I have been putting off visiting Jamaica again as my first trip years ago wasn't great. I was in Kingston and found it to be a very sketchy city, so this time I wanted to visit an entirely different area and give it another chance. After spending a few days in Negril, I now understand why so many tourists say they won't return to Jamaica.
Most people I interacted with in stores were rude and borderline hostile. Basic greetings like "hello" weren't even said by some store clerks. Sitting on the beach was met with aggressive weed smoking and drunk hawkers coming by about every 10min offering weed, bracelets, t-shirts, and various other things. Some wouldn't take no for an answer and would stick around trying to push more items onto you.
Getting into the water isn't much better as now you are met with guys on boats offering snorkeling, parachuting, and other activities.
If you decide to walk anywhere, taxi drivers will constantly stop beside you and try to offer you a ride and on several occasions, motorcycles stopped and were trying to sell weed.
At local restaurants, homeless people would come up and ask to buy them something to eat or drink. And I would get really aggressive looks on occasion from other customers.
Overall, I felt like most of my trip was being on edge rather than relaxed and I've never had this sensation in other Caribbean islands.
And not really related, but I found it frustrating that most of the coastline in Negril is privately owned. It's hotels side by side and there's not really an easy way to access the beach, and on several occasions I was told I couldn't sit there as it's private property. Apparently the public property is only up to the high tide line. This isn't the case in most other Caribbean islands where it's easy to park your car on the side of the road and just walk to the beach and have the entire place to yourself.