50am a hot little girl with big tits came up to him and propositioned him for sex indirectly. He told her to wait "right here" seating her at a table outside of the club he worked at and ran inside to tell his boss he was leaving early, his boss said "ok, just count out your money really fast". Louis said he never counted so fast in his life, glancing at the table with his fresh meat every 3 seconds. Unfortunately for Louis he wasn't fast enough, as a "carnie" as he put it, tatted up to his neck, sat with the girl, and after less than a minute of conversation and a cheek touch got her to leave with him. He was beyond salty at that, I would be too.
Louis rage-quit his job one night, last time I saw him he said he booked a flight to Thessaloniki as he had a blast there, and said it was the best place to pull Greek girls consistently.
THE TWO IRISH LASSES
Early on in my stay, at the end of one night when night turned to day, I was walking home drunk from the last bar to close. At the turn to enter my hotel, there were two blonde irish girls, a 7 and a 7.5, laying on the ground in skimpy dirty clothes talking nonsense and laughing to one another. I don't remember what I said, might have been something like " I guess that's how a good night ends!". The girls instantly warmed up to me and asked me what I was doing and they were lost, playing the dumb drunk bimbo act. I said I was going home and I'm staying right up this path. The 7.5 and the 7 responded at the same time, with the 7.5 saying they live down this street and could I take them home and the 7 asked me if I had room for them.
I've thought about this a lot and why I didn't play my hand better, but I instead answered the take them home question reflexively, the other more higher-chance-for-sexual-activity topic died and never came back up. The walk wasn't long and the girls were still receptive to me, the 7 was begging me to text her tomorrow. The next day I texted both of them, radio silence. I saw them out a few days later and a wave was all I got.
Was it my inner beta instinctively sabotaging me? Probably. If I could do it again I'd do things differently, all I can do is learn from it and I definitely did.
CONCLUSION
14 days in Ios, strike out.
I'm glad I went as it helped me close the book on several itches I've had, namely island life and the high octane 19 year old LETS FUCKIN PAAARTTYYY crowd. I have no interest in either of them. I've outgrown that scene and as far as living on an island goes, it's like living in a small town you can't easily escape.
I won't be going back to Ios. But knowing what I know, if I hypothetically was going back; I'd do a steroid cycle and hit the gym for a year beforehand hard. Going with a group of friends might help too. The quality is there to just about make the trip worth it, but as I mentioned above, I feel the place caters to a few archetypes and I'm not one of them.