In a couple of hours I board a plane to Bangkok and Guide Training 2011 begins. Three weeks of adventures, hotel inspections and a lot of time with our teams in each country. While I am excited to see everyone and get up to date on all the new hotels and tours, it was a tough goodbye with the kids this morning. They, of course, were much braver than me and said goodbye with no tears, but three weeks is the longest I’ve been away from them and I know that I am going to miss them!
The good news is that I get to meet some of my favorite people in the world, our Journeys Within directors and guides! You might have heard that we were putting together a video for guide training, celebrating our guides as the stars of our company. Well the video is done and to celebrate the start of guide training we thought we would share it. Check out the video and see if you spot any familiar faces or places!
Ready to get on the road again, but sadly this time is without my little helpers!
Journeys Within guide training starts in just two weeks! Every year Brandon and/or I go and meet the guides in each of the countries we run tours to. We’ve done this since we opened the company and we feel it’s a key reason we’ve been so successful and our guests have such a good time when they’re traveling with us. Usually we do guide training when and how we can…a quick trip here, a visit there, but this year I decided to do a big Guide Training Tour. Starting September 2nd I’ll fly to Bangkok and commence Guide Training 2011!
The tour will start in Bangkok where I will meet our Thailand director Jeab and of course our amazing Bangkok guides. After training in Bangkok we’ll head North to Chiang Mai and meet with our guides there as well as doing the Gibbon Adventure and visiting a lot of the hotels we use up there. From Chiang Mai I’ll head to Luang Prabang where I’ll meet Nicole, our Laos director and together we’ll run guide training in Luang Prabang and then Vientiane. Next stop is Vietnam. In Hanoi I’ll meet Michelle and we will hold a couple days of guide training in Hanoi, head to the Central coast for the Hue, Danang and Hoi An guides and then head to the South for a fun guide training outing in Saigon. I am going to then head by river back to Cambodia as I’ve never done this trip before and have always wanted to, and will meet Narla in Phnom Penh for guide training there before flying home and doing one last guide training here in Siem Reap. The only country I couldn’t fit in was Myanmar, but I’ll be there in February to meet our guides there again! It’s going to be a whirlwind three weeks and I’m a little exhausted just thinking about it, but also really excited. I’ll be bike riding with our guides in Bangkok, elephant riding in Chiang Mai, having an adventure day in Luang Prabang, going to an amazing lake in Vientiane, cooking class in Hanoi, bike riding in Hoi An and a Mekong Delta homestay followed by a river cruise in Phnom Penh and a fun JWOC activity here in Siem Reap.
This takes a lot of organizing and I appreciate that all my team has been putting this all together and that my US office will be covering me as I travel. I’m excited to see our guides, listen to their experiences over the last year and talk about how to make Journeys Within even better. We’ll also be debuting our Guide Training 2011 video…watch this space:)
Do you have tips for me, for our guides? What really makes a great guide? Share your advice with me and I’ll pass it on to our guides.
