Thursday, May 19, 2011 Red (Trash) Sand (Trash) Dunes in (Trash) Vietnam
This is a tragedy.
I may do a longer story on this, because frankly, it’s appalling. The amount of trash on the ground, in the streets, in the bushes and trees and yes, the sand dunes, is flabbergasting. You would think that the locals would not put up with this, but they do. The don’t only put up with it, they contribute to it. Hell they’re probably completely responsible for it. Because I sure as heck didnt’ see any tourists contributing to this mess.
These are glorious, wonderful, amazing red send dunes in Vietnam. Trashed.
Click to fill your screen with this photo!
Don’t see it yet? Click on the picture, make it bigger. See all that white stuff on the dunes? Trash. You’re thinking, “that’s not so bad is it?”. But that photo above… that’s about the best photo I could get, where I saw the least trash. I actually gave up trying to avoid the trash, and decided to document it instead.
Here, have a closer look.
Click to fill your screen with this photo!
What do you do about it? How do you fix something like this?
Reader Comments (4)
If the rubbish distresses you, you'd better not go to Egypt.
There is rubbish everywhere, the municipalities sweep the stuff into piles on street corners and leave it to decompose. The canals are full of rubbish.
The Egyptians also smoke furiously and aggressively, dropping their discarded butts any and everywhere.
I even saw the police watch teenagers spraying graffiti on the stones of the pyramids.
In short; the place is a toilet - avoid it at all costs.
I think it is something that we take for granted here, that there are laws and they are enforced. We have rangers in national parks that will write you up. (this is all sponsored by our taxes, something we should be happy about)
Paul — I haven't been to Egypt. I really do want to see the Pyramids, and that's very disappointing to hear. Although I suppose not all that surprising.
Ben — we do take it for granted. Imagine the reaction if you dropped a candy wrapper on the ground as a kid; your mom would smack you upside the head! We're educated from birth that littering is bad. Apparently that's not part of the culture there. Which is really hard for us (westerners) to understand. I'd certainly love to get a first-hand insight from someone from there.
-Joseph
We were in Egypt for 10 days last September. We saw one canal where men were fishing and children swimming all within in just a few feet of a bloated dead horse in the water along with lots of trash disposed there. It seemed as though every plastic bag ever made found its way to the streets of Cairo. Our guide said that the government was trying to make changes but that there was a huge gap between trash disposal needs and capacity.
Trash problems didn't seem so significant once we moved to Luxor and beyond. Still, it was a trip of a lifetime.