Adventure sports are as foreign in Madagascar as the concept of leisure time: in a country where 90% of the population has no running water, survival trumps entertainment. French entrepreneurs are trying to change that, investing in new tourism infrastructures to draw foreigners and (ideally) teach the locals new, marketable skills. In my investigation of this subject for NatGeo Television, I traveled to Sakalava Bay, where I had just two hours to learn to kitesurf—normally it takes three days. I’m already looking forward to returning to this barely known beach resort and showering the locals with greenbacks.

The following list surfaced in Harper’s magazine, January 2011, from a series of “Market Profiles” by VisitBritain, the official UK tourism bureau. Written “to help everyone in tourism, from taxi drivers to hotel personnel,” in preparation for the 2012 Olympics in London, the list was intended to “provide an even more efficient and helpful customer service that takes account of cultural needs.”

• Cleanliness is of major importance to Austrians.
• The Portuguese take great pride in wearing good fabrics and clothes of the best standard they can afford.
• New Zealanders are accustomed to high-pressure showers, not a weak dribble from a nozzle, and are also used to gallons and gallons of hot water being available.
• Although Italians give little care to public places, they are scrupulously clean in their own homes.
• Don’t be offended by Argentine humor, which may mildly attack your clothing or weight.
• Canadians often identify themselves as Canadian by wearing a maple-leaf pin or a maple leaf on their clothing.
• Czechs are very sensitive to price changes.
• Brazilians do not travel lightly.
• As a nation, Germans are interested in many things; however, football, cars, travel, culture, their homes, and getting a good deal are some of the most important.
• The Dutch have a strong desire to order their time in agendas and on calendars.
• Mexicans drink huge quantities of soft drinks and beer.
• Good conversational topics are Mexican culture, history, museums. Never discuss the Mexican American War, poverty, aliens, or earthquakes.

• Avoid discussing personal matters or linguistic divisions with Belgians.
• Malaysians dislike walking long distances and are likely not to be very active.
• Nordic people like to get close to the “natives.”
• The Japanese (particularly women) could be said to have a childlike air to them.
• Russians love the English sense of humor and believe it is very similar to the Russian one.
• The South African sense of humor is based more on American slapstick comedy than on British wit and play on words. Therefore they may struggle to understand the “joke.”
• Don’t ask personal questions to a Brazilian.
• The Dutch hardly ever invite people with whom they are not closely acquainted for dinner.
• Spaniards use utensils to eat most food. Even fruit is eaten with a knife and fork!
• Thais are generally aware of the Four Seasons restaurant (for the crispy duck), and the Blue Elephant Thai restaurant in London.
• The French will begin eating only after someone says “bon appétit.”
• Koreans do not like to talk a lot during dinner.
• If an Arab stares you in the eye as you speak, it means that he is giving you his full attention. If he doesn’t, it means that he may not care what you are saying.
• If an Arab bites his right finger, it is a sign of contempt, and this will usually be accompanied by muttering.
• Mexicans use a “psst-psst” sound to catch another’s attention.
• Russians may come across as cold and not very open or polite people.
• The Dutch do not believe in lining up and show almost no consideration in public for a person’s status, gender, or age.
• In America, time is a very important commodity. People “save” time and “spend” time as if it were money in the bank.
• Belgians tend to be indirect.
• Nordic people are often very conscious of environmental issues.
• Indians do not like to express “no.” Rather than disappoint you, for example, by saying something isn’t available, Indians may give an affirmative answer but be deliberately vague about any specific details.
• Koreans are not Chinese.
From Harper’s Magazine, Founded in 1850; Vol. 322, No. 1928; January 2011

Hilltop above Carmel Valley, California

Hwy 121 Westbound, Napa to Sonoma

Big rains this spring have greened the entire state of California, from north to south. What’s not green is white: the Sierra remain buried under the deepest snowpack in 20 years.  In a few weeks, once rainy season ends, everywhere but the mountains will turn gold—the color of lion’s fur, the dusty brown of tourist season. Now is the time for a road trip. As a professional travel correspondent, I always schedule California research trips for spring. Here’s why.

Wildflowers, Greenhorn Mountains, Southern Sierra Nevada

The Sierra Nevada Foothills go brown by May. California is nicknamed the Golden State not for the metal gold, but for the color the hills turn in summer. In early spring, the most magnificent flowers explode at around 2000–3000ft elevation, along winding back roads you can’t take faster than 30mph.

Mountains of the John Muir Wilderness, above Convict Lake

The mountains hang like curtains from heaven along Hwy 395. Spring comes late to the Eastern Sierra—there’s always a chance the sky will go gunmetal grey and dump heavy snow on the high ridge lines one last time. Hwy 120 over Yosemite stays closed till July, leaving the high-mountain deserts of eastern California desolate and forgotten till summer. So much the better to experience the vastness in solitude.

Burj al-Arab Casting Shade on the Persian Gulf

Dubai is home to some of the world’s most instantly recognizable hotels, but does the service measure up to the facilities? Some come close, but none I found merits the rarefied ranking of a real five-star. And that includes the iconic sail-shaped Burj al-Arab—which I prefer to call the Bourgeois à l’Arabe.

