Anders
00:00 – 00:01
A bit of a reprieve.

Mark
00:03 – 00:05
Yeah. So there’s some cool

Anders
00:05 – 00:10
days coming up, going to be 23 and 24 and 22. Are you having

Mark
00:10 – 00:16
issues with droughts and wildfires and all of that?

Anders
00:17 – 00:41
There’s a lot of fires going on but not in area at the moment. There was 1 in Western Victoria in the Grampian and pretty strongly when we’re away but I haven’t heard much lately so I’ve got it under control, but I say most of me news on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Mark
00:42 – 01:07
yeah, that’s 1 of my resolutions for the new year. I’m trying to cut down on news because you know most of it is just yeah and so negative always so negative it’s really much of it is clickbait obviously but but but still it’s just you know there’s so much bad news and and I’m kind of figuring you know if it’s important enough then you’ll hear about

Anders
01:07 – 01:21
it anyway yeah We’ve got a federal election coming up in about 4 months. So the next 4 months will this be a World of bullshit getting spewed out by both parties. Yeah, they will never keep time anyway So

Mark
01:21 – 01:58
we got we got the same thing going on in is what they call a speed election because the the the the the chancellor resigned Earlier than expected And now we have an election coming up in 6 weeks. And it’s just, it’s for German standards, that is very fast. And Yeah, well, the extreme lefts and the extreme rights, you know, they are thriving and real politics, you know, takes place in the middle on middle ground, more or less, if you want anything done.

Anders
01:59 – 02:05
There’s a whole movement of nationalism. Yes. Sweeping countries at the moment.

Mark
02:05 – 02:06
Yes.

Anders
02:06 – 02:13
I don’t necessarily say it is a bad thing sometimes, like some of it is constructive, but some it’s obviously not constructive.

Mark
02:14 – 02:15
Exactly, Exactly right.

Anders
02:15 – 02:19
I think there’s a whole nationalist movement.

Mark
02:22 – 03:00
Here in Europe, it’s like the political establishment, they’ve obviously failed to deliver because there are more people than ever in desperate need of affordable housing and paying jobs and stuff like that. And they just don’t seem to be able to deliver. That’s when the wings, the extreme lefts, the extreme rights, they thrive on stuff like that. So I really wish that the establishment could just get their act together and just, you know. Yeah. So

Anders
03:01 – 03:05
in the absence of any real leadership, you know people will believe what they want to believe

Mark
03:05 – 03:06
and exactly

Anders
03:07 – 03:08
Look for something else.

Mark
03:08 – 03:22
Yeah, exactly That’s that’s exactly right. Yeah Yeah, so Let’s jump right on to Thailand and Bangkok and all the stuff that we didn’t manage

Anders
03:22 – 03:30
Let meget Google photos up here. As we talk about a few things.

Mark
03:32 – 03:47
Maybe I have some old memories that I can dig up. Let’s introduce ourselves. Hello and welcome to Southern Summers and Northern Winters. Once again, hi Mark. How are you doing this Monday?

Anders
03:48 – 03:53
I am fine and is Another week. Well, it’s not really another week because we only chatted on Friday night.

Mark
03:53 – 03:54
Yeah, we did

Anders
03:54 – 04:06
So so really another weekend. Yeah has gone by here in Australia and in and Germany for that matter Yeah, it’s been a nice weekend here. I’ve had the weekend off It was pretty warm and sunny

Mark
04:07 – 04:15
Yeah, we just chatted before we started the recording here 28 degrees currently in where you are

Anders
04:17 – 04:23
Nice and very warm actually 1 of the warmest summers we’ve had here for a while.

Mark
04:24 – 04:37
Yeah, and I’m sitting here in Munich with minus 5 degrees. We’re talking celsius degrees here so for anyone listening elsewhere wondering that doesn’t sound like much 28 it’s

Anders
04:42 – 04:45
uses the other temperature gauge besides Americans I don’t

Mark
04:45 – 04:54
know Fahrenheit is I don’t know and no I think even the Canadians they use Celsius don’t they

Anders
04:54 – 05:05
so we can all get our act together and use kilometers and not miles, you know, meters and not yards, you know. Yeah. Centigrade and not Fahrenheit, like, you know, let’s make it 1.

Mark
05:05 – 05:10
But then we could go on Mark because you’re in a country where you drive in the wrong side of the streets, you know.

Anders
05:10 – 05:42
I’m not quite sure about that, but you are correct. We could change sides and possibly Australia should change sides because that was 1 of the reasons the auto industry in Australia Failed a few years ago in the end because manufacturers had to Make cars to make the driving on our side for the cars and there was an extra expense in that so I think that’s why General Motors pulled the pin from Australia because it was costing them too much and they weren’t selling enough cars to warrant it so

Mark
05:43 – 05:45
oh I didn’t know that yeah

Anders
05:45 – 06:05
yeah and they drive on the same side or they have the same steering wheel on Right hand side. Yeah. Yeah there because most car plants in the world is set up for left-hand side because that’s where the majority of vehicles But majority of countries, you know sit on the left when they drive and not the

Mark
06:06 – 06:15
right. It’s funny because who on earth decided to do something differently? Now we’re going to do it in the other side.

Anders
06:17 – 06:36
I mean I’ve driven from England like into France and you go from 1 side of the road to the other side of the road yeah you also go from miles to kilometers yes so yeah England and France drive on opposite sides and they use opposite speed measurements. So just to make it all that more interesting.

Mark
06:37 – 07:31
Exactly. I can remember 1 horrible evening arriving late by plane into Dublin airport in Ireland and we rented a car, we’re going to the other side, we’re going to Galway. It was raining, it was dark and we just got out of the airport area and through Dublin, rush hour and obviously I was not accustomed to the other side of driving and it was a nightmare. And in 1 crossing intersection I was in the wrong side of the street. I mean it was near the airport. It was near the airport so I think that the other drivers they were thinking oh there’s another tourist.

Anders
07:31 – 08:04
Yeah most definitely. Yeah I think the first time I drove on the wrong side of the road in Portugal which was quite alright because it was in the winter so it was off season, there wasn’t many tourists around so I had the most of the roads to myself but I can still remember having to go pick up this rental car by myself because Rebecca had the kids and they were only little at that stage so this company come picked me up and took me to their office, we were staying in I think it’s called Elbufiera I think it

Mark
08:04 – 08:04
was the

Anders
08:04 – 08:05
name of the town.

Mark
08:06 – 08:06
We were

Anders
08:06 – 08:15
staying there and they drove me about 5km up the road to pick up this car. And I reckon driving back to the hotel was 1 of the most nerve wracking moments of my life.

Mark
08:15 – 08:16
Yeah.

