501 Places

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!

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.

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.

75% of travellers take into account the reviews and comments of blogs and review sites before deciding on their holiday destination. That was one of the main findings of the GfK Ascent survey that was presented at last week’s CIMTIG Travel Vision 2010 event. Should that be a surprise? I suspect for those of us who book our travels independently the figure might even seem low. But when considering that the majority of the 15,000 respondents had just returned from a more traditional resort holiday, we should maybe sit up and listen.

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.