The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament 2011: Your Chance To Win $150 In March
Nominate your favorite city to travel to and at the end of March you could win $150 cash in The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament 2011.
In 2009 it was Sydney, Australia; last year it was Zermatt, Switzerland; all you have to do to enter this year’s contest is leave your city nomination in the comments below before this Sunday, February 27th at 1800 US EST.
Any City In The World Is Yours – Except These
You can select one city per email address provided someone hasn’t already picked it in the comments. As always, newsletter subscribers got a head start so the following places aren’t available.
- Zermatt, Switzerland – (Jen)
- Valletta, Malta – (Mike)
- Curitiba, Brazil – (Anna Luiza)
- Guilin, China – (Marijus)
- Kyoto, Japan – (Todd)
- Paris, France – (Amy)
- Istanbul, Turkey – (Natalie)
- Bangkok, Thailand – (JW)
- Playa Del Carmen, Mexico – (Sergio)
- New York City, USA – (Michaela)
- Sao Paulo, Brazil – (Tamara)
- Toulouse, France – (Deniz)
- London, England – (Erica)
- Porto, Portugal – (Stephen)
- Mexico City, Mexico – (Lynn)
- Reykjavik, Iceland – (Dave)
- Vancouver, Canada – (Scott)
- Singapore – (Paul)
- Jerusalem – (Judy)
- Stockholm, Sweden – (Alan)
- Beijing, China – (Paul)
Don’t fret if your favorite is one the list, surely you must have a second!
How The Tournament Works And Important Dates
The Best City To Visit Travel Tournament 2011 is a single-elimination bracket tournament. Every Tuesday in March, readers will vote on the head-to-head match-ups until 128 cities are narrowed down to a single winner.
- Deadline To Enter: Sunday February 27th, 2011 1800 US EST.
- Preliminary Round Kicks Off The Tournament: Tuesday March 1rst, 2011.
- Contest Championship: Friday April 1rst, 2011.
- Winner Announced: Tuesday, April 5th 2011.
The winner will receive $150 in cash via Paypal by April 30th. Plus, if you sign up now for my RSS feed or daily email updates during the entire tournament month of March and win, I’ll add $50 to your prize.
I’ll take the first 128 cities entered into the contest to kick things off next Tuesday March 1rst.
A Photo With Your Contest Every Tuesday
One of my goals in 2011 for foXnoMad has been to make the site more visual, with more of my personal photography and larger images. Since there will be quite a few tournament posts this upcoming month, I’ll continue the travel variety with a focus and collection of photos along personal stories after each one. Part of posting more photos means taking more pictures and I’ve got quite a backlog from the countries I’ve visited recently.
Even More Prizes Coming This Month
It’s a big contest month on foXnoMad, with an opportunity to win $50 next Thursday as well as several $100 Apple gift cards beginning the following week. Start your chances off right by nominating your best city to visit – big or small, both have won – by mentioning it in the comments below. Good luck!
[photos by: v3rnondotcom (tournament bracket), DavidMartynHunt (Zermatt Switzerland), Werner Kunz (Boston panorama)]
A Background And Traveler’s Introduction To Bahrain
The tiny kingdom of Bahrain, located in the Persian Gulf, has been in the news lately due to a number of anti-government protests which began in Pearl Square. The current instability only begins to reflect the complex make up of Bahrain’s citizens, immigrants, and clouded history as the little guy in small pond with big fish.
Some Bahrain Basics
Bahrain is a small (750,000 square-kilometer) nation, made up of 33 islands with Bahrain Island being the largest and (by far) most popular. The capital of Bahrain is Manama, where all international flights to the country arrive and depart. Many travelers and guides refer to the nation “Bahrain” as a whole, without breaking information down into individual towns and cities due to the nation’s small area.
- Easy Entry – Bahrain issues tourist visas on arrival to a variety of nationals. Visas for 2 weeks (or multiple entry up to 28 days) can also be obtained in advance online through the Bahrain Electronic Visa Service at the same cost of around 7 Bahraini Dinar (~$18 USD).
- Oil Economy – 30% of Bahrain’s gross domestic product (GDP) is from oil revenue.
- Number Of Visitors Annually – Bahrain sees 2-4.9 million travelers annually [PDF], putting it somewhere near Brazil in world ranking.
There are oil fields and deserts in the south and interior, plenty of beaches and coastline, along with several remote touristic sites that are all easily accessible by rental car or taxi.
Nearly 50% Foreign
Bahrain, like many of its Gulf state neighbors, is made up a large immigrant minorities who come to the country looking for work through guest worker programs. With the rapid furor of development in Bahrain, finding work isn’t difficult, although the labor often is.
