Green Around the Globe » Singapore

Backpacker to Business Class Part 2: The Staying

Keith — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:07:41 +0000

This is the second post in a series documenting the differences between traveling as a backpacker and as a business traveler. To see the first post in the series about the differences in air travel, please click here. Next, I want to cover the differences in accommodations.

One of the biggest questions people asked about our backpacking trip was, “What was it like to stay in hostels?” often asked with an intonation that implies that hostels must be dirty and terrible places to “have” to stay when traveling on a budget. So I thought I would compare my Singapore accommodations on both trips. While backpacking, Amy and I stayed at the lovely Sleepy Sam’s in the Arab section of Singapore, just down from the Masjid Sultan mosque.

We sprung for a private room ($62/night), but shared the bath, toilet and kitchen facilities with everyone. Included in that nightly fee was a simple breakfast of toast, jam and coffee, so we never really had to use the very nice kitchen.

Compare that to the luxurious Fairmont Hotel, which is located across the street from the famous Raffles Hotel, the birthplace of the Singapore Sling.

My room at the Fairmont ran $265/night, but did include a magnificent buffet breakfast every morning (which was most likely a huge contributor to the approximately 5lbs I gained on this trip despite working out 4 days in the Fairmount’s huge gym). The biggest difference probably has to be the beds. At the Fairmont there was a very comfortable king size bed with fresh sheets every 3 days. At Sleepy Sams the bed was a pretty thin mattress on a small platform. However, I will note that the free lobby wifi was MUCH slower than the wifi at Sleepy Sam’s.

All in all I am not sure that the Fairmont is worth the entire $1,100 premium that they charge over a place like Sleepy Sam’s for 6 nights in Singapore. In fact, at the Sustainable Brands 2011 Conference in Monterey, the second stop on my business trip, I learned about Google’s travel and expense system, Trips, that employs gamification principals to save the company money. As it was explained, the system works by allotting employees a set amount of funding for a trip to a city or region. If the employee is able to book and travel for less than the set amount, my understanding is that the employee has two options on what to do with the savings:

Bank the savings to use on a future trip – allowing you to stay at a luxury hotel; or
Donate the difference to charity.

If we had that system at Johnson & Johnson, I think that I may have honestly considered the option of staying at Sleepy Sam’s if I knew that I could bank the savings or donate it to charity. The potential $1,100 savings would have been a bit of an inconvenience and a little less comfortable, but if I am willing to take it on, I should share in the savings, right? What would you do? Let me know in the comments below. And if you work for Google (Kristin, I am talking to you) and I have this wrong please correct me.

Backpacker to Business Class Part 1: The Flying

Keith — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:52:32 +0000

I have just returned from my second RTW (round-the-world) trip in as many years. The first took me to 18 countries on 5 continents, took over 9 months to complete, cost me $31,124 (my half of the total) and was done as a self-funded backpacker. I just completed the second RTW trip as a business traveler. This time, the route took me east, over Northern Europe to Singapore, on to San Francisco, before the final eastern leg back to Philadelphia on June 12th. The trip took just over 2 weeks and will cost Johnson & Johnson a shade over $10,000 for me to attend a key regional meeting and an industry conference. To compare and contrast the two experiences, I will publish a series of upcoming posts about what was better, worse and just different between traveling as a backpacker and as a business traveler. Let’s get things kicked off with one of the biggest differences, flying business class.

While we did get a couple of nice upgrades on our backpacking trip, including an upgrade to economy-plus on the United flight from Chicago to Munich and the very clutch business class upgrade on Korea Air from Sydney to Seoul,

we were mostly back in economy. This was not too bad as most of the flights we took on the backpacking trip were less than 5 hours. Just enough time to read a magazine, write a blog post and maybe have a meal, as most international airlines, even the budget ones, still serve meals on flights of only an hour or two.

That is a huge contrast with my recent 18.5 hour flight on Singapore Airlines direct from Newark, NJ to Singapore, the longest direct flight in the world.

The entire plane is business class, with lay flat beds, personal entertainment systems and meals of seared tuna and fresh bread served on real china.

And while the amenities and services on the plane were a huge benefit, and made being in the air for that long not only tolerable, but downright enjoyable, it was the benefits in the airport that made the most difference in my flying experience. It all starts with the check-in. As I was traveling for business, I had a suitcase for luggage rather than my Osprey backpack, and there was no additional charge for checked bags (I am sure it is covered in the $6,500 ticket cost). I was then directed to the business class lounge which had complementary wifi, beer, wine, and small bites before boarding.

