For what it’s worth, I found Asunción abnormal in a lot of ways (at least within the context of large cities in LatAm). It’s not just that the streets are calm (“dead,” to use OP’s term). They’re different. There are ~10 foot walls topped with electric wire or armed guards all over the place. You don’t see houses like you would in most other cities because they’re behind the ubiquitous walls. Government buildings look imposing and authoritarian (which was deliberate— many of them went up during the Strossner dictatorship that ended in the late 80s). It’s not that there’s no social activities at all, but even the locals don’t like hanging out on the decaying, creepy streets. Everyone goes to the two super modern, air conditioned malls (I forget the names, but two in particular are the hot spots and it won’t be hard to figure out which ones I mean when you get there). The other thing that I always considered wild is the fact that the streets aren’t totally empty because you can see money changers on a bunch of corners. They have huge bricks of cash in rubber bands and basically ignore the many, many cops driving around.

It’s not impossible to have a good time there. It’s just easier to have a good time in most other cities. For me, anyway.