When we arrived Rio de Janiero, we were met by our very enthusiastic guide, Alex Ma Ling, a Chinese Brazilian - now I didn’t expect that! Alex wants everyone to think that Rio is one of the safest cities in the world, but he isn’t fooling anyone. When he goes through the list of tours his agency runs, one of them is a slum tour in a jeep where you drive through some of the 700 favellas (slum neighbourhoods) and see how they live - he says it is a great tour, you see lots of drug deals going down, some with guns, but it is real safe because you are behind bullet proof glass - you just better hope the jeep doesn’t break down! We drive past slum areas with just corrugated iron for rooves,
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