A tale about Jan (part one)

I’m used to blank looks, daydreamers, and people throwing me strange looks at the group meeting (you can just tell they’re wondering “how the hell is this little blonde thing going to get us through the Middle East?”) but there’s a woman glaring at me. Her name is *Jan; a fat, frumpy twenty-something from Melbourne, Australia. She has her arms folded tightly across her chest and is tapping her foot sharply on the floor. I finish up my talk trying not to notice her.

“Any questions?” I ask

“Yeah, I’ve got one,” Jan yells.

I nod to let her know to go ahead.

“So you’re not a qualified Egyptologist or historian or anything then?”

I laugh, “oh no, I never even went to university.”

Jan smirks and un-crosses her arms. “Well a fat load of good you’re going to be on this fucking tour.”

Thanks for your input Jan, I’m sure you’re going to be a pleasure to deal with for the next 18 days.

If you’ve ever had the dubious pleasure of working in customer service, you’ve had your share of rude people to deal with. Now shut your eyes and imagine your worst ever customer; the one who was being nasty for the sake of it, just because they could. Got that person in mind? Now imagine if you had to deal with that person for 18 whole days, not just between your 9-5 work hours but 18 WHOLE days. Welcome to my world.

Pax quote two

On seeing a hand-written advertising board for a shop at the entry of the Siq in Petra that read:

Visa

Mastercard

Handmade bedouin silver

Pax: “Wow! Do they really still use handmade bedouin silver as currency here?”

Feedback: the bain of a tourleader’s existence

You’ve just come back from your holiday. What a great time; you saw some amazing sights, visited some fascinating countries and made a whole bunch of new friends. What fun. Now it’s time to fill in your feedback form for the travel company you used. This simple form allows you to rate all sorts of aspects of the trip (accommodation, transport etc) on a scale of one to five (one meaning this was the worst experience of my life, five meaning excellent), with space for individual comments afterwards.

The first section of the form is devoted to me, your tourleader. You know, the one who facilitated your great time. The person who took you out to her favourite restaurants, made sure you were always on time for the bus, showed you that wonderful narghile joint in Damascus that you’d have never found by yourself. The one that got you through the border crossings smoothly, yelled at that taxi driver in Aleppo who was driving like a maniac and spent hours explaining the real role of TE Lawrence in the Arab Revolt because you’d specifically asked a dozen questions about him. Now how does that person deserve to be rated?

You pause as you look at the form on your computer screen, remembering all the good times. That amazing walk up Mt Sinai when I kept telling you that the summit was just round the corner to keep you going after you said you were going to give up. The night around the campfire in Wadi Rum where I produced a surprise bag of marshmallows to toast. The traffic-clogged Syrian-Turkish border debacle where I convinced the driver to do a 42-point turn and then drive down the wrong way of the street, to get us through the border quicker. Sure there was that disgusting hotel in Petra where  the rooms were filthy and the service non-existent and your shower-head fell on your head and broke when you tried to take a shower and you yelled at me that this wasn’t acceptable, and I tried, oh I tried, to get you another room but the hotel was full. I even offered to swap rooms with you but you looked at my room and realised it was even worse. But even that bad incident has faded to the realms of ‘funny story from my travels’ now in your head. You laugh at the memory and begin to fill in the form. And then you rate me…as a four, because nobody’s perfect, right?

A four? Are you kidding?

I basically wiped your ass for you for three weeks and you give me a four. This is not a school report people, you are allowed to give fives. Fives are good, fives are great, fives get meddling Head Office do-gooders off our backs so that we can get on with what we’re good at – leading tours – and not have to constantly explain to a person sitting on their fat ass in front of a computer screen adding up statistics, why we’re not getting fives. Yes that’s right folks, our glorious Head Office keep a running tab on our feedback to make sure we’re up to scratch. Of course it’s necessary, we all understand that if they didn’t do that some lazy leaders would get up to all sorts of mischief but they’re also totally unrealistic. Our bosses think that all pax who’ve had a great experience will simply rate us five. They don’t take into account the school teachers (who just can’t bring themselves to give full marks) and the analytical pax (whose brains nag them that there’s always room for improvement). These pax write wonderful comments under their rating such as:

*”I have done several group tours and Jess was the best leader I have had yet – she really inspires enthusiasm for the region and travel more broadly.”

*”Jess is an enthusiastic, positive, knowledgeable and really well-organised leader.”

