good morning guys. this is doug coming to you from the suez canal in egypt. so i woke up yesterday in
aswan and i decided, i gotta be spontaneous and just go check out what the heck is going on here
at the canal. you probably heard that there is an enormous tanker ship stuck blocking the entire
suez canal, where 12% of the world's trade passes through. so it's obviously a huge problem for
a lot of the world, a lot of supply routes have been cut off, there are livestock on boats that
are not able to get through to their destinations, there's potentially going to be a huge toilet
paper shortage.... so this has huge implications, and i just decided, i gotta go and see what's going
on. so yesterday i flew from aswan to cairo and then drove about an hour and 40 minutes out here
to the city of suez, where i am now. it's at the starting point of the canal, on the southern end
of it. so today my goal is just to get as close as possible to the ship and show you guys whatever i
can. so the hotel i'm staying in is absolutely filled with journalists. i've heard people from
the uk, from china... so there are a lot of people all over the place, and i think security is going to be
pretty tight around the ship. i'm going to do my best to get close to it, and we're going to try
to find a viewpoint. but i have heard that the military and the police have it pretty locked down.
so it's almost impossible to get near the canal, but right here there's a little gap in the fence
and you can see the beginning of the canal. there it is. so yeah, can't see too much from here, but i'm
gonna head back to my hotel now, drive around, see if we can find a better vantage point. so let's go
figure out what is going on here at the suez canal. and to give you guys some context, so the ship has
been stuck in the canal since tuesday. it's now sunday. so it's been five days, and they've been
working tirelessly since it first ran aground to free it. so mainly they've been dredging out
a ton of sand and mud from where the ship is stuck into the side of the canal, digging out
tons and tons and tons of earth, basically, to try to get it out of there. and the hope is that they
don't have to begin offloading the containers from the ship, because the ship is stuck at a
random part of the canal, it's not in a port, so there's none of the infrastructure to take these
massive, heavy containers off of the ship. so that is really what they're trying to avoid at this
point. they're trying to just dig out as much earth as possible and hopefully get the ship to
budge. and apparently they did move it a tiny bit for the first time since it got stuck yesterday,
saturday. so today they're going to be working more on that and we're going to go check it out.
so we're just driving and we can see the ship. we're driving kind of parallel to the canal right
now, but it's kind of hard to get close because the edges of the canal are controlled by the
military, so we're driving along trying to figure out a place where we can get a bit closer to it.
stay tuned. okay, so apparently the police are arresting a lot of people that are trying to
go -- yep, ready -- that are trying to go near the ship. so i'm on the back of a bike now. okay, okay.
put it away? okay, okay.
alright guys, so i'm literally hiding, like, behind this bush here. this is super sketchy.
i don't think this guy coming is very happy.
very difficult to get close, but--
driving by it now. and uh, gonna take a look. clearly, the security situation here is very much changing....
wow. we are very close to it now.
there it is, evergreen. you can see it on the side. wow.
It's difficult to convey the size of the ship on video. It is absolutely massive.
okay, okay, okay. they're yelling about the camera.
okay guys, so we're back in the car. uh, i'm not supposed to
be filming around this area right now, so i'm keeping the camera down low. apparently there's
a bunch of police in like, civilian clothing around here just like, patrolling the area, so
the whole situation is very sketchy. but yeah, i did get kind of close. so yeah, we're gonna
leave this area pretty quickly. so, it's crazy guys, lining the canal are these kind of uh,
small villages. now we're getting into more of the real city here, suez, but it's pretty crazy
to think that 12% of the world's trade passes through this area here.
alright, we're a little bit away from the uh, super sensitive area now. but part of the reason
why it's so sensitive, besides the ship that's stuck, is that in addition to being an important
route for trade, this is also an important military route. so you've got military ships from all over
the world passing through here. so even without this ship situation that's currently going on, this
is a very, very sensitive area, and the military are controlling the entire area. it's so funny because
here in egypt i haven't heard anyone talk about this situation at all. until i've come here and
brought it up, i haven't heard a single person even mention it. but from my friends in america, and
the western media, and stuff is all over it. there's memes and everything going
around, and it seems like people in the west are talking about it a lot more than people here
in egypt, and even in town here, literally a few kilometers from where it's happening.
alright guys, so behind me you can see a ton of ships waiting, basically, around the entrance
to the suez canal, for the blockage to be moved, so that they can go through it. you can see-- i counted
like at least 35 ships, but i know there's hundreds on either end of the canal waiting to go through.
and they're carrying all sorts of stuff.
my friend who's showing me around said this isn't normal. you normally wouldn't
see this many ships just hanging out here. so this is all backlog.
alright guys, good morning. it's the next day here in suez. i am soon on my way out of here,
to continue my journey onward to sudan, as i had planned before. i woke up this morning to
some news that they've actually managed to move the ship a little bit. apparently the course is
now corrected about 80% of where it needs to go. so they're continuing to work on it.
it's now monday. it's been six days since the ship got stuck. i also heard that yesterday, president sisi,
egypt's president, authorized them to begin the process of the backup plan, which is to remove
a lot of the containers on the ship. so this ship is actually one of the largest and longest
in the world. it's no joke. it is absolutely massive, and it actually holds upwards of 20,000 containers,
so, to remove them is going to be an enormous task, but they're getting ready for
that in case they're not able to move it through other means. alrighty guys, i have made it to the
cairo international airport. i filmed the last clip at about 1:00 PM here, and it's now about
3:30 PM. so in that time, i'm happy to say, egypt has successfully re-floated the ship, and it is
on the move. so forget what i said before about having to unload the containers. luckily, they were
able to pull it off. i want to say great job and congrats to the egyptian authorities on getting
the job done. after seeing that ship, i'm amazed that anyone was able to move it once it was run
aground. it's absolutely incredible. so i guess that is the conclusion of this adventure, guys. thank you
so much for watching. i hope you enjoyed it, and please do consider subscribing to the channel
if you did enjoy. i've got a lot more coming soon. also, check out my instagram guys, @doug_barnard.
i'm always posting updates there, and it's a great way to stay up to date on my travels. so,
thank you guys so much for watching, again. i really appreciate it, and i will see you in the next one. bye-bye.