We’ve been on the streets of Saigon giving out some Connections fliers to tourists. My wife first did it with some of our young student volunteers. It was tough, she said. The common answer was ‘we’re leaving tomorrow’, if any answer was forthcoming at all. I tried it one Sunday morning. I thought it would be pleasant to be able to simply chat with a few backpackers, see where they are going and where they’ve been, but nay. The first people I approached who were bent over a map on a bench literally recoiled in horror as my lips moved in their direction. I felt dirty. Then, I started to think about it, and of course some random white guy roaming around Saigon striking up conversations would probably be incomprehensible to a SE Asia weary, tout hardened, paranoid backpacker.

Stash, we used to refer to at Uni and on our travels, is basically free stuff or something you can add to your collection. For example, the Island Divers T-shirt we all bought on Koh Phi Phi after completing dive certs was most definitely ’stash’. Hence the picture of my Connections stash.

So the idea behind the stash is to give our students a bit of an identity if they are direct marketing. I am cautious about both T-shirt and hat together, it’s pushing the boundary on good taste and it’s not really the message behind what we are trying to achieve, stepping away from horribly organised tourism. The T-shirt by itself is quiet smart, so I declared thou shalt not wear ye hat together with thine T-shirt. Tis cheesy.

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