Souvenirs for sale, Luang Prabang

Our house is full of stuff from our trips. As I type this post I have a set of Malawian drums on the shelf above me alongside a strange unnamed string instument from Uganda. On the wall hangs a cartoon map of Argentina and a watercolour from Bristol (of all places). There’s a pottery piece from Peru and a Sri Lankan elephant on the window sill. It’s nice to have these mementos, although they’re a nuisance when we decide to move house.

As the years have passed we’ve become more sensible about bringing these bits of junk back from our trips. We normally settle for a painting or a batik, mainly for the ease of rolling it up and stuffing it in the pack without adding to the weight of what we carry. But it wasn’t always like this.

Perhaps our most impractical gift was not even for us, but for my brother. We had just visited the Terracotta Army in Xi’an in 1995, and we passed on the chance to buy the $30 clay figurines that were being sold in the shop on the site. Outside the kids were selling what appeared to be identical figures, although our guide warned us against buying these as they had not been properly fired in the kiln and would break when exposed to frost. A strange objection, and one we chose to ignore as we were offered 5 figures for $3.

These must have weighed almost 10kg between them and doubled the weight of the pack instantly! What seemed like a bargain at that instant soon proved to be a millstone around my neck (literally) as I had to carry these clay pieces for a further two weeks around China. Fortunately, my brother and his wife were thrilled with the little men and they still adorn their living room 15 years later.

We see many ridiculously bulky items for sale to tourists as we travel. We came across thousands of large wooden dolphins in northern Cambodia (there were probably more wooden dolphins than there are tourists passing by in a whole year), we saw tourists buying large pots in Laos and opting not to ship them but carry them on their trip, and even strange animal statues that serve as garden furniture in Africa, again often seen at the airport being packed into the hold and thrown to the mercy of the baggage handlers.

There are countless opportunities to buy useless rubbish when we travel. The item that looks fantastic on a street stall in Bali can often turn into a embarrassing and tacky eyesore when it’s back home in Birmingham. But people must buy them, or they wouldn’t be there in the first place. Anyone care to own up?

Ridiculous things we buy on our travels is a post from: 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?

A lesson in customer service: The Cambodian laundry is a post from: 501 Places

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 Themelis Cuiper, the name behind this rogue site? He 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.

Finding your content on another site: theft, flattery or just part of life online? is a post from: 501 Places

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.

8 rules of social media that your grandfather could have taught you is a post from: 501 Places

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.

Tipping: one place that gets it right is a post from: 501 Places

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!

What was in your 80s backpack? An old fart remembers is a post from: 501 Places

Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames

Today we took a walk along the Thames from Blackfriars Bridge to Greenwich. The route is around 7 miles long and winds its way through the heart of London’s historic docklands. The purpose of our trek? To visit the new Solar Season at the Greenwich Observatory. It’s well worth a visit if you have an interest in astronomy, and the planetarium show ‘Secrets of the Sun’ is the highlight of the current exhibition. I’ve visited the observatory several times in recent years so my main reason for going was this temporary display, but we had a quick look at the camera obscura too (the ultimate spy device), something of which I never tire.

The Meridian Line in Greenwich: 0 deg E, 0 deg W

It got me thinking about the places I prefer to visit when we travel and how I tend to be very polarised (pardon the pun) in my interests. I have to admit to not being the world’s best appreciator of art. I will rarely go out of my way to visit a gallery. I’ve been to Madrid several times but never the Prado, and to Paris many times but only once to the Louvre; we were in New York for a year and lived three blocks from the Met and never set foot inside. I know, I know, it makes me a bad person in the eyes of many. In my defence I do enjoy looking at pictures in small galleries and displays when the mood takes me, and love staring at sea pictures and dramatic skies.

I do however enjoy science museums and get very excited by unusual natural phenomena. We have visited science and natural history museums across the world, and we both have a keen interest to see volcanoes wherever we can. We’ll travel out of our way to see meteor craters, unusual rock formations, geothermal spots, waterfalls, canyons, glaciers… any of the amazing natural wonders that grace our planet. I wrote yesterday about our experiences of seeing the aurora borealis; without doubt one of the greatest spectacles on earth.

