501 Places

It’s probably part of my Polish heritage, but I have always been drawn to cemeteries. They are typically calm and peaceful places, where few people venture and those that do behave in a quiet and respectful manner. As a teenager backpacking solo around Europe for the first time I often found cemeteries to be a great spot to take off the pack and just chill for an hour or two. The break from the hustle of the city was a welcome relief.

I have to admit to not being as respectful as I should have been when I was younger.  I studied for my first degree in the northern English city of Bradford, and on the other side of town is Undercliffe Cemetery, an impressive if decidely spooky place. It was the traditional burial place of the rich mill owners of the 19th century, and many of the tombs here are over 2 metres in height. Some you can even walk inside. It was a spot where we would occasionally come and watch the sun rise after a big night out, once even taking a guitar to greet the new day in style. But at night it had a malevolant atmosphere, and we would often walk through as a dare, usually running back to the safety of the gate when we heard a noise. One of my flatmates even spent a night in the largest tomb for a bet, but reported nothing of note much to our disappointment.

While human remains are usually buried and totally out of sight, this is not the case in the Nazca desert in Peru, where you can wander around the bare earth and see skulls, skeleton parts and even old clothes. Things that would be normally kept in a museum are lying on the open earth for all to see. Many of the bones have, not surprisingly been plundered, although an impressive selection remain.

While walking around a cemetery in England it is normal to see occasional flowers among a majority of untended graves. I was struck by the contrast when I visited Ukraine, where every grave is full of flowers. A permanent covering of artificial flowers is topped with fresh flowers and in fact there were more people in the cemetery than I witnessed anywhere else in the village I was visiting. It was clear that there was a strong connection between the burial site and the memory and ongoing respect of those who had passed away and it was this respect that was evident in both observing and listening to those who came to spend time tending to the graves of their loved ones.

Of course the rich and famous can become more accessible to their adoring public in death than they ever were alive. Graves become places of worship for their fans and many cemeteries are busy with a flow of people to one particular famous resident. Maybe there is no better example of this than the tomb of Eva Peron in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. More than 50 years after her death there is still a steady stream of visitors paying their respects, most of whom only know of her through the myths and legends that have built up in the decades since she was alive.

Cemeteries do mark the sad passing of people from this world. But they are also positive proof of love and respect for the dead, as shown by the devotion that people have given to keeping graves fresh and clean. They can also provide peaceful havens in otherwise noisy and crowded cities. Finally, they offer us an easily accessible historical record of the people who lived in the neighbourhood, and in many cases an insight into how they lived their lives.

A chaotic Delhi street

As the taxi driver took us through the outskirts of Damascus, I could almost predict his words before they were delivered. He had collected us from the bus station, and being almost the only Europeans on the bus he had pounced on us and offered us a ride into town. Sure enough, the patter unfolded as planned: the hotel we had asked him to take us to is full (then rubbish, then expensive) and he knows a much better one for 10% of the price. “Very clean sir”. I smiled and politely told him that we had already paid in full for the hotel, but he continued selling us the virtues of the Hotel Magic. Eventually defeated, he dropped us by the hotel and after a brief disagreement on rates we parted with a smile.

This encounter will sound very familiar to many who read this. Particularly in Asia and Africa, the majority of taxi rides (in my experience) involve some element of hassle (although usually minor). It’s not only taxis. Local guides will offer to take you around a site for a low fee and then ask for treble the amount in a tip, usually telling a story of poverty and the struggle they have bringing up a large family. Maybe a rickshaw driver will take a long detour to your destination, via a craft centre or a “very good restaurant”. And waiters will add a little extra to the bill, hoping that it is not scrutinised and paid in cash.

It can be tiring and it can be annoying, and can take away from the impression we get of a place. After all, when planning  our trip do we build into that dream the need to be ever vigilant with those who we meet and the constant attention from hawkers or beggars?

It is easy to snap at people, particularly if they are the last of many in a day to have tried to seperate you from your dollars. I have done it, and am ashamed to say so. A taxi driver who charged me $4 for a trip back to a hotel where it had been less than a dollar on the way out had me seeing red, and I ended up giving him $2 and slamming the door in anger. Similarly the guy in Damascus who expected us to pay $12 for a couple of colas and a few pistachio nuts. We agreed on around $5 but not before some hassle.

But if I try and put myself in the shoes of those drivers or guides, I think it’s easier to have some empathy with the motives for these often crude tactics. The very fact that we have come to visit the country is a perceived statement of our wealth. The association of tourists with money is a deep rooted and usually accurate one. The $2 that I held back from that taxi driver is more than a day’s income for some people; for us it takes a few minutes to earn.

