Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Thank you, Tony Leung & Carina Lau for advertising Bhutan

Living in a Chinese society, where hardly anyone seems to have heard of Bhutan, I wished I get a dollar every time someone asked me where Bhutan was. But that changed after Cannes best actor winner Tony Leung and actress Carina Lau got married in the Bhutan in 2008. They are to Chinese (HK, Taiwan, Singapore, China, etc) what Brat Pitt and Angelina Jolie are to Americans.

The other day I went to a dentist and she asked me where I was from. I said, "Bhutan" and waited for her to say the usual "where the hell is that". Instead, she went, "oh the place where Tony Leung and Carina got married". She said she was honored to have me as her first customer from Bhutan. Similarly, all of a sudden many other Chinese people when they hear "Bhutan" they don't go point blank anymore. So the HK couple made Bhutan famous.

Many Chinese people now know Bhutan, at least now they know that there is Bhutan somewhere. And what's more, they have this beautiful image of Bhutan because unless there was something special about Bhutan, this super rich and famous couple wouldn’t have gone there for their most special day of their lives. Who am I to meddle in what they believe? For me I am just happy that I no longer have to convince for most of the people at least that there is such a country called Bhutan using Himalayas and Nepal as reference points. The star couple from HK had promoted Bhutan in a few days what our tourism would have taken years. Thank you, Tony and Carina for choosing Bhutan, the God's own country.

1 comment:

  1. Nice work! I gotta admit that I knew Bhutan through this couple also.

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