Allow me to give you a bit of context about Georgia for those of you who don't know much about it: it was a part of the former Soviet Union (USSR) and achieved independence upon the breakup of the USSR in 1991. It is bordered by Russia to the North, Azerbaijan to the East, Armenia and Turkey to the South and the Black Sea to the West. If you were to look at the position on Georgia on the map, it may seem more like a part of the Middle East, given how far East it is - the capital Tbilisi is much further East than entire countries like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and if you were to travel in a straight line from Baghdad in Iraq due north, you would eventually cross the border from Armenia into Georgia near the town of Udabno. I have been to Istanbul where they famously proclaim that it is the city that spans Asia and Europe, that the Bosphorus Straits is where Europe ends and Asia begins. Well, Tbilisi is so far East it is one whole time zone ahead of Istanbul! The country is in the same time zone is Dubai, that's four hours ahead of London and that was enough to mess me up, I had a few sleepless nights due to jet lag. Yet culturally, this country looked and felt a lot more like Eastern Europe - not quite Prague, but maybe more like Riga or St Petersburg. And in either case, the people in Georgia look as white as they come in any major European city: the only exception is the lack of diversity. In London, Paris or Berlin, you'll find loads of black and Asian minorities but in Georgia, a black man walking down the street would get stares because he would be the only black person around - not in a hostile or racist way of course, but people would actually stop and look whilst in London, nobody would bat an eyelid. I had my share of idiots staring at me but more on that later.
And let me get this over and done with, there's no easy way to say this: Georgia is a very poor country. If you were to look at the latest GNI per capital figures, Georgia is ranked 103rd in the world, that's below countries like Indonesia (94th), Sri Lanka (92nd), Namibia (101st) and just above the Philippines (105th). I would typically associate poorer countries with hot weather, but I was traveling around Georgia in January and encountering so much snow, so I suppose I was seeing the country through rose-tinted lenses. 'Oh look at that idyllic scene of the pristine Georgian village with a dusting of white snow on the roof tops and the fields,' when really I am looking at a farming community living in abject poverty. Yeah, there are a number of Eastern European countries which are actually that poor including Ukraine, Albania, Armenia and Moldova being the poorest of them all. This is a double-edged sword for us tourists: on one hand, there are great bargains to be had! I stayed in 5-star hotels and paid a tiny fraction of what I would have paid to get the equivalent in Western Europe. One meal in Tbilisi which consisted of two portions of kebabs, bread, salad and a bottle of mineral water came up to 8.5 Lari (£2.50 or S$4.36). You could get a pastry or slice of cake at a bakery for like 1.5 Lari (£0.44 or S$0.77). A bus ride from Tbilisi's Didube bus station to the nearby town of Mtskheta (a distance of 25 km) costs just 1 Lari (£0.29 or S$0.51) but a bus ride within Batumi city costs just 0.30 Lari (£0.09 or S$0.15). The price of a ticket on cable car in Kutaisi was just 1 Lari (£0.29 or S$0.51). The fact is if you're a student on a budget, then Georgia would be a great place to travel and you're going to get to see and do loads on a tiny amount of money compared to the West. Just make sure you don't exchange too much money when you first get to Georgia as you may have trouble spending it all!
