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Countries you didn't know existed....

Poi E said:
Nice girls from Nuie. :)
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looks a beautiful place

would love to be there now


03_2-niue.jpg
 
megra said:
Kiribati and Vanuatu are former British colonies: The Gilbert and Ellice Islands. In my first year of secondary school, back in the day, we read A Pattern of Islands by Sir Arthur Grimble which was about his days posted there in the 1920s as a very minor diplomat. Not as dull as it sounds, it was rather charming and self-deprecating in a colonialist sort of way...
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In actual fact, Vanuatu was neglected by the UK and many French colonists moved in. In 1906 the Anglo-French condominium of the New Hebrides was formed and run as a joint interest with a joint administration before independence on 30 July 1980.

I'd love to spend a long time travelling round the south Pacific. The Cook Islands are gorgeous and I'd love to see a lot more, preferably by sea :)
 
Just found an article about tax evasion from a few years back, the following obscure countries were in trouble:

Andorra; Antigua; Aruba; the British Virgin Islands; the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Sark and Alderney; Liechtenstein; Marshall Islands; Monaco; Montserrat; Nauru; Netherlands Antilles; Niue; Panama; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Lucia; St. Vincent; Tonga; Turks and Caicos; US Virgin Islands; Vanuatu; Western Samoa.
 
My personal favorite: Equatorial Guinea - a collection of a few islands and a small bit of land on the west coast of central africa. Ruled by a series of very nasty and completely nuts dictators.
 
Bob said:
My personal favorite: Equatorial Guinea - a collection of a few islands and a small bit of land on the west coast of central africa. Ruled by a series of very nasty and completely nuts dictators.
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i do hope yr not planning a coup! ;)
 
Pitcairn Islands: last UK dependency in South Pacific. Colonised after some kind of mutiny/piracy on a British boat. Population 47, spread over 4 islands. Biggest export - postage stamps. The islands have 8 telephone lines and 1 internet connection. Situated just past French Polynesia. Recent history is that 8 female residents 'escaped' to New Zealand claiming asylum after alleging abuse back home. As a result, 15 male residents, including the mayor/president/whatever, face charges of indecency.

What I want to know (if this is true, I'm quoting sheppardsoftware geography games here which I play with my 7 year old) is:

Who's charging them? What's the make-up of the other 24 residents?
Why hasn't someone thought of opening up a bar or a picture-house there?
Why hasn't this place been re-populated, I'm sure theres plenty of people who'd jump at the chance to shift to a pacific island with excellent climate??
Or am I being a bit thick?

Anyways, if anyone could tell me a bit more about these places I'd be curious:- Guam, New Caledonia, Tuvalu, Kazakhstan (would particularly like to hear from Celtic fans here), Bhutan, Mauritania, Central African Republic (for a place wedged next to Nigeria and cameroon it sounds a bit dull)
 
1) the trial was in NZ or Australia - big news a few months back
2) dunno
3) you're not allowed to just move there - it's pretty small and you need permission. i don't think it's that nice a climate, anyway. the guardian had quite a long article by some woman that had lived there for a year (and shagged some local married guy, apparantly).

Kazakhstan - 1/3 Russian, rest mostly Kazakh, desert/scrubs, oil, miserable. Worked with a guy who thinks Atyrau was a shitehole but Almaty can be quite nice, apparantly. Economy controlled by President's family. Corrupt. Growing slowly. Next in line for colour revolution? Elections might prove a turning point, though no obvious opposition figure. Why Celtic fans, partuicularly?
 
Guam: US naval base
New Caledonia: French out of the Pacific!
Tuvalu: sold off .tv ccTLD, disappearing beneath rising ocean levels
Kazakhstan: the incredible shrinking Aral sea
Bhutan: banned cigarette sales
Mauritania: slave trading and one of the first steam turbine liners.
Central African Republic: used to have a president who liked his subjects so much he ate them.

Edit: Mauretania has just had a coup. So there.
 
Poi E said:
Central African Republic: used to have a president who liked his subjects so much he ate them.
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Recently the area of Republic of Congo that borders CAR has been found to have an enormous previously unnoticed elephant population (it's basically a big forest). One of my best mates is writing a history of Congo and has been pootling around that area recently. Most of the population in the northern Congolese forest are pygmies so I'd imagine there are a fair few in southern CAR.
 
Bob said:
Recently the area of Republic of Congo that borders CAR has been found to have an enormous previously unnoticed elephant population (it's basically a big forest). One of my best mates is writing a history of Congo and has been pootling around that area recently. Most of the population in the northern Congolese forest are pygmies so I'd imagine there are a fair few in southern CAR.
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Good work your mate is doing, hopefully it will have the side effect of helping to focus attention on the desperate plight of pygmies in the Ituri province.
 