*”Jess was great – passionate about the area and full of knowledge. Really added to my enjoyment of the trip.”

Unfortunately comments can’t be fed into a stupid statistical computer programme to rate leaders so Head Office take no notice of them whatsoever.

Fours simply don’t cut the mustard, threes are a travesty and well, if you get a two or (eek!) a one (which can happen if a pax takes a dislike to you but that’s an entirely different post), expect a very harsh and un-enjoyable conversation with your boss on how to improve your leading skills.

So future pax, when you’re filling in your feedback form ask yourself this question. Did I have a good time? If you can put a tick in the box next to that question then you can allow yourself to rate your humble tourleader as a five. No tourleader may be perfect but I’m pretty damn close.

*NOTE: Comments taken from real feedback I received where I was rated four. (Boo!)

Pax quote one

Just before heading into the Algerian Sahara for a five-day desert safari from Djanet to the Hoggar Mountains:

Pax: “Will we be able to get chocolate in the Sahara?”

Me: “Yeah, if you buy it beforehand.”

Pax: “Oh, so there’s no shops?”

Me: “No mate. It’s the desert, there’s nothing there.”

Pax: “So how are we going to eat?”

Me: “Well we’ve got 4WD’s and our Touareg guides are going to bring all the food supplies we need with us in them.”

Pax: “Oh, so there’s nothing where we’re going?”

Me: “No.”

Pax: “So how will we eat dinner?”

Me: “They are going to BRING EVERYTHING WE NEED with us.”

Pax: “So, where are we going to sleep?”

Me: “We’re going to pick a spot to camp every night and lay out under the stars.”

Pax: “So there’s nothing there?”

Me: “Just sand.”

Pax: “I don’t suppose there are toilets?”

Me: “No.”

Pax: “Oh well, just thought I’d check.”

Pax type one – the partner

The wildcard pax. This is the person who was dragged along on the tour by their partner, generally has no expectations and has done no research beforehand. They will usually have no idea about the itinerary and they won’t have read the trip notes. In other words, they have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

This type of pax can be great. If they’re the happy-go-lucky type they’ll just cruise along and be surprised and delighted by what they see and do, comfortable in the knowledge that if it does turn out to be rubbish they can blame their other half who dragged them along. Occasionally though, this pax can become a leader’s  nightmare. This happens when the husband/wife who wants to go on the tour hasn’t bothered to consider the comfort level their partner is used to on holiday.

Dave* hadn’t thought about that. For him this was his trip of a lifetime and obviously he wanted to share this experience with his wife Karen*. Bless him. Unfortunately for me and the rest of the group, Karen was what I’d call ‘not particularly suited’ to adventure travel and she took every opportunity to remind us of this. Poor Dave, I don’t think he even realised how non-adventurous his wife was. Well, how would you know when so far in your relationship the only holidays you’d been on together were the ones that included the words ‘all-inclusive’, and ’5-star’ in their brochures.

It was obvious that Karen wasn’t coping by the evening of day two when she nervously picked through her meal, pushing to the side everything that wasn’t chips and looking glum. Chirpy Dave was of course having the time of his life and totally ignoring the fact that his wife wasn’t looking very happy. As I filled the pax in on what we were doing tomorrow and reminded them that the next day’s accommodation had shared bathrooms, she was practically in tears.

“Don’t eat that Dave, that’s salad,” she snapped looking at the greenery on his plate as if it was poison.

“Jess is eating it,” Dave said shovelling a fork full into his mouth (thanks Dave!)

Karen gave me a dirty look, “but the guidebook says you shouldn’t eat any uncooked vegetables or salad.”

NOTE:  Ah, how I love guidebook advice. Don’t eat the salad, peel all your fruit beforehand and then wash it in bottled water, stay away from vegetables unless they have been cooked to a pulp, don’t drink the water (actually they’re right on that one but you get the drift). My god, what exactly am I supposed to feed my pax? Middle Eastern restaurant cuisine isn’t strong on vegetables in the main dishes but what it does have is lots of salads and other uncooked mezze dishes where you can get your green-intake. If you don’t eat them, you’re basically going to be vegetable free for the entire tour. And no, of course the salad hasn’t been washed with bottled water. Get over it and stop being so paranoid.

