Places That Don't Exist
Simon Reeve travels to a group of unrecognized nations - countries so obscure they don't officially exist.
On his journey he visits little-known parts of the world including Somaliland, Transniestria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ajaria, South Ossetia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Somalia, Moldova, Taiwan, and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
In this series, Simon Reeve is taught to fish by the President of Moldova, becomes an unofficial Somali diplomat, and finds himself crammed into a lift with the President of Georgia.
He visits a little-known country stuck in a Soviet-era time-warp, and a mountainous state which claims to have the highest rate of longevity on the planet.
He meets a villager who sold a kidney to buy a cow, and children forced to live in freezing railway carriages. Amid the minefields of Nagorno-Karabkh, Simon is pelted with snowballs by refugee children.
not possible to see in The Netherlands?
2018.03.08 Always interesting to see some place different.
Sad that a few con men still rule the world, no matter where you go, and the people put up with it.
@Wald0: Thankfully the usa people exchanged one horrible con man doing his banker masters bidding of trying to "transform" it into a Collectivist(socialist-communist) country to make us poor and weak to become fodder for the new world o-dor, for another con man who is trying to do the opposite. Indoctrination is a horrible thing whether it is in a madrassah or a university blaming the ills and corruption of incremental socialism and corporatism(the more accurate name of fascism according to Mussolini who coined the term) upon capitalism, a natural economic system when no corrupt govt is allowed to pick the winners and losers(socialism-communism-corporatism does the picking) rather than a political system.
horrible host
i dont know, i like the guy, he seems to be okay, but it's just his smirky mouth that freaks me a bit. It's almost like I'm supposed to be in on some sort of little secret, it's just a bit creepy, and I know I'm being shallow too.
Oh, one more thing; this series is eights years old, so I'm sure lots of things have changed since this series first aired.
Well, what an interesting ride this was.
The doc is a series divided into 5 episodes. The host, Simon Reeve is adorable, young, and exudes boyish charm. He's a very brave and congenial man as well.
Simon went to some places that were unsettled or resented his camera crew. Some places I'd never heard of.
He talks with average Joe's, local officials and his guides.
The episodes contained too much information to relate in this comment (and I have a memory like a sieve);
I found this series very informative and educational; without being too dry or repetitive.
It was a fun way to learn something new about history and geography; and about different societies I'll never get to visit for myself.
Very interesting docs. Add several points to Taiwan issue. Although officially China will never allow Taiwan to be independent, Taiwan has already been a country in practice for decades. Although it is not officially recognized as a country, there are Taiwanese passport which are widely accepted internationally, with which one can travel to lots of (126 in exact number) countries without lengthy visa procedure, including EU, US, Japan etc. It has independent government and military and economic system. Most importantly, in practice Chinese government tolerant current state of Taiwan, as long as Taiwan does not officially declare independence. And this is exactly what current Taiwanese government is doing: do not speak about independence but just acts as a country. And there is definitely no real intention of war such as in Georgia. Chinese government will never change the old saying such as mentioned by one officer at the very end due to political correctness, but reality is much flexible and softer.
The doc gives an image that it is very difficult for people in China and Taiwan to travel around. This has changed quite a bit now. Since 2008 there are direct flight from China to Taiwan, and Chinese people can apply for a special visa to visit Taiwan. The same also holds for Taiwanese wanting to visit China. In fact right now Taiwan is saturated with Chinese tourists.
Somaliland is in serious trouble, medically at least. Long gone are the doctors who traveled the world helping the 3rd world countries, for the good of it. What has recognising the country got to do with helping those people.
Very interesting series,
The presenter is excellent, i like his audacity and quick reaction to a possible problem.
1i
Great documentaries , very informative but scary , history is becoming more difficult to comprehend , there is some thing more than meet the eyes .?
The sound engineer should be fired.
Since when is Moldova obscure? Oo or Georgia for that matter, or Armenia? Out of that list only 3 of them where unknown to me..>.>
nothing new! Only for the Westerners, as always!
Excellent set of docs, I had no idea that some of these countries within countries existed. Well presented also.