(no subject)

[fivemack]

[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.

Comments

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

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.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

It may just reflect that I've read different things, but of

Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Chongqing, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Harbin

(the list of cities in China that this database thinks are bigger than Liverpool)

everyone's heard of the first three, and Guangzhou and Chongqing raise vague memories. I couldn't name a city in Indonesia other than Jakarta (OK, Bandar Aceh, but that's a city noted for having ceased to exist at the end of last year), whilst Bandung's Liverpool-sized and Surabaya's close.

[ckd]

Guangzhou was formerly known as, and is probably better known as, Canton IIRC.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

And Chongqing was Chungking or something like that pre-pinyin.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised there are only nine compared with the six(?) in Indonesia.

Maybe it's more that it just doesn't occur to that so many people live in Indonesia. The population's apparently 240 million. I knew it had the largest number of muslims of any country, but I've never thought of it as country with a population that large. China's population is 1.3 billion but the distribution among cities will be wildly different I guess.