Poor Karen. She wouldn’t eat the food, she hated the accommodation and she truly thought all the locals were out to steal or rape her. Nothing I did could convince her otherwise. Strangely, the more miserable she became, the more bad things happened to her, which of course made her even more miserable. It was her toilet that wouldn’t flush in every hotel, it was her shower that was always cold. It was always her meal that came last at dinner (or turned out to be not what she’d ordered). It was her bag that broke and her washing that came back from the laundry two sizes too small. All little things, but if you’re determined to have a bad time then they escalate into huge issues.

We were in Wadi Rum when she had her first public breakdown.

“We have to sleep together…outside?”

“It’s going to be great,” I enthused, “there’s going to be a billion stars above us, we get to watch shooting stars. It’s amazing, you’ll love it.”

She didn’t of course. She hated the mattresses and huge snuggly duvets that were going to be our beds because she didn’t know when they’d last been cleaned, she wished she had her own sleeping bag so she didn’t have to use them (of course she hadn’t brought a sleeping bag, the closest this woman had come to camping before was watching people do it on TV). She was hugely upset by the fact that there was no shower at camp. She couldn’t believe she was going to have to use a squat toilet. She was mortified that she was going to sleep in the company of twelve other people who would have to see her without her makeup in the morning (she ended up not taking it off). She didn’t like sand. It was basically her nightmare.

After that experience, it all went downhill. Syria was her own personal horror film. It smelt, it was noisy, nothing worked properly and the wonderfully welcoming Syrians all wanted to talk to her, which she found terrifying. Dave was taking no notice of her whingeing because he was too busy having a good time. I got all the complaints, the tears and the tantrums. For three weeks. The best moment of the tour came in Damascus after Karen and Dave found a KFC and went off to feast on the colonel’s secret herb and spice encrusted crappy chicken. Karen was ill for two days afterwards.

“I hate this tour!” She wailed at me one evening (which, by the way, isn’t a nice compliment when you’re the leader).

By the time we pulled into Istanbul I was knackered and Karen and Dave’s relationship was hanging by a thread. Luckily the golden arches of McDonald’s managed to cheer Karen up enough for them to patch things up but I don’t think Dave will get to choose their holiday destination ever again.

So here’s the deal people. If you happen to be considering going on an adventure-style tour and are part of a couple, please (for my sake) take into account how your partner will cope with this.  If your partner is the type who thinks a holiday is about two weeks beside the pool with a cocktail in hand and always packs hair straighteners, you’ll be giving everyone a break by leaving her/him behind.

*NOTE: ALL NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY, STUPID AND JUST PLAIN ANNOYING

Tools of the trade

If you want to survive as a tourleader there are a few skills you need to pick up. Patience is indeed a virtue, and a handy one when you’ve got to answer the same question fifty times in a day. The first lesson you learn in tourleader land is that people don’t listen. At all. You will find yourself regurgitating the same information twenty times in one conversation in the hope that if you repeat it enough, somehow the message will get through.

Me, “so the bus is going to leave at 2pm which means I need you to be down here, all packed and ready to go with your bags to catch the taxis to the bus station at 1pm.”

Pax, “what time does the bus leave.”

Me, “2pm.”

Pax, “how long is the taxi ride to the station?”

Me, “it’s about 20 minutes, so we’re going to leave here at 1pm.”

Pax, “so we need to be ready at 1pm?”

Me, “yes, all packed and ready to go at 1pm in the hotel foyer.”

Pax, “so how long will we have at the bus station before the bus leaves?”

Me, “well we’re leaving at 1pm and it’s about a 20 minute taxi ride so we’ll have around 40 minutes at the station.”

Pax, “Right…so the bus is at 2pm?”

Me, “correct. Anymore questions guys?”

Pax, “sorry, sorry. I didn’t quite catch that. So we’re leaving here at 1pm and the bus is at 2.30pm?”

Me, “no, we’re leaving here at 1pm and the bus is leaving at 2pm ok, but all you need to remember is to be ready at 1pm. Here in the foyer. Packed. Are we good?”

To be a great tourleader you need to be an entertainer of sorts. No you don’t need to lug around a guitar and have spontaneous group sing-a-longs (though I know a tourleader that does do that and having such a talent would definitely help), but you need to have some ‘talent’ that will gel your group together. The most important  of the many roles you  will play as a tourleader is the group entertainer. Your ability to do this can make or break a group. One tourleader I know carries a full-size backgammon board everywhere with him and teaches all his pax how to play, another simply sets out to get her pax drunk as often as possible. A very good friend of mine (and a devilishly handsome one at that) simply sleeps with as many of his pax as possible; which by the way can backfire on you terribly unless you are able, like him, to charm the birds out of the trees. Me, I set forth right from the start of the tour telling them embarrassing stories from my past. I goof it up, play the clown and rope them in that way. It seems to work…most of the time.