Anders
08:18 – 08:21
You’re all of a sudden sitting on the opposite side. So

Mark
08:21 – 08:46
all of a sudden, you’re very aware of your movements and, you know, yeah, but it really, it really doesn’t, It doesn’t take that long. It’s really about an hour or 2 into, then you just sort of get gotten used to it. I mean, we spent 3 months in Australia and 3 months in New Zealand. And I didn’t think much about it

Anders
08:47 – 08:48
after a while, do you?

Mark
08:48 – 08:50
No, that’s just how it was.

Anders
08:50 – 09:38
The first couple of days Rebecca would always be saying to me, you’re drifting, you’re drifting like to walk on the road. After a while you tend to get used to it, especially if you’ve got a little bit of time to relax. Like I said, if you’re in a situation like you were in Dublin where all of a sudden you’re just in the middle of everything and I had that same situation when I landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport and picked the rental car up from there and there was this traffic everywhere. But luckily I was heading into the country in France up the north where the World War 1 and World War 2 sites were so I was quickly out of the action but but yeah it was it was a little bit eye-opening in a city besides Paris trying to get out of their airport and I hadn’t actually driven a car on that side for about 3 years at that stage.

Anders
09:38 – 09:39
So, oh

Mark
09:39 – 09:46
yeah. Yeah, that’s yeah. But you know, accidents happen in those situations. So you really have to take care.

Anders
09:46 – 09:47
Yeah, they do.

Mark
09:47 – 09:49
Yeah. So yeah,

Anders
09:49 – 10:14
especially overseas countries like for us, like Australia’s got pretty low speed limits compared to compared to world standards like you know as fast as you can drive in Victoria is 110 kilometers an hour and that’s only on certain sections of the road, most sections it’s only 100 on the open road so you get to some places in you know France I think there was speed limits up to 140, Germany there’s no speed limits in some places.

Mark
10:15 – 10:16
Exactly. I can see

Anders
10:16 – 10:24
how people who come from other countries don’t drive on that normal side of the road can end up having accidents and things like that.

Mark
10:24 – 11:24
Absolutely. I think it’s crazy. I mean, yeah, here in Bavaria in southern Germany, we do have highways with no speed limits and there’s a certain niche tourism catering for those speed junkies and they come here and they’re obviously not accustomed to high speed. And then they come here and they can drive whatever sport car they rent and put other people’s lives at risk, dare say, because I think a couple of years ago, some idiot driver died. Fortunately, I would say He died alone. He crashed his car at high speed and just fell off the road and nothing else happened.

Mark
11:24 – 11:42
But you know he could easily have hit some other innocent driver. And I think it was only last year someone posted a YouTube video driving almost 400 kilometers an hour on a stretch here in a Bugatti.

Anders
11:42 – 11:44
Very little room for a mistake there.

Mark
11:44 – 11:49
I mean, what goes through your mind when you do stuff like that it’s just

Anders
11:50 – 12:10
like easy to do if you’re not used to it like I had an experience with this like I think in possibly outside of Munich maybe 1990 2003 we’re going to the Garmish Partican yeah that’s down south in it towards Yosemite. It

Mark
12:10 – 12:11
is, yeah.

Anders
12:11 – 13:02
I was with my wife and a friend, he was a nurse and his wife was a nurse and a carload of Japanese tourists had rolled their car up in a bank at high speed so we had to pull over and help all they did while we sort of tried to help but and much like a movie scene, ambulances just flew in, landed on the, landed on the autobahn, shut the autobahn down, you know, took these people away. But 2 of them were dead, in the car, so that was quite sad. But, but yeah, so once again, this is obviously people driving too fast that are not used to it from from foreign countries yeah lost control on a corner and rolled up an investment that was simple as that there was the end of you know a couple of them yeah that if sad for people to go on holiday and never come back.

Anders
13:02 – 13:03
That’s for sure.

Mark
13:04 – 13:48
Having said that though, it’s sometimes because I’ve been living here for quite some time now and obviously I regularly drive a car on the Autobahn. So I’m always able to identify like my fellow Danes because they drive slowly and they always take the middle lane. Oh, there’s another Dane. But in Denmark, I mean, at some sections you can drive 130 kilometers per hour. Mostly it’s 110. Yeah. So that’s similar to Australia. 110.

Anders
13:48 – 13:50
I just don’t think the roads are good enough in Australia.

Mark
13:51 – 13:54
No, no. Yeah. Yeah.

Anders
13:54 – 13:58
You got to have really good roads if you want to drive. Yeah. True.

Mark
13:58 – 14:29
True that. Which is another thing. There’s always like construction work going on in Germany because we have so many, so many highways that it’s just, there’s always something. On a trip from Munich to Denmark, which is 1, 200 kilometers to my mom in Denmark, you are bound to get into about, I don’t know, 10 construction sites on the way because there’s always something going on.

Anders
14:29 – 14:30
And It

Mark
14:30 – 15:11
doesn’t really matter which route you choose. Because we can go through the former East Germany. There are newer roads there, but still now they’re approaching an age where they need to be maintained. Or if you go through the old West Germany, where the highways are much older, but they’re renewing these all over now. The German A7, which is the most crowded, I guess, it goes from Flensburg in north all the way down to to the very south of Germany the a7

Anders
15:11 – 15:13
actually going to Flensburg I think

Mark
15:13 – 15:16
yeah it’s a border to Denmark yeah yeah

Anders
15:16 – 15:20
I caught a ferry up there to is it Leland or lowland

Mark
15:20 – 15:20
yeah

Anders
15:23 – 15:51
yeah so I caught a ferry from from there 1 day to Denmark to the island to 1 of them islands there and there’s a long time it’s going back a long long way and yeah and came back and I think there’s a city called Le Beaux up there. There’s a submarine somewhere in northern Germany on the shores. Yeah. Long time ago this is 2003 so I’m stretching the memory way back there.

Mark
15:53 – 16:57
Yeah, no, so yeah there’s a lot of construction going on every year every summer and you think you know Maybe it’s a good advice to people coming into Germany, driving through Germany. If there’s any chance at all that you can do it, drive at night. That’s what we usually do because When we go from Munich to Denmark in the summer, we go every summer for some weeks and we try to leave like 09:00 in the evening. And it takes about 12, 13 hours. And then we arrive for the late breakfast at my mom’s place the next day and we drive through the night but it’s so much easier there are no there are no stow a stow is a you know stop and go There are very few of those during the night, less trucks, stuff like that.

Anders
16:57 – 17:08
I remember like specifically about Europe and Germany, the amount of trucks that are on the, the amount of lorries or you know, trucks that are traversing the continent taking goods you know all over the place.

