There are Guides and there are Guides

I just did a Night Safari tour. This is a 'Sit-In-Coach' tour, ie, tourists signed up from various hotels' tour desks and the Travel Agents put them into one bus. Most times, each agent has bookings which could fill up 3 buses. So I was relieving for my friend Maria to be the guide for the tourists on the first bus.There were 2 other guides for the other coaches. Well, the 1st coach guide must do the transport arrangement to send the paxs back to hotels after the tour. That means, each coach should be alloted the hotels in nearby vicinity. This requires knowledge and years of experience. Now, this was my first time and it was rather challenging. My luck, I have Dyanna, a more experienced guide on the 3rd coach and she offered to help. Cut the story short, everything was fine. She is a darling among the guides, helpful, friendly and guides always crowd around her!

I have many Guide friends now, all kinds, all shapes and sizes.
There are guides guided by passion. These kind, bless them, I love to be with, for I am this kind. They are not choosy about jobs and they dont mind challenging ones. Then there are guides guided by money.They will go for the jobs which pay the highest and require the least effort. They often take tourists 'for a ride' providing very little service and making them visiting shops and signing up for optional tours in order to earn commissions.

Some guides, like Dyanna are helpful and you love working with them. Others are individualistic and will not help nor teach you what to do. Some are greedy, they will pocket all the comms which should be shared among the guides, if you are not careful. I have seen them all.

Guides- One Too Many

Recently I renewed my Tourist Guide licence. That means I have been a Guide for 3 good years!I survived, contrary to what many people think. Must say it is the best job I have ever had. It suits my temperament, interest and ability. So I have enjoyed the last 3 years and get paid too.

So my badge number is 2350 and a few days ago, a new Guide was introduced to me and her badge number is 2953. Another words, for 3 years, 600 new guides entered the market. See the competition. So don't expect Guide fees to go up and don't expect payment to be faster than the usual 2 months.

So to renew the licence, the Guide will have to go through 21 hours (7-hr for each year of service) of training Courses conducted by several organisations. Ofcourse we pay for them @ about $80/7hr Course. So to renew, it costs me a total of about $300.

The Courses really were a waste of time. The Guides go through the motion, the trainers knew the low level of interest from the trainees and also go through the motion. A vicious cycle and of little benefit.

So this is Indians season, half of the active Guides are now doing Indian groups. Bless the Indians.

Lull Period

This week has been a quiet one. I was not called for a job since Mon. I am doing one today (Fri). A SIC tour called Heartland and Changi Village Tour.

Such tours are mentally stimulating with lots of talking. It surprised me that I could have accumulated so much of local knowledge and get to talk about it. Must confess that Singapore is a far more interesting place than I dare to admit. My job as a tour guide opens up space in Singapore for me.

Ive known Katong with its rich peranakan heritage better now. Then the bohemia in Seah Street/Beach Road, it is buzzling on most nights. Chinatown is now my haunt.

inbound

It takes a bold guy to be a tourist guide

There are more lawyers, more doctors, more engineers, accountants than tourist guides!

There are more people wishing to be a tourist guide than there are people aspiring to be lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants

There are more people succeeding in becoming lawyers, doctors, engineers and accountants than in becoming tourist guides

More postings soon. Akan datang