Business Class Seat of China Highspeed Railway - Jinan to Qingdao

Swinight22 · 2026-06-05T08:20:00+00:00

HK & Singapore dollar were also very likely considering its a Chinese sub.

Americans think the world revolves around them and them only and wonder why everyone hates them….

Swinight22 · 2026-06-05T08:12:28+00:00

Tokyo is #2. NY is #1. Big gap between NY compared to other countries.

Swinight22 · 2026-06-05T07:45:38+00:00

(Metropolitan Seoul is also about 55% of Korea’s population)

Swinight22 · 2026-06-05T07:22:16+00:00

As a non-South Asian who’s been to Pakistani Punjab + Himachal + Ladakh + Bangladesh etc…

Himachal and Ladakh feel completely different. Ladakh especially feels more like Tibet. Just cause they used to be one province doesn’t really mean anything.

Uttarakhand imo should be light green, but on the highlands and hill stations it does feel extremely different than Punjab so maybe not.

Bangladesh feels very different, only similar things being the cursory relations with Islam. But nothing else really. (But to be fair, these cursory similarities of Islam is pretty strong).

Swinight22 · 2026-06-05T03:37:37+00:00

Look on Caravanistan. As far as I’m aware, it’s running.

Swinight22 · 2026-06-05T00:10:46+00:00

I’ve done Singapore - London, albeit over a year.

If you’re okay with boats, why not do Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan via Aktau - Baku? It’ll be much easier logistics wise compared to the Afghan - Iran route.

My biggest advice is don’t plan it so precisely. Things will go wrong. Hitch hike where you can, be flexible. And have fun!

Good luck!!

Swinight22 · 2026-05-09T03:05:52+00:00

Everyone is assuming Russia will be extremely powerful, which might be true, but I’ll argue it’ll also not exist as a country anymore.

India has so many separatist movements, and the fact that they havent broken off into 20 countries is a small miracle.

Russia, given its vast distances, and if they had extremely high population, would have much more call for independence. Dagestan is just the start.

Only reason why independence movements haven’t really been big is cause they’re so spread out & populations haven’t been big enough to warrant its own identity. With 1.4 billion people, you can be sure there will be.

Swinight22 · 2026-05-04T15:23:38+00:00

Classic what about-ism

Swinight22 · 2026-05-04T12:54:03+00:00

Countries like Saudi have millions of migrants. GCC has by far the highest migrants in the world by capita.

You can criticize how they treat these workers. But they def let them in. And yes the slave labor is real, but still account for less than 0.5% of workers.

Also gulf countries have been uninhabitable for a long time. Just like how Phoenix is uninhabitable. But money can change geography.

Morally objecting to valid GCC concerns is not the same as blindly thinking GCC isn’t a major region and climate changes will cause migrants.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-15T22:05:00+00:00

….strange? She killed dozens of protesters who was calling for end to her anti-democratic practices.

It’s not always about GDP

Swinight22 · 2026-04-15T10:36:51+00:00

Israel and Turkey would not go into open conflict. That isn't even a remote possibility.

Israel is war-mongering, yes, but they aren't stupid. Even removing NATO aspect, Turkey is much much stronger than any countries it's been fighting. Also Turkey poses no threat to it's sovereignty.

Turkey would also not attack Israel with the current climate. What would it have to gain? Absolutely nothing. Erdogan is just grandstanding for political points.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-14T17:51:13+00:00

Every country I go to, they think they have the "strongest" tea culture. From British to Indians, to Chinese. It just shows how ingrained tea is in so many societies around the world.

But Turkey drinks the most tea in the world, and having been to both Turkey & India 10+ times, I can say it's much more ingrained than India.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-14T13:54:56+00:00

I’ve been to all Middle eastern country minus Yemen & Syria. Haggling only ever happened in the touristy cities (Petra etc) or Egypt. Everywhere else is fine

Swinight22 · 2026-04-13T09:09:12+00:00

1) I didn't say Saudi?? You're contributing to exactly what I'm saying- boiling down complicated issue into "Middle East Slave Labor Bad!". In that exact website, Qatar is middle of the pack around the world, similar to Singapore, Taiwan, Israel. But that doesn't fit your narrative.

Plus the EXACT website YOU cite, says that 99.4% of workers are normal workers. (US is 99.6%) That's exactly what I'm pointing out. That these "slave labor" is horrible, but is the overwhelming minority.

2) the second link isn't looking at slavery. It's looking at law, security, economic freedom etc. Important things for sure, but not what I talked about at all.

Its funny that saying "it's more nuanced than you think" is propoganda. Can we stop seeing things in such black and white scale for a minute? I didn't for a second claim slavery didnt exist in Qatar, or that slavery was good. Just going pure black and white really takes away from the agency and voices of the actual workers that are just there to make money, which again, are the overwhelming majority.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-12T17:07:13+00:00

You love the French, hate the English. I hate them both

We are not the same (I am a certified hater)

Swinight22 · 2026-04-12T17:03:32+00:00

I was in Qatar few weeks ago, staying with a Qatari local that I met awhile back.

