Peg Kerr's Journal

So, I have found the best cure for pandemic lockdown boredom/cabin fever ever. HeyGo.com is a website where you can sign up for free and take video tours in real time, all over the world, following guides who tell you about their home. You are invited to tip the tour guides (you can use Debit/Credit Card, Paypal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay), but it is not required. The possibilities are endless, and tours are going on 24/7. You can book ahead for a tour and get an email reminder, or just check the calendar and see what is going on at the moment and jump on immediately.

I signed up this week, and since then, I have:

• attended a "Janeiros" concert in Porto, Portugal
• watched a Cholitas professional wrestling match between two women in traditional Bolivian garb
• attended a tour about the history of the diamond industry in Amsterdam (this one was particularly cool, because the guide biked around the city with his GoPro camera on his chest, and I got to see what a particularly bikeable city is like)
• ridden a cable car over the Thames in London.
• explored the city of Bath, UK
• virtually walked around the city of Bergen, Norway, learning how the people handle coldness and darkness in January
• hung out in a Japanese Zen Garden in Melbourne, Australia for a meditation session

You can tour an Indian market and watch the guide buy ingredients and then cook a traditional dish. You can visit museums and botanical gardens, in real time. You can go to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. You can visit Angkor Wat or go on a safari in Nairobi. You can learn about crime and plague in London. You can kayak down a river in Vietnam. You can learn about the history of morning prayer from a Jewish guide in Jerusalem.

It has all been so much fun. I learned things, both history and interesting cultural tidbits. And I got out of my own headspace and my surroundings to see things and places I may never have a chance to see in person. But I got to learn about them anyway.

You can take "postcard" pictures of what you're seeing on your screen and ask your guide questions in the chat. Here's one I took: part of a poster from La Paz, Bolivia advertising the women available for professional wrestling matches:



I am really looking forward to exploring so much more of the world. Hat tip lydamorehouse. Thank, Lyda!

To make this week's collage, I took maps of four of the locations I explored this week for the background, and over each, I put one of the postcard images I took during the tour. Upper left: Bath, UK/a Bath chair (these were used to transport finely dressed ladies to the Assembly Rooms in the 18th and 19th century). Upper right: La Paz, Bolivia/one of the women doing professional wrestling. Lower left: Bergen, Norway/a city park gazebo. Lower right: the Thames in London/a cable car. In the center is the HeyGo logo. (I'm going to be playing a bit more this year with online tools that allow me to do slightly more sophisticated things when assembling collages. Here, I used the "Blend two images" function on the website Lunapic).

HeyGo



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.