- Large US Expat Community – The United States 5th Navy Fleet is based out of Bahrain, bringing with it many US military families. Areas like the Manama’s Adilya are teaming with nationals of the US, Germany, and other Western nations, keeping Bahrain remarkably in tune with those places.
The immigrants populations are mostly from India, Nepal, and the Philippines, creating a sense of multiple worlds on a tiny island. Not only are these peoples contributing to the Bahraini workforce, they also bring with them their culture and food giving travelers to Bahrain a plethora of variety for each of their senses.
Staggered Development
The financial district in Bahrain is evidence of the oil-based funding going into modern development along Manama’s coastline. Creative skyscrapers overlook modern souks like Bab Al-Bahrain, with other neighborhoods looking more like microcosms of southeast Asia.
A large part of the separation within the populations is reflected by the difficulty of obtaining Bahraini citizenship; which is typically only granted to Arabs who’ve been in the country for more than 15 years. Citizens receive a number of special benefits from the government; including monetary bonuses, some which come at opportune times.
Little Known History
Prior to the introduction of Islam around the 700AD, little is known of the inhabitants of Bahrain. Burial mounds of ancient peoples dot the interior landscape of Bahrain, whose somewhat mysterious history is covered well at the Bahrain National Museum. Currently, Bahrain has a Shiite Muslim majority and was part of the Persian Empire until 1793, until the current ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa took power. The Shiite neighborhoods are segregated and marked obvious by black flags.
Much of the religious tension between the Sunni and Shiites, including mistrust and allegations of discrimination have fueled the recent demonstrations against the government in Bahrain.
In the early 1900s Bahrain’s economy was based on pearling before the discovery of oil in 1932. There are monuments, museums, and stores filled with pearls for sale (at especially low prices) throughout Manama.
Beyond Oil, Pearls, And Protests
Bahrain has a carefully crafted exterior that dulls the many of the conditions that make it such a (usually) attractive place to travel. English is very widely spoken in Bahrain to the degree where it has become the universal language between all of the various nationalities in the country. Public and private transportation is by-in-large inexpensive and quickly navigable, and the variety of international food will satisfy most any traveler’s appetite.
Where Bahrain’s culture, food, and history begins and ends is unclear yet all of it is sharply focused on a small physical area making it impossible not to dig into immediately upon arrival.
Interview With Michaela Potter About Career Break Basic Training And Extended Travel
Michaela Potter and Sherry Ott, the founders of the popular website Briefcase To Backpack, recently launched a new course designed to teach others how to take career breaks to enrich their lives. Called Career Break Basic Training, its aim is to get you from the desk to the door with experienced support along the way. Having been featured in the New York Times, Briefcase To Backpack is the premier resource on career breaks and Michaela was kind enough to answer a few questions about Career Break Basic Training.
First of all, what exactly is a career break?
Career breaks can mean different things to different people – traditionally it is time away from your career or job. For instance, people may take a break to raise children – others may take a break to care for an ill family member.
Our idea of a career break is more defined around the opportunity of stepping away from your day-to-day life in order to reexamine your life goals with the chance for self-discovery and inner growth. And we feel one of the best ways of doing this is through travel because it gives you the chance to get out of your element. By visiting other cultures and opening yourself to new experiences, you can learn so much about yourself – thus giving you insight you might not have gained from remaining at home.
For most people that thought is terrifying, what are the benefits of a career break?
There are numerous benefits of taking a career break or sabbatical, including what I already mentioned. For those who are burnt out at their job, time away allows them to rejuvenate and return with a restored sense of balance and energy. And for those who feel like they have hit a wall in their career, a break allows them to refocus on their career path.
This is what my husband experienced after he left his job without securing another one. He felt that our break away together was a great opportunity to reflect on his previous 14 years of experience and it helped him to reevaluate his career path and see if he was on the right track. Within months of our return he secured a new job in the position that he desired.
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of taking a career break is the chance to move a part of your retirement up in time. The definition of retirement as we knew it is gone. There is no longer security in Social Security, pension plans, or 401Ks. And more and more adults are having to work longer than they had ever anticipated.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the median number of years a full-time worker stays at their job is 5.2 years. And as our friend Kirk Horsted of Break Away points out, with most people working for about 50 years, that’s approximately 10 career break opportunities between jobs.
And even if you did “successfully” retire when you were 65, you may not be able to take advantage of opportunities you could have when you were younger. Perhaps the best statement I heard regarding this was from travel writer Rolf Potts. At a book reading he was asked why he started traveling. He stated “because retirement doesn’t always reward you with time to travel.” This was in reference to his grandmother, who had waited for retirement to travel but was struck with an illness and unable to do so. This ignited a fire in Rolf to travel while he could. And he’s now regarded as an expert on long-term travel.