The ability to lie is very useful in tourleading. Basically if you’re the sort of person who can’t tell a fib with a straight face you’re not going to last very long in this job. Cultivating this skill is essential right from the start.You’ve got to remember, your pax think you’re an expert in everything to do with the region you lead in (in my case the Middle East) and they don’t want to know about any gaps in your knowledge. They want you to be able to answer their questions, that’s why they paid for a tour. So if you don’t know the answer, make it up. This can be as simple as:

Pax, “when was this building built?”

Me, “1562.” (The honest answer is I don’t have the foggiest but obviously they don’t know either.)

Beware of this method if you are unlucky enough to have a  ‘But The Guidebook Says…Pax’. This type of pax can trip you up easily if he/she catches you unaware. In this tricky situation, the above conversation could continue something along these lines:

But The Guidebook Says…Pax, “but my guidebook says it was built in 1702.”

Me, “ah, 1702, well does your guidebook tell you that that’s the date it was REBUILT…yes, after the massive fire that destroyed it in 1689.”

But The Guidebook Says…Pax, “wow really? My guidebook doesn’t say anything about that.”

Me, “yeah I know, the information is so condensed in guidebooks. They never tell you all the details.”

Saved. Yet again, by lying.

Lying is also useful at the daily dinner time debacle when your pax will expect you to know the entire ingredients list of a 42 item menu. Let me give you a tip on this situation. Whenever you sit down with your pax for a group dinner, open the menu authoritatively and give them a low down on the listed items. If you’ve been to the restaurant before list four or five of the dishes that you’ve either eaten (or you’ve seen pax eat before) as your favourites, skipping anything that you have absolutely no idea about. Nine times out of ten this will satisfy the pax enough that you have eaten everything here and are pointing out the best local delicacies for them to try. If you’ve never eaten at this certain restaurant before, grab the menu and do the same thing anyway (see lying is useful) using the dish descriptions to wax lyrical about the food. Then, err, hope for the best when it all comes out.

Now here’s a word about language skills. Obviously very useful when you’re leading tours through a non-english speaking country and oh, how I wish I was a linguist and could pick up a new language with ease. Unfortunately I’m not but the fact of the matter is your pax will expect you to be (if not fluent), competent in the language of the country you’re in. Learn at least a few choice slang terms in the language that your pax could never get from a phrase book. (NOTE: I find hanging out with street-hustlers and touts very useful for this.) Being able to bring these out when talking to the locals will sufficiently dazzle your pax enough to convince them that you speak the lingo.

Pax have the very strange belief that at all times, you actually know what you’re doing. Confidence is obviously a must. You may have told your group that this is the first time you’ve run this tour (in the world of leading this is known as a ‘blind tour’), they may have nodded understandingly at the group meeting upon hearing this but believe me, they have forgotten this fact withing five minutes of the tour starting. Never, EVER admit you have no idea where you are, even if you have got the group completely lost in the middle of a city tour in Damascus. Learn distraction techniques,

“oh look at that wonderful Ottoman architecture!”

to keep them occupied while you hurriedly get your bearings. Remember, pax can smell fear and if you panic you can lose the entire confidence of the group in your leading skills.

There’s so many other skills needed it’s impossible to list them all. In a day’s work you’re expected to be a teacher, doctor, historian, travel co-ordinator, friend, councillor, accountant, mother, translator and guide as well as an expert on everything from geology to what the weather is going to do tomorrow. But the most important tool of the tourleading trade, the one that will get you out of nearly every sticky situation you find yourself in? A constant smile. Even when you’ve only had 3 hours sleep because a pax’s bathroom flooded in the middle of the night and they knocked on your door for you to fix it. Even when a border guard doesn’t want to let one of your pax into the country because they were too dumb to read their pre-trip notes that told them they couldn’t get a visa at the border and now you have to sweet talk the guards into letting them get one. Even when a pax is having a hissy-fit over their meal coming out cold and is demanding that you get the waiter to bring them another one. Smile, smile, smile. You’ll make it through if you can at least do that.