What distinguishes five-star from four-star service? The primary difference lies in the anticipation of a guest’s needs. A good hotel provides what you want before you know you want it. An example: You’re at a city hotel in, say, London, and step outside just as it begins to rain. Before you have to ask, the doorman offers an umbrella. Sure, any good four-star stocks umbrellas, but only the five-star will thrust one into your hand at the exact moment you need it, without your having to request it. Herein lies the problem.

Raffles Dubai Bedroom

Dubai’s hotels are staffed by inexperienced youths from developing countries, many of whom had never set foot inside a luxury hotel before working at one. Employers routinely take away their passports, and don’t allow them access to their earnings until they leave the country. They live in employer-provided dorms, get bused back and forth to work, labor six long days a week, and have no social lives. Few employees speak the same language and must attempt communication in English, their second or third language. Thus they can’t rely on shared cultural gestures and non-verbal cues: misunderstandings constantly occur. Workers don’t know basic hotel lingo, such as ‘feather pillow’ or ‘alarm clock,’ let alone ‘iPod docking station’ or ‘ethernet cable.’ How can you anticipate guests’ needs when you have no idea what they’re asking you?

Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) determines the star level of the city’s hotels, but the system is based entirely on facilities. Thus, many hotels in Dubai are classed as five-stars. But real classification systems by organizations such as Michelin and Forbes Travel (formerly Mobil), are based as much on service as facilities. This makes the third Michelin star, or fifth Forbes star, hard to get. You can’t fool a good inspector, even if you know he’s coming.

Lobby of the Burj al-Arab

When I inspected Dubai’s hotels, I worked like a Michelin or Forbes inspector, calling on my experience in the luxury-hotel business and considering service as well as facilities. I gave each hotel the benefit of the doubt by assuming it a five-star until it proved itself otherwise. Then I deducted points. I deducted a lot of points in Dubai.

Let’s take the Burj Al Arab, the hotel most famous for hyping itself as the world’s only ‘seven-star’ hotel. Psha, say I. To my eye, it barely achieves five. Why? The doorman was missing in action. Though a battalion of valets flanked the door, they remained frozen, arms at their sides, as I counted to 60 before finally opening the door myself. A small detail, yes, but the fifth star is entirely about small details. And for $3000 a night, there’s no room for mistakes such as this, one which a demanding guest would consider a discourtesy.

Raffles Dubai Lobby

The reason the valets didn’t open the front door is at the heart of why Dubai’s hotel service is weak: employees have no civil rights in the UAE and live in fear of losing their employer-sponsored work visas—which would result in immediate deportation to their poor-as-dirt home countries—thus they dare not go off script. The valet is hired to park cars, not open doors. But at a proper five-star, employees must be nimble, take initiative: honor first the guest, then the employee handbook.

If you feel like you're being watched in Dubai, just remember: You are.

The true measure of a hotel’s service lies in how it handles problems. Anyone can steer a ship in calm seas, but only a master can navigate a gale.  Thus, I present complex service requests when I visit a hotel. I won’t reveal tactics, but I will say that the number-one property I found in Dubai was not the Burj al-Arab, but Raffles, which takes a more European approach to service. Fear not: You probably won’t have any problems with your Dubai hotel, unless you’re particularly demanding, in which case, please take notes and send them my way.

John A. Vlahides is a former member of Les Clefs d’Or, the international union of the world’s elite luxury-hotel concierges, and co-authored Lonely Planet Dubai City Guide, 4th ed. Copyright Lonely Planet. Please do not reproduce without permission.

In this short film for NatGeo & Lonely Planet TV, I’m on the hunt for the French Foreign Legion in Madagascar, exploring the island’s wind-whipped northeastern coastline via ATV. My destination: an abandoned lighthouse and military base, lately colonized by goats and a charming young goatherd.

On assignment in Madagascar for National Geographic and Lonely Planet, I made a detour to investigate Ilakaka, the gem capital of Madagascar, a boomtown gone bust, where Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law got shot to death. The place gave me the creeps. I didn’t stick around.

While in Morocco for Nat Geo TV, I was asked to investigate pottery, one of the country’s most famous artisinal traditions. The following short film, produced by Lonely Planet Television, captures the skill and hard work of these incredible craftsmen. Have a look.

On assignment in Morocco last year, Lonely Planet gave me the task of investigating Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, for broadcast on National Geographic Channels International. The following footage wound up on the cutting room floor, but recently reappeared on YouTube.

Sufi music is a means of connecting to the Divine through chanting and dance. But it’s more than simply worship; it also serves a therapeutic purpose. When someone is depressed or otherwise mentally ill, Sufis consider the sufferer to be endiablé – inhabited by a devil – and the only solution is to drive away the demon with an ever-crescendoing swell of heavy percussion and songs set to religious poetry. It’s incredibly loud – especially when the horns blare.

