Chua Chin Hon gets lost while in an official Olympics media bus.

In Beijing

Getting help. ST Photo: Lee W.Y.

THERE are nearly 100,000 of them, all kitted out in cheery blue-and-white uniforms and ever-ready smiles.

Whether you are in town as a tourist or a journalist, you won't have missed this army of volunteers that the Chinese host has assembled for the Beijing Olympics.

Mainly students, this group of volunteers take on a whole range of duties ranging from the essential – translation and crowd control – to the seemingly bizarre – greeting journalists at the door when they enter the main press centre.

Casual conversations with them suggest that they work for nothing, and put up with the long hours and terrible food solely due to a desire to serve their country during the Olympics.

Their enthusiasm and spirit are certainly admirable, and would probably lay to rest worries about the country's "one-child" generation turning out to be a selfish, uncaring lot.

But in a massively complex operation like an Olympics, enthusiasm and a ready smile do not make up for their woefully inadequate training – something which is increasingly frustrating the press corps.

In the past week, I've lost track of the number of times when I approached these volunteers for basic information – where is the media entrance to this stadium? – and got in response what is arguably the most uttered phrase in the Beijing Games: "I don't know."

After being directed to wrong entrances, bounced around from counter-to-counter, this "I-don't-know" mania reached silly new heights on Sunday when the media bus that was supposed to ferry the reporting team to Peking University Gymnasium got lost!

This bus journey from the press centre was supposed to take about 20 minutes. But on Sunday afternoon, the bus driver, a temporary replacement for another chap who was caught in a traffic chap, began going in a strange detour around the main Olympics venue instead of heading to the gymnasium.

The volunteer on board the bus, a hapless teenage girl in glasses, looked traumatized as angry journalists demanded to know where they were going and how this could happen. The teenager, clearly not knowing the way to Peking University, could only assure that the driver was trying his best to find his way there.

The eventual journey took 50 minutes, more than twice the time taken.

A friend remarked that this is a classic example of the inefficiencies that China needs to overcome in its economy and elsewhere.

So here's a memo to the London organizers of the 2012 Olympics: A modest team of well-trained volunteers will beat an army of clueless undergraduates anytime.