As a pretence, we start off talking about Mark being late for the podcast recording as he forgot!!

Anders
00:00 – 00:23
You know, you never know, you know, in our age, things can happen, you know, and I was, I was just thinking, if he doesn’t come on, then fine, we can do it another day. It’s just, it would be a bit unusual for you not to Did you just completely disappear?

Mark
00:26 – 00:26
Yeah, no,

Anders
00:26 – 00:26
I was

Mark
00:26 – 00:31
sitting on the couch and I had a bit of a pre-sleep sleep. I had a quick snooze for about

Anders
00:31 – 00:32
half an

Mark
00:32 – 00:34
hour.

Anders
00:34 – 00:37
I didn’t wake up at seven. No, it’s

Mark
00:37 – 00:37
fine.

Anders
00:37 – 00:40
It’s fine. How are you? Did you have a good week?

Mark
00:41 – 00:50
Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. Worked all week. I have one weekend on, one weekend off where I work, so this one gone was my weekend

Anders
00:50 – 00:50
on,

Mark
00:50 – 00:51
so next

Anders
00:52 – 00:53
weekend will be weekend

Mark
00:53 – 01:02
off. So this week is always a better week, because it leads into three days off, because I have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off every second week.

Speaker 3
01:02 – 01:04
that’s good for me

Mark
01:04 – 01:08
definitely and yeah so i’m not

Speaker 3
01:08 – 01:09
really got anything planned but

Mark
01:10 – 01:22
i’ve got a few things on in the coming weekends after that that i have off so um cool Melbourne for the weekend after that we’re gonna see Bryan Adams. Um,

Anders
01:22 – 01:34
yeah, I was gonna ask because uh, I think beck wrote that somewhere or was it you I can’t remember but because I I was Listening to some Bryan Adams recently and and one of you wrote that you’re going to see him in Melbourne

Mark
01:35 – 02:04
That’s cool. Thursday the 6th. I think he’s on in In Melbourne and that happened to fall in line because Willow flies into my daughter flies into Melbourne on Friday the 7th is so and we were staying in Melbourne Thursday night and Friday night anyway. So just have to see if I can sneak her into the apartment we’re booked into and she can sleep on the couch. Yeah on the Friday night. I probably would have cancelled it and came home. Friday morning after I picked her up, but I’ve noticed that I booked a

Anders
02:04 – 02:05
non-refundable apartment because

Mark
02:05 – 02:06
I knew we

Anders
02:06 – 02:07
were going to the

Mark
02:07 – 02:07
concert. So

Anders
02:08 – 02:08
I

Mark
02:08 – 02:11
just assumed we were going to stay Thursday night and Friday night.

Anders
02:11 – 02:12
And even

Mark
02:12 – 02:13
though

Anders
02:13 – 02:14
I told her to

Mark
02:14 – 02:19
try and fly in Saturday morning because that would suit better, you know, they still

Anders
02:19 – 02:20
do

Mark
02:20 – 02:21
what they want to do and fly

Anders
02:21 – 02:21
in

Mark
02:21 – 02:25
Friday. So I sort of said to her, well, we’ve got to stay in Melbourne because I’ve paid

Anders
02:25 – 02:26
money for this apartment. Of

Mark
02:26 – 02:29
course. I can’t get it cancelled.

Anders
02:29 – 02:29
It’s

Mark
02:29 – 02:30
non-refundable.

Anders
02:30 – 02:31
So

Mark
02:31 – 02:39
you can either stay in Melbourne the night with us and sleep on the couch in the apartment. I’ll bring a sleeping bag and hopefully we can sneak

Anders
02:39 – 02:39
you in

Mark
02:39 – 02:40
there.

Anders
02:40 – 02:41
Or

Mark
02:41 – 02:44
otherwise I can pick you up at the airport. We can go and have lunch

Anders
02:44 – 02:44
and then I can

Mark
02:44 – 02:48
put you on the train back to our town.

Anders
02:48 – 03:11
What’s a usual What’s your usual working week? Because you mentioned you have weekends off and then weekends on and stuff. How many hours in Australia is a usual working week? I would say,

Mark
03:11 – 03:21
you know, if you were talking a traditional job, They work 9 till 5.30, I guess. So it’s 38 hour or something.

