Photo: Picture of Ramil meeting new friends in Tari.
The country has welcomed the first two tourists from Dubai after the visitors were convinced by the beauty of Papua New Guinea displayed at the world expo in Dubai.
Ruslan Tarpan and Ramil Shaidullin from Ukraine and Russia respectively visited the PNG pavilion at the expo2020 and were blown away by the images and videos about the country. They were also introduced to locally made products such as coffee, honey, artefacts and jewelry, which they purchased.
The duo arrived in the country earlier in the week on a 10-day tour to several places in the country including Ambua Lodge in Tari, Karawari in East Sepik, Mt Hagen and Kokopo in East New Britain.
“The people are very friendly, the nature is so beautiful and the food is great,” said an excited Ramil from the mountains of Ambua.
Ramil who has now called himself Mangi Tari seems to love everything he comes across such as the decorations and masks in the lodges, artefacts and is interested to take them back to Dubai.
“Everything is good but the internet is not good,” he told IPA Officer Mrs. Beverly Piawu. “But the main thing is that we are having a great experience in the green outbacks of PNG.” The duo chartered a plane to take them around their visits.
During the Dubai world expo’s thematic week on Travel and Connectivity in January, the PNG Expo Team hosted an investment forum to promote the ICT and tourism sectors. The key message delivered during the forum was that digital technology in this century and access to broadband internet for our citizens and visitors would add value to the natural environment and cultural diversity of Papua New Guinea and therefore, PNG needed an integrated tourism and visitor connectivity infrastructure system. The team highlighted the call out for investors and experts that would help plan and deliver the connectivity system in a sustainable way.
Expo Commissioner General and PNG Ambassador to Brussels and the European Union His Excellency Joshua Kalinoe said he was happy to see the results of expo starting to come into fruition. He said this was a result of the efforts put in by the team during the six-month long expo. He also stressed that PNG was an exotic country but it needs visitors to experience a mixture of both the modern and traditional means of PNG lifestyles so that even if they spend time on the remote mountains or islands they can still have access to internet and electricity.