How can Career Break Basic Training get someone from their desk to actually traveling on a career break?
Many times people who are longing for a career break or long-term travel experience can feel very isolated, given that a life sabbatical tends to be a fairly unique endeavor in American culture.
- The three main ingredients behind the design of Career Break Basic Training – inspiration, structure, and community – helps members to prepare and plan an experience that is most meaningful to them.
The inspiration component allows members to build a foundation and strong understanding of what exactly it is they want to do with their time off. This will help fuel them as they encounter some of the challenging logistical aspects that we address through the structure of the course. And the community lets them know that they don’t have to go through this process alone, especially if they don’t have a support system in place. In addition to using our personal experiences, there are a large number of travel-savvy been-there-done-that experts featured throughout the lessons and community to help encourage and keep members motivated.
Can’t someone just “take” a career break – why use the Basic Training?
Deciding to change your career or take time off from your current job can be very challenging on the mind and soul. Add travel plans on top of that and you may get discouraged enough to abandon your career break dreams. In addition, there are so many resources out there it can be very overwhelming as to where to start. We help would-be career breakers sort through all of that travel information overload.
I think some of our current members say it best:
“Basic Training consolidated all of the issues and questions in one place and allowed me to develop my own laundry list and spared me lots of ‘discovery’ time on the Internet – for sure. Having someone organize the process of planning for me is HUGE and I think that you can’t emphasize that enough.” – Karen Bloom
- “If I had done this a year ago, I may already be on the road – it probably would’ve given me a kick in the butt to get going a lot sooner!” – Katie A.
- “I can honestly say that the structure that you have given me, the resources you have introduced and the experts that you have tapped make planning for an undertaking like a career break so much easier. There are things that I’m not sure I would have gotten up to speed on without this.” –Matt Sussman
- “Considering that there is tons of info out there on the Internet, attempting to wade through all of it and then trying to decipher what’s real and what’s fake could take weeks if not months. For someone like myself who is really committed to creating this experience, the dollar value just in terms of time alone is invaluable.” – Rodney Washington
Does the course cover a variety of people or a specific type (e.g. solo travelers, etc.)?
Just as every snowflake is different, so is every career break. We can’t tell people how to plan one that will be perfect for them, but the course aspect is designed so that they can decide that for themselves.
Because there is more to planning a career break than the travel aspect, we’ve enlisted the support of many experts in the fields of financial planning, international volunteering, teaching ESL, insurance, and downsizing, among others, who provide valuable tips. And our career break vets are passionate about sharing their unique stories, wisdom and experiences – whether it’s about working on the road, solo travel, budgeting, Couchsurfing, or traveling as a family, couple, or solo.
And through our forums, group discussions, or personal blogs, members can have conversations and ask questions on any number of topics that may be of interest to them. Given the vast experiences of our career break vets and experts, there is bound to be someone that can address any issue.
From your own career break, what’s one moment that made you realize it was worth doing?
I’m actually a fan of the multiple career breaks and have taken advantage of my time between jobs to do extended travel, much like Kirk suggested. I’ve currently taken three career breaks over the past 10 years with an additional six months of travel after university, which I refer to as my gap half-year.
And the impetus for my passion for travel actually stemmed from my time studying abroad and backpacking during college. I found travel to be an even better education than what I learned in the classroom and it was from then on that I decided I would incorporate travel into the rest of my life.
Thank you very much for answering these questions and shedding more light on career breaks Michaela. Those of you interested to learn more or take your own career break can check out Career Break Basic Training for more information.
Pearl Square In Manama, Bahrain
February 18, 2011 by Anil P.
Filed under Pictures and Video
It’s tough to believe how calm the atmosphere (aside from the traffic) was when I strolled by the Pearl Monument above some 3 weeks ago. Currently the site of tense and violent anti-government protests, under normal conditions there isn’t a much to do at in the square but take photos of the Pearl Monument. Before oil became the primary source of the Bahrain’s economy, pearls were the kingdom’s main export and there are plenty of references to that fact throughout the tiny country in the Persian Gulf.
The current protests revolve around a history of discord between Bahrain’s Shiite Muslim community and the ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa royal family. The Shiite communities are rather segregated in neighborhoods marked with black flags that can be found throughout the capitol Manama and rest of Bahrain. The road to political and social equilibrium for Bahrain is an uncertain a volatile one for now.
You can see more of my recent pictures and sights from Bahrain in this gallery here.
