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?

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.

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.

George Orwell (taken from Wikipedia)

Did you know that the complete works of George Orwell are now online and freely available?  I only discovered this yesterday, and I was instantly drawn to a page from Homage to Catalonia, the story of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Born as Eric Arthur Blair but known around the world by his pseudonym, he went off to Spain in 1936 along with many other idealist young men from around the world to fight the rise of fascism. The book tells of his adventures and traumas during his two years in Spain.

Why my interest in this book, and one page in particular? I was fortunate to meet one of the characters from this book in 1985 in Spain, and he was happy to share his recollections of that time with me. He was by then an old man, but even in my short encounters with him I could easily fit him into the picture painted of him by Orwell 50 years earlier.

“The company we were relieving were getting their kits together. They had been
three months in the line; their uniforms were caked with mud, their boots
falling to pieces, their faces mostly bearded. The captain commanding the
position, Levinski by name, but known to everyone as Benjamin, and by birth a
Polish Jew, but speaking French as his native language, crawled out of his
dug-out and greeted us. He was a short youth of about twenty-five, with stiff
black hair and a pale eager face which at this period of the war was always very
dirty. A few stray bullets were cracking high overhead….. I peered cautiously through a loophole, trying to find the Fascist trench. ‘Where are the enemy?’ Benjamin waved his hand expansively. ‘Over zere.’ (Benjamin spoke English– terrible English.) “

You can read the rest of the chapter here.

So how did I get to meet him? As a teenager I had travelled down to Sitges, a holiday resort just south of Barcelona, to visit my uncle and aunt who had retired there. My uncle was a dominant and influential man, and even in retirement had quickly become a central figure in the local ex-pat community. He introduced me to many foreigners in Sitges, mostly British and some from elsewhere; one of these friends was Benjamin.

When he mentioned that he was fluent in 18 languages I was intrigued to meet him, and spent some time sitting in the plaza during the siesta periods listening to his stories. He was happy for an audience, and although he didn’t dwell solely on his distant military past he was very eager to dish out advice on life to a naive young 16 year old. He was very opinionated and as a head-strong man he often clashed with my uncle. I think they were two old men who needed to argue with one another to keep themselves mentally active.

One thing that Benjamin said to me stuck in my mind, and although it’s far from original it was the first time I had heard it. He said “Are you a communist? You should be a communist. If you’re under 25 and you’re not a communist, you’ve got no heart. If you’re still a communist when you’re over 25 you’ve got no head.” I never appreciated the link between his advice and his own bitter experiences, but still wonder now how much his views were shaped by his time in the Civil War, and how much by the changes that took place in the world in subsequent years.

A chance encounter, but since my meeting with Benjamin in that Spanish summer I always remember him when I hear the name of George Orwell.

New location for UK?

Living overseas can be a great experience. We tried it for a year and enjoyed so many things about living in New York. But there is something about the country where we grow up that forms an emotional attachment for us. Symbols of the UK make us smile and reminisce about home, while hearing a British accent in a remote part of the world can be a comfort.

I like it here, and having lived in many parts of the UK have come to take comfort in the British way of life. Our modest culinary skills, our understated manner, dry sense of humour and crap national sporting teams sit well with me. So maybe if I did want to move to another part of the world, I would just take the whole island with me. But where would I put it? Where would you stick the UK if you could literally lift it and put it elsewhere on the globe?

Here are just a few contenders for a new British location:

1. Off the coast of southern California. We could enjoy an almost perfect climate: warm and plentiful sunshine, no major weather related disasters to worry about, and an easy hop to visit the US national parks, Hawaii, Alaska and central America. (We would need earthquake proofing though). We would also gain a lot of US and Japanese tourists, enticed by the shorter flights and the better weather.

2. Next to Greenland. One simple reason for me: the chance to see the aurora borealis on a regular basis. Ok, it would get cold. Very cold. But we’re used to that already this year, aren’t we? We can always dress for the cold, and unlike the folk in other Arctic regions, the Brits know how to make a lovely cup of tea to make everything lovely. We might even learn how to continue with our normal lives despite a flurry of snow. And think of the top class ski resorts on our doorstep!

3. In the dead centre of Europe. A nightmare scenario for much of the people of Britain who would be forced to learn other languages, adopt the Euro and have to live with direct neighbours for the first time (there’s 20 miles of sea separating us from the French and they still make many Brits nervous). I suspect this move would be blocked by the rest of Europe, frightened about the prospect of British stag parties pouring into even more European cities and the threat of fish and chips invading their national cuisine.

4. South Pacific. Great weather, proximity to many of our kindred spirits in Australia and New Zealand, warm crystal blue oceans. These would be a bonus, but the main reason for such a distant move? England could rest easy knowing they would have a great chance of qualifying for the World Cup every year in the Oceania group, with key qualifiers against the likes of New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.

Where would you stick the UK if you had the choice?