I arrived in Senegal from Morocco at 1 am, couldn’t get a Mautiania visa, and was mugged leaving the airport. I was also thrown in jail for a couple hours at the border with Mali (Kidro) for being a witness to a fight (they just wanted to know what I saw and didn’t want me to go away.)
And Senegal is probably the most civilized country in West Africa, right up there with Nigeria. It’s better, by far, than: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. That was some trip...
I was in Vietnam for a year. It was not a garden spot at all, but it was not nearly as bad as the sh!t holes you describe.