Mark
17:08 – 17:43
Yeah and Germany is in the middle of everything so you know all trucks have to go through Germany. There was 1 because I was really pissed off 1 time and I was behind 1 of those big trucks with, I think it was a double truck, double trailer. And then it says on the back, the very back of that trailer, it says, you know, without me, your fridge would be empty. Which is true. Yes,

Anders
17:44 – 17:46
they’ve got a gentle wire putting thing.

Mark
17:46 – 18:25
Yeah, they do. Yeah, but they did not really maintain the railroads, the railways for many, many years now. They’re trying to get back into the swing of things with putting things on rails again, which would be better for the overall traffic situation here. It’s, it’s really, there are a lot of bottlenecks, particularly around the bigger cities. So, so if you can go at night please don’t because that that will that will help you a lot that will help you a lot

Anders
18:25 – 18:27
you saw go at night then Anders will be able to go during the

Mark
18:27 – 18:39
day yes true true But speaking of driving in the wrong side of the road, you went to Thailand, but did you, did you, you didn’t drive, did you? You didn’t rent a car there?

Anders
18:39 – 18:55
I’ve never driven in, I’ve never driven in Asia on purpose because there is a lot of crazy traffic, even though they seem to be very calm. They have a way of doing it where no 1 gets angry whereas in Australia people would be yelling and screaming at each other.

Mark
18:55 – 18:57
Same in Germany, yes.

Anders
18:57 – 19:30
So much in Thailand or even Bali. They seem to have a calmness about the mayhem and they just work it out and let each other go. No 1 seems to be in a rush. Like you know whereas in western countries we all seem to be in a rush. Yeah. But some exciting news I will be driving March the 8th for a motorbike loss and then I’m hopefully going to go to Lombok which is an island just off Arleigh, hopefully in May and we might be able to hire some scooters for once and actually go for a cruise around.

Anders
19:30 – 20:30
Around so that’s my that’s my goal like part of our goal obviously is to travel long-term at some stage in 2 years time or so until the younger daughter finishes school and I thought part of that would we require motorbike life. Yeah. We live in Bali for 3 months or Vietnam for 3 months or somewhere We need to be able to get around like infants. You know down to the shop to a supermarket or something like that Probably not so much keen on driving around in Bangkok or hoaching The place like Bali or or some of the smaller smaller city is probably okay So we thought we better go and get our full motorbike license because without them you can’t actually get travel insurance and if you have a crash on your motorbike overseas on your scooter you know you could be up for a fortune with no cover and then you’re in real trouble so we thought we’d do it the proper way and make sure we had licenses so then travel insurance will cover us.

Mark
20:30 – 20:45
Oh yeah well that sounds exciting that sounds exciting but I agree with you driving a car through Bangkok that would be my worst nightmare. Yeah

Anders
20:46 – 21:00
Thank you. We caught a lot of taxis while we were in Bangkok. 1 thing about big cities is you can never go too fast anyway because the traffic is pretty gridlocked.

Mark
21:00 – 21:01
Yeah, it is.

Anders
21:01 – 21:28
So you’re only just putting along but you know the whole Whole when you don’t live there, you know the positioning of the car, you know, I can’t make turn here Well, you know, I needed to be on that side 200 meters or ago, you know Yeah, probably the hardest part in places you don’t know is to make sure you’re on the right side or you know when you’re exits coming up and things like this Can be a real issue if you’re driving in Asia.

Mark
21:29 – 21:44
Yes We were driving once we were driving the tuk-tuks in Bangkok and that seemed to work pretty well and they seemed pretty fast I mean, yeah, that was that was actually a great way to get around, you know

Anders
21:50 – 22:02
like being in Mario Kart in person though. You know like, except you’re not driving, they zip around and they’re loud and you know and they’ve got fumes flying out the back room and they’re darting in and out of traffic. But you seem to get everywhere really really quickly.

Mark
22:02 – 22:03
Yeah you

Anders
22:03 – 22:33
do. I don’t know whether it’s because they’re smaller than the car or not but comparative pricing they were fairly cheap as well like I would I would before I would approach 1 I would know how much like my ride share which in Asia is called Grab, obviously in Europe and America it’s called Uber or different things like that. So I’d always get a price off the ride share app first so I sort of had a rough idea before you go and approach the Tuk Tuk drivers because they obviously, they’re obviously looking for tourists and they want extra money.

Anders
22:33 – 22:40
So if you have a rough idea about how much it costs you, you can negotiate a bit better price with them.

Mark
22:40 – 23:26
Yeah, true. We fell into that typical tourist scheme once. It was at the hotel. They arranged for us to go somewhere on a tuk-tuk and obviously, you know, they were just waiting for people like us to come out of the hotel and, you know, so we ended up, for a few hours, this tuk-tuk driver took us to some temples. And but then around noon, it was time to eat something. And he took us to tourist restaurants and he wanted to to bring us to some shops where he would get commission. I didn’t need a new tailored suit or anything.

Mark
23:27 – 24:09
I mean, it was just so Towards the afternoon, he was getting more and more pissed with us because he couldn’t rip us off. You know, we went into this restaurant and the excuse was, yeah, well, we can’t bring tourists to any of the normal street food restaurants because your stomachs can’t handle it, which is a load of BS of course. So that was both a good experience and a bad experience because we had it pretty early on on our long one-year journey around the world. So we kind of had a wake up call there and it wasn’t too expensive.

Mark
24:09 – 24:34
Yeah, it wasn’t too expensive for us either. So it was okay, but it was just, I was annoyed that they were, you know, because we had, at the time our son Anton was only like 3 years old. Come on, we have a little, we have a little child here. You could at least be respectful of a small child family, but they were just trying to get by, you know,

Anders
24:34 – 24:45
it’s just the sad part about people doing that to you is it actually, it actually makes you think that everyone who approaches you when you’re overseas

Mark
24:45 – 24:45
Exactly

Anders
24:46 – 25:23
is wanting to rip you off. Yeah Because I get defensive all the time now when someone approaches me because I think okay, what do they want? You know, what’s it gonna cost me? Well, yes to do and yeah, Some people legitimately don’t some people are legitimately just friendly or just want to tell you something But yeah, yeah, there you go. Okay, they’re gonna tell me something now They’re gonna want 10 dollars for telling you this, you know So yeah, it’s in 1 way It’s pretty sad because that’s how it makes you it makes you view the world in that eyes, which is not good.

Anders
25:23 – 25:26
But you just can’t tell, can you, between who’s trying to take it

Mark
25:26 – 25:35
to your eyes? And who’s trying to… No, that’s the thing. Sometimes It’s too late when you realize, you know, oh man, this is a ripoff, you know.

