Monthly Archives: March 2023

Destinations

Luxury Phuket Villa – Your Dream Destination in Thailand

Phuket the destination

Phuket is the biggest island of Thailand. It lies on the southern part of Thailand, on the west-facing Andaman Sea shore, on the southern point of Phang Nga Province.

Tourists love Phuket for the diverse range of attractions it offers. Some of them include the Phuket Aquarium, Crocodile Farm, FantaSea, Butterfly Farm, Chalong Temple, and the waterfalls. You will never run out of places to explore and new experiences to try in Phuket.

Phuket accommodation

For the tourist especially, accommodation is one of the main concerns on every vacation or trip. The question always arises: where to stay? If you’re the type that wants to splurge, villas are the in thing now. Luxury villas in Phuket are increasingly becoming more and more popular as a favored option as opposed to the extravagant holiday accommodation offered by resorts and hotels.

Phuket villas

Phuket luxury villas are available for rent or for sale; you choose. Either way, booking is easy and can be done online. However, be aware the villas are booked out in no time especially during peak season, so do your reservations beforehand.

Long term villa rental

Villas is a perfect abode for those who opt to stay in Phuket for a relatively long period of time. It’s always nice to have a place to go home to after your day of travel, business or even schooling. For those planning on having a permanent vacation house each time you visit, there are villas for sale in a wide range of locations with a wide range of prices. If, on the other hand, you’re merely on a momentary holiday and have no definite plans of going back, you can always rent the villa of your choice.

Summary

In Phuket, you can always have a dose of nature and fresh air in the perfect holiday location in the villa of your choice. There are a multitude of locations varying from seafront, hillsides with spectacular views of beaches and bays and quiet areas inland.

If you’re planning to spend your next holiday in Phuket, better book your villa before others beat you to it. With Phuket luxury villas, your holiday and vacation experience is a splendid guarantee.

Cultural

Why Bedouin Jewellery Has Such an Important Cultural Value

One of the pleasures of Middle East living used to be shopping for old jewelry-especially old Bedouin jewelry, rich in intricate silverwork, coral, carnelian and pretty stones picked up from the hills and sands during the Bedouin’s movements.

Nowadays, the handmade jewellery that once graced the persons of desert nomads is disappearing. The Bedouins themselves are exchanging it for modern pieces jewellery. The jewellers in the cities are breaking the jewels and remodeling it for modern pieces. Artisans who once made the jewelry are retiring or changing the way they work. And most of what remains is already in private collections and museums.

According to experts, this trend is widespread. In Saudi Arabia silversmiths are melting down Bedouin jewelry and recasting the silver in new designs. In Karak, in Jordan, two Yemeni jewelers who set the styles in jewellery for several generations have retired. In Beirut a jeweler who could once verify the stamp of a particular craftsman or pick out a technique characteristic to him says that the old work doesn’t pay anymore.

Why? Because life and values are changing dramatically as the Bedouins settle down. The Bedouins are not at all reluctant to change the rigors of life in the desert for the comforts, and the opportunities of life in towns or villages. And wives are no less reluctant to exchange pieces engraved by hand in patterns as old as tribal tradition, for costume jewelry fresh from a factory stamping machine.

Most Bedouin designs probably go back to ancient southern Iraq, famous in Biblical times for gold and silver mined from the Kurdistan hills. Another influence was Rome. Funeral busts in Palmyra, Syria, from the first-century A.D. show similarities to what was worn in the days of Caesars and what is worn by Bedouins today.

After the Arab conquests of Persia, the Persian mastery of fine engravings, filigree and inlays influenced Arab designs even more. During Mogul and Tamurlane times, other features were copied, some still survive today in Afghanistan, and in the Jebal Druze area of Syria. This seems to be especially evident in the elaborate diadem headdresses sometimes worn today in Lebanon at weddings.

What has evolved is a wide variety of jewelry: silver pendants plaited into the hair; headbands with dangling beads, scarves with antique coins fixed to the edges; crowns with a disk encrusted with stones; swinging pendants; intricate chokers; bracelets and belts. (Because so much silver is required to make them, belts are very rare.

Many Bedouin designs are functional but most also have symbolic meaning. Indeed some collectors say every item of jewelry relates to some religious expression or ancient belief, there are many signs of animism-a prehistoric belief that all objects, men, plants and stones are inhabited by souls-still survive in the Middle Eastern jewelry. Occasionally there is a mixture of symbols on the same piece of jewelry. Common to all Bedouin jewelry are bells and dangling coins from Ottoman, Byzantine and Roman times. Other distinctive features are the Islamic half moon-said by some to be Turkish in origin, but by others to be typically Kurdish. Iraqi jewelry often has turquoise or pearls from Bahrain, a trading neighbor. The filigree is supposed to be Turkish in origin, but from Beirut to Sana´a, it is not an uncommon feature. Many typical Bedouin pieces also have a “du’a” (prayer) that is cylindrical. (The prayers placed in the compartment are believed by some to ward off misfortune, sickness and death. So, it is thought, does the “hand of Fatima”.

