Anthony Bourdain - Saudi Arabia

My wife and I are huge fans of Anthony Bourdain. For those of you not familiar with him he is a chef, writer, TV host. Here is a link to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain and here is a link to his Travel Channel page http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain. his shows are mostly about the food of the country he is visiting but he also talks about the history of the country. He always has a local person as his guide and they are usually well versed on the history of the country! His last show which was last night 7/21/08 was in Saudi Arabia. He had a "casting-call" where viewers sent in video tapes of themselves explaining why Anthony should come to their city or country. It ended up between Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Philippines and Buffalo, NY. Yes that does say Buffalo! Needless to say Buffalo was ruled out! So out of the three left he chose Saudi Arabia.

We thought it was one of his best shows. You really get to see a side of Saudi Arabia that you never really see. Most of us think of it as the place where 15 of the 19 hijackers behind 9/11 came from, but there is a lot more! He is hosted by a young film producer by the name of Danya Alhamrani who runs the first woman ran production company in the country. She is a bit westernized having been raised between the U.S. and Jeddah Saudi Arabia. The best part is the steaming of the whole camel at the end of the show. Actually it was pretty gross!

For those of you interested in seeing a great show about someplace most of will never travel to, I suggest keeping an eye out on Travel Channel for this show!