Traffic light art; Canary Wharf

I wonder if others are also drawn strongly to either artistic achievements or natural wonders. Of course it is possible to appreciate both, but do most of us possess a strong bias for one or the other? I can look at a sculpture or painting and remain unmoved when others are speechless, while the sight of nearby flowing molten lava or a spectacular waterfall will have me enthralled and inspired, and I will want to spend a long time admiring the power and beauty of the sight in front of me. I appreciate that for others it is the opposite.

We are thinking of a trip to Italy at some point soon, and it’s not surprising that Florence will not be our destination. Instead we will head for the Aeolian Islands, and the active volcano of Stromboli in particular to see nature at its most fiery and majestic. And who knows, I might even buy a picture of the lava flows to hang on our wall back home.

Are you an art gallery or science museum person, and can you be both? is a post from: 501 Places

Aurora over Kattfjord, Norway. September 2002

Seeing the aurora borealis for the first time is one of my most vivid memories. We were staying in the Shetland Islands, around 100 miles north of the Scottish mainland, and had returned to our cottage after dinner. It was just before midnight, and being early April it was still bitterly cold when the wind came howling in from the open ocean that lapped against the rocks beneath our windows.

I stepped out, more in hope than expectation, and stared at the clear sky. The stars shine brilliantly here, with none of the light pollution that blights much of the UK. I wasn’t on the look-out for stars however. Right on cue, from the western horizon I saw a diffuse red glow and excitedly called Sam down to take a look. By the time she joined me outside the glow had intensified and climbed high into the sky. It soon transformed into green and white ribbons of light, its constant movement leaving us mesmorised. Over the next two hours we stood in awe as before us we observed nature’s greatest display. At one point the lights shone down from directly overhead, with a dark central corona emiting rays of multi-coloured light towards the horizon in every direction.

Aurora over Shetland. April 2000

We had struck lucky. Our week in Shetland in April 2000 had coincided with one of the strongest bursts of solar activity for years, and in fact that night the aurora borealis was seen over southern England and even in France. Strong displays of the aurora are impossible to predict however, so it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. So how can we give ourseleves the best chance of witnessing the northern lights?

Firstly, solar activity has an 11 year cycle, and the chances of seeing the aurora are increased greatly at the peak of the cycle. The next peak period will be in 2013-14, so it’s a good idea to plan a northern lights trip for that time.

Secondly the further north you are, the better the chance of seeing the aurora. Northern Scotland does offer the best chance to see the lights in the UK, but for better odds you need to go to northern Norway and Sweden in Europe, and Canada or Alaska in North America. Greenland and Iceland are also in an excellent place to witness the northern lights, and the difficulty of reaching Greenland make it a bigger (if very expensive) adventure. There is an equivalent in the southern hemisphere, the aurora australis. However, because the good places to see these lights are all on the Antarctic ice, you have to rely on good luck to witness the rare sightings in Tasmania or southern New Zealand.

Then there’s the weather. Bill Bryson famously went to the north of Norway to witness the aurora and ended up staying a month until the clouds parted and allowed him a glimpse of the magical spectacle. Iceland too suffers from almost constant cloud cover. Alaska and Canada may offer a higher probability of clear skies, along with northern Siberia (if you can bear the extreme temperatures).

It also needs to be very dark, and in these northern extremes there is little or no night during the summer months. September- October and March-April offer the best times to view the aurora; it’s dark enough without having to bear the worst of the winter temperatures.

If it seems too much trouble to travel somewhere cold and dark on the off-chance of seeing the northern lights, there is an easier way. Next time you travel eastwards across the Atlantic, try to get seated by the left-hand window (any A seat). If you look out as you pass over Greenland and Iceland in the middle of the night, there is a pretty good chance you’ll see a dancing green curtain in the northern sky. You might not feel as though you’ve seen it properly, but it will almost certainly tempt you to go north to see the lights from the ground in all their glory. We’ve been lucky enough to see the aurora in four different countries, and will certainly be heading north again in three years time to take our chances again.

A guide to seeing the Northern Lights is a post from: 501 Places

If three quarters of holidaymakers are researching blogs and reviews to help them decide where they go on their vacations this confirms the high level of influence that certain sites have. I did get quite excited at this point. The thought of 75% of people consulting blogs before deciding where to go on holiday made me feel very important. Sadly that excitement was replaced by despondent realism after less than thirty seconds when the name TripAdvisor was uttered.

