501 Places

Outside the laundry shop, Phnom Penh

I don’t know what it is about travelling, but we seem to be particularly aware of the extreme levels of service when we are away from home. We all have stories of the appallingly bad; whether it is imcompetence, incomprehension or service given with added undiluted hostility. Occasionally though we also experience the very highest standards of service, and often it’s found in the places where we least expect it.

One such case for us was in the suburb of Phnom Penh where we staying over Christmas. We were overdue for a laundry day, and needless to say the hotel we were staying in was not an option (it would have come to around $50; exactly what we paid for a night’s stay). Walking through the neighbourhood we didn’t find any of the $1/1kg laundry signs that were so prevalent in the tourist hot-spots of Laos. But we did find a place that looked as though they might wash our clothes (a general store with a clothes line hanging limply from a streetside pole along the side of the shop). I tried to ask the family seated around a table in the shop whether they do laundry but none of them understood a word and after many smiles and blank faces we walked away.

Undeterred, I returned later with a rucksack full of dirty clothes. It must have been around 5kg worth, and the main man greeted us and tipped out our laundry, carefully separating it into neat piles and all the while tapping numbers into his calculator. I feared the worst while he added the items and he seemed to add on many extra fugures before showing me the final figure: $4.81. I nodded with a poker face and he signalled I should come back at 8 o’clock the next morning.

And here’s where he excelled. When we walked past the shop that evening, we saw our washing hanging in the street. We went up and found that it was completely dry, so asked him if we could take it there and then. He was not happy for us to take it as he signalled that it wasn’t finished. After much persuasion he allowed Sam to take a couple of items she needed and he hung on to the rest. When I collected the remaining clothes in the morning, every item was neatly pressed and carefully folded. He was full of gratitude and the family later waved and smiled warmly at us when we passed the shop again during our stay.

Why have I shared this very ordinary story? For me he personified what it means to excel in delivering customer service. He could teach many businesses much bigger than his own about the essence of customer service. The pride he took in doing the job to the highest standards was striking. He could have easily let us take our clothes away and spare himself the extra task of ironing. We would have been happy customers at that point. But it wasn’t enough for him to leave it at that. He insisted on finishing the job properly, whether we appreciated it or not. How many of us will go the extra mile when our own pride in the quality of our work is the only reward?

Maybe I should have expected it. Others may have experienced it long ago. It was still a surprise however, to find my words on someone else’s site, without my prior knowledge and without any reference to my name or link to my website. Here’s the post I wrote on Saturday morning and here’s what popped up on the Themelis Cuiper website only a few hours later. My post, word for word. The only mention of 501 Places is in the permalink from my site that has been copied into the corresponding link on their site.

Should I be flattered that someone wanted to copy my article? Certainly not; it appears that this site has dozens of new posts every day. It’s easy to presume that the others might come from the same route, and that no-one actually read my post before it was posted on that site.

Should I be angry? I certainly was at first. How dare they!! But then I accept the reality that if you put your content on the web, there are thousands out there for whom copyright means nothing, and who consider all content to be theirs to do with as they wish. That’s just the way it is.

Who is behind this site? Themelis Cuiper appears to be a prominent internet presence. He describes himself as a ‘positive solution thinker’ and has a high profile on LinkedIn and Twitter. It would be fair to assume he is well versed in the etiquette of distributing others’ content online.

Should I take action? What can I do? Themelis Cuiper seems to be based in Holland. Do copyright laws apply across borders? Should I find out? In any case, keeping things in perspective, it’s only one blog post.

So what should I do? It seems like this is an occupational hazard of blogging. At some point, most bloggers will find their words sitting on another site and curse the cheek of the person responsible. It seems that a ‘Name and Shame’ approach might be the most pragmatic approach. It makes me feel better to get it off my chest, and it might just put a spoke in the SEO plans of these companies or individuals, presuming that is indeed the sole motive for their actions.

What do you think? I would welcome others’ advice, and also would like to hear whether this is an unusual occurence, or whether it is just goes with the territory of blogging.

“Social media is revolutionising our world. It is changing the way we interact with others, and the way in which companies and individuals do business.” “The old ways are dead; long live Twitter and Facebook.”

Presumably this brave new world comes with its own set of new rules. In search of these new commandments I have pondered my time spent reading others’ interactions and have gleaned a few observations (I’m sure I’ve missed many more):

1. Be nice. Thank people when they promote your work, give credit to those whose work you share with your connections.

2. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Having a positive (while realistic) outlook on everyday issues will attract others to listen to you.

3. If you’ve nothing good to say, say nothing at all. It’s easy to sling mud, especially when hiding behind a veil of anonymity. Nobody likes to lose face, and stepping back before launching a critical tirade can often preserve the dignity of all sides.

4. Like it or not, we are judged not only by what we say but also by the words we choose to convey that message. Filling our communications with profanities inevitably puts the messenger in the spotlight at the expense of their content.

5. It is very easy to add labels to ourselves. Guru, expert, no.1 whatever. I look at the self-written descriptions of the widely recognised leaders in a field. None of these words ever show up. Why? Because they don’t need to tell anyone how good they are; their achievements speak for themselves. If I see a person describe themself as a guru, an expert, or ‘The Leading’ whatever, my immediate impression is not a positive one.

