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Five things I liked about Bhutan:

1. Nature

In Chinese, there’s an idiom called “开门见山”. It is often used to mean speaking directly without beating about the bush, but literally, it means open the door and see mountains. That’s exactly what you get in Bhutan. You open the door, and you see hills, mountains, traditional houses. In many developing and developed countries, you get such views in the countryside. Why is it so unique in Bhutan? Because this is what the entire country is like.

You go to the capital, Thimphu. You don’t see posh looking buildings. You see traditional houses. You won’t guess where the king lives.

Nope, not the red and white U shaped building. That’s the palace, but the king doesn’t live there. He lives in the grey house surrounded by trees that I circled. Pretty modest for a monarch, I would say, but it’s great that he isn’t spending too much of his people’s money on luxury.

2. Cleanliness

Seriously, this one is a major upvote. Singapore is often touted for its cleanliness. But sometimes, locals like to joke that instead of being a clean city, we are a “cleaned city”. There are fines put in place to discourage littering, rubbish bins every 100 metres to dispose of our rubbish. Yet we still need an army of cleaners cleaning after out butts, and even so, you can spot cigarette buts, plastic bags, and even random empty coffins discarded around 😆

Yeah I’m not even kidding. Boggles my mind how they ended up in the river.

Well in Bhutan, there is absolutely no litter on the streets, or anywhere. Trust me, I tried spotting a piece of rubbish throughout my five days there. I’m glad to say that I failed. Plus there were no public rubbish bins anywhere on the streets. The citizens really take great care of their environment. The only thing that is remotely “litter” is horse dunk, but that’s because they like their animals roam freely. The water in the rivers are absolutely clear. It’s amazing.

3. Culture

Bhutan is really serious about preserving their culture. There are tons of traditional festivals all year round. The tour guides, government officials etc. all have to wear their traditional costume during work hours.

A trip in Bhutan is mainly centred on culture. You tour the monasteries, their traditional factories, their houses. It’s like a time travel back to a few centuries before.

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4. Happy society

Yeah, their country’s biggest priority is happiness. Because of that, their work hours are deliberately kept short. During summer, the official working hours are from 8am to 5pm, and during winter, it’s 8am to 4pm. No overtime work. #worklifebalance #lifegoals

Surely many of you would have heard about their Gross National Happiness Index, their country’s version of the GDP and GNP.

To me it’s really a very different life philosophy. In most Asian societies, working is at the topmost priority in our lives. Success in your career is something that many spend years of their youth pursuing. But the Bhutanese show that besides work, there are so many things in life that you can enjoy. Economic development, career success and earning money are not the most important things in life.

5. Development

Bhutan was the “Hermit Kingdom” up until the last century. It was enclosed, landlocked, and there wasn’t any modern economy. Bhutan is rapidly developing, but what I like about their development model is the caution they exercise against merely focusing on the money. Even as they open up their country to tourism, they make sure that their cultural roots are preserved, and that the money that they earn from tourism is channelled back to the development of the country, be in in education, housing or infrastructure building.

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I think Bhutan is one of the most unique countries I have ever visited. It was almost as if I was stepping onto another planet, so different from where I came from. Bhutan and Singapore have very strong diplomatic relations, and I hope this will remain as such in the future years.