The flight was long, but covered the nearly 10,000 miles in astonishing comfort and speed. One of the key benefits of this long flight is that Singapore Air is a Star Alliance member, resulting in me achieving Silver status on US Air from this one flight. With Silver status I was able to get a free upgrade to domestic first class for the final flight back to Philadelphia, which allowed me to complete the entire trip in business/first class. And as Amy remarked when we quickly checked our luggage ahead of a very, very, long, bleary-eyed and irritated looking economy class check-in line at 5:15am in the San Francisco airport, “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure does get you a whole lot of convenience.” Not to mention a free bloody mary or two on the flight home. What do you think, is business class worth the dedication to slavishly flying one airline?

Southeast Asia Highlights

Keith — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:31:40 +0000

After a 4 hour upload to YouTube (and still less than stellar resolution) our highlight video from our two months in the southern region of Southeast Asia including; Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia is finally up. With this being our second regional highlights video it warrants a new page under the Pictures & Video page, introducing the Regional Travel Video page. As we complete each regional highlight video (one about every two months) we will post it there. Don’t worry though, for the amount of work these take (6-8 hours each), we will also be doing a post about each one as it is completed. So if you are a facebook fan or subscriber to our email updates you will find out as soon as it goes up. And if you are are not, what is stopping you?

Enjoy the video and the snow if you are in on the East Coast in the States.

Food and Friends in Singapore

Amy — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:01:41 +0000

Like the eye of a storm, Singapore is a center of calm, cleanliness and order in the chaos that is Southeast Asia. Upon crossing the border from Malaysia, I was immediately struck by the beautiful, lush landscaping, the trash-free curbs and the pedestrians waiting patiently at crosswalks. But what truly made our five days in this modern and efficient city-state fantastic was the incredible hospitality of Anand Samuel, a good friend of mine from law school.

Anand, who grew up in Singapore and now lives in New York, just happened to be back home visiting when we arrived in Singapore, and was more than generous in showing us around his hometown and introducing us to his wonderful friends and family. We celebrated our arrival with Singapore Slings at the ultra-touristy but must see Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel, the bar that originated the drink. The rest of our time in Singapore was a whirlwind of delicious meals at hawker stands and food courts, parties with Anand’s local friends, and a fabulously informative private tour of the National Museum of Singapore led by Anand’s mom, a docent at the museum.

A highlight of the National Museum was the Living Gallery – Food, a fantastic display of food-related artifacts and sound installations from the 1950s to the 1970s. The exhibition is designed to demonstrate how street food reflects the ethnic diversity and cross-cultural exchanges of Singapore. Best of all was the context the exhibition provided for our delicious culinary adventures at the Newton Hawker Center – chili crab, bak kut teh (pork rib soup), oyster omelet and Hainanese chicken rice, just to name a few of the many dishes we sampled.

After stuffing ourselves with Singapore’s gastronomic delights, it was great to get off the tourist trail and meet locals, getting some perspective on what life is like for young professionals in Singapore. Not only did we get to meet friendly and interesting people, we were also able to get a unique insight into what our lives could be like if we lived and worked in Singapore. Unlike anywhere else we’ve traveled to, in Singapore we were able to see the city through the eyes of our local peers and really picture ourselves living there. The city is melting pot of different cultures with English as the official language, it’s clean, green and easy to navigate, and, of course, there’s the amazing food. If it weren’t for the endless heat and humidity (profusely sweating immediately upon exiting anywhere with air conditioning was a common phenomenon), Singapore could give Philly a run for its money as our adopted hometown.

It was also eye opening when we realized how many of Anand’s friends have lived, worked, studied or extensively travelled abroad. These Singaporeans are truly global citizens. It seemed like everyone we met had tales to tell from adventures in other parts of the world, and their enthusiasm for travel and experiencing other cultures was energizing after three months on the road.

***

The Singapore Sling was created at the Raffles Hotel at the turn of the 20^th century by Hainanese-Chinese bartender Ngiam Tong Boon.

Recipe

30ml Gin
15ml Heering Cherry Liqueur
120ml Pineapple Juice
15ml Lime Juice
7.5ml Cointreau
7.5ml Dom Benedictine
10ml Grenadine
A Dash of Angostura Bitters
Garnish with a slice of Pineapple and Cherry

Singapore Pictures

Keith — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:01:08 +0000

Check out our pictures from our 5 days in Singapore.

Sustainability Symbols, Icons and Certifications

Keith — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:00:31 +0000

Communicating to consumers that a product has an environmental benefit can be a difficult and complex issue. Trying to explain all of the reasons why the product is better due to sustainable features such as using recycled materials, having a low-carbon footprint, being organic or being locally sourced is a complicated and long list. That is why a lot of products use of one of the many icons, certifications or 3^rd party endorsements available, and there are many to choose from. A quick Google Image search turned up these 6.