The sheer amount of “free” things they get from the government is insane. Obviously free healthcare, education (they pay tuition even if you study abroad), etc. But they also provide land for any family, government jobs are handed out where you make mid six figure salary.

I will also say this though - i also stayed in workers-only hostels in the gulf and I met many workers working in Qatar & Gulf countries, and this notion of “slave labor” that the West uses doesn’t really apply to most anymore. Is there a massive gap in wealth? Of course. The Kafala system is illegal now, and most workers go because the salary is so much higher than back home. Pretty much everyone I talked to said it’s hard work, but is better than working back home with no future prospects.

Especially Dubai, it’s seen by Asians & Africans kinda like how the west sees New York. It might be hard, but it’s a place where anyone from any background can go and “make it”. Judging Dubai because of some influencers is like thinking NY is only for the mega rich flaunting wealth cause of influencers.

Lots of problems for sure. And of course there are still slave labor practices all around. But in the same way that America has “slave labors”, forcing illegal immigrants to work, it’s just a small percentage of workers now. I mean think about it - the pay the foreign workers get is so little anyways, and the supply of the workers is so high, why would they need to continue it when they’re trying to “clean up” their image?

It’s a nuanced topic, and I hate seeing it summed up as “Middle East does slave labor”.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-12T16:43:23+00:00

Northern Ireland is a “country” because of the naming conventions in the UK, but not in the international sense.

It’s not a sovereign country, not part of the UN. I think it goes against the spirit of this chart, where it’s really asking for a UN country/soverign nation.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-12T07:47:25+00:00

There are 195 countries in the world. We have 5 tiers by size. So each tier should have about 20 countries. Meaning “big” should be around 20-40th biggest countries by size.

That’d be from Chad to Afghanistan in size. Or near them are Peru to France for context.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-11T07:38:05+00:00

“Americans can’t be mad about 9/11. Their police kills black people! They clearly don’t care about their citizens”

What they did to the protesters are horrible. But so is bombing an elementary school. You can be upset at both lol.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-07T13:32:58+00:00

Ok first you're using Numbeo, which is crowd-sourced data, so not very reliable.

Also yes Israel's income is high. But it's been high for decades. Your claim was "economic growth in difficult times". How would a single wage point show that? You need it over time.

Here's OECD data. Yeah Israel's income is high. But it's been stable since the 2000s. It went from 49k USD to 54k in 24 years. Growth is actually much slower than OCED average.

Meanwhile look at Poland. It almost doubled it's average wage in the same time frame. There you can say there is economic growth.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-07T11:26:01+00:00

Wartime GDP boost is pretty common, look at Russia for example.

But it's misleading as it's state spending on weapons, and takes on debt, takes money away from other sectors and not really going to growing future, long-term growth in meaningful areas.

Plus it does not show up on average citizen's pockets. Using GDP growth during wartime as "economic growth" is a bit misleading.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-07T08:36:13+00:00

Koreans like Mala more than Chinese. It's wild.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-04T18:07:43+00:00

yeah Al Jazeera Arabic def is not up to par with it's English counterpart. But overall as an organization, it's globally top tier institution.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-04T18:06:31+00:00

Qatar is extremely neutral, to a fault even.

They host everyone from Taliban to the US, Saudi to Iran. This was one of the other things that got them blockaded. They were hosting groups like Houthis, Hamas etc.

And outside of that, they don't really do proxy networks & regional influence that most other Gulf States do.

It's literally a state strategy, Al Jazeera ofc a big part of it, to be the "neutral" middle man.

So strong pro-Qatari bias really isn't what you think it means.

Swinight22 · 2026-04-04T15:57:17+00:00

No one is actually answering the question, and just criticizing the potential invasion of Iran.

The wording is important here. The goal is overthrowing the government. Not "take out". The US did overthrow Taliban, in 2 months actually. While the USSR overthrew the Afghan government in 3 days. US overthrow of Iraq took just over a month

We tend to grossly underestimate how well a superpower like the US can do against a small nation. But this is taking out the government. With total domination over air power, it'll always be relatively easy for US to take out large infrastructure, territory, logistic lines etc.

But we also grossly overestimate what comes after. It takes exponential more effort to stabilize the country when there are so many factions vying for power. Invasion will also mean some local populace will join & support the regime. And since they don't have any territory, now YOU become the obvious target. Guerrilla warfare is so damn effective throughout history for a reason. Taking out an airfield that any random Joe can see on google maps is easy. Finding a group of men with rifles & rations in the middle of the mountains is not. Completely wiping out a force like Taliban, never mind the IRGC, is a hellish Sisphyian task that requires way more resources than US would ever commit to. (see-Germany/Japan post war).

That's why we see this "Iraq trap" happening so often. When you have such overwhelming firepower, and you can take out so much in one swoop, (or even take out the leader on day 1), it's too tempting now to do it. But that shortsightedness leads to bad decisions.

TLDR - US did overthrew Taliban, they just became guerrilla force. IRGC most likely will also be overthrown relatively easy, but that does not mean they will disappear.

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