Imagine yourself depressed. A brotherhood of ten robed mystics shows up at your bedside and starts drumming and singing in a clamorous fortissimo. There’s no ignoring them – and that’s the point: to penetrate the sufferer’s consciousness, rouse him from torpor, and get him up and moving in a sort of trance-dance. Once this happens, the music must not stop until the endiablé falls to the floor, an indication that the demon has been exorcised.

I must say, it works. Before I arrived in Morocco, all I knew of Sufism was that it’s the mystical branch of Islam. Religious-poetry and musical scholar Youssef Ghazale invited me to experience a house blessing by a brotherhood of Sufi musicians. This was my first major assignment on the first full day of shooting. Frankly, I was freaking out, fearing myself caught in something way beyond my abilities, and I had no clue how to approach the task before me.

The drumming and chanting began. So great was the intensity of noise that my chair shook. I locked my jaw in a frozen smile, but incense kept tickling my nose, forcing me to relax my facial muscles. As the music volume swelled, so did my mind-chatter, and suddenly I was faced with a choice: trip on my own self-made insanity or surrender to the present moment. The horns blasted in a deafening roar, and up I leapt, clapping and hollering alongside the women. By the end, I felt positively giddy.

Up until recently there were few – if any – opportunities for outsiders to hear these glorious, cathartic sounds in person. But lately you can, if you time your trip to coincide with the Fès Festival of World Sacred Music. Be sure to bring your demons with you.

]]> http://johnvlahides.com/2010/10/16/sufi-mystical-music-in-morocco/feed/ 2 http://johnvlahides.com/2010/06/05/postcards-from-a-travel-writers-journal-france/ http://johnvlahides.com/2010/06/05/postcards-from-a-travel-writers-journal-france/#comments Sat, 05 Jun 2010 09:49:26 +0000 vlahides http://johnvlahides.com/?p=207

I spent springtime researching Provence and the Côte d’Azur for a new book, getting lost on back roads as often as time allowed. As a travel journalist, I rarely have time to linger at the most beautiful places I’m paid to cover.  So I snap pics to remind myself where I’d like to return, once I’m no longer on deadline.

The Luberon Mountains, just after a driving rain. The clouds broke and a rainbow exploded over the vineyards of Joucas. This is the land that Peter Mayle fetishized in A Year in Provence.

The classic plâteau de fruits de mer. Near the salt marshes of the Camargue (where fleur de sel originates), nothing beats the fish stand in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer – the one with the rickety tables, right across from the Mediterranean. It’s called Cabane aux Coquillages (“shellfish shack”), and six oysters and a glass of white cost a mere €5.50, just what you want to spend  when you’ve sand between your toes.

Marseille reeks of garlic. They put it in everything – olives in aperitif, anchovy pizzas, and the city’s signature dish, supions – sliced squid pan fried with olive oil and parsley. In the ancient Panier district (pictured), the streets are too narrow for cars. Even locals get lost in the labyrinthine alleys, lined with candy-colored houses strung together with clotheslines. When it rains, the whole city shutters.

Locals whisper about the mafia, and speculate on the extent to which it does or does not run Marseille, but the city’s French Connection days have long since past. Now all eyes are on 2013, the year Marseille will be the European Capital of Culture and officially becomes gentrified. You’ll probably not meet a gangster here – unless of course you open a nightclub, or hang out at Au Son des Guitars.

The most forward-looking viewpoint from musty Aix-en-Provence lies at the city’s fringe, at La Fondation Vasarely, where the optical-art master Victor Vasarely‘s vast, floor-to-ceiling canvases permanently hang in six, purpose-built hexagonal galleries – even the ceiling glass is honeycombed. The place made me wish I still did acid. When I walked outside, my reset button firmly hit, I was disappointed to find myself still in uptight Aix. God, that town needs a good enema. I’ll take gangsters any day.

It’s the emerald month in California. While most of America waits for spring’s first crocuses to pop through mud and snow, California glows electric green everywhere you go—everywhere except the Sierra, which are buried beneath 15ft of white. Where to head now? Anywhere. Get in the car and drive, preferably through the foothills of the Sierra (where this picture was taken),  but even I-5 looks fantastic in March.

Lake Tahoe Winking Through the Trees

The skiing in the Sierra this season has been epic, and the current series of cold storms means the snow will last well past April. Horizon Air started new service to Mammoth Lakes from LAX and SJC, shortening the 7-hour drive from the Bay Area to a mere 45 minutes, meaning you can ski California’s top ski mountain the same day you arrive. My top pick for Tahoe this season has been Alpine Meadows, where powder stashes remain days after a storm. Tip: If you’re an expert, find the Palisades—that’s Tahoe winking at you through the trees.

Forgive my silence: I’ll be in Provence and the Côte d’Azur for the spring, researching a new book for Lonely Planet. If I have time, I’ll update you on what’s happening on the French Riviera—with any luck, I’ll be typing from a yacht in St-Tropez. Regardless, I’m back in May. See you on the road, if not the Mediterranean.