The traders that regularly go to the refugee camps or the desert plains in the time of Bedouin seasonal migrations in search of bargains, the attraction of Bedouin jewelry is economic rather than aesthetic. To some collectors it is simply rejection of the stamped, mass-produced costume jewelry. To others in love with the history it is something more. It is the echo of a way of life. To them the disappearance of this jewelry also means the disappearance of a life they once symbolized.

Camping

An Insider’s Peak at the Ultimate Internet Boot Camp (UIBC)

Review: Peak Potential’s “Ultimate Internet Boot Camp,” (UIBC) December 5th – 10th, 2010, Los Angeles, CA

UIBC is a five day intense training course that not only teaches how to create a profitable WordPress website from scratch, but also teaches you the marketing skills to promote your website and create an income stream that will bring you revenue for years to come. You don’t have to trade hours for dollars anymore! What a concept!

Imagine, 300 people in a room, each with their own unique background and skill set, armed with a notebook computer and an internet connection, ready to embark on a journey that will lead them down the path to build their own money earning website from scratch in five days. And the Peak Potential’s team delivers!

I was impressed by the way the event was organized and structured, so that even though we were in front of a computer screen for about 12 hours a day, I was totally engaged the entire time. The sessions were interspersed with timely stretching, high-fiving, hilarious games, music and dancing. They also gave us permission to howl like a wolf whenever we felt like it. After a couple of days, it seemed perfectly normal. I took 35 pages of hand-written notes in addition to the numerous handouts that they provided.

Their presenters were both entertaining and knowledgeable with excellent credentials. Andrew Lock, the lead presenter for the seminar, was a real joy. His British humor reminded me of Monty Python. Eric Lingenfelter also did an excellent job presenting his sections as did Chris Farrell. T. Harv Eker, author of the best selling book, “Secrets of a Millionaire Mind”, was also highly motivating. All of their presenters were first-rate.

Also note that Alex Mandossian, who is usually one of the lead presenters, and a very good one, was absent due to his daughter’s illness. I’m happy to report that it appears she has made a complete recovery from a very serious illness. Alex still taught some of his sections of the course from a DVD recording of a previous seminar, and amazingly, the attendees responded to him as if he was standing right there. That’s charisma!

Prior to the beginning of the seminar, there is a pre-training program which is very good at preparing attendees to hit the ground running on day one. The pre-training includes registering a domain name, determining your passion, explaining what to bring to the event and setting up various accounts such as PayPal.

During this five day event, we:

  • Determined our monetizable niche
  • Learned how to set up a WordPress website
  • Sold products from our new site
  • Learned how to use online marketing tools to drive traffic to the site
  • Created and embedded a YouTube video

Note that this is not a get rich quick scheme. If you apply the lessons learned in the seminar over time, with effort and consistency, little by little, day by day, you will achieve real quantifiable results.

I am not accustomed to spending large sums of money on seminars, but overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the quantity and quality of information they packed into this course.

On the negative side, I felt that their hosting packages were a little overpriced, $25 a month for one site, $50 a month for up to five sites. It costs an additional $20/month for your iContact account and $20/month for help desk support. Help desk support is free if you are enrolled in their continuing education.

There are several advantages to keeping your site hosted by UIBC, like staying in contact and getting support from other seminar attendees, affectionately known as the “wolf pack”. Also, it’s not a simple task to transfer a WordPress site to another hosting company. It involves backing up both the content files and database file.

The other knocks I have on the UIBC hosting package, center around the issue of “website control”. WordPress theme selection is limited. Also, UIBC doesn’t allow ftp access to your site, access to the style sheet or the ability to upload additional plug-ins, other than the ones they provide. For advanced users, this can be frustrating. But, I can understand the logic behind it. If you have 300 people accidentally screwing up their websites by misconfiguring their style sheets, the cost to run the help desk would go up dramatically.

Still, the benefits of attending the seminar, greatly outweigh the negatives. In my opinion, the online marketing principles alone make the seminar worth the money.

If I was asked to sum up the Ultimate Internet Boot Camp in one phrase I would say, “it’s a life changer.” It was like attending the best motivational seminar you could ever attend, injecting it with technically enriched content and topping it off with online marketing tips worth their weight in gold. OK, I guess a tip doesn’t weigh that much. But, you get the point.

In this review, my intent was to provide an in-depth, insider’s look at Peak Potential’s “Ultimate Internet Boot Camp.” I have given my honest opinion, the reason’s why I think this boot camp is well worth the money, and outlined some areas where I think they need to improve. And, knowing the quality of the personnel at the helm of Peak’s, the Ultimate Internet Boot Camp seminar will just get better and better.

Please note that I have been a full-time graphic and web designer for over ten years. This review is my opinion, written from that perspective.