Probably because the overwhelming majority of countries chlorinates their water to various degrees because they don't have the exceptional plumbing quality needed to otherwise guarantee potability.

Countries where the tap water is drinkable without chlorination have quality that exceeds bottled water, and it might even be sourced from the same aquifers.

The best tap water on earth is in Iceland. Volcanic filtered and so clean tasting... one of the joys of being in the country.

Once you get over the sulfur smell anyway... (or was that only the northern thing?)

This is one benefit of growing up with awful well water. Literally anywhere tastes pretty darn good by comparison!

When traveling by vehicle (pickup truck for me) I've thrown in a 5 gallon cooler of water from home. It was so nice to want to drink water because it was my own good well water that tastes like I'm used to.

When I had to fly to NY for work I felt like I couldn't get water anywhere that was worth drinking.

Where in New York? If NYC, this sounds insane to me, because New York municipal water is objectively speaking among the purest (if not the purest) in the country.

NYC tap water has spoiled all other tap water for me

San Francisco tap water is almost as good. It was better before they started mixing reclaimed water into it, though I’ve either gotten used to the new taste or they’ve fixed the treatment process.

Vancouver winter water (summer water tastes more off) >>>>>> NYC tap water and I will die on this hill

I question this as a bad take or a data-point of one, because NYC water is the best of Upstate water.

I’ve travelled and lived across the country during my high school and college years; and I’ve travelled my extensively within Upstate very (Adirondacks, Catskills, and Finger Lakes) and the taste of local water is the first thing I notice.

Bad building pipes aside, I have not tasted any water that exceeds NYC’s tap water in taste.

I’m not the only person who’s expressed this, and guests from other regions have also admitted the same consistently over the years.

When travelling where? The blanket statement here just doesn't work. Every major area has very different water in the tap. A lot of the bottled water is just tap water from another region.