31/10/2014
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After having finished our training in the classroom, it was the time to head out for the real fun experience at China Town, Indian town and the Flower Market following new tourism trend "Cultural and Creative tourism in practice". The activity does not attract only tourist guides and followers but also dominant national TV Channel 3 to observe and videotape our activities.
Our walk tours started at 13:00, and it was luckily that it was not a hot day. The tours started with the introduction of the the Chinese community and beliefs, then we walked through different allies around China town to explore the ways of living of the Chinese dating back to more than hundred years ago. The main street of China town is very interesting, but at the backyard is even more fascinating. There are many parts that most of the tour guides have never seen before until that day.
We stopped at many places in China town to taste some local specialties and delicacies. This is new experience in professional guiding that most of us have learned from this trip.
One of he most important issues of this activity is to encourage the guides to understand how to interpret what they see along the way effectively; how to link different stories together to make interesting explanation to the guests, and how to introduce the tourists to involve various forms of local culture that they have never had before. It is a true challenging to incorporate what the local people do in their daily life into creative tour programs and be interpreted to travelers from foreign cultures by creative tour guides.
In reality, the foreigners come to Thailand not just to see the temples and monuments, many of them also want to consume the culture or participate with locals in several ways. The one who can help them achieve what they want to pursue is inevitably the tour guides who can guide creatively.
