A view of Kemer, Turkey

On this strip of Mediterranean coast, two Turkish villages illustrate completely different paths to tourism development.
Located just 20 miles apart, Kemer and Cirali were once sleepy communities of citrus farmers, nestled between the lush mountains and the cerulean sea. But in the mid-1970s, their paths diverged.
Turkey designated the Kemer area as its first tourism development zone and, with World Bank loans, threw open the doors to builders.
Five-star seaside hotels, restaurants quickly sprouted. By 2005, Kemer had 75,000 hotel beds--triple the number planned.
Cirali stands in sharp contrast--a low-key paradise of family-run bed-and-breakfasts tucked among fruit trees.
The sandy beach, bordered by ancient ruins, has been kept free of buildings to protect the nests of endangered loggerhead turtles. Tourism is Cirali’s lifeblood, too, but its environmentally conscious accommodations and restaurants are a rare Mediterranean example of sustainable development, reported The Christian Science Monitor.
This week, signatories to the 1976 Barcelona Convention meeting in Spain are expected to approve a new convention about coastal development that may help ensure that as Mediterranean tourism booms, there are more Ciralis and fewer Kemers.
Already the world’s most popular tourist destination, the Mediterranean’s appeal is growing. Drawn by its warm seas, ancient ruins, and unique cuisine, more than 175 million tourists visited the region’s coast in 2000. By 2025, that number is expected to grow to 312 million.
Much of that new development is occurring in North Africa and on the Mediterranean’s eastern coast, in areas that had previously seen scant tourism.
But the increasing demand for tourist facilities, along with expanding urban sprawl from booming coastal cities, is leading to a loss of about 125 miles of coastline a year, according to the Blue Plan, a United Nations project that examines development and environmental issues in the Mediterranean.
Already, 40 percent of the sea’s coasts have been built on; without new regulations, such as those being debated in Spain this week, that figure could rise to 50 percent in fewer than 20 years.
On the frontline of expanding tourism , the booming Antalya region of Turkey, which includes Kemer, is one of the most rapidly expanding fronts of Mediterranean tourism. Between 1990 and 2006, Antalya’s tourism capacity grew 140 percent, according to the Antalya Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Almost 40 percent of Turkey’s tourist beds are concentrated in Antalya, along a narrow strip coastal land less than a mile wide.
“Kemer is doing business now only because of its name. There is nothing special about it anymore,“ says Tuncay Cesur, who grew up nearby and now works for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Cirali.
This rampant coastal development, with its towering hotels and built-up beaches, doesn’t just destroy the view; it also extracts a heavy toll on the environment, destroying pristine natural habitats, spewing sewage and pollution into the sea, and causing the salinization of aquifers.

Beneath the giant shadow of a towering cruise liner, a mix of elderly European and American tourists stand admiring Hong Kong’s iconic harbor.
About to embark on their dream cruise, the group are pioneering what analysts predict will become a hot new travel trend: seeing Asia from the water, with spas, luxury shops and swimming pools by your side.
With draws like southern Thailand’s idyllic oceans, emerald limestone peaks studding Vietnam’s Halong Bay, and famed port cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Hanoi, the industry is predicting a boom in Asian cruising, as tourists look beyond global hotspots like the Caribbean and Mediterranean, Reuters reported.
“We find (Asia) interesting and we’ve done the Caribbean ... I think Asian cruises are extremely hot, there were actually quite a few we looked at that were already sold out,“ Dana, one of the passenger said.
The World Cruise Shipping Industry estimates the number of cruise passengers in Asia will jump 40 percent from 1.07 million in 2005 to 1.5 million in 2010, fuelled in part by Asia’s growing affluence and improved flight options to regional port cities.
Given the rosy outlook, mega-vessels like “Rhapsody of the Seas“--279 meters long with beds for 2,400 people--have increasingly plied Asian waters, using places like Singapore and Hong Kong as seasonal homeports.
“We are very pleased with our results, all our sailings out of Singapore are completely sold out, our long cruises out of Hong Kong have sold pretty well,“ said Rama Rebbapragada, the Asia-Pacific managing director for Royal Caribbean Cruises, the world’s second largest cruise operator, which owns the Rhapsody.
With more ships on the horizon, port cities across Asia are upgrading their cruise infrastructure to tap the burgeoning market potential.
Hong Kong, already a major Asian tourist destination with over 28 million tourists last year, plans to build a new cruise terminal in 2012 in a bid to become a regional cruise hub.
The terminal is expected to generate economic benefits of up to $282 million per annum by 2020, and will be large enough to accommodate the world’s largest cruise liner, Project Genesis, which will be finished in late 2009.

