With over 660,000 followers on Instagram, 33-year-old Stanton has broken into the local Gulf community while documenting his travels between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen. And the one thing he always leaves behind wherever he goes are the smiles on those around him.
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See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
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00:00As-salamu alaykum, my name is Max Stanton aka Max of Arabia. I'm half English, half American, and I've been living in the UAE since 2007.
00:10I'm relatively fluent in Arabic, as you guys might know, and the reason behind this is purity integration.
00:17I didn't study Arabic. I can read and write, but I didn't study how to read and write.
00:22And for me, the most important thing and my number one tip for anybody trying to learn Arabic is just practice.
00:29You can try to read a newspaper all you want, you can go to classes all you want, but if you're not using it outside of those circumstances, you're never going to get good at it.
00:38So, if it's a taxi driver, if it's somebody in the fish market, if it's somebody on the street, if it's somebody you see in a restaurant, whatever,
00:47I think the most important thing is start with conversational Arabic, because if you learn Fusha, which is classical Arabic,
00:54okay, you're going to sound, number one, like the newscasters, but number two, nobody speaks that in the world.
00:59So, I think wherever you're living in the world, if you're in the UAE, learn the Emirati accent.
01:03If you're in Saudi, learn the Saudi accent. If you're in Yemen, learn Yemeni.
01:06Because, I don't know, for me, the purpose of learning the language is to become closer to the people and understand more about them and the culture.
01:13So, if that's something that's interesting to you, I think the best thing you can do is learn what's closest to the people where you're living.
01:21My days are extremely different. So, I don't know, kind of unfortunately for me, I don't have a fixed schedule,
01:28because I think it would benefit me and make me more productive.
01:31Normally, I wake up between 5 to 6 a.m., I exercise, I read for an hour, and then I start doing emails and following up on things from the night before.
01:41Production, filming, it depends. Like, for instance, yesterday, we were filming an ad.
01:46So, it's going to be a one-minute video for Instagram, but the shoot was maybe five hours.
01:51Even though it might look like it's something simple on your phone screen, the work that goes into something like that is quite heavy.
01:59Obviously, I play with my cats, I meet my team at Humanagement, we go over the projects that we're working on.
02:06I go out, I travel, I genuinely try to film as much content as possible.
02:12Recently, honestly, I've been lazy, but I'm kick-starting my YouTube again.
02:16So, that's going to be taking up a large part of my time, both filming, editing, and planning.
02:21This is the hardest question anybody can ask me, is what's your favorite place?
02:24Because I travel a lot, and I think everywhere you go is beautiful.
02:28I think one of the places that would be the biggest surprise for lots of expats is Saudi.
02:34So, I'm not going to say where to go in Saudi, because I think all of Saudi is beautiful.
02:40I was recently there for over a month filming a TV show, and there are beaches that rival the Maldives.
02:46There's unbelievable scuba diving, there's unbelievable archaeological sites spread across the kingdom,
02:52from the highest part in the north all the way to the south.
02:55There are beautiful mountains, there's wadis with perennial streams, fresh water.
03:01It's a vast country, so things are distant, but beautiful people, as are all Arabs,
03:08but also amazing, amazing, amazing things to see culturally.
03:12So, definitely worth a visit, and definitely not what people would expect.
03:17May God grant you success and happiness, God willing.
03:19Have a beautiful day, and stay safe.