I moonlight as a weekend tour guide. Yeah, I know, that sentence sounds glamorous. It isn’t, because I only do Batam and Bintan, which means waking up at 6 am or earlier on a Saturday, spending the whole day repeating the same spiel, and recovering on Sunday.
Being a weekend tour guide also comes with its share of disasters, like the very painful morning I woke up disoriented and badly hungover in a hotel room (my cousin was visiting) and realised I was seriously late. My cousin and a friend stuffed whatever they could into my go bag while I brushed my teeth. Then I rushed out the door, hailed a cab to HarbourFront and ran for the ferry, go bag in hand. It only waited for me because my colleague has a good rapport with the captain, and I spent the entire ride feeling guilty and thanking him profusely.
But on the flip side, it also means being appreciated and loved by a bunch of older aunties (I lead group tours), eating delicious Indo seafood for free, and pocketing enough tips to cover my lunches for the next work week.
Working as a weekend tour guide gives me a deeper appreciation for the hospitality industry and a whole new respect for every tour guide out there. It teaches me to memorise tidbits about the places I take my groups to (I know way more about Batam than I ever wanted to), and it teaches me discipline. Weirdly, it also makes me savour the weekends when I don’t have a tour.
But more than anything, I get to see the same place through the eyes of someone who has never been there, with the kind of awe we lose once things become familiar. The seafood, though, never gets old.
My weekends aren’t entirely mine, and some Saturdays I’d trade anything for a sleep in. Still, whenever I travel somewhere new as a regular tourist, I catch myself watching the guide at the front of the group, the one holding the flag and answering the same question for the fifth time with a smile, and I feel a little kinship. Being a weekend tour guide is exhausting, chaotic, and occasionally humbling, but it gives me stories, a soft spot for aunties on tour buses, and a way to see places I’ll carry with me long after I hang up the flag.
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