Places That Don't Exist: Trans-Dniester Part 2of4

Holidays in the Danger Zone: Places That Don't Exist
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Author Simon Reeve undertakes a thrilling journey through the most obscure countries in the world -- Places That Don't Exist.
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There are almost 200 official countries in the world, but there are dozens more breakaway states which are determined to be separate and independent. The breakaway states have their own rulers, parliaments or warlords, and are home to millions of people, but they're not officially recognised as proper countries by the rest of the world. Several have their own armies and police forces, and issue passports and even postage stamps which the rest of the world ignores.
All of the breakaway states have declared independence after violent struggles with a neighbouring state. Some now survive peacefully, but others are a magnet for terrorists and weapons smuggling, and have armies ready for a fight. All could be at the centre of future wars which threaten their regions and the wider world.
In a world of easy adventure tourism, Simon visits breakaway states & unrecognized nations which don't usually feature on the tourist trail: Somaliland, Transniestria, South Ossetia, Taiwan, Abkhazia, Ajaria and Nagorno-Karabkh.
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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. Simon also discovers abandoned missiles capable of destroying skyscrapers, al Qaeda terrorists in an African jail and the mass graves of children killed by soldiers.
Simon meets a blonde popstar who's a crackshot with an AK-47, a mournful guitarist, and a Taiwanese boy band. He climbs the world's tallest building, visits the site of the battle in Black Hawk Down, is electrocuted in Mogadishu, finds 5,000 year old rock paintings, buys himself a new Somali passport from a man called Mr Big Beard, and is held as a spy by the Transniestrian KGB.
Snake blood is on the menu in Asia, rock-hard yoghurt in the Caucuses, camel milk in Africa and two bottles of cognac when Simon is forced to celebrate independence with a Communist politician.
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. But in the sweltering heat of Mogadishu he needs a dozen armed gunmen just to stay alive.

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