Out of Africa

MALAYSIANS ABROAD
By MAJORIE CHIEW

A safari tour operator finds excitement in the game parks of Kenya. 

Fact File
NAME: Vincent D. Naidu
AGE: 49
HOMETOWN: Kuala Lumpur
EDUCATION: Methodist Boys School, Sentul, Kuala Lumpur; Newport University, California
OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur and safari tour operator
CURRENT BASE: Nairobi
YEARS ABR OAD: 16
E-MAIL: vincent@timeless-safaris.com 

SAFARI tours are truly adventurous. You never know what wildlife you’re going to see, says Vincent Naidu, an entrepreneur and safari tour operator in Kenya. 

For someone who has been on numerous safaris and enjoyed dramatic landscapes and exciting wildlife, seeing elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard – which he thinks is the most elusive of the Big Five – roaming about may just be another day on the job. But his adrenaline gets pumping when he “sees predators hunt”. 

Naidu gushes: “The greatest moment is to see a cheetah or lion stalking for a kill! 

Nature lover: Vincent Naidu operates safari tours in Nairobi.

“I’ve also seen a pack of hyenas setting on a dead and bloated elephant, tearing its guts out, while vultures hovered overhead.”  

Another time, he saw a buffalo killing a hyena in an attempt to protect its calf.  

The first time Naidu witnessed such a killing was in Masai Mara, a park reserve in south-western Kenya. 

“Masai Mara is a compulsory stop,” insists Naidu who was back in Kuala Lumpur recently. “It’s famous for its exceptional game and the annual migration (Great Migration) of zebra, Thomson’s gazelle and wildebeest from the Serengeti, from July to October. You need to stop at Masai Mara for a minimum of two nights to enjoy the safari.”  

Naidu relates the time when he was the guide for an American journalist from Rough Guides (travel guidebook). They were by the crocodile-infested Mala River for two days to stake out the Great Migration. 

When it happened, they sat in the thick of the excitement for eight hours, taking in all the sights of the perilous crossing! 

They also had a close call at the reserve. “Some 100m away, a lion jumped out of nowhere and went for an antelope. We’d gotten out of our vehicle although we were not supposed to. Luckily for us, the lion chose the antelope for food and not us,” he chuckles. 

Another interesting destination, says Naidu, is Lake Nakuru (in central Kenya). “It is a soda lake where you can see flamingoes by the thousands (due to the abundance of algae in the lake) and the black rhinoceros, an endangered species.” 

Then there’s Treetops (Hotel) in Aberdare National Park in central Kenya, which is best known as the place where Princess Elizabeth acceded to the throne after the death of her father George VI of Britain, in a visit in 1952. 

“She went up (Treetops, a resort on stilts) as a princess and came down as the queen of England the next day,” Vincent says, savouring every moment in retelling the story. 

In 1995, Naidu flew to Nairobi to visit his then German girlfriend, who was studying for her PhD in integrated pest management in Kenya. After three months, he fell in love with the country. 

“I realised Kenya has so much to offer. It was a land of opportunity, particularly in tourism. Masai Mara, for example, is the greatest game park in the world,” says Naidu, who says that 30% of his business is in safari tours and 70% in the education business. 

“Kenya has great weather and the people are very friendly.”  

He extended his stay in Kenya and a year later, started Timeless Safari Limited, an inbound tour company, with a South African partner, Alvin Jones, who also has club and casino businesses. 

Three months into the business, he brought in a group of 40 Singaporeans to join the safari tours. Later, his clients included tourists from India and then Scandinavia and Germany. 

As a travel consultant, he approached Kenyan tour operators to include Kuala Lumpur in their tour packages. They gave it a try and the first tourists (thanks to Naidu) to Malaysia were a family of five – a couple and their three children. 

“The Vora family were Gujeratis and third-generation Kenyans who enjoyed Kuala Lumpur and Malacca thoroughly,” he says. Three months later, the tour operators added Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Langkawi to their tour destinations.  

In 1997, Naidu and his partner set up Taipan Vacations and Travel in Nairobi to handle tours to the Far East. A year later, it became the third biggest tour operator in Kenya and the No.1 tour operator for the Far East. In 1999, it started promoting Borneo, Bali (for honeymooners) and China. 

Naidu says: “In August 1998, a bomb blast in the US Embassy in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania resulted in a ‘financial crisis’ when Kenya was branded as a terrorist country. The blast woke us up and we changed our business strategy and diversified into education.” In 2001, Taipan Vacations was sold off. 

Whilst it was getting difficult to obtain visas for Kenyan students heading to the United States and Britain, as they were regarded as “security threats”, the Malaysian Government was encouraging foreign students to come over. So in 1999 Naidu tied up with two private colleges in Malaysia and got the first batch of three Kenyan students to study in the country and, to date, continues to bring Kenyan students to Malaysia.  

In March, he formed the Malaysia-Kenya Business Council in Nairobi and is its interim chairman. The council, he says, is a platform for Malaysian businessmen to explore business opportunities in Africa. 

Naidu is the second in a family of four brothers. One is an engineer, another a restaurateur and the third, a food and beverage manager. 

He is now setting his sights on opening a Malaysian restaurant in Nairobi and expanding his education business with more tie-ups with Malaysian universities. He also hopes to promote Malaysian batik among the “huge expatriate community” in Nairobi.  

Next month, he plans to organise a Malaysian food fest in Nairobi and get Malaysian manufacturers to promote their products to prospective Kenyan investors.