Muslim Parenting

My rating: ***/****

The series bills itself as an international adventure travel guide and features various young hosts traveling to different countries or regions of the world and meeting the locals and seeing the sights. No luxury hotels here.The hosts all travel as the locals do, often stay with local families and eat at local markets and eateries as well.

I think this is a great series if you are covering social studies or just want to travel with your child (withoutleaving your house). Beyond just seeing the sites or activities a country or region has to offer, each episode also includes a fair amount on its history and politics.

That said you do need to preview the episodes before watching them with your kids, because some of them do contain objectionable segments.

For example, a trip to Mexico City has the host sampling tequilas at a bar and another episode’s trip to the ‘Deep South’ shows the host getting liquored up at a beach party and with a savage hang-over the next day. In the episode on Turkey, the female host visits a hamam (Turkish bath) and we see her bare shoulders and legs as she lies on a slab to be receive her post-dip massage.

I did not find anything sketchy like that in the episodes on Central Asia, or Iran. But as I said, as with every DVD/video you show to the kids, you probably should watch it first.

My favorite Pilot Guide hosts are Ian Wright and Justine Shapiro.

Ian is a young Brit and as intrepid as they come. By his own admission, he has a stomach like tin and dives right into eating camel with Bedouin men in Jordan and digs into an entire sheep (including the eyeballs,which he is offered as an honored guest) in Kyrgystan. He seems willing to try just about any activity on offer and generally seems to connect well with the people he meets, even if there are language and cultural barriers.

Justine,who is American, is more reserved - this may just be her style, but I think it also reflects the differences between traveling as a male and being a female traveler. That said, she still manages to try many things that she and certainly the audience have probably not experienced before.

Both Justine and Ian seem to be respectful of the people they meet, their customs and circumstances.

I would avoid episodes hosted by Megan McCormick. To me she came off as too priviledged - too happy that the a huge stack of local money was worth only $1 USD - too willing to casually touch the men who were her guides [when as a viewer one knows that due to culture and differences in race and class they do not feel they have the same right]. I felt that she really fed right into the stereotype of the clueless, ugly N. American and squirmed in my seat as I watched. I think I cannot express my distaste for her attitude enough.

I’ve given Pilot Guides a mixed 3 and 4 star review because while many episodes are absolutely excellent there are some that contain non-halal segments, so I can’t give the series an across-the-board endorsement.

Pilot Guides/Globetrekker is widely syndicated (PBS, Discovery Channel, etc.), various clips can be downloaded from the site so that you can preview the show and episodes of the series bought at their online travel shop.

First posted in July 2006.

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