Taq-e Bostan is located 5 km from the city center of Kermanshah in western Iran.

Taq-e Bostan is a series of large rock relief from the era of Sassanid Empire of Persia, the Iranian dynasty which ruled western Asia from 226 to 650 AD.
This example of Sassanid art is located 5 km from the city center of Kermanshah in western Iran.
It is located in the heart of the Zagros mountains, where it has endured almost 1,700 years of wind and rain.
The carvings, some of the finest and best-preserved examples of Persian sculpture under the Sassanid, include representations of the investitures of Ardashir II (379Ð383) and Shapur III (383Ð388), Wikipedia reported.
Like other Sassanid symbols, Taq-e Bostan and its relief patterns accentuate power, religious tendencies, glory, honor, the vastness of the court, game and fighting spirit, festivity, joy, and rejoicing.
Sassanid kings chose a beautiful setting for their rock reliefs along an historic Silk Road caravan route waypoint and campground.
The reliefs are adjacent a sacred spring that empties into a large reflecting pool at the base of a mountain cliff.
Taq-e Bostan and its rock relief are one of the 30 surviving Sassanid relics of the Zagros mountains. According to Arthur Pope, the founder of Iranian art and archeology Institute in the USA, “art was characteristic of the Iranian people and the gift which they endowed the world with.“
Taq-e Bostan and its rock reliefs comprise two big and small arches. They illustrate the crowning ceremonies of Ardashir I and his son, Shapur I, Shapur II and Khosrow II. They also depict the hunting scenes of Khosrow II.
The first Taq-e Bostan relief, and apparently the oldest, is a rock relief of the crowning ceremony of Ardashir I and his son Shapur I. It includes the figures of four people with swords, helmets, and lotus, the latter being the flower cultivated extensively by Iranians.
Researchers have long debated the identities of the figures in this relief, although most are agreed on the identity of the fallen figure. He is Artabanus IV, the last Parthian king whose rule terminated in 226 AD.
This rock relief does not depict a scene of the coronation ceremony of two Sassanid kings. Rather, it depicts the demise of the Parthian dynasty, where Artabanus’s figure has fallen under the feet of new rulers. Another view maintains that the fallen figure is Haftanbokht mentioned in Karnamak-i Ardashir, and the right figure is Kayus of Kermanshah who was reinstated as a local governor by Ardashir (the figure in the middle).
It is now believed that the figures represent Ardashir I and his son Shapur I, stomping over the dead body of Artabanus IV, delighted and intoxicated with victory over their enemy. Izad, the Zoroastrian name for God, stands behind Ardeshir as a symbol of protection.
A closer look at the rock relief shows how meticulously Sassanid artists created this scene. The figure standing to the right wears a jagged crown. He has turned to the middle figure and holds out a ribbon-decked royal ring. The middle figure wears a helmet.
Both figures have robes that cover their bodies to the knees, though the robes differ in detail with the middle figure’s robe showing a rounded hem.
The middle figure’s helmet is also round and allows his curly hair to fall from beneath. This differs again from the crown worn by the figure on the right. Behind the middle figure, another figure stands in a halo of light around his head.
This figure represents Izad Bahram, who, in all the extraordinary adventures of Ardashir, performs the role of guardian and guiding angel. Previously, Izad Mithra (Mehr) had been the guardian god of the Parthian military.
The feet of the Izad are noticeably smaller than the other figures. He wears delicate and elegant shoes. His small heels rest on a lotus, indicating the artists intention to create soft and tender platform for his delicate shoes.
Relief panel measured on 15.08.07 is approx. 4.07m wide and 3.9m high.
One of the most impressive reliefs inside the largest grotto or ivan is the gigantic equestrian figure of the Sassanid king Khosrow II (591-628 AD) mounted on his favorite charger, Shabdiz. Both horse and rider are arrayed in full battle armor.