But here's the other side of that sword: you get what you pay for. The public transport is cheap enough for the locals to afford, so on our trip to Kutaisi airport, my partner had to sit next to a woman who must have been some kind of abattoir worker who just reeked of animal blood and waste. It was a sickening smell but the locals just opened the windows of the bus and put up with it - the lady had to make a living after all and my partner's jacket seems to have picked up that putrid stench. And the quality and the variety of the food in Georgia was disappointingly poor - despite sharing a border with Turkey, Georgian food was stodgy, heavy and monotonous (but very cheap of course). They make a big deal about this dish called Khachapuri which is a cheese-filled pastry but don't be taken in by the videos you may find of it on Youtube: most of the time it is served cold (or even close to freezing, if the weather outside is way below zero). If you want good pastries, go to France, Greece or even Turkey but not Georgia, the pastry is designed to fill you up so you have enough energy to work on the factory or the mines when it is -20 degrees, it is not designed to titillate the taste buds of the rich ladies having high tea at the Ritz. They have a version of the bao called Khinkali which they claim to be some kind of soup dumpling, but when I had one, I just rolled my eyes and thought, you guys really need to try the Chinese version of this. The Khinkali pastry was as thick as a Georgian grandmother's coat in winter and there was only a little bit of meat inside. Once again, this was food designed to fill your stomach rather than thrill your tongue. The cuisine here has been shaped far more by the very hard times during the Soviet era rather than a desire for fine dining. This is poor man's food - I had encountered the same situation in Indonesia, where I was shocked at how disappointing the food is compared to neighbouring Malaysia, where the food is always excellent. There is a strong correlation between bad food and poverty.
Let's take something as basic as fruit for example - I like to eat fruits as part of a balanced diet but trying to find fresh fruit in Georgia is an interesting story. You will get apples and oranges everywhere as those are grown locally, there may be some grapes, kiwis, pomegranates, bananas and occasionally plums but that really is it. Once I got back to London Luton airport, I purchased a watermelon and mango fruit salad at the M&S foot outlet there - that was the first time I had seen watermelon or mango since I had left England. Neither watermelon or mango are grown here in the UK as it is too cold for those fruits, but you can easily walk into a shop and buy those in here. Well not in Georgia, if it is not sourced from a relatively local area, it's not available. By that token, anything imported or foreign commands such a premium: the most expensive meal I had in Georgia was actually a Thai meal. I had tried to track down a Chinese restaurant in Tbilisi, but after having seen their menu, I decided it was ridiculous as it was even more expensive than the Chinese restaurants in London! We then found a completely empty Thai restaurant on the next street with more down to earth prices - not exactly cheap but more on par with what I would expect to pay in London. The staff were entirely Thai and we had a lovely meal there, but yeah that still turned out to be the most expensive meal I had in Georgia at 60 Laris (£17.61 or S$30.78) for a papaya and crab salad, a seafood Pad Thai, a chicken curry, a fried prawn dish and a bowl of white rice, a mineral water and an apple juice - that meal was so incredibly good. I did wonder how on earth they managed to get hold of a fresh papaya in Georgia - though that's probably why an authentic Thai meal there commanded such a premium.
If you're tempted by the cheap prices to stay in a hostel for as little as 4 Laris (£1.17 or S$2.05) a night in Tbilisi, don't - not unless you want to find out what it was like to live in a Soviet gulag with freezing cold rooms, flea-ridden mattresses, blood-stained bed sheets, mold covered walls, 12 bunk beds packed into a tiny room without even a window and only a toilet to share. Like I said, you get what you pay for. And even if you do pay for five-star accommodation like I did, don't expect to get the kind of service you would normally expect with a five-star hotel. For example, when I was at my five-star hotel in Akhaltsikhe, I found out that the bedside lamp in my room wasn't working. I called the reception and explained the situation, the woman there just replied, "I don't know." I then got impatient and I asked if she didn't know if the lamp could be replaced tonight or if she couldn't understand my English - she replied, "I don't know." So I went down to reception, took out my phone and wrote "my bedside lamp is not working, could you fix it?" then Google translated it into Georgian: ჩემი საწოლის ნათურა არ მუშაობს, შეგიძლია გაუკეთოთ? I then showed the Georgian text to the lady at the reception desk who read it, then she gave me my phone back with a insolent shrug as if to say, "like what the fuck do you expect me to do about it? I don't care. Now fuck off and leave me alone, I have loads of videos on Youtube to watch." There were plenty of other examples of awful service in Georgia from Miss "I don't know" to Miss "I don't give a fuck" but I have long just accepted this to be the case when traveling in Eastern Europe - the service is always piss poor compared to places like America, the UK or Japan. I thought I had encountered truly awful service in some of the places in Asia like China and Singapore last year, but Georgia has somehow managed to hit a new low when it came to service.
