Pyramids, ancient civilisations and weight-lifting with music

As much as I’d like to blog in length about tonight’s very absorbing coffee session, I have DUN to cover first thing in the morning.

This is Dr Semir Osmanagic, or Dr Sam for short. He discovered the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids.

The topic went from archaeology to ancient civilisations to Atlantis and aliens.

Overall a very interesting evening that succeeded in making me wonder how to levitate things with music alone*, but a blog entry for another day.

* Tibetian monks lifting giant blocks of stone with music. Google it.

Bosnia & Tourism

When people mention Bosnia and Herzegovina, it’s hard to shake off the image most people my age have imprinted in our heads – The Bosnian War. After the war ended in 1995, there would be the usual post-war reports and then not much at all. No news is usually good news, and the good news is that they have picked up the pieces and moved on.

The thing that’s been rolling around inside my head the last couple of days after our coffee with HE Ensar Eminovic on the Malaysian Global Business Forum is the tourism aspect. Maybe it’s because I’ve attended a number of tourism-related events. Maybe it’s because I’m from Sarawak and we’re pretty good with the tourism thingy ourselves.

But honestly, how many of you ever considered going to Bosnia on vacation?

Watch this video:

How many of you wanna go to Bosnia now?

My answer is absolutelyhellyes. I like medieval architecture. And horses and wide open spaces. And the possibility of cracking my skull rowing down a river that looks like a giant staircase. And watching people jump of bridges. No wonder tourism is their biggest money maker.

If Nordin or Ensar comes by again, they gotta tell me where this is:

Going to Bosnia now will require you to transit through a couple of airports, but it may be a little easier to get there in the near future. Malaysia and Bosnia signed an air agreement in August, opening air links between the two countries. Now it’s up to Malaysia Airlines, Air Asia or some new Malaysian airlines to fight for the route. ;-)

This will mean significant tourist traffic to add to their already booming tourist industry.

“Tourism is booming to the extent that we have a serious problem, which is the lack of accommodation capacities,” said Ensar in the first half-hour when everyone was still feeling each other out. “We lack hotels. If I had money myself, I’d invest in a hotel and it would guarantee profit.”

He added that many people are turning their homes into guesthouses or motels. This is of course a savvy move to meet an obvious demand. Personally, I like the idea of staying in a guesthouse as long as it is well-run, clean and have friendly staff.

Five-star hotels are nice, but outside my range. It’s also a very effective cocoon from the real world. You know how a lot of these international hotels strive to make you feel like you could be in any one of their outlets anywhere in the world no matter which one you are in? That’s nice if you’re on a business trip and want to focus on what you’re there for, but not really when you’re out to visit a different country.

If you asked me, I’d like to encourage the guesthouse angle. Take a page from the Malaysian homestay programme, which was recently relaunched with new guidelines from the Ministry of Tourism. Set up a cozy guesthouse with some emphasis on the local culture and offer small, personal tours of the area… all appropriately priced.

It’s probably not going to cost as much as building a whole hotel from ground up, and it gives everyday people a chance to literally operate a business from home.

Speaking of big hotels, anyone wanna guess what’s coming up in the Bosnian Pyramid Valley? According to Ensar, large pieces of land around the pyramids have been snapped up… by Malaysian businessmen.

“What they are planning to do, I do not know. Probably something related to tourism,” he added noncommittally.

I hardly think they’ll be building banks next to what promises to be the next cool thing since the pyramids of Egypt.

Coffee with an Ambassador

The bloggers of Kuching were given a virtually unheard-of opportunity to sit down with His Excellency Ensar Eminovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ambassador to Malaysia, the night before he was due to hold a press conference with the local media. Yes, I was there, although I was nearly late due to an article that proved hard to write. Still, I was one of the early ones.

The Ambassador is in Kuching to drum up publicity for the Malaysian Global Business Forum, a major business event that will bring in key industries and sectors and hook them up to relevant industries in the highlighted country. It’s from Nov 9 to 11 at Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK).

The forum is organised by Glenreagh Sdn Bhd. As you can already guess, this year’s forum focuses developing business ties with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Glenreagh’s Managing Director Nordin Abdullah thought it’ll be cool to let bloggers in on the forum because bloggers play a vital role in disseminating information and influencing their readership. Why yes, that was my first question to Nordin. Because for the life of me, I can’t make the connection between what most Kuching bloggers normally blog about and an international business event.

We got the scoop the night before the local media. We’ve all decided to ignore the fact that I’m local media. Anyway, I know I’m not going for their press conference tomorrow, hence it’s nice to have a foot in. This post is still 24 hours ahead of local media.

It’s also nice to be able to call the Ambassador by his first name. If I met him under work context, I’ll have to address him as Mr Ambassador. And I won’t be saying very much to him.

Ensar assured us several times that he is a normal guy.At 35, Ensar is the youngest ambassador to South East Asia. As I’m only 3 years younger than him, you can guess I’m feeling very under-accomplished and inadequate now.

Bosnia is very eager to forge business relations with Malaysia for several reasons. Malaysia was a great help to the people of Bosnia during the Bosnian war, providing support and taking in refugees. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is even going to be the Keynote Speaker at the gala  dinner of the Forum.

The relations between the two countries is what Ensar described as “Jalan Sehala”, a one way street. Help have been pouring into Bosnia since the war, and now the people of Bosnia want to give back to Malaysia by working out something that will benefit both countries.

I asked him what the top industry in Bosnia is right now. He said it is tourism, given their long, rich history that virtually gave them no time to invent folk tales.

“We make more history than we can consume,” he said.

With things like the Bosnian pyramids, castles and nature, tourism is booming so fast that there are not enough hotels to hold all the incoming visitors. If you have a billion bucks or so lying around, you might wanna consider building a hotel there.

The other two things the Bosnians are very good at, due to their unfortunate history of a terrible war, is medicine and forensics. Medicine because they had to deal with a great deal of serious trauma. Forensics because there are a lot of unidentified bodies out there. In fact, a forensic team from Bosnian was dispatched to Thailand to help identify bodies after the tsunami.

There were plenty of interesting insights of Bosnia, but it’s 3.30am and my head is exploding. This is the best I can give you off the top of my head (my folder with the press release and my notes went AWOL at Starbucks). Hopefully I’ll locate them tomorrow and have time to transcribe a few more things in detail.