Anders
25:35 – 26:07
Well, it is. Like we had the same experience in Bangkok, similar to yours. We booked a day tour through the hotel we were staying at and they wanted to take us to some river market, which was way out of Bangkok somewhere. And we pull up and he said, we’re going to a market. And we pull up and he’s like, oh, you need to pay this lady to go in the boat. And it’s like a certain price. And I said, no. I said, no, I’m not paying. I’m not interested. You can just turn around and take us back into the city.

Anders
26:08 – 26:25
They wanted some exorbitant price like $100 or something, $100 Australian or something to get us down these canals to these floating markets where you pull up and buy things and I was just like nope I’ll buy. I’m not interested so you know you can just take us to the next site.

Mark
26:26 – 26:27
Yeah and

Anders
26:27 – 26:49
all of a sudden even this lady who they must be in cahoots with who gets kicked back from you know they were talking and the next minute they’re like oh okay we’ll do it for this. I’m like no no no no no no no. In the end I think I got them down to about $20 Australian which I then went okay for that price. I still didn’t really want it but I was like well I’m certainly not doing it for that price, but for

Mark
26:49 – 26:50
now it was each

Anders
26:50 – 27:00
for 1 of it. I was like, okay, we’ll do it now. But they didn’t tell me there was a charge for that. They said a visit to a floating market, like when we looked at this itinerary for this tour. Yeah.

Mark
27:00 – 27:01
And

Anders
27:01 – 27:09
then when we got there they’re like, oh no, but you’ve got to pay to go on. I’m like, well, I didn’t say that anywhere and that wasn’t part of the, you know, I’ve already paid you for this tour.

Mark
27:09 – 27:30
Yes, exactly. That’s that and that’s when you’re there in the middle of the situation. Yeah. It’s just, what can you do unless you’re very firm in your nose and nose. Apart from that, it could have been that you didn’t have any cash. You could just say, I don’t have that much cash.

Anders
27:30 – 27:43
Now, these days I wouldn’t because I never carry cash. Yeah. So I can legitimately use that story these days. But yeah, so it always makes you a bit weary when you…

Mark
27:43 – 28:10
Yeah, which is sad. But You know that most people living in and around Bangkok are probably not making a decent wage. So obviously they’re trying to hustle their way through their day and make as much money as they possibly can to provide for their family. I understand all that, but still, be fair, be upfront. It’s like

Anders
28:10 – 28:20
I couldn’t tell you the last time I jumped in a taxi anywhere. I distrust taxis no matter where we are. I’d probably use that as an example, but anywhere in Asia I would never just get in a taxi.

Mark
28:20 – 28:21
No, no.

Anders
28:22 – 28:42
Because they’re going to rip you off, literally. They’re all looking to rip you off unless they’ve got an app for their taxi company where you can pay on the app like upfront so you know the price. I’m never getting in any chatty. I’d much prefer to take Uber or Grab or Diddy as they have in Asia because the price is there when you book it and you know how much it is.

Mark
28:42 – 29:33
Yeah, that reminds me of a time I had way back when I was really young. I was on a holiday in Greece, on Crete, the island of Crete. And we were some small town way outside of, I think, 10, 15 kilometers away from our hotel. And it was a mountain restaurant. And there was a bit of a stretch to walk down from the mountain to the main road from where we were hoping to catch a taxi there. And sure enough, a taxi came once we got down to the road and he already had 2 or 3 passengers, obviously paying for the ride.

Mark
29:33 – 30:27
And then he took us on, me and my girlfriend at the time. And then I knew, had a rough idea of how much it would cost us to get to our hotel from where we went on the taxi. And then when we got there, he mentioned a price like 3 or 4 times that price, which he would then earn on top of the passengers that he already had. So I just said, no, he had already driven us and I said, no, I will pay you this, which I knew was the right amount. And then we argued for a couple of minutes and then he said alright sure it’s just but he was trying you know to get 4 times that price it was just come on we’re not that stupid.

Anders
30:28 – 30:55
The problem isn’t that we’re not knowing. With a lot of things in Asia, because you’ve bought a lot of stuff, but you don’t actually know. You don’t actually know whether you’re getting a good price or you’re not getting a good price. I guess if you go in and you’re happy to pay whatever it is, then you get it for that price, and I guess you should just be content with it, but in the end you may very well be overpaying, yet you never actually are. So, a

Mark
30:55 – 31:25
lot of times… The thing is the majority of tourists, they probably don’t think about, you know, because if you say, well, okay, it’s, it’s some sort of amount in, in Thai bats. And then, only a couple of minutes later, you, you, you, in your head, you figure out what’s it in, what is it that in euro or in Australian dollars oh shit I just gave them a ton of money I mean it’s but then it’s too late you know

Anders
31:26 – 31:37
my wife has a as a thing for fake Louis Vuitton bag and Prada and things like that that you can pick up in Asia. Yes,

Mark
31:37 – 31:38
yeah any market.

Anders
31:39 – 32:12
So in Bangkok they were wanting like 60 or 70 Australian for a fake bag and people were buying them left right and centre and like she bought these same bags like in Vietnam and in Bali for maybe 20 dollars Australian like only as early as 12 months ago you know so but people were happy to pay it So I guess it’s all relevant to what your expectation is, you know I’m hoping yeah, it’s stupid enough to think that our original Louis Vuitton bag

Mark
32:15 – 32:26
And that’s the thing, you know, there is a market obviously for stuff like that. In Europe you can’t import them. In the EU it’s illegal to import counterfeit. Well I think

Anders
32:26 – 32:33
it’s illegal to take them into Australia too, but I think if you’ve only got 1 or something like that or 2 if you had a whole suitcase full of them.

Mark
32:33 – 32:35
Oh, yeah, that would be different

Anders
32:36 – 32:47
But I know people I don’t know I shouldn’t say I know but people obviously do that because you say that local markets You know you think people sell on oak leaves you know for 10 dollars They’re always a water fucking suitcase load of them.

Mark
32:47 – 32:48
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Anders
32:48 – 33:05
you’re in co handbags which are everywhere They’re in Bali and things like that so stocked up with suitcase season and got through customs and said I don’t need to declare anything and have got away. Probably made a nice, nice little income as they do.

Mark
33:05 – 33:15
Yeah. A couple of years ago there was a prominent Danish politician’s wife who got in trouble because she had a fake Louis Vuitton back.

Anders
33:17 – 33:19
Obviously they don’t pay the politicians enough

Mark
33:25 – 33:39
yeah yeah yeah really really it’s just you know yeah well obviously I’ve been in in those phases of my life as well where, you know, designer stuff would matter to me, but now it’s just, you know,

Anders
33:39 – 33:40
now as you get older, I go to,

Mark
33:40 – 33:41
yeah, I

Anders
33:41 – 33:48
go to like 1 of the big variety chain stores here, big W or Target and buy a plain black T-shirt that costs me $10.

