One Year, One World!

Meet Jen and Winston. In 2003 they made a journey around the world and in the process changed their lives. You can share in their experiences via their blog, follow their path via their itinerary and see the world as they saw it via their amazing photographs.

Click Here to go to their site or first read on for some examples of their blogs and photos:

Saturday, August 30, 2003

I've watched with great interest the way that Moroccan people greet each other. There seem to be many different ways, depending on whether you're male or female, what region you come from, and who you are greeting.

The most common way I've seen men greet one another is with a handshake and then a cheek to cheek kiss, first the right, then the left. Once in a while, I've seen a man greet another by touching his heart with his right hand accompanied with a small bow. Often when they speak greetings to each other in Moroccan Arabic (which incidentally sounds quite different from the Arabic we heard in Egypt), they seem to say several different phrases to each other very rapidly in quick succession. Occasionally, we observed someone who was apologizing to another person also touch their heart with their right hand, quite a sincere gesture.

Women greet each other with a four-time cheek-to-cheek kiss, which sometimes seems to take a while. Once in a while, we've seen a two or three time kiss. In the Rif mountains, the women from the village towns touch each other's hands, and then touch their own lips, which was unusual, but pretty interesting.

Saturday, September 13, 2003
Farewell, Tunisia
Tunis, Tunisia

Next we drove north to Kairoun, the holy city of Northern Africa. In addition to Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, Kairoun is the fourth of the special Islamic cities. In fact, going to Kairoun 7 times count as going to Mecca for the Muslims. We visited the Great Mosque and Mosque of the Barber, two of their most famous mosques. There are 135 mosques in Kairoun. The Great Mosque is very large though quite plain in terms of their decoration, though with its simple lines, it definitely looks even more imposing. The Mosque of the Barber on the other hand, is elaborately decorated with carved plasters, stained glass, and colourful tiles.

We had a guide Hemil, who is a student of technical engineering at a university in Kairoun. He also showed us the Mosque of the Three Doors, the mineral water drawn up by a camel (this water is thought to have a source from Mecca) and several Berber artisans at work (rug weaving, slipper making, jelaba sewing). As suspected, we ended up with a pitch at the carpet shop but left without buying any. Driving north, and eventually merging onto the toll road, we made it back to Tunis at 5pm and checked into the Hotel Tej, the same hotel we stayed in last weekend when we were here. We even got the same room from the clerk who recognized us.

Monday, December 08, 2003
A Glimpse of Bhutan
Bangkok, Thailand

As it turns out, getting to Bhutan is an adventure in itself. Putting an airport in the Himalayas gives rise to the challenge of finding a decent flight path from which to land and take off. Paro Airport is located about an hour and a half (by car) from Bhutan's capital and only city, Thimphu, and is in one of Bhutan's only valleys long and flat enough to accomodate a runway. Put it this way, the Druk Air pilot even came online to calmly say, "If you look outside the aircraft window and see mountains closer than you have ever seen before, please don't be frightened, just realize that this is standard operating procedure." As we descended through the clouds, the pilot deftly navigated the plane in between mountain ranges, dramatically slowing the plane down as we dropped over a ridge, and banking sharply to the right just over treetops as we came in for a smooth landing. It was a totally awesome flight; it reminded me of flying into Hong Kong's old airport, where you could once see people hanging out their laundry in the apartment buildings just off the plane's wingtips.

Incidentally, we got clear views of Everest and the whole Himalayan range on the flight to and from Paro. We didn't get up close like I would have had I been on the mountain flight, but it was still pretty neat to be able to see the highest point on Earth with our own eyes, even through an airplane window. Also interesting is the fact that, Druk Air, Bhutan's only airline, owns only two planes, and only flies into Paro, Bhutan's only airport.

We were met by our tour guide Sonam and driver Laal, who accompanied us for our entire four-day, three night visit (it was really just three days, as we flew out early in the morning on the last day). Now, tourism in Bhutan operates a little differently than it does in most places. The government is incredibly protective of Bhutan's culture and somewhat tries to limit exposure to Western influences. The King and the Bhutanese government have been taking conscious steps to manage growth and development in Bhutan... more on this later, it's a fascinating topic.

The way that Bhutan limits the number of tourists to the country is by imposing a high fee on foreign tourists, and requiring visitors to book a tour through a government approved agency (of which there seem to be very many). There is no actual quota on tourists per se; it's simply that the high daily cost is quite prohibitive. As a result of being signed up with a tour, our guide Sonam was with us pretty much every single moment of our visit, except when we were in the hotel rooms. This was somewhat restrictive, and made me think that we kind of had a "handler" of sorts... however, we were well aware of this beforehand. Because of the high cost and method of tour, I think that visiting Bhutan might not be everybody's cup of tea if you're overly concerned about getting the most bang for your buck.

Now, having said that, I want to point out that we could ask to do almost anything we wanted, and Sonam would strive to take care of any requests we had. There are only a few districts that are restricted to tourists, and these are apparently due to unwanted "social elements" in those areas. Less than 7000 visitors came to Bhutan last year alone; there are at least 7000 people who enter Nepal in a week. It was incredibly refreshing (and quite selfish) to be able to get a glimpse of a country without throngs of other tourists milling about. We definitely felt privileged by having the opportunity.

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