Chahbahar mud volcanoes in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province.

Late last year a hotel in Dresden sent an unambiguous message to two prospective neo-nazi guests--please do not come.
“Since I would not know how to encourage my staff to greet you or serve you, I beg you to cancel your stay,“ Johannes Lohmeyer, manager of a Holiday Inn in the picturesque east German city, wrote to the two men, said AFP.
The pair, members of Germany’s xenophobic National Democratic Party (NPD), complied and Lohmeyer received some 2,500 messages of congratulations for showing them the door.
The incident was one, well-publicized case in a concerted but unofficial campaign by hotels in the former communist eastern Germany to redeem the image of the region after a host of brutal, racist attacks in recent years blamed on skinheads.
“Every new racist attack that hits the headlines harms our tourism figures,“ said Birgit Freitag, a spokeswoman for the official tourism body in Brandenburg, the largely rural and poor state that surrounds Berlin.
She pointed out that tourism accounted for 4.5 percent of the revenue of the region and that some 125,000 people here depend on tourism for their livelihood.
An Ipsos survey, a global survey-based market research company headquartered in Paris, in neighboring Saxony-Anhalt, where Iraqis and Malians were harassed in two separate incidents just hours apart in December, found that the state’s tourism figures may have been 11 percent higher last year had people not associated it so strongly with neo-nazis.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the NPD has held seats in the regional parliament since 2006, an estimated 400,000 people last year changed their minds about visiting the area.
The local tourism office estimates that this cost the region between 120 million and 200 million euros (180 and 300 million dollars).
“All the hotel associations in the east take this problem very seriously,“ said Uwe Struck, the head of the hoteliers’ group in Brandenburg.
The NPD party has a strong foothold in the east, holding seats in the state legislature of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the smaller German People’s Union (DVU) has a handful of MPs in the northern city state of Bremen and in Brandenburg.

Cambodia doubled its number of luxury golf courses last year to four and hopes to have eight by 2010 in a bid to lure more high-end tourism from the fast-growing sport in Asia, officials said, reported AFP.
Cambodia in 2007 opened its only two PGA-rated courses in the popular tourist town on Siem Reap, in northwest Cambodia near the famed Angkor temples which remain the country’s biggest draw for foreign visitors. A third course backed by South Korean investors is expected to open in Siem Reap in 2009, said Suos Yara, secretary general of Cambodia Golf Association.
Three other multi-million-dollar golf projects are also under construction near the capital Phnom Penh.

A model of the Singapore Flyer, slated to be the largest observation wheel in the world.

Singapore’s hotel sector looks set to continue its spectacular rebound as room rates and visitor numbers hit record levels and the city-state unveils numerous sparkling attractions, experts say.
The inaugural of Singapore Airshow, which bills itself as Asia’s largest aerospace and defense event, starts the year off with thousands of foreign visitors expected in February, AFP said.
About the same time the Singapore Flyer, the largest observation wheel in the world, is to open.
Events will peak in September when Singapore’s first Formula One Grand Prix races through the city’s famously pristine streets.
Even before the new attractions Singapore’s tourist arrivals hit fresh peaks, with record high visitor numbers every month last year, said Quek Swee Kuan, the Singapore Tourism Board’s (STB’s) deputy chief executive for international operations.