Too Poor For Passports: Suriname

How did you like that peak into the Hermit Kingdom? Pinky liked how they called South Korea a puppet every time they mentioned it. We also really didn't expect there to be so much international coverage, either. The music was so antiquated, too! A bizarre glimpse at a bizarre nation.

Today we're going to head to a country that we have to admit that Pinky wasn't aware of and that Ellen thought was in Africa (so much for being a geography buff, eh?), which is kinda embarrassing because it's a relatively close neighbor with a sizable land mass.

Suriname! (See, it obviously exists and is in South America.)

It's home to less than 500,000 people, which means that our postage stamp-sized District of Columbia has more folks living in it. Think about it: Suriname is 64,000 square miles, while DC is only 61 square miles.

Anyway, apparently it's a Dutch-speaking former colony and is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the world. There are descendant’s from pretty much everywhere. Here is the list of it's official languages, all 18 of them...

Dutch
Sranan Tongo
Hindi
English
Sarnami
Javanese
Malay
Bhojpuri
Hakka
Cantonese
Saramaccan
Paramaccan
Ndyuka
Kwinti
Matawai
Cariban
Arawakan
Kalina

80% of the country is unspoiled rain forest, too, which is pretty rad, huh? And get this: it's one of only three countries in the world where a mosque and a synagogue are located next to each other! Isn't that kinda fucked up? Yeah, we thought so, too. The other two countries with neighboring mosques and synagogues are Bosnia and Herzegovina, which we visited last week, and Bulgaria.

So let's head on down to Suriname and see what we've been missing, eh?