With a bit of our “loose change” a man can make a real difference to his family. Does he see the inequality in our circumstances as fair? I probably wouldn’t if I were him. I just happen to be fortunate enough to have been raised in a relatively wealthy and stable country, while he has had to work extremely hard just to put bread on the family table. Would I have qualms about asking for a little more from a wealthy tourist to get something for my children in that situation? I doubt it.

I still don’t like being scammed and will resist someone trying to take advantage where I can. Each one of us who shells out money to a scammer or beggar to mollify our own guilt is only making life harder for those who follow. But if I can stop for a minute and think about why the person is trying to get a little extra from me, I might just be able to treat them with the dignity they deserve,  even if not with the dollars they want. And surely that makes for a better travel experience for me too.

I will choose my words carefully here, as I don’t want to be seen to be overly whinging. There are many benefits and priveleges afforded to those who hold a British passport: easy access to most countries in the world, a decent network of official support in the event of a problem and of course the world’s almost universal adoption of our language as the international mode of communication (last week I stood in a Belgian shop and watched while a Flemish speaking assistant and a Spanish tourist conversed, in English of course).

But there are certain times on our travels where people have made assumptions about our preferences and acted on those assumptions, without checking whether in fact they applied to us. Most of these are very minor and usually cause a smile rather than irritation. Almost all are associated with food and drink. I have listed five examples from my experience, and am sure others can add to the list:

1. Ketchup. Wherever we travel in the world, as soon as the staff in a restaurant work out that we are British, the tomato ketchup comes out. I HATE the stuff and can’t understand why I would want to ruin a good meal with it. Do so many Brits request this on the table of the most remote restaurants that everyone is compelled to provide it?

2. Tea. Contrary to popular opinion not all Brits drink milky tea. Yet in many places (north America in particular) as soon as people learn that we are British there is a hospitable scramble to find some tea. No kettle in most homes: microwaved water is the way to go. I prefer my tea green, and always without milk, and I have raised more than an eyebrow or two for not conforming with the stereotype.

3. Spicy food intolerance. In India I did get tired of the constant checks from staff in restaurants, particularly the posher places, to see if the meal had inflicted pain on me. I love spicy food, and while I won’t deliberately order something to have me screaming I will certainly add chillies to a dish if I feel the need. So to have staff fussing over me when eating a mild dish was amusing but made me think about the number of British people who must have previously complained in order to create this behaviour.

4. Spicy food censoring. An extension to the above, we were prevented from trying a delicious looking treat of chilli cashew nuts from a roadside stall in Sri Lanka by a driver who insisted they would be too hot for us. Maybe he would have been right, but I wish I had been given the chance to try. I wish I had been more assertive in asking to stop, and resented the fact that my being British meant that I was deemed unsuitable for this potential culinary highlight.

5. Crap buffets. On a recent trip in Jordan, we hired a driver in Amman who took us around the country for a few days. When arranging places to stop for lunch, on the first day he took us to a truly awful place that provided a tasteless selection of pastas and poor quality meats for tourist buses. The next day I tried to be diplomatic and asked him what his favourite food was and how we could get to try that, and he found another place for us in a small town. Great, we thought, this is more like it. Soon it transpired it was another tour bus stop on the road to Petra, for groups looking to eat in a typical small town. More buffet rubbish, although this time to be fair it included a rendition of his favoured dish. From then on we made our own lunch arrangements. He was clearly under contract to visit certain places with his guests. Do so many people prefer to eat from these buffets that they become the meal of choice? They are almost without exception awful.

What else have people been unwillingly treated with when revealing their nationality? And if these are the things that Brits face, what are the perceived tastes of others? Comments welcome as ever.

Imagine you are 24 miles through the NY Marathon (for some of us that’s a tough thing to picture). You have ran through the 5 boroughs of the city, and are now stumbling through the final couple of miles on the roads of Central Park. Crowds are cheering you on, and you know there’s probably a little over 15 minutes to go. And yet, out from the crowds comes a woman with a pushchair and a dog, fighting her way through the runners and not giving a damn about the trouble she causes.

That was our experience of the New York Marathon in 2003. We had volunteered as marshalls, and we were given the task of controlling the crowds at the 24 mile marker on the park drive, just next to the Met museum at around 78th street. A memorable expericnce, and one I would recommend to anyone who is staying in the city at marathon time this weekend.

Our spot in Central Park; near the Obelisk

I asked the policeman who had the proper job of controlling the crowds at this point how we could best assist. “Stay out of my way” was his cocky response. Less than 20 minutes later he was asking us for assistance, and later even letting us know what he was doing to make sure we could manage the control of the spectators while he sat around having an extended cigarette break. He had underestimated the help he was going to need, and only later realised that we might be useful to him.