Mark
33:48 – 33:51
Exactly. Exactly. No Rip Curl or Quicksilver

Anders
33:51 – 34:01
or anything like that. Whatever. You know, Surf Brands or

Mark
34:02 – 34:27
Exactly. No, and there was a phase, there was a time when big logos and big brand, you know, t-shirts with big brands, they were popular. But now to me, I mean, maybe It’s just my age, but I really go for nothing. I don’t want anything on my clothes. It’s you know, it’s if I have to wear a logo, they should pay me. You know,

Anders
34:31 – 34:51
yeah, Bangkok is popular anywhere in Asia. All the fake ripoffs and knockoffs and things like that that you want to pick up. So yeah, that’s 1 of the things that, especially Bangkok, because Bangkok’s a city of so, so many, you know, the biggest open air market in the world is in Bangkok.

Mark
34:51 – 34:53
Yeah did you go there? Did you go there?

Anders
34:53 – 35:33
Yes I did go there and it is immense. Yeah. Crazy it was really hot. I spent most of the day sitting down having a drink while I let my wife and daughter go do shopping because like I said there’s not really much I like to I like to buy when I’m on holiday I’m not a souvenir hunter I’m not a brand hunter so yeah So I sort of sat around why why they went and rummaged through all these stalls and alleys But yeah, it was definitely I am was definitely an eye-opener but 1 thing about Bangkok if you’ve been to 1 market you think To them all because they’re all selling the same Yeah No matter which 1 you go into.

Anders
35:33 – 35:44
I like called Patanam I think and Samping is another 1. Yeah. I was going to markets every day. I was just playing along behind her.

Mark
35:44 – 35:45
Yeah.

Anders
35:46 – 36:24
Very cramped and hot and busy and sweaty actually much like Bangkok airport. When we arrived at Bangkok airport I thought this is really good. Got off the plane, there was many people around, got through customs within about 2 minutes. Then once you walked out of customs there was like a thousand people and everyone’s milling around trying to get either a taxi or waiting for their ride share, or not their ride share, like their organised Airport transfer and we had a really good airport transfer that we booked through booking.com. We’ll include the link to that in our show notes.

Anders
36:24 – 36:46
So what they do is they say, they gave me all these really good instructions and they emailed me the day before and messaged me the day before so their customer service was spot on, but they say go down to gate 5 and you’ll find a guy holding the sign with your name on it. So off we trottled down to gate 5 and needless to say, yes, there’s a guy holding my name.

Mark
36:46 – 36:46
Okay.

Anders
36:46 – 37:26
But needless to say there’s also 15 other guys from 15 other different companies holding holding people’s names And the wall is plastered with Companies and people’s names so there’s like people standing around every standing around everywhere waiting for a ride share so it was interesting but the custom they were good like that’s spot on on what they said but yeah it was pretty pretty chaotic and that’s this sums up Bangkok all in 1. Yeah, there’s people who stand around waiting for trains, buses, cars, anything like that. It’s a city that’s always on the move, but it’s always packed.

Mark
37:26 – 37:50
Yeah. And somehow, you know, a Bank, because your experience is very, very similar to mine in terms of how crowded it is, how hot it is, particularly also the market. I’m just wondering who shops there? Do the locals go there for food or ingredients? Who shops there? Or is it just a show for,

Anders
37:51 – 38:32
I don’t know. I think that the Thais who shop there would get it cheaper than what the Westerners would. Probably. They would be a cooking system, most definitely. Yeah. Like my brother, he’s married to a Thai lady. Whenever they go to Thailand and they go somewhere, he doesn’t book a hotel, they just go there and he sends his wife in to negotiate the price. They always get a cheaper price because he sends her in and she’s Thai and he’s not. So he stays outside while they get a really good price and then he comes in after his wife has negotiated a good price and it’s similar system to that in China but probably not for the same reason.

Anders
38:32 – 38:43
So in China like there’s Westerner only hotels in China and there’s a large percentage of hotels in China that Westerners can’t stay in.

Mark
38:43 – 38:43
Okay.

Anders
38:44 – 39:29
And that’s only because of the administration and paperwork side that the Chinese government enforce on them that they have to report any foreigners who are staying like to to the authorities so big chain hotels would have a system where I guess they scan and computer systems are probably able to, you know, fax or have some sort of software that registers, yes, with the government but for small run hotels it’s not that easy. They would have to scan, get the information, go to the police station, register the people individually, all this sort of stuff. So there’s a lot of hotels that won’t accept Westerners just because of the administration that goes along with it.

Anders
39:29 – 40:04
And we stayed with my daughter’s host family and we stayed in an apartment they owned and they had to take our passport from the police station the day after we arrived within 24 hours and register us as foreigners in the country because we were staying in an apartment that they own. So yeah, Chinese place have to be told that you are actually there. But if you stay, like I said, at a chain hotel run by Holiday Inn or Marriott or Hilton or someone, they do all that for you. But If you’re only in a small hotel, probably someone won’t accept you because the paperwork’s just too

Mark
40:04 – 40:05
much for them.

Anders
40:05 – 40:06
It’s just too immense.

Mark
40:06 – 40:07
Yeah. Yeah.

Anders
40:08 – 40:51
So that makes it a little bit interesting in China. Speaking of crowds, so in Bangkok, we wanted to go on a night river cruise on the Chopra River and we went on this bookless cruise through the outer on the Chopra Princess that was called. It was only a 2 hour cruise where you had a buffet dinner going on which was quite nice. I mean the real star of the show is the Bangkok skyline obviously with a lot of really nice buildings lit up. So it was quite good experience. It was something I booked through the Artois and it’s something else if it interests you, we’ll leave a link.

Anders
40:51 – 42:06
But on a normal night this would have been really good. But the night we went was the 30th of December and New Year’s Eve celebrations were already in the air. And Where we had to catch this boat was out the front of 1 of the newest shopping centers in Bangkok which lines the rivers for 1 cyan, like a 5 or 6 story mega complex and Bangkok has so many shopping centers. So we get there and they got these 3 stages set up and the Bangkok version of Backstreet Boys or whoever is playing and there’s probably 5000 people on this promenade out the front of this shopping centre where we’re meant to catch this boat and squealing like teenagers, you know, squealing like giddy children at these rock stars who are all singing and it’s an absolute nightmare because you’re trying to get to your boat and boats are leaving every 15 minutes, all these different boats and normally you’d just be able to walk down to the pier but because they had all these fenced off sections and things like that, I couldn’t have picked the worst night in history to go and try and get on a boat.

