SURINAME

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>>1106742
Oh, the pic in the OP is an abandoned sugarcane plantation. It stopped working 20 years ago and it's already on the verge of collapsing.

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>>1106745
About 95% of what I had. Surinamese food is good but it's often the same.

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>>1106746
R O T I
O
T
I

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>>1106747
Some Paramaribo pics coming up. Pic related is a renovated/maintained historic building. There's plenty that run considerably more risk of tumbling down.

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>>1106748
This is a street somewhere in the historical centre of town. I didn't take pictures of the ubiquitous Chinese supermarkets in the outer parts of town (seriously, they're fucking everywhere).

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>>1106749
There was a policeman next to this statue telling me I couldn't take a picture of this statue (he didn't deign to explain for what reason). It's of some monstrously fat dude, which is the only reason I wanted to take a picture.

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>>1106750
I have no idea why that picture came out rotated. Anyway.

The translation of pic related is as follows:
"This monument is dedicated to my son Ruben, who died by suffocating in a refrigerator in 1966. It is a warning to the Surinamese community to watch their children better."

The Surinamese, man.

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>>1106751
I spent a considerable amount of time in the jungle (which is why I was sent to Suriname in the first place). If you didn't know better, you'd think it's Africa. Poverty, women washing in the rivers and carrying big baskets on their heads, you name it. Most of them are also VERY averse to having their picture taken. This dude wasn't.

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>>1106754
The foremost hut was where I slept when I went to this particular village. It belonged to a distant cousin of the local 'kapitein' (mayor/chief) but said cousin was working in French Guiana while I was there.

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>>1106755
Big ol' spider on the tree nearest to my hut.

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>>1106756
Small snake which had crept into my hut. Remedied by smashing it over its head and then chucking it at fascinated onlooking four-year-olds. My local associate/co-worker really was a people's man.

Tired of uploading pics for now. If anyone has questions, I'll be around.

>>1106742
bedankt voor de pics

Thanks for the pics!

Is it worth visiting?
Any nightlife?
Did you feel safe?

>>1106771
>>1106775
You're welcome!

>worth visiting
It's by no means a must-see country. That said, I'd never been out of Europe before, so seeing the jungle was pretty cool. Flights were pretty cheap, too. And that they speak Dutch there is pretty useful, even though my English is pretty good.

>nightlife
While I was in the city, I was staying with a very religious teetotaller, so sadly I didn't really go out. Drinking with the Saramaccans in the jungle was pretty wild, though.

>safe
Yes. There is a *lot* of crime in Paramaribo, but nearly all of it is drug-related and takes place in the seedier suburbs of the city. There have always been loads of Europeans in Suriname so white people are not really seen as cashcows like in less touristy places.

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>>1106742
Thanks for the thread. It's looks like a weird place to visit. Doesn't appear to be really relevant for my interests though. Most likely will not visit. But again, thanks for the input

>>1106756
All of a sudden my interest in Suriname has disappeared

As a South American I must add some trivia and it is that in none of our countries they teach us ANYTHING about the guyanas, they're a complete and absolute mystery

>>1106871
I second that.
Nothing about the Guianas or Suriname.
Had to google to find out what language they spoke and which currency they use in Suriname.

To OP, by the photos, the city doesn't look that developed. Which cities did you visit and how developed were they?

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>>1106877
>Which cities did you visit?
The capital is the only city of note, at my guesstimate of 250.000 inhabitants. The rest of the country's 600.000 inhabitants live in villages of little interest.

>how developed were they?
Paramaribo is OK. Most buildings have air-co, there's a functioning transport network, roads are maintained, the whole shebang. It's not a pedestrian-friendly city by any means, but I never felt like I was slumming it.

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>>1106897
Although I do have to add that the SRD (Suriname Dollar) devaluated from €1=5.8SRD to €1=6.2SRD while I was in the country. There's something of an economic crisis going on there at the moment.

>>1106871
Well, if I'm perfectly blunt about it, there's not a WHOLE lot to tell.

>>1106861
I didn't enjoy the snake, because it can slither up to you. The spiders are content sitting in their palm trees, waiting for the ubiquitous mosquitoes to get trapped.

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>>1106847
>Most likely will not visit
It's nice for a Dutchman to go abroad and be able to speak his language in a tropical country. There's next to nothing in Suriname that you couldn't do someplace else, but I was sent there on my boss' dime so I'm not complaining.

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As an unrelated aside, does somebody know what the deal is with black people and checkers? I didn't even see a single checkers board in Paramaribo, and as soon as I went into the jungle, people were playing it *all* the time.

>>1106756

Yeah, I was really interested in going to Suriname and now I'm just not. Didn't they find a tarantula the size of a puppy there recently?

White Beach and Cola Kreek are pretty nice to visit. Nice relaxing places to swim but depending on the time of the year they may have a lot of visitors.
There are also some nice places to relax and fish if you are into that.

>>1106995
All of a sudden my interest in living on this planet have disappeared

>>1106794
What do you consider as cheap? Flights from UK seem more expensive than flying to other countries in the region (around £800 - 1000 for Suriname, about £500-700 for Brazil)

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>>1107087
KLM has an almost-daily flight from Amsterdam, so does SLM. €650 for a retour flight to South America seems pretty cheap to me.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/goliath-spider-hormiga-vin

>he even describes how it feels for a human to get bitten

>>1106742
>>1106745
>fallout irl

While mysterious, Suriname and the Guyanas seem super dull. Whats the deal? No fun history? Any cool nature?


Also, why the hell did you get sent to Suriname?

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>>1107909
>no fun history
Not really. They brought Africans over to work the plantations, slavery was abolished, they brought over Indians to work the plantations, Indians got fed up, they brought over Javans to work the plantations, plantations weren't profitable anymore, INDEPENDENCE, mini civil war, the present day.
They democratically elected their former dictator, though. Look up Bouterse if you're interested.

>Any cool nature?
The jungle is cool. Just walking around is completely different. I didn't get to go to the cooler things like the Raleigh Falls, sadly. No time.

>why the hell did you get sent to Suriname?
I work for a Dutch NGO which promotes and monitors forest regrowth. Many slaves fled into the jungle and founded villages there, but often they've burnt down so much primary forest for agriculture that regrowth becomes difficult. We try to check whether that happens and try to come up with strategies to aid it.
That's the big goal. But my work came down to counting and inventorying all the plants on different patches of jungle ground (25 m2), ever further from the villages. Something the locals found a pretty funny sight, but hey.

Pic related: strangling liana. Eventually kills the tree it grows on and uses it as compost.
>shh, no tears