6. Friends come and go; they will follow others for as long as it suits them and drop them when they no longer serve a purpose; people have their own agendas and when yours coincides with that of another more inflential person you can make great progress very quickly; it’s best not to take these things personally.

7. Nobody likes being sold to, but we all appreciate others who can listen and provide an answer that meets our needs.

8. It’s easy for anyone to shout. Loud enough and people will hear. The challenge is getting them to listen.

If you hadn’t noticed, I never used the term ’social media’ once in these rules, nor mentioned any technological platform. Isn’t that the point here? That the rules of how to use social media are in fact not at all new: they are the same rules that have applied to human communication long before the advent of electricity, the telephone and even the printing press.
Social media is not rocket science. While there are particular nuances to adapting our social skills to any new outlet, one basic principle holds true: whatever the next great new advance will be, the ability to communicate intelligently with others will always be the cornerstone to using it successfully.

I view tipping with a sense of distate, and see it as a sad legacy of a class system that should have died out decades ago. In a nutshell I don’t see why service staff aren’t paid a decent salary so they don’t have to beg to customers in order to make up for their employer’s shortfall. I’ve written on the subject already and won’t repeat my previous rants but I did recently find an example of a tipping policy that seemed to be novel, unobtrusive and above all else, highly successful.

Those who have spent any significant time in Laos recently may have found their way to Joma Bakery. It’s 100% geared to the falang market, and the prices will exclude not only the average Lao person but also many a hardcore backpacker. They do however offer a fresh cool interior, and their AC cafe is a welcome relief from the heat of the day in Luang Prabang or Vientiane. Their cheescakes and shakes are fabulous, and I have no doubt that if they produced the same stuff in London or New York they’d be constantly packed with regular customers.

Joma have a focus on their community involvement in Laos and Vietnam, and the posters in the cafe display their involvement with local villages (like Starbucks but it appears a bit more real). There is a Tips jar next to the till, and each time we visited the cafe in Luang Prabang it was fairly full of cash. We heard that this was not always the case, and had changed dramatically as a result of a suggestion by the local manager.

Tips had typically totalled around $15 a month; not much between 6-7 staff, even in Laos where average salaries are little more than $30 a month. The manager suggested to the staff that they start a policy where 50% of tips are donated to the local community projects. You might think that this would be resisted, given the difference that even a couple of dollars can make in a month. But the staff embraced the idea, and the policy was implemented. A sign was placed on the Tips jar, and the effect was immediate.

People came in, enjoyed the service (it was excellent) and wanted to tip. Knowing that their money would not only help the local baristas but also the local communities in the area, the tips rolled in and in the first month they collected $300: a great contribution to the community and a ten-fold increase in their tips.

No pressure, no suggestions, just a ‘tip what you like, if you like’ jar on the counter. As a result people tipped willingly, and not through fear of a likely confrontation. A small step, and such a big difference to the staff and others who benefitted from their initiative.

The only photo with my pack (yes I know I look like a skeleton)

Nowadays I am obsessed with travelling light, and feel like a complete failure if the scales at the check-in desk exceed the 10kg mark (we managed 19.8kg between two of us for our month in Asia, which I thought was just about passable). But it wasn’t always so, and when I first started travelling in earnest the weight of my pack was the last thing on my mind.

I started to think back as to the contents of that first backpack, and thought back to what I decided to carry around Europe for 8 weeks back in 1987. In the days before Ryanair I was no more likely to take a flight than walk to the moon, so I never had the chance of an airport weigh-in. But thinking about it now it must have been a very heavy bag, given the clunky stuff I decided I had to carry.

Heaviest of all, my camera. A Zenit EM Russian SLR, aka ‘The Tank’. This Soviet masterpiece must have come in at over 2kg, and the case alone would have added another kilo or so. It was designed to withstand nuclear armageddon, and had I dropped it from the Eiffel Tower I have no doubt it would have worked fine afterwards, although there would have been more than one strange look at the crater it would have left behind. Accompanying this of course were many rolls of film in the bottom of the pack.

Next was my music equipment, and while it didn’t weigh as much as the camera it certainly took up more space. One Sony Walkman (or cheap imitation), a bulky set of headphones, ten cassettes in their cases and around 20 Duracell batteries. It’s hard to equate all this with an iPod!

Copenhagen: My street art at its inglorious best

Next in size would have been my journal, my pens and pencils and a set of coloured crayons. These would prove precious as I pedalled my very limited street art skills on the streets of northern Europe.

My clothes were squeezed in wherever they would fit, and I typically lasted a week between washes, although that became two once I realised that clothes are nearly always reversible. And of course the bottom of the rucksack was taken up with my sleeping bag (so much bulkier than it would be now) and a ground sheet that became tattier and tattier as the trip wore on.

The final touch to the packing? My father kindly made me no less than 20 cheese rolls on the day I left home. Far too many I protested, but they proved to be so valuable as I worked my way through them in the next few days. In fact I don’t believe I had to buy any other food until I reached Oslo!