Anders
42:06 – 42:51
There were 5, 000 people watching a concert in the exact same place that the boat leaves from. When you stand around and it’s really hot in Bangkok, it’s hard not to think of Bangkok as his, but alone surrounded by thousands of other people and there’s no breeze and once we got on the boat It was fine because we went down the river and there was a there was a nice breeze The food was good. It was maybe over 20 different meals to choose from like it was a buffet so you can just go up and go up and help yourself you know traditional stuff like pad thai and coconut chicken and you know a lot of Asian dishes and some soups and things like that so I think it was maybe $50 Australian so it’s probably 30 euros so it wasn’t bad value for for 2 and a half hours

Mark
42:52 – 42:52
okay yeah

Anders
42:52 – 43:10
I’d in Bangkok on the river with some really good views and so that was 1 of the probably the better things we did in Bangkok yeah Bangkok uses it’s a big city but I think there’s really a lot to do like in Bangkok itself as well sure centers

Mark
43:10 – 43:11
yeah nothing

Anders
43:11 – 43:13
centers there’s a lot of temples

Mark
43:13 – 43:17
yeah but you go to did you see they’re reclining Buddha and

Anders
43:17 – 43:21
I didn’t say it this time, but I did say it last time. Yeah Yeah,

Mark
43:21 – 43:22
yeah, yeah

Anders
43:22 – 43:31
this time we went back to to what what I run which is like Looks like it’s made out of porcelain. Yes.

Mark
43:32 – 43:32
Yeah. Yeah.

Anders
43:32 – 43:44
So we went back to that 1 because that 1 was really nice. And I liked that 1. I probably could have went back to the reclining Buddha. But yeah, we found ourselves mainly just wandering around markets because other than that,

Mark
43:45 – 44:17
You are right. Yeah, you are right. That’s… …Many museums. No, that is true. I mean, yeah, now that you mention it, it’s not like, you know, if you go to like Paris, there are millions of museums that you would want to see or sites or locations, churches, domes, whatever. But in Bangkok, not so much. It’s more for the food and for the… I guess if you can come to a luxury hotel and shopping. Yeah, true.

Anders
44:17 – 44:56
Definitely. I find that in a lot of cities in Asia, like you don’t need to stay there all that long in a lot of these cities because you’ve ticked off the main site pretty quickly. Like Ho Chi Minh City as well. It’s a similar size to Bangkok, about 12 million people. It does have a couple of interesting war related museums. If you’re into that sort of history, there’s 1 called the War Remnants museum about the American war as they call it in Vietnam. It’s not the Vietnam war, they call it the American war because it was the 1 that invaded.

Anders
44:57 – 44:59
So it’s called the American war for the

Mark
44:59 – 45:00
different angle.

Anders
45:01 – 45:40
Yeah. So and this museum really does portray a different angle, portrays what they believe is the truth. You know, there’s a lot of, they make a lot of good points about, you know, that they really weren’t that, didn’t want to be involved in the war. In the South, they weren’t communists. In that end of Vietnam, it was more the North Vietnamese that were the communists. And about all, it goes into a lot of things about Americans who were there, including politicians who were in the war who did some atrocious things that then went on to be senators and things like that in the American political system.

Anders
45:41 – 46:12
How they bombed countries like Myanmar who were not in the war and yeah so there’s a lot of yeah yeah probably 1 of the really better museums I’ve ever been to in Asia there’s really good 1 in Bangkok though there’s 1 the Bangkok National Museum tells a really good story to about its past and its history. If you go north of Bangkok to places like Ayutthaya and further on it tells you can learn a lot about the ancient Bangkok or the ancient kingdom that lived in that area

Mark
46:12 – 46:13
which is

Anders
46:14 – 46:27
quite interesting but in the city there’s not really much left. Bangkok slowly getting torn down, original Bangkok like most cities to be replaced by high rises and hotels, shopping centers, and things like that.

Mark
46:28 – 47:11
It was a pity. It was interesting. We stayed at an Ibis hotel at the river bank. So we had what you mentioned earlier, the skyline and we could see out by the pool area, which we actually spent a couple of days there because it was so warm and Anton was really struggling with the heat. And also when he was that little 3 years old, he had like very blonde hair. Now it’s darker as he’s grown older, but back then he was blonde and they would touch him, the locals, they wanted to touch him and he couldn’t stand that.

Mark
47:11 – 47:49
We thought it was odd as well. So at the end, we just stayed in the hotel for the last the past couple of days and just walked around the block to a couple of local restaurants in the evening. But in the evening, we could sit at the pool area and really enjoy the skyline of Bangkok. And there was a lot of construction going on back then and I guess this is still going on I guess you know we’ll never stop. There was there was just all these high-rising Well shopping malls hotels Stuff going on

Anders
47:49 – 48:32
I think I think Bangkok is actually It’s actually on a mission to build a shopping center to every BTS station I was funny so the BTS is the above-ground rail. Yes I rail that that goes well above but nearly most BTS stations actually have a shopping centre built next to them and there’s a walking walkway from the BTSC straight into a shopping centre and on the line we were on we were about 8 stops away from what’s called Siam which is considered the middle of the city and there’s about 5 big shopping centers at this 1 station Siam but 8 stops away where we were working about 4 of the 8 or 5 of the 8 stops in between us and they had shopping centers as well.

Mark
48:35 – 48:38
Is there really a need for that many shopping malls? I mean,

Anders
48:39 – 48:52
we would think so, but they were always packed every time we went to 1. You know, they were crazily packed. I guess, you know, I guess it’s more people go then 8 because they really be food courts, you know Oh,

Mark
48:52 – 48:53
yeah, yeah, because of

Anders
48:53 – 48:53
the food

Mark
48:53 – 48:54
courts. Yeah.

Anders
48:54 – 49:03
Yeah, so they bunch it all together and turn it into Do some shopping go to the movies have some

Mark
49:03 – 49:04
stuff like that. Yeah.

Anders
49:04 – 49:17
Yeah things like that so you can do everything especially I guess in warm weather locations like Bangkok, that’s probably appealing maybe to the people on their days off to spend it in the air.

Mark
49:17 – 49:37
Yeah, because it’s nice and cool. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that would be my reasoning too. But but but yeah. But thinking about it, like, like from a business point of view, could you attract enough customers to do, you know, pay the rent for the shop and you know, all these things, but apparently you can.

Anders
49:37 – 49:47
Apparently they do. Yes, most definitely. That’s what the world’s becoming. Isn’t this 1 big shopping center everywhere? Everyone seems to be building shopping centers like right out everywhere.

