When you are on an escorted tour you will often find that the Tour Director is a fountain of information about the area you are visiting, its history and legends. In addition there are the wonderful local guides who are specialists in the particular city or region into which you have traveled.
Do not overlook these precious resource people!! They not only will guide you down the highways and byways, but they will entertain with local color and (sometimes) delicious gossip: which Medici was cheating with his neighbor; which merchant prince short-changed the king…lots of fun with inside info.
But there are the down times, when the bus ride is a little longer than you’d like or the rain is pelting and you really don’t feel like getting drenched on your way to yet another museum. These are great moments for getting the real “inside scoop”, the stuff that’s not in the guide books. Here are some moments which I hold in my memory even after many years have passed.
Scene 1: the hot and humid interior of a tour bus on a very wet monsoon-like day in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Cast of characters: some tired and wet travelers, dozing and waiting for the rain to cease. The young woman local guide and the traveler sitting behind her.
I started the conversation by asking her if this was her home city. This opened a wonderful conversation about her home and her rather large family…mother, father and many siblings. One brother, she said with pride, had finished his medical education and was doing his residency in the United States! She was delighted with the adventures he was writing home about; his colleagues at the hospital; the Americans whom he met and their “strange” ways. I enjoyed listening to my country being praised in such glowing terms. I asked her where her brother was living and she said he was in a province called “Ohio”. Well, that was interesting, since I grew up in Ohio; so I asked her if she knew that name of the city…”Oh, yes, it is called Can-ton” she replied. Wow! My home town!!!! So, just for the record, I asked the name of the hospital. “It is called the Hospital of Mercy, do you know of it?” Did I know of it!!! I was born there!!! It is a small world, isn’t it? [ Epilogue: a few months after that tour, I returned to my home town and called the young man to tell him I’d met his sister and that she was well…he was thrilled; loved America and hoped to stay after his training. ]
Scene 2: a mountain resort in northern Slovakia. I’m enjoying a light lunch outside the restaurant when our Tour Guide sits down with me and we chat. Was I enjoying this wonderful site in the Carpathian Mountains? Absolutely, I replied, my father was a Czech and often spoke of the beauty of the Carpathians. Then he spoke the name of the district …My father was born in this area!!! I had traveled thousands of miles, through more years than I wish to recount, to walk the land of my father and grandparents!!
Scene 3: a long bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City to the historic tunnels, burrowed out in French colonial times, then expanded during the “American War” (we call it the Vietnam War). Our delightful local guide regaled us with a convoluted story about his love of American breakfast cereal and “sweet milk”. He also gave us a lesson in Vietnamese…a very difficult language!!!
The moral of this little blog? Be sure to engage your Tour Director and Local Guide in conversations above and beyond the obvious. You’ll be delighted with the results…I guarantee it.
Arelene N
arlene@atlastravelweb.com
