fivemack | (no subject)

(no subject)

[Poll #518184]

I may have missed out some really obvious destination 'near' Australia; never sure as to the value of 'near' to use in that part of the world.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of huge cities in Indonesia whose names are not household words; Bandung's bigger than Liverpool, Ujung Pandang the size of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. And just how big places that you know as 'what's the capital of Sudan?' pub-quiz answers are: more than seven million in Bogota or Lima or Kinshasa; nearly six million in Khartoum, which I know only as a small desert settlement in a Flashman novel.

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Oooh, just for me ?

Sadly, I'm just as untravelled in my former-local-area as over here. I never even made it to Perth ! And I'm only counting Bangkok because I've been to the airport a few times for up to 8 hours :-)

("Near" is a tricky concept when Sydney to Perth is around 4000km - ie roughly the same as Glasgow to Baghdad, or to somewhere well beyond Moscow.)

It doesn't really surprise me actually, but that might be the result of having travelled round China where I suspect most of the cities are at least the size of Liverpool.

Hmm, Brisbane should be 2 - I worked there for three weeks at Trolltech's Australian office. I didn't see the option when I filled out the poll ;)

I was reading someone's "Rough Guide to Montreal" over their shoulder on the bus a little while ago, and it started "Montreal is the third largest Francophone city in the world, after Paris and Kinshasa." I googled Kinshasa when I got home, because I had only vaguely heard of it, and wow, it's the second largest Francophone city in the world, 7 million people.

Big planet. So many interesting bits it's possible to entirely miss lots of them.

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