Tour Guides

You come into contact with numerous tour guides when you travel as much as we do. Even if you are traveling independently instead of with an organized tour from start to finish, taking a local tour is the best way to see some of the sites unless you want to rent a car and drive there yourself (and I don't recommend renting a car because the traffic is horrendous in some of the countries we have visited). I would rather put my trust in someone who knows the area and is familiar with the streets and traffic patterns.

Tour guides come in many shapes and sizes and with different personalities. One of my favorites was a young Chinese man in Dalian, China, just starting out in the tourism business. He had a delightful personality and everyone loved him. He gave me his email address and I am still corresponding with him; he calls me his American mama. Now he is a tour guide for Chinese groups coming to the United States and is so good at what he does, he is the tour guide as well as the local guide for many of their stops.  When we visited Hong Kong several years ago, he had moved to Shenzhen which is on mainland China across from Hong Kong.  He met us in Hong Kong, helped us go from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, and then took us to the bus to go back to Hong Kong in the evening, staying with us until the bus left.

The tour guide in Beijing, China, had retired from the Chinese tourist association but still guided tours when he was needed. He was very knowledgeable about Chinese history and customs, and was very good at keeping us away from beggars and pickpockets during a crowded tourist season. The tour guide that took us to Nazareth and Galilee was a Jewish man, but whose knowledge of Jesus and his ministry was fantastic.  

Our tour guide in Siberia was very knowledgeable.  She told us that we had come on a good day because the sun was shining and it was 35 degrees F.  She said she had to sell her car because the streets were so full of potholes, she couldn't keep it repaired.  I know some roads here in Birmingham that are just as bad.

Some tour guides can be very annoying. For example, the one we had in Taiwan had a habit of repeating the last sentence that he said. After a few hours, we were tired of this. The tour guide that took us to Stonehenge filled in the time when he was not giving us facts with trivia, when all we wanted to do was rest or sleep. He also had a habit of rolling his r's to show off to make us think he was a typical upper-crust Englishman. The guide in Split, Croatia, spoke in a monotone that sounded like a child in school memorizing a piece of poetry. She also used "uh" in about every other sentence and had no interaction with the people on her tour. The Russian tour guide was very cold and would not let us stop to use the restroom in the airport - her answer was "use the one on the plane." You can imagine the poor flight attendants trying to work around the line in the aisle.

I have some advice for tour guides. You are, in fact, a teacher and you are teaching visitors about the country that you are so very proud of. Be aware that you have a captive audience on a bus full of people who are usually jet lagged, have had too much to eat, or who have not slept well in strange beds. Let them know that they are welcome and give them a reason to want to hear what you have to say. After all, your tips reflect on how well you pleased your passengers.