Mark
49:47 – 49:48
Like, yeah, unfortunately,

Anders
49:49 – 50:14
yeah. Melbourne is a set of shopping centers at all probably in Street or off Elizabeth Street they join in between 2 of them and it goes like Melbourne central the Emporium and then there’s another 1 so it’s like 3 big shopping centers that you can just and into my street join up and you can pretty much just walk through 4 or 5 shopping centers like in the 1 in the 1 area or with a different

Mark
50:14 – 50:15
name and that

Anders
50:15 – 50:16
all similar shops

Mark
50:16 – 51:04
it’s it’s it’s it’s a sad thing Both here in Germany and in Denmark, we have these shopping centers as well. They’re popping up like, I don’t know, mushrooms. The problem with them is, or my problem with them is, that it will cannibalize on the original city center atmosphere because you would have small independent shops in these old buildings and you know at street level and they are dying because they, well, there’s not enough people walking by and they don’t have any business anymore. And, you know, a shopping mall, you know, nice and cool as it may be, it doesn’t have that original charm, does it?

Mark
51:04 – 51:05
So not at all.

Anders
51:06 – 52:09
It’s just that. That’s quite striking actually in Melbourne, since COVID and since COVID lost shops closed in Melbourne. Berkstreet Mall in Melbourne used to be a popular shopping area and you walk down there now and nearly half of the shops in this pedestrian mall area in the centre of the city I would say were closed last time I was in Melbourne. Maybe never to reopen, I don’t know. These shops, these places used to have body shops and adidas and all these big, big chains and combined with some smaller stores but they’ve all taken off. I don’t know whether they’ve just gone into shopping centres and out of the main heart of the city in Melbourne but mainly in the main heart of Melbourne people really just go there to eat these days and there’s a few old classic arcade type malls still from colonial era times little laneways and things like that which is still popular but yeah the center of Melbourne has changed dramatically since, since COVID.

Mark
52:09 – 52:10
It’s really sad.

Anders
52:10 – 52:25
Victoria was closed down for 4 or 500 days. So plenty of retailers went, went foot up and everyone went and started working from home and a lot of people actually haven’t returned, you know, to working in the office because everyone was away. Yeah, literally.

Mark
52:26 – 52:27
So yeah, true.

Anders
52:28 – 52:31
A lot of businesses in Victoria. That’s for sure.

Mark
52:31 – 53:10
We see the same. We see the same in Munich. I mean, you go through the city center, we have, it’s still fairly alive, I would say the city center, but there are more and more of these closed shops with the 4 leases, for rent sign. And I’m just thinking, you know, from a business money point of view, why do these people who owns the buildings, probably just some hedge funds or, but why don’t they, isn’t that interesting for them to, yet lower the rent so that it’s not empty. I mean that.

Anders
53:10 – 53:18
Maybe it’s a cash write off if it’s empty and they’re paying for it with no profit. Maybe you know there’s another option that they’re right.

Mark
53:18 – 53:39
Probably there must be some kind of thing going a business business thing going on there that it makes no sense for them to go too cheap but but it’s I don’t know it can’t be good for business when half the shops in the street are are empty it is really not not good.

Anders
53:39 – 53:45
I put in the news this morning here and it’s like there’s a cost of living crisis in Australia.

Mark
53:45 – 53:45
Yes.

Anders
53:46 – 54:41
Pretty prevalent everywhere The first thing that happens in a cost of living crisis is people stop going out to buy food, you know, and things like that. They’re 1 of the first things that tick off the list. And the price of coffee, like a cup of coffee in Australia now is sitting somewhere around 7 dollars Australian for a cup of coffee like if you go out so they’re predicting that 2 in every 5 coffee shops in Australia are literally closing as we speak at the moment so there’s tons and tons of and I noticed this the other day when I went on this drive, I was telling you about the other day, we went up to Far East Victoria and this town, this small town, like I said, about 3000 people, but very self-contained because as I said the next nearest town was the next nearest big town was possibly 80 kilometers in 1 direction and 150 kilometers in the other direction So it’s got to

Mark
54:41 – 54:42
be it’s got to be

Anders
54:42 – 55:16
self-contained in what they’ve got. Yeah, but Even in a small town like that I reckon there was 6 food stores closed in this town. In this town there’s only 1 street, 1 main street and all the shops are in the main street. The street’s probably 200 meters long with shops on both sides. But out of that there was probably 6 food shops or cafes that were closed and they’re the first thing that goes when people have got no money because people stop going to have a milkshake or have a coffee or buy a cake or buy pie in Australia or a salad roll for lunch

Mark
55:16 – 55:16
and things

Anders
55:16 – 55:38
like that. So that’s what is really biting, I think, in Australia, small business at the moment, because everything is, the cost of everything is through the roof. Groceries, power, gas, electricity, like everything is, yeah, it’s through the roof. So someone’s got to suffer somewhere and that tends to be small business, hospitality businesses.

Mark
55:39 – 56:02
The thing is, you know, because it’s the same story here, probably everywhere on the planet. Who benefits from that? If everything just becomes more and more expensive and nobody can sustain a business and it’s just where does the money go? I’m just thinking where does it all end?

Anders
56:03 – 56:45
I think this all sort of feeds into this nationalistic movement that we’re talking about. You know, are we, are we dependent on foreign suppliers, you know, for our gap and our pet food and our things like this? And why are we paying so much for it? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves? Why aren’t we keeping it for ourselves? I feel this in Australia strongly because we produce gas that we sell to the Japanese for like 1 or 2 cents a litre and yet we’re all charged 2 dollars, you know, and things like that. And you know, we sell uranium to every country in the world to run their nuclear reactors yet we don’t build nuclear reactors in Australia to power our own country.

Anders
56:46 – 56:55
So, you know, this is how this sort of movement these Is how Trump won basically isn’t it like he said? Oh, it’s all about America, and that’s what we need to be

Mark
56:55 – 56:55
and yeah,

Anders
56:55 – 57:08
and in some retrospect It’s probably not a bad move for a lot of country within scope not his scope, but you know yeah I’m on what you’ve got yourself instead of selling it to everyone

Mark
57:10 – 57:18
and buying it from everyone. True true and even go down to just

Anders
57:18 – 57:20
buy local buy local produce

Mark
57:20 – 57:36
but buy buy stuff manufactured in Australia or stuff manufactured in Europe I mean it doesn’t have to come from from the other side of the planet you know that’s but on the other hand then if you if you were if I were to buy an a smartphone manufactured in Germany you will probably cost me 5000 euros

Anders
57:37 – 57:42
but This is the problem because we all had industry in our country.

Mark
57:43 – 57:44
Yes, we did.

