I saw them everywhere in Rome last summer. Lots of tourists of course, but I try to go off the beaten path and I saw quite a few locals wearing them too.
Indeed. Here in SE Asia, everybody still uses 3.5mm jack smartphones. It's a rare occurrence to see wireless earpods, and almost always these are cheap Chinese AirPod knockoffs.
Some of the cheap knockoffs are getting really good. Mine get 4.5 hrs battery life, have the optical sensor on the bud that pauses when taken out and wireless charging case including an cloned (stolen) apple SoC that gives the real battery life of the "airpods" and case when the case is opened.
Doesn't match mine either. Here in Japan (at least in Tokyo) it's uncommon to see wired headphones. Most are random wireless headphones, I would estimate 20-40% only being AirPods.
I'm in Hanoi, I see airpods everyday (and no, I don't go to tourist areas). I myself use Huawei Freepods 3, which cost about the same as Airpods (~180 usd).
Go to a random rural town in a midwestern US state and I'm sure you probably won't see people wearing Airpods, which is probably what people are picturing when someone says SE Asia.
We have paved roads believe it or not, as well as a large class of people who use the newest iPhones.
That only happened on high-end smartphones. Low-end and mid-range still have 3.5 mm socket.
(Also, I actually look around regularly at the train station, and I still see mostly wired headsets. I'm using a wireless one, btw.)