There was no breakdown presented of which sites people refer to for this ‘intelligence’. I would however suspect that TripAdvisor is far and away the most influential site in this regard. I rarely come across people who haven’t consulted TripAdvisor to check out the hotel they’re about to book, and most of us believe that they can see through the fake stuff and pick out the real reviews. So although I have no doubt that reading about a story on a blog can influence some people to want to visit a place (it’s certainly been the case with me), I am sure that most of the 75% of this sample was made up with those who just want to check out a hotel.

It is striking how much sway TripAdvisor does carry these days. I have stayed in a place where the owners need to spend almost nothing on marketing as almost all of their guests come via TripAdvisor. They provided outstanding service and people (myself included) were only too happy to spread the word.

When things go wrong on the other hand, there really is nowhere for hotel owners to hide. A bad review is seen by all, and if over half of future guests are reading the reviews, what does a hotelier do when a disgruntled client publishes his complaints online?

Some properties actively use Tripadvisor to manage their complaints publicly. They will reply to each comment, good or bad, thanking the reviewer and offering explanations or apologies as appropriate. It’s a great opportunity to show off customer service skills. After all, we all know that every business will get complaints. Those who are open enough to face up to these with public commitments to fix the problems identified will win out in this new world.

Of course this is only great as long as the hotel management are actually acting on their word. If you read the same complaints for six months and each time there is a promise to make things better with the complaint appearing again the following week (it happens), then it might have been better for the property management to have kept their head in the sand.

75% of holidaymakers influenced by blogs, reviews, comments is a post from: 501 Places

Loadsamoney! (Just under $100 worth of Uzbek Som)

According to the GfK Ascent Survey of 15,000 UK holidaymakers in 2009, as presented at the CIMTIG organised Travel Vision 2010 evening, UK tourist numbers for last year to Egypt are up 20% and Turkey up 9%. On the downside the Canary Islands have seen a drop of a massive 22%, while numbers are also heavily down in Italy (19%), Cyprus (15%), Greece (13%) and Spain (13%).

These are quite dramatic numbers, and spell a serious issue for the traditional Mediterranean destinations who have built much of their success on the back of the British holidaymaker. What do all these countries suffering a slump have in common? The most obvious explanation is the Euro, against which the pound has weakened heavily in the last three years (although it has been fairly stable for almost 18 months now). We heard how American tourism patterns changed when the dollar tanked in the last decade, with less Americans coming to Europe and to Japan. As Europeans we also noticed how those places that tied their currencies to the US dollar suddenly became more attractive to the rest of us.

But on closer examination something doesn’t make sense here. If we look at the big winner in this survey it is Egypt, enjoying a 20% boost in UK visitors in 2009 alone. The explanation presented for this was that the strength of the Euro is driving Brits to look for better value elsewhere. Yet the British currency has fallen by almost exactly the same amount against the Egyptian currency as it has against the Euro (11 Egyptian pounds to the GBP in 2008 and a little over 8 today).

So why the major change in tourist hot-spot from Spanish and Greek resorts to Egyptian ones? I must admit until I heard these figures I had no reason to check the state of the Egyptian currency, but I had heard much of the PR that had told us all that people were looking to take their holidays away from the Eurozone and that Egypt and Turkey seemed to be the obvious alternatives.

I suspect most people have no inclination to study currency markets (I find them fascinating but I am aware that this is not a very cool admission to make). So if the message is that the Euro countries are expensive and it’s best to go outside of the Eurozone to make your money go further, then perhaps a lot of people have taken this at face value and headed off to Thomas Cook and asked for a holiday to Egypt or Turkey.

Which really leads me to commend the Egyptian tourism authorities on an excellent job well done. They have managed to jump on the bandwagon of anti-Eurozone publicity and reap rich rewards, without anyone holding up their hands and pointing out that their currency has gained in strength at the same pace as the now expensive Euro. It looks to me like a marketing strategy of keeping your head down while making money; and it is being executed with much success.

The Egyptian tourism boom: great marketing or skillful silence? is a post from: 501 Places