After living in Bangkok for so long I sometimes forget how lost I was when I first got here. As I wrote in 2001 when I first arrived: “Walking down streets I can’t remember past landmarks I don’t recognize to order food I can’t pronounce.” But now that I’m comfortable here all of that is forgotten – except when I travel out of Thailand. If you relish the raw unfamiliarity of making it on your own in a strange land, more power to you, but I got that out of my system a long time ago. Now when I travel, I often invest in a guide – the human kind. It’s just easer; more comfortable; less distracting. And let me tell you, there’s a huge difference between an okay guide and a great guide. Guides in Thailand are often a crap-shoot, but it appears they’re about to get much worse. Or are they?

Before I get into criticizing anyone, let me say that I’ve acted as a tour guide in Thailand and it’s hard work. Not only do you have to be should you be pleasant, funny, inquisitive, knowledgeable, and a good conversationalist, but you have to worry about what the next five steps are while still being gregarious and informative. A good guide’s train of thought is a mess: “Is our van at the next stop yet waiting to pick us up? Are these people thirsty or hungry? Do they have to go to the bathroom? Are they scared or uncomfortable with anything? Is there a better spot to take pictures that I can tell them about? Make sure that dinner doesn’t contain nuts because the kid is allergic. Do they know what to do in case we get separated?” etc, etc. Mentally and physically, you’re ON the entire day, and it’s exhausting.

And hiring a tour guide in Thailand – anywhere, actually – is always an unknown. You have no idea if they’ll just run through the motions or be a truly wonderful host. So I was pleased a while ago to see this story on the NNT website (which is down now, so I linked to a ThaiVisa page about it) on how the Tourism Council of Thailand is working to make sure things remain at a high quality. From the story:

The Tourism Council of Thailand is calling on the government to help improve the country’s tourism management while the industry continues to grow fast.

That sounds like a good idea. The article says how there just aren’t enough trained  guides to go around. The obvious solution would be to train  more guides, offer more incentives, perhaps raise the wages a bit or throw some of that fat Tourism Authority budget at advertising. Of course, this being Thailand, they went with another solution. From this story in the Bangkok Post just four months after the story above:

The Ministry of Tourism and Sports plans to lower the minimum education level needed to become an accredited tour guide to Grade 4 for three foreign languages.

Now your first instinct might be to smack your head on your desk or, if you’re my buddy Saksith, give yourself a mighty facepalm. But while lowering qualifications doesn’t seem like the obvious choice for improvement, I turned to a friend who has some insight into this. Dan Fraser, co-founder of Smiling Albino, host of Long Krung, and all around decent fellow, has worked in Asia’s tourist industry for nearly 15 years. He says:

The hardest part is finding licensed guides who understand the true interests of westerners, and who can communicate things in a way that is interesting – not just instructing. Finding guides willing to work for the dignity of a fine profession, without relying on shopping schemes or kickbacks is a major challenge. Typically low wages in this field lead to the commission-based guiding, which compromises the free will of the guest. Most guides who have grown accustomed to this have never taken the time to truly understand and adapt to what today’s tourist actually wants.

Going out for dinner with Dan always ends in unexpected ways.

Going out for dinner with Dan always ends in unexpected ways.

I then asked him what he thought of them lowering the qualifications, and the answer I got surprised me:

A great step forward. Some of the best guides I have ever met are not actually licensed guides at all, and have virtually no formal training. It is about passion and personality, and an ability to communicate and host in a variety of scenarios. This usually isn’t something a guiding academy can teach. You need knowledge of course, but the facts are just details that anyone can learn, but no one travels to Thailand just to hear the facts…

So now I don’t know what to think. Personally, I like a guide that can make me feel a place, who can give me the history and any colorful stories that will help me understand the who who, what, when and why of a location. Unfortunately, this type of, shall we say, pizzaz, is hard to find anywhere, let alone Thailand. I’m not sure what the future holds for Thailand’s tour guides, but if they can’t find ones that are well educated, hopefully they can still find ones that are dynamic, knowledgeable and entertaining.