But is there much to be gained by traveling to a place like Georgia? You bet there is. Let me give you an example: one of the most isolated and difficult tourist attractions to get to in Georgia is the ancient cave complex of Vardzia. It is 61 km from the nearest big town Akhaltsikhe but there are no buses that ply that route as there are only very small villages on that road which simply eventually ends in the mountains. The road there is of a very poor quality and covered in potholes - during the rainy season, it is often flooded and in winter, parts of it could be covered in treacherous ice as the snow gets compacted by the vehicles, turning the road into an ice rink. Yet the destination is so amazing it is worth the difficulty to get there and I had no choice but to book a taxi to take us there and back. The taxi driver we got was a funny, friendly guy who spoke no more than a few words of English, but fortunately he is old enough to have been educated in the Soviet days, so we spoke in Russian all the way and boy was he very talkative - hey, I got a free Russian lesson with my taxi ride. The ride there was slow, bumpy and uncomfortable: you were either be thrown around by the huge potholes in the road (and the suspension in his car was shot to bits as a result of the punishment) or you were perilously close to the edge of a cliff whilst driving on a snowy ice-covered road. It took about 1.5 hours to driver that 61 km, so that was 3 hour round trip but goodness me, that was a painfully uncomfortable 3 hour trip! So whilst the time we spent at Vardzia was totally awesome, but goodness me, the journey there was absolutely horrendous. I was mentally prepared for a rough trip but it was a lot harder than I thought. In most other countries, the roads would at least be of a much better quality.
Georgia is a big country, from East to West it measures about 750 km and from North to South, it is about 200 km at the widest point. It is roughly comparable to the size of West Malaysia (also known as Peninsular Malaysia), though it is slightly bigger. However, getting around Malaysia is a breeze with plenty of options to choose from if you wish to travel from Penang to Kuala Lumpur. You could get a bus, a train or even a flight. However, West Malaysia currently has a population of about 25.5 million people, so that means there are plenty of people who would want to travel around the country at any point, fueling a demand for good public transport. The population of Georgia however is tiny, at just 3.7 million people - that's even less than Singapore but they live over an area larger than West Malaysia and Singapore put together. So that means very little demand for public transport to get around the country and even if there is say a train line between two cities, the trains only run like twice a day because there are so few people wishing to travel between those cities. That is quite an inconvenience for the tourists because it means having to plan your schedule very carefully - if you miss the last bus or train to your destination, you could end up stranded in the wrong city as the next bus or train won't be for another 12 hours. Such is the nature of traveling around a very sparsely populated country - you're probably better off renting a car if you are unwilling to rely on public transport under such circumstances and if you stick to the main highways and not try to reach a remote location like Vardzia, you should be fine. Fortunately, the tourist information offices in all the cities I visited have always been very helpful in helping me figure out the local bus and train schedules.
Nonetheless, Georgia is a country that took me by surprise on so many levels - on one hand, it is so poor. I remember walking around the bazaar in Tsqaltubo and there were few people actually buying anything but a lot of people trying to sell you stuff. I wasn't interested in buying anything - I just wanted to see a real Georgian market where the real people shopped but it was just depressing as you realized that few of these people were making any money. There was an old lady selling shoes but most of them were totally covered in dust and they looked as if no one had wanted to buy any of her shoes for years. Yet by the same time, most people seemed to be pretty honest: for example, when I took a bus in Kutaisi, I thought that the ride should cost 1 Lari per person when it fact it was only 0.5 Lari. So when I paid the driver 2 Laris for the two of us, he instantly gave me back 1 Lari. Thinking that he thought that I was only paying for myself, I told him in Russian, "Нет, я плачу за двух человек." (No, I am paying for two people.) He then told me that it cost only 1 Lari for two people and then handed me that 1 Lari coin - given how poor the people are over there, he could have said to himself, "silly foreigner, I shall put the change in my pocket." But no, he insisted on charging me the correct fare. There were cases were we had meals in places which had no menus or price lists, but were still charged very little money for all those meals. You would think (perhaps rather unfairly) that such poor people would be dishonest and greedy when it comes to money and this was indeed the case in Tunisia and Indonesia, but actually a lot of the people we met like that bus driver were so honest with us. Ironically, both Tunisia and Indonesia are somewhat richer than Georgia but goodness me, the Georgians behaved with so much more honesty and integrity than the Tunisians and the Indonesians - this leads me to believe it is not so much a function of poverty but rather a cultural factor to determine how the locals behave.
