VISITING THE WORLD'S LEAST POPULATED COUNTRY

hi it's a lavalla I've been to every single country in the world and today we're going to talk about the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu you've probably never even heard of Tuvalu it's a small place of 10,000 people along with an hour that makes it the least populated un member nation in the world there's not a lot to do there's not a lot to see but I'm gonna tell you some of the fun parts Tuvalu is one of the more difficult countries to get to because it's so remote it's very far out in the Pacific Ocean but also there's only one flight one airline that flies there Air Fiji because they're the only one because there's no competition they charge between 600 and 900 dollars just for the round-trip one to two hour flight it's a little bit ridiculous but if you want to go to Tuvalu that's what you have to do because the island because the atoll is so small the airport runway is actually in normal Street so every day or every couple days when the flight lands they have to shut off the street all of the people come out to see the plane land and the plane will land right on the road it's a really funny thing to see to be driving on the runway and then an hour later to see a big airplane kind of land there in Jeddah there's not very many hotels there's a couple guests house they're often booked out by the government they're expensive they're not very nice I stayed at a local family he's was a Member of Parliament which is really exciting because he was able to give me a lot of information and details about island life on Tuvalu but also like the political status the economic status he was one of the people who negotiated the dot TV deal you might have heard about this Tuvalu has made a lot of money because they sell their internet code dot TV to different entertainment companies it's a funny way to think about a country making a huge amount of their revenue but in a small island country like Tuvalu that's what is important that's what's possible the other ways that they try and make some money is fishing they like own some of the fishing rights along but really all of these island countries they suffer from hard economic times not a lot - not a lot of opportunity they don't have many resources not only a few people of a few natural resources other than the sea they're also suffering from climate change these islands have such a low elevation like a maximum of a few meters and so any kind of increase in sea level will really really deeply affect these small islands in the Pacific and their small populations I spent most of my time with my hosts I explored essentially the entire island every part that I could from one end all the way down to the other I we went my car I went by foot we went by motorbike and each time just this one lane road and we would go slowly down it I was joking with them that if you drive on tuvalu you don't actually know how to drive because driving at ten kilometres an hour down a single-leg road and then turning around and coming back does not compare it all to the driving I'm used to in New Yorker or an Abu Dhabi but you know they some of them are even afraid of like that kind of speed Tolu is so small that when I landed my host wasn't at the airport but I just asked has anybody seen Sam and somebody put me on the back of her motorbike and drove me to Sam's house every day when I was in Tuvalu I would make sure that I would wake up in time for the sunrise and stay awake as long as the sunset and that's because on these islands in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific the ocean is so big the horizon is so magnificent magnificent and divine that that's just like the most impressive thing to do it for me that's what will always be in my memory is waking up really early walking down the rocky beach behind the house and just looking as the Sun would rise because it's an atoll right so a small circular island with the center kind of fallen out that creates in the center Lagoon and so you can stand on these narrow strips of land and you can look to your left and see the calm Lagoon and to your right and see the big waves of the ocean and it's just really fascinating juxtaposition because you're literally just on you know a 20 meter wide stretch of land looking to one side and kind of seeing this calm and looking to the right and seeing the strength of the ocean the ocean is so important to life in Tuvalu it's where they get all their food it's where they get now their money it's you know they're constantly going on long boat rides to the outer islands and so to kind of understand more about the ocean wall is there to talk to people about its importance to them was really fascinating to me it's not something that like I think of as someone who grew up in a landlocked place like Indiana - how important the ocean can be but it's the same like in the in Abu Dhabi you know we have the desert is really important in Europe parts like you can have the forest is important you know where you get all of your your sustenance from because Tuvalu is so small they don't have their own currency it doesn't make sense that can't have you know really a like a monetary unit so they use Australian dollars they do have their own little tuvaluan coins that they use but just shows again how some of these small countries they are very reliant on others economically you know also to bring in any kind of food and it's interesting to think about why they do have independence and why they have sovereignty and what kind of reality that puts on to a place when the only have 10,000 people but you have to have a president you have to send somebody to the UN you have to be a part of all these look bigger discussions I think that like really interested actually to think of how these small places are nations within themselves and they have a role they have a seat within the international community and they have this voice and that puts a lot of impotence on them to be able to think about how to play that role a hugely important part of life anywhere of course one of my favorite things is food I was lucky that because I was staying with the local family I had breakfast lunch dinner cooked for me by the host and she was so excited to give me all their different foods we had um obviously lots of fish but in these Pacific Islands I've become very reliant on imported canned goods and so that's what's funny to me to be in a place where you can go catch a fresh fish but they're eating like bread and you know like Nutella or like things that you can be very unfresh things they like spam for example which you wouldn't maybe imagine there's so many dogs on to who and people when there's so many dogs around people aren't as nice to dogs as like I would expect you know and I want to like pet them and like play with them but they're like no like that's you know a wild dog or or we don't know whose dog that is if that dog has a lot of disease or something but yeah so I hope that you enjoyed some of my stories from tuvalu if you have any questions or comments about a comment down below subscribe I'm always happy to talk more about it and see what you guys have to think it's a really interesting place that a lot of people don't know about and I think that's what travel is about learning new things and hopefully we can do that together you

Channel: Sal Lavallo

Views: 49,415

Rating: 4.9045615 out of 5

Keywords: tuvalu, pacific islands, pacific, south pacific, pacific tourism, funafuti, atoll, world's least populated country, least populated country, least populated, islands, sal lavallo, travel, travels, traveler, around the world, every country, visit every country in the world, visited every country in the world, island hopper, island hopping

Id: hu4A_YJCMSo

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 31 2018