All are an attempt to quickly communicate that the product is “better for the environment”. One of the best examples of making a complex sustainability message easy to understand is LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental and Design. This is the sustainable building certification process created and managed by the US Green Building Council in the United States. One of the most visible aspects of the program to the average consumer are the plaques that a building owner is entitled to put on the front of their building to communicate to everyone going by that this building is a LEED certified building. This, like all icons, allows the consumer to instantly understand that this building is better for the environment than one that is not certified by LEED.

Being familiar with these plaques and seeing more and more of them in the States, I was perplexed on our recent stop in Singapore. As we walked through a couple of the malls in the downtown area, including City Square Mall, I saw signs and even plasma televisions extolling the many features that were designed into these new buildings to make them more environmentally friendly. They also included the measurable impact, i.e. tons of carbon saved, swimming pools of water saved, etc. as part of the consumer education campaign. What I did not see was any communication of what official certification, if any, the mall had achieved. It led me to do some digging to see if Singapore in fact did have a sustainable building certification process similar to LEED in the US. Turns out they do in fact have quite a robust process, Green Mark, that has been in place since 2005, and they even have a pretty good logo. My question is why are they not better at branding their achievements?

It seems that the lesson of the Hybrid Honda Civic has not been shared with the leadership of the BCA (Building and Construction Authority), which oversees Green Mark in Singapore. Part of what makes the Prius so successful in the US is that the car is a rolling statement by the driver. It is a status symbol, pure green consumer social capital that is awfully hard to miss as the car has such a distinctive design. The first generation Hybrid Honda Civic, however, looked exactly the same as the non-hybrid car, the only difference being a small badge on the back. The result, as of April 2008, is that despite a much lower price, Hybrid Honda Civics have sold 80% fewer cars than the Prius[1]. Consumers that are looking for a more environmentally sustainable product, especially with a significant purchase such as a car, house or office space, want to ensure that the premium they paid for an environmentally superior choice sends a message, so making that message easy to communicate and understand is critical.

I would offer that a major success for LEED in the States has been the effective marketing they do jointly with developers and building owners to promote their certification. A major contributor of the value for the building owner is the LEED certification, as it helps to command higher rents and attract increased numbers of potential tenants. Green Mark needs to quickly invest in establishing their band to ensure they continue to provide value to the developers that choose to go through the certification process.

What do you think? If you were to invest in a more sustainable purchase, like a car, house, or office space, would you want to ensure it was easy to talk about it?

[1] Source: http://www.hybridcars.com/market-dashboard/april-2008-hybrids-defy-recession.html referenced on January 16, 2010

Backpacker v. Flashpacker

Amy — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:13:23 +0000

Flashpacker: a tech-savvy adventurer who often prefers to travel with a cell phone, digital camera, iPod and a laptop. The term also reflects a growing demographic of travelers who are forsaking traditional organized travel, venturing to destinations once the reserve of more adventurous backpackers, and the increasing number of individuals who leave well paid jobs or take ‘career breaks’, using the time to travel independently, but with greater comfort and many of the gadgets they are accustomed to at home.[1]

Hello, my name is Amy, and I am…a flashpacker. It’s official. Keith and I fit squarely into the definition and have accepted that despite the 15 kilogram packs on our backs, we are not backpackers.

Our realization and acceptance of this label occurred last week in Singapore, when we arrived at the Backpacker’s Cozy Corner Guesthouse. We arrived to a dirty, characterless hostel where the rooms were windowless, the sheets stained and the wifi nonexistent. We were at least ten years older than the other travelers who were roaming the bleak hallways with that dazed, still-hung-over-even-though-it’s-4pm look in their eyes. Our five-night reservation was immediately reduced to one night, and our first afternoon in Singapore was spent searching for a new place to stay.

We found what we were looking for at Sleepy Sam’s Bed & Breakfast: wifi, lockers for our valuables, a secure entrance both to our room and to the hostel itself, a clean kitchen for self-catering, comfortable common areas and a slightly older and less hung-over looking crowd. Our room itself was smaller than at Cozy Corner, and the walls were paper thin, but for the extra $30 a night we had peace of mind, clean sheets and the ability to stay in touch with friends and family, work on our blog and research the next leg of our journey.

Looking back, we probably should have realized long ago that we weren’t cut out for the low-budget backpacking scene. We’ve never been thrilled when staying in a hostel with “backpacker” in its name, and given our age, the amount of electronic gear we’re carrying and our proclivity for tour guides it should have been obvious. I suppose we all must pass through denial – i.e. that we are no longer twenty-two and willing to sleep (or pass out) anywhere – before reaching acceptance. We are flashpackers, flashpacking around the world, hopping from one wifi enabled hostel to the next on this well-guided and technologically connected adventure.

Are you a backpacker, flashpacker, or something else entirely?

[1] Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpacking_%28travel%29#Flashpacking