So there you go - that's my first quite intro piece to give you a taste of what Georgia was like. In the following days, I shall offer you more stories about some of the people I met and some of the interesting experiences I have had there; stories that you just can't tell via Instagram. Do leave a comment below please if you have any questions. Thanks for reading.
As much as I know you hate China I would say that even for the cheapest hotel ($40 per nite) I have been too they attempted to provide a certain level of service. Unlike that time when I stayed at an international chain Holiday Inn at Basingstoke where I had to ring the bell for both checking-in and out since the reception was unmanned. The paid internet was horrendously slow and I posted a review about that hotel to TripAdvisor. And worst of all they overcharged me so I had to waste 15min arguing over the bill during checkout. But with a single sample size I won't stereotype UK as having horrible service. As for the service quality in SG it is abysmal, no contest.
I have far less experience in China than you have my friend, but in my last trip, it was a bit hit and miss - I stayed in two places (one near Houhai and one right in Shekou) and I encountered some members of staff who were brilliant and others who were clueless. It just made me think that there's no training, no quality control - that's why the useless idiots continue working there and continue making stupid mistakes. And the worst I encountered was at Citigo which was supposed to be quite a nice place, but some of the staff there were utterly useless. Then I stayed at this cheap and tacky place right next to the Shekou port terminal prior to my ferry to Macau and the staff at the cheap place were both English speaking and totally helpful. Go figure. None of the staff at Citigo spoke a word of English and just stared at my hubby blankly when he approached them and asked him, "ni neng shuo putonghua ma?"
As for the UK, again, hit and miss like my China experience lah, I have traveled around the UK for work as well and have stayed at places like the ones you've described. Some good, some bad, kinda dependent on your luck I'm afraid. I have had some great experiences and some awful ones. The best ones I've had tend to be in Wales!
As for SG, again, hit and miss - but there you go. Let's compare it all to Japan, where they hold the gold standard for service.
I have had more misses than hits in Sg, maybe because I don't pay top dollar for 5* service but at places where I had to pay a service charge I never had acceptable service. This is probably due to lack of manpower and lack of training. Even flying the famed SQ I don't see stellar service so can't justify paying so much. And since I'm usually paying so much more in Singapore I have a harsher judging criteria but even if I were to lower my standards they still wouldn't pass. As for Japan and Taiwan they are usually top notch service wise and the service personnel always go above and beyond in everything they do. A Japanese hotel once snail mailed a mobile adaptor from Japan to Singapore, completely FOC, which I left in their room. They same thing happened when my wife left her bracelet in one hotel in Suzhou but in this case it was local shipping, also FOC. I struggle to think of a position example for Singapore and I have booked rooms in expensive hotels like St Regis Singapor and Sheraton Towers. In fact there was a horrible service failing at St Regis during one of my ex-company's DND but I won't share it here since they made a service recovery attempt.
Hi there. Yes I've flown SQ on my trip from Singapore to Australia as they offered a great package but quite frankly, I couldn't see why they are so much more expensive than everyone else.