JTG posting

miniGMgoit said:
Isnt it part of the Federal State Of Micronesia
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It's definitely an independent state in its own right and nowhere near the Federated States of Micronesia. Vanuatu is part of the Melanesian region which also includes Fiji, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and New Guinea. Micronesia is mostly north of the Equator from memory and contains - as well as the FSM - Guam, Palau and Kiribati amongst others.

Polynesia is the south Pacific and is made up of the Cook Islands, Tonga, Samoa, French Polynesia, American Samoa and others.

*starts pining for a big ship to sail round the Pacific on*
 
Vanuatu made some cash in the 1990s by allowing banks to be registered in its jurisdiction with no oversight, monitoring or transparency. These banks (really just shelf companies that existed on paper only) were primarily used by Russian and other FSU criminals, corrupt civil servants and tax dodgers to launder funds.
 
wiskey said:
It's definitely an independent state in its own right and nowhere near the Federated States of Micronesia. Vanuatu is part of the Melanesian region which also includes Fiji, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and New Guinea. Micronesia is mostly north of the Equator from memory and contains - as well as the FSM - Guam, Palau and Kiribati amongst others.

Polynesia is the south Pacific and is made up of the Cook Islands, Tonga, Samoa, French Polynesia, American Samoa and others.

*starts pining for a big ship to sail round the Pacific on*
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I would highly recommend doing that. I have been fortunate enough to experience life in the Pacific. Mainly the South Pacific but its something I always had and always will long for.

My ideal life would be to fuck everything off and go live on Huihane, in French Polynesia.
(remembers and sighs) :)
 
JWH said:
Vanuatu made some cash in the 1990s by allowing banks to be registered in its jurisdiction with no oversight, monitoring or transparency. These banks (really just shelf companies that existed on paper only) were primarily used by Russian and other FSU criminals, corrupt civil servants and tax dodgers to launder funds.
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Several PI nations had ben engaging in this sort of thing, attracting not only Russian crims but also some of New Zealand's most notable corporate citizens and banks, who turned out to be crooks, cheats and liars (now resident in Switzerland.)
 
rutabowa said:
and Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina.
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For least touristy place, I went to Bosnia with my then gf in summer of '97. It's a bit weird being on holiday in a place where roads have tank track imprints in them and houses have lines of bullet holes. :eek:

Oh, and sitting eating eel in a restaurant in Medjugorje where the only other diners were a bunch of SFOR troops, but where there were masses of shops selling religious tat because of the nearby shrine!
 
I went to Sicily just before they started advertising the place as a tourist attraction. It was the period that the government had virtually declared war on the mafia - 1993. The prison in Palermo had a ring of tanks and armoured cars around it, and nearly every street corner in Palermo had armed soldiers standing guard behind a bullet proof barrier.
 
parallelepipete said:
Oh, and sitting eating eel in a restaurant in Medjugorje where the only other diners were a bunch of SFOR troops, but where there were masses of shops selling religious tat because of the nearby shrine!
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Funny place that, the god people say it's because of the VM shrine or whatever that it didn't get attacked. No, you fuckwits, it's because it was Croatian catholic thugs in Herzegovina who were busy doing the attacking.
 
Poi E said:
Funny place that, the god people say it's because of the VM shrine or whatever that it didn't get attacked. No, you fuckwits, it's because it was Croatian catholic thugs in Herzegovina who were busy doing the attacking.
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And the souvenir shops etc. were probably a good source of currency for them? (even during the war, apparently there was a hardcore of pilgrims from Ireland/US etc. visiting the shrine)

<chokes on thug-funding plate of eels>
 
parallelepipete said:
And the souvenir shops etc. were probably a good source of currency for them? (even during the war, apparently there was a hardcore of pilgrims from Ireland/US etc. visiting the shrine)

<chokes on thug-funding plate of eels>
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Yeah probably, also gave them some air of respectability I guess. Some of the most revolting people I have ever met were in Herzegovina.
 
Bob said:
I'm going there next week. The consulate in London is a man in the front room of his flat near Baker Street with a flag on his desk. Very friendly and efficient. :)
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The British Consul in Kyrgyzstan owns a bar at one of the major junctions in Bishkek called Fat Cats. Although I am generally unwary of hanging out in ex-pat joints, this guy is spot on (I have temporarily forgotten his name. Tell him I said hello. I was down there 10 months back - teaching English for 7 months)

Pickmans, I don't quite understand why you incorrectly corrected the OP as to the name of the country. Kurgistan???
 
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