There were two main tasks. One was to ensure that the crowd did not encroach too far onto the road and make the drive so narrow for the runners that they couldn’t pass. This was a constant challenge as the thousands of spectators wanted their photos and would lean further and further into the road to get them. But it was manageable. The second task was far harder.

The point we were patrolling was normally a crossing used by pedestrians to cross the park. With tens of thousands of runners passing through we had to stop people from walking across and encourage them to walk around 30 yards along the sidewalk to the underpass. Hardly a major inconvenience.Yet for some New Yorkers this was too much to bear, and they set off, pushchairs, dogs, children in tow, causing chaos to the runners who by now were not exactly in the best shape.

At first we were shocked that anyone could be so ignorant and selfish and we tried to call them back politely, but as the day wore on and we grew weary and realised that some people were so arrogant and stupid that nothing was going to stop them endangering their own safety and more importantly that of the runners. We shouted at them with ever increasing venom , and the crowd around us were highly amused to witness these two Brits with their funny accents yelling abuse at the stupid people who wouldn’t follow a simple request. Some were cheering us on as much as the runners!

As well as getting a marathon T-shirt (I felt too much of a fraud to be seen wearing it around the city) it was a great introduction to city life, coming as it did around 6 weeks after our arrival in New York. So if you are in the city this weekend and want to do something unusual, have a look on the official New York Marathon website and take on one of the many volunteer roles. It’s a great way to be able to shout at people and get away with it!

When was the last time you left a hotel vowing that you would tell everyone who would listen (and those who wouldn’t too) about your experience? Whether exceptionally good or disastrously bad, stories of nights spent in quirky, opulent or offensive accommodation make for a great subject to share with friends. For hotel managers, like it or not, how your customers experience your service will be retold many times; not just on Trip Advisor and other online forums, but also over dinner, in the pub and in idle chatter to anyone who your customer will meet.

So how do you ensure that your story is told to your advantage? I will present the results of my focus group consisting of one traveller. My needs for a satsifactory hotel stay are simple, and I believe they are also fairly typical. Yet having stayed in hundreds of hotel rooms around the world, my experience is that they are rarely met. Here’s my wish list – I would be interested to know if others agree.

Things that matter to me:

Cleanliness – a clean room is a must. Dirty bedding or furniture creates an irredeemably bad impression, yet is so often present. As for the bathroom, if a hotel cannot present a guest with a clean sink and toilet on arrival they should not be in business.

Wi-fi – more and more people travel with a wish for easy connectivity these days. Whether for business or leisure, access to the internet is no longer considered a luxury. Hotels that charge for internet access may be making a few extra dollars from their guests, but they are losing more than this in goodwill. Free wi-fi in my opinion is now a basic requirement for a hotel.

Decent bed size – why do some hotels still place a small bed in a room where they can fit a proper king size? Some places in Europe still give you a single bed, at less than 1m wide. Not comfortable, and not a good impression.

Fridge – no, I don’t want it full of the hotel’s overpriced snacks and spirits. Bit I do expect a free supply of chilled drinking water. A reasonable request I think.

Free parking – I’m staying at your hotel, and you want to charge me $25 a day to park? That’s hardly a warm welcome.

Friendly staff – it might not be a dream job to work in at a hotel reception, but a smiling face and friendly greeting goes a very long way to making a hotel experience a good one. If your staff are grouchy to your guests, it will undoubtedly reflect in your guests’ perception of your company.

Things that don’t matter to me:

Over-elaborate lobbies. Make them bright, make them clean, but please, if you are going to spend more on refurbishment, start with the place that your guests will remember. Great hotel room, average lobby, not great but excuseable. Swanky lobby, dingy room; unforgiveable.

Concierge. I have never really worked out how I should make use of this service. I have stayed in many hotels where a concierge desk sits by the door, but other than asking for a map of the city I don’t think I’ve used this service. This might sound a bit thick, but what should I be asking them for?

Trouser press. One of these days I’ll use it, just to see how it works. An ironing board and iron in each room would be far more useful, instead of having to call housekeeping and wait half an hour for it to arrive.

Finally the subject of tips. Here’s a suggestion and from the discussions online I know many Europeans at least will agree : pay all staff a decent wage, build it into your costs, and then let guests know that all service charges are included in the room rate. I would immediately put such an establishment on the top of my preferred hotel list, even if it cost a little extra. Not only does it save me the discomfort of not knowing who to tip and how much, but it also marks the hotel out to me as a caring employer.

So, my wish list is this:

Include wi-fi, parking, chilled water and all service charges in the room rate, and for that rate give me a clean room and polite and friendly staff. I would willingly pay a higher room rate to stay in a hotel that satisfies this list against one where the rate is lower but tries to claw back add-on revenue at every opportunity.

I would love to hear how others agree/ disagree with my list.