And oh yes, TAIWAN! I love Taiwan so much. I had brilliant experiences there - apart from the one night I walked through a red light district with my hubby and we were accosted by the Mamasans left right and centre. A few nights later, I walked through that area on my own and I was totally left alone.
The fact is Japanese people are polite anyway to each other, so that good customer service is a natural extension of their own culture. Singaporeans are fucking rude to each other, so trying to get them to smile and get into 'customer service mode' at work is a big ask when being polite is just not a park of their culture. I remember once in AMK, I was ordering chicken rice, I used a complete sentence, "Uncle 您好，请给我一份鸡饭，谢谢。" And he smirked and said, "Walau, say until liddat, next time say uncle one chicken rice can olredi." And I was like, holy fuck, I am so like a fish outta water here.
I can't help it - I think in English, then I translate what I want to say into whichever language I am speaking. I remember being in a Chinese restaurant with my brother in law and he said something like, "give me the chilli sauce" and I was mortified. But I suppose that's just the way Singaporeans speak and that's considered normal. I would say something like, "excuse me, hi - could you give me some chilli sauce please? Thank you." That's because I think people like service staff deserve to be treated with respect and you can't bark orders at them like they're your maids. Heck, I am even polite with my sister's maid whilst my family barks orders at her. I remember this happening in so many other countries as well - Turkey was another. I would do the same thing, I would say 'bir cay istiyorum lutfen' (I would like a tea please.) Whereas I remember the guy at the other table barking orders like, 'bir cay, bir su' (1 tea, 1 water).
But in French and I'm sure in Japanese, for example, you would never bark orders like that as it is a social taboo to be that abrupt and rude in those languages. The thing is that's coded in the language so we are taught to use polite phrases when ordering food for example - but English is different: we can be polite, but you don't have to be.
I believe one should say please and thank you whenever necessary regardless of the local culture. I would ignore that uncle's comment and be myself. Manners maketh man/woman. Just because Singaporeans are infamous for their rudeness doesn't mean that I should go down to their level. This is one instance where I do not follow the "Do as the Romans do" mantra.
Yes, they do. However, I get the feeling that they still regard them as hired help, which in essence they are. That is, the maids know their stations. They are fed the same food, and they are not abused in anyway, but there is still a barrier. If I ever have a live-in, I would be a lot friendlier and warmer to her because she is in my living space full-time.
As much as I know you hate China I would say that even for the cheapest hotel ($40 per nite) I have been too they attempted to provide a certain level of service. Unlike that time when I stayed at an international chain Holiday Inn at Basingstoke where I had to ring the bell for both checking-in and out since the reception was unmanned. The paid internet was horrendously slow and I posted a review about that hotel to TripAdvisor. And worst of all they overcharged me so I had to waste 15min arguing over the bill during checkout. But with a single sample size I won't stereotype UK as having horrible service.
ReplyDeleteAs for the service quality in SG it is abysmal, no contest.
I have far less experience in China than you have my friend, but in my last trip, it was a bit hit and miss - I stayed in two places (one near Houhai and one right in Shekou) and I encountered some members of staff who were brilliant and others who were clueless. It just made me think that there's no training, no quality control - that's why the useless idiots continue working there and continue making stupid mistakes. And the worst I encountered was at Citigo which was supposed to be quite a nice place, but some of the staff there were utterly useless. Then I stayed at this cheap and tacky place right next to the Shekou port terminal prior to my ferry to Macau and the staff at the cheap place were both English speaking and totally helpful. Go figure. None of the staff at Citigo spoke a word of English and just stared at my hubby blankly when he approached them and asked him, "ni neng shuo putonghua ma?"
DeleteAs for the UK, again, hit and miss like my China experience lah, I have traveled around the UK for work as well and have stayed at places like the ones you've described. Some good, some bad, kinda dependent on your luck I'm afraid. I have had some great experiences and some awful ones. The best ones I've had tend to be in Wales!
As for SG, again, hit and miss - but there you go. Let's compare it all to Japan, where they hold the gold standard for service.
