I think it is time to put travel to Bhutan into some kind of perspective. During my three week travel to this idyllic country I discovered the place is not all it is hyped up to be. Value for money is extremely poor. Furthermore, service is terrible and there is little understanding of the desires of tourists.
One huge problem is the setup of the entire tourist industry ; tourist agencies book your hotels and restaurants so that there is no true consumer competition between establishments and the places most likely to profit are either those that either offer the guides best service or are the cheapest. Although there is no lack of staff in restaurants, hotels and museums, there are often few people actually working. One of many examples of this is the widespread habit of all meals being buffet based. If you are paying $250 per day and are clearly paying enough staff, I think it is reasonable to expect more than this, especially as there are usually only 5 dishes anyway so for a table of people it is really not a lot of hassle to serve warm fresh dishes instead of luck warm self service. There were many more examples of poor service for example; our three week trip started at the airport in Parowith a luke-warm welcome from our guide who we discovered did not even know all of our names! In any other place in the world if you are spending $15000+ for a private guided tour for a group of 4 you would really expect the guide to be familiar with your names!
Some of my favourite scenes were a bunch of Bhutanese standing around in a museum with no clear role and one westerner busily working on the electrics. Clearly there was little interest to work or to learn in this scene. This is an attitude which is freely admitted by some Bhutanese we meet. Bhutanese are extremely proud people, although this characteristic is one great factor that has allowed them to preserve much of their cultural heritage it is also a huge barrier for development and prosperity of the country. Many of the physical labour jobs are not done by Bhutanese as people there look down on these vocations. For example, all of the road works and much of the building construction, electrics and plumbing is done by Indian labourers. Bhutanese people lack skilled work forces to do these jobs yet there is little interest to acquire these skills as they are looked down upon by Bhutanese.
I would argue there is something foul in a country where even the monks eat meat and yet no animals are butchered due to Buddhist beliefs. All meat you will be served will be imported from India, over terrible roads and without consistent cooling– I am neither a vegetarian or Buddhist or an animal rights fanatic but I can just imagine with disgust the condition where these animals are farmed and thus this setup is disturbing and hypocritical for numerous reasons.
Furthermore, people are a lot less interested/open to foreigners compared to other Asian countries, which is ridiculous when considering how important tourists are for this country. In reality you can do very little without your guide and their constant presence may limit contact with other locals. I found that the best experiences where the few times we managed to slip away from out guide and were invited to a local festival.
Do not go expecting to purchase any souvenirs as the quality is poor and items are overpriced to the point of insult. The best quality items are invariably those imported from India, Nepal or China- but there two are overpriced. Also be aware of always inquiring about prices before you make use if any service. We ended up paying over $40 for one load of laundry. When complaining about this cost the hotel staff wrote down how this cost was created by listing each item and its price individually. We had obviously thought it they would just charge a lump sum or one load of laundry and not over a dollar for each pair of underwear. This was in Bumthang and it is not reasonable that this cost twice what this service would have cost in New York, obviously the overheads are not comparable and there is plenty of labour available as there is no other industry.
We generally like to travel in a way that allows us to visit hospitals, schools and industry. The first two where readily accessible to us which is quite a positive, however, there is no real industry to speak of in Bhutan. We also always make a conscious effort to consume local produce (obviously our attempt of consuming local meat was a shot into the wind), one such product was Panda Beer however, this unfortunately was actually run by a Swiss man who immigrated to Bumthang, and therefore less Bhutanese that expected.
All in all I recommend you reconsider spending your hard earned money on this trip, however if you do decide to travel there avoid using the Bridge to Bhutan travel agency. Our guide was not good and the atmosphere he created was very negative. He chose some pretty bad restaurants and hotels and did not react to our preferences. The two brothers running this company seemed more capable than our guide however, although this is a quite a new company, in a start-up economy they do not find it necessary to take out tours personally. Anywhere else in the world people trying to run a small company would probably be more involved. Would not recommend this agency
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