Anders
57:44 – 58:13
They’re gone because we’ve got an open market where we import from trading partners like China. And this is no slur on China. They’re smart. They can control their wage bill, keep it low and yeah. And then we let them into our countries and then we wonder why our companies that are making exactly the same things fold. We should be protecting our own industries to do these things. But now we’ve gotten right on

Mark
58:13 – 58:22
top of it. Yeah, no, no, no. We can wonder about stuff like that. I don’t understand world economics but…

Anders
58:24 – 58:45
I do understand protectionism and the Australian government is much on protecting Qantas as they can getting back on to travel. They’ve just brought in their new airline policy the government you know where much like in Europe where you can claim money back from airlines if your plane is late you know in such

Mark
58:45 – 58:46
a way. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Anders
58:46 – 59:11
Or you’re delayed Well that bill went to the Parliament then the Australian government refused refused to Run that through because it might cost Qantas money. So Oh What us Qantas can do whatever whatever they like To major airlines in Australia the government Government fly around with Qantas the government ministers get upgrades from Qantas, they sit in the lounges of Qantas, you know,

Mark
59:11 – 59:12
all this stuff.

Anders
59:13 – 59:36
So they’re right in the pocket, so this bill that was meant to fix quite a speed late in canceling flights and not giving refunds back and all this sort of stuff got watered down to the fact where now the only actual thing is they have to give you a refund within 28 you know and that’s the only That’s the only thing that come about it. No Or anything like that.

Mark
59:37 – 59:44
Oh man Pontus used to have a good reputation. It was it was 1 of the the really good airlines, you know back in the day

Anders
59:51 – 1:00:19
and if you look at their share price well I got some shares in Qantas and their share price is up 80% like in the last 12 months. Wow. I think a lot of airlines are like that. I think I was looking at United in America it’s up 90% share price so out through the roof But I mean quite a really should be broken up. It’s a monopoly in Australia. I mean And it’s just star and they’re the 2 biggest conus and jetstar are the 2 biggest airlines in Australia owned by the same parent group.

Mark
1:00:19 – 1:00:20
Yeah, of course.

Anders
1:00:20 – 1:00:31
How are you meant to get competitive prices in Australia when that happens? And then you chuck in Virgin, who are the second major airline in Australia.

Mark
1:00:31 – 1:00:35
Are they still present in Australia because I was going to mention? Yeah,

Anders
1:00:37 – 1:01:23
definitely. They went bankrupt at the start of COVID and some venture capital group from America bought them, restructured them, sold all their big twin-lane jumbos and brought in more smaller fleet and stuff like that in very profitable 2 or 3 years I’ve had 2 other airlines try and start 1 was called Bonzer and 1 was called Express So they took off and they lasted a few months. What happens is as soon as they open a new route, like Qantas and Virgin then dump flights onto that route to put them out of business basically, because Qantas and Virgin can afford to run at a loss on certain routes whereas the new players really need to be making money from the get-go.

Mark
1:01:24 – 1:01:25
Yes of course, yeah.

Anders
1:01:26 – 1:01:57
So they pretty much just run them out of the market straight away. Like Bonza was the last 1, I think it lasted about 8 months before their planes got repossessed and flown back to America. It happened 6 months ago. But yeah, so as soon as someone starts they might fly, say an obscure route, they’ll fly like Melbourne to Cost Harbor or somewhere on the South Wales North Coast. This was a route that Qantas weren’t flying but as soon as someone gets in there then Qantas will put a plane in there and they’ll fly it every day and they’ll fly it at half the price.

Mark
1:01:57 – 1:01:57
Yeah.

Anders
1:01:58 – 1:02:41
Just to keep their market share and their monopoly on the market. That’s okay, no problem. We can handle that. Like Australia is literally a country of monopolies. Because we’re small, I think it’s acceptable. Like we have 2 supermarket chains that control 90% of the supermarket market. We have 1 hardware chain that controls 95% of the market because there’s no competitors and the government don’t make it easy for competitors. But a lot of it’s to do with the logistics as well. I think within Australia, I know a German company or Polish company, Calflant, a supermarket chain, they went to come to Australia.

Anders
1:02:41 – 1:03:13
It was 3 or 4 years ago. They spent $20 million in Australia setting up, buying a couple of properties, building a warehouse, employing staff and then they said we can’t do it, we’ve got to leave. So they left before they even opened because it’s such a big country and the centres are so far apart, the logistics of say having a warehouse in Sydney that then has to feed stuff to Melbourne, Brisbane, things like that is just too far away. It takes an Aldi 20 years, 25 years to get 200 stores in Australia.

Mark
1:03:14 – 1:03:15
You still have Aldi, right?

Anders
1:03:16 – 1:03:40
Yes. Aldi is the number 3 supermarket. It has about 10% of the market. 10% of the market where the other ones control 80 or 90% of the market. And once again, they participate in anti-competitive actions. They go and buy blocks of land like in that are in the center of town so no 1 else can build supermarkets on them things like this like yeah real shit

Mark
1:03:42 – 1:03:57
well business is never pretty all right so yeah we’ve once again we’ve come way off our topics but it’s it’s always nice to chat with you, Marc. It’s… It is.

Anders
1:03:57 – 1:03:57
It’s nice to chat with

Mark
1:03:58 – 1:04:08
you too. Yeah. And this time, a little bit of Bangkok, Thailand, driving on whatever side of the road your local rules

Anders
1:04:08 – 1:04:09
were. We were there tonight.

Mark
1:04:12 – 1:04:19
So thank you very much for listening. You wanted to mention something about the affiliate links. We’ll put them in the show notes

Anders
1:04:19 – 1:04:34
yeah definitely I sent them through to Anders so if there’s the things in Bangkok that you need a transfer in Bangkok when we went on smart ride which we got through booking.com was really good and the cruise on the Chopra River something to do if you’re in that really good.

Mark
1:04:34 – 1:04:49
Exactly and also in the show notes we will leave links to, we have a YouTube channel that Mark is trying to and Facebook we have Instagram exactly so

Anders
1:04:56 – 1:05:04
you can join any 1 of these comments like leave us a question I’m still waiting for that first person to leave us a question. Come on! Yes.

Mark
1:05:05 – 1:05:07
Don’t be shy. Don’t be shy. Don’t be

Anders
1:05:07 – 1:05:09
shy. Say hello. Yes.

Mark
1:05:11 – 1:05:15
Thank you very much for listening and we’ll be back, well, next week.

Anders
1:05:16 – 1:05:17
We will be here.

Mark
1:05:17 – 1:05:20
Yes. We hope you’re here. Exactly. Bye.

Anders
1:05:20 – 1:05:21
Bye.