I have had more misses than hits in Sg, maybe because I don't pay top dollar for 5* service but at places where I had to pay a service charge I never had acceptable service. This is probably due to lack of manpower and lack of training. Even flying the famed SQ I don't see stellar service so can't justify paying so much. And since I'm usually paying so much more in Singapore I have a harsher judging criteria but even if I were to lower my standards they still wouldn't pass.
DeleteAs for Japan and Taiwan they are usually top notch service wise and the service personnel always go above and beyond in everything they do. A Japanese hotel once snail mailed a mobile adaptor from Japan to Singapore, completely FOC, which I left in their room. They same thing happened when my wife left her bracelet in one hotel in Suzhou but in this case it was local shipping, also FOC.
I struggle to think of a position example for Singapore and I have booked rooms in expensive hotels like St Regis Singapor and Sheraton Towers. In fact there was a horrible service failing at St Regis during one of my ex-company's DND but I won't share it here since they made a service recovery attempt.
Hi there. Yes I've flown SQ on my trip from Singapore to Australia as they offered a great package but quite frankly, I couldn't see why they are so much more expensive than everyone else.
DeleteAnd oh yes, TAIWAN! I love Taiwan so much. I had brilliant experiences there - apart from the one night I walked through a red light district with my hubby and we were accosted by the Mamasans left right and centre. A few nights later, I walked through that area on my own and I was totally left alone.
The fact is Japanese people are polite anyway to each other, so that good customer service is a natural extension of their own culture. Singaporeans are fucking rude to each other, so trying to get them to smile and get into 'customer service mode' at work is a big ask when being polite is just not a park of their culture. I remember once in AMK, I was ordering chicken rice, I used a complete sentence, "Uncle 您好，请给我一份鸡饭，谢谢。" And he smirked and said, "Walau, say until liddat, next time say uncle one chicken rice can olredi." And I was like, holy fuck, I am so like a fish outta water here.
I think you were too polite, you should have just said something like 黑/白鸡饭吃/包的 and that would have sufficed.
DeleteI can't help it - I think in English, then I translate what I want to say into whichever language I am speaking. I remember being in a Chinese restaurant with my brother in law and he said something like, "give me the chilli sauce" and I was mortified. But I suppose that's just the way Singaporeans speak and that's considered normal. I would say something like, "excuse me, hi - could you give me some chilli sauce please? Thank you." That's because I think people like service staff deserve to be treated with respect and you can't bark orders at them like they're your maids. Heck, I am even polite with my sister's maid whilst my family barks orders at her. I remember this happening in so many other countries as well - Turkey was another. I would do the same thing, I would say 'bir cay istiyorum lutfen' (I would like a tea please.) Whereas I remember the guy at the other table barking orders like, 'bir cay, bir su' (1 tea, 1 water).
DeleteBut in French and I'm sure in Japanese, for example, you would never bark orders like that as it is a social taboo to be that abrupt and rude in those languages. The thing is that's coded in the language so we are taught to use polite phrases when ordering food for example - but English is different: we can be polite, but you don't have to be.
I believe one should say please and thank you whenever necessary regardless of the local culture. I would ignore that uncle's comment and be myself. Manners maketh man/woman. Just because Singaporeans are infamous for their rudeness doesn't mean that I should go down to their level. This is one instance where I do not follow the "Do as the Romans do" mantra.
DeleteWell Di, I'll always be the most polite man in the hawker center :)
DeleteI was also polite to my sister's maids. After all, she hand-squeezed oranges for us and ironed my shorts and t-shirts!
DeleteJust out of curiosity - does your sister's family treat their maid well?
DeleteYes, they do. However, I get the feeling that they still regard them as hired help, which in essence they are. That is, the maids know their stations. They are fed the same food, and they are not abused in anyway, but there is still a barrier. If I ever have a live-in, I would be a lot friendlier and warmer to her because she is in my living space full-time.
Delete