Anders
03:21 – 03:22
Yeah, something like

Mark
03:22 – 03:37
that. But because I work in disability support clients, obviously need support around the clock. So I work odd hours at times, 7 o’clock in the morning till 2 o’clock in the afternoon sometimes. Things

Speaker 3
03:37 – 03:37
like

Mark
03:37 – 03:48
that, or even short shifts where I work from 3 till 6 in the afternoon. But I normally do that after I have another I normally stack a couple of shifts in a day if I’m gonna

Anders
03:48 – 03:50
Yeah, I got a Wednesday.

Mark
03:50 – 03:53
I started on a Wednesday. I started 645 at

Anders
03:53 – 03:54
one job

Mark
03:54 – 03:56
and I finished at 845 and then I

Anders
03:56 – 03:56
started another

Mark
03:56 – 04:00
job at 9 and I finished there at 3 and then I start at

Anders
04:00 – 04:01
another job at 315 and

Mark
04:01 – 04:03
finish there

Anders
04:03 – 04:04
at 615 Wow

Mark
04:05 – 04:08
that’s my longest day of the of the fortnight and

Anders
04:08 – 04:17
But over a couple of, say over a month, you probably, like on average, you would work like 38-40 hours.

Mark
04:21 – 04:28
I’m doing about 75 hours a fortnight. Yeah, but that’s down two years ago.

Anders
04:28 – 04:28
I was

Mark
04:28 – 04:32
doing about 92 hours a fortnight. Wow. It was

Anders
04:32 – 04:33
too many

Mark
04:33 – 04:33
hours. The

Anders
04:33 – 04:33
money was

Mark
04:33 – 04:38
really good. Yeah, you

Anders
04:38 – 04:39
need your rest as

Mark
04:39 – 04:49
well. Yeah, so I let a few go. Actually, I let a few go because we were making a little bit of money online at that stage. So I was sort of like, OK, I can

Anders
04:49 – 04:49
let them go

Mark
04:49 – 04:55
because I can replace that money easily enough at the moment. But that’s changed.

Anders
04:55 – 04:56
I still haven’t

Mark
04:57 – 04:59
gone back to look for more work because

Anders
04:59 – 04:59
I’m

Mark
04:59 – 05:25
pretty comfortable on what we make here. And we were in a good position where we basically own our house and we bought our car outright. So we, in all honesty, without sounding without bragging or you know, standing, you know, trying to better off than I am, you know, we make more money than what I have to pay. Yeah, I don’t really need to do any more work. If I work more, it’s just safe from going holiday more basically.

Anders
05:25 – 06:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, you’re absolutely right. In this stage of our lives, you know, with almost grown up children and all I mean, it’s, I guess, also based on our life experience, it’s just, it’s not about money always, you know, it’s when you’re young, you want to make money, because that’s that’s equals to opportunities, you know, but but as you grow up and grow older, it’s just, you know, you just want to have a good life. And you just want to have some quality. And that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of money. It really doesn’t.

Anders
06:01 – 06:01
I

Mark
06:01 – 06:06
don’t know, it’s more about quality and the experiences

Anders
06:06 – 06:08
that you have the later on in life, I think

Mark
06:10 – 06:12
you get. Like for instance, if my daughter

Anders
06:12 – 06:12
wasn’t in

Mark
06:12 – 06:14
school, I would quit my jobs and

Anders
06:14 – 06:14
take what money

Mark
06:14 – 06:15
we

Speaker 3
06:15 – 06:17
had and we’d go traveling. And, you know,

Mark
06:17 – 06:18
because that’s something that

Speaker 3
06:19 – 06:22
I think is possibly enriching at this stage of my life.

Mark
06:23 – 06:27
And, you know, in all honesty, I’m a little bit done with the work I do. I shouldn’t say that.

Anders
06:27 – 06:27
I

Mark
06:27 – 06:48
mean, I do my best when I go there, but I’ve been doing the same job since 2000 and so I’m nearing 20 years in disability support and I’m probably at the end of my tether. I could do with a change. Yeah, it’s more what it’s more

Anders
06:48 – 06:49
what I’m saying, but,

Mark
06:49 – 06:50
um, I

Anders
06:50 – 06:51
don’t really

Mark
06:51 – 07:06
have any other great skills except to work in a shop, which is what I did. I worked in retail for a long time and the money in retail is not so great. And I’ve got a really good amount of flexibility with the jobs I have at the moment. So, you

Anders
07:06 – 08:02
know, but, you know, um, that’s what they say. Sorry. That’s what they say that, you know, in general. People can’t get good workforce, good people to work. I mean, be it retail, be it what you do with disability assistance, whatever. I don’t know where the young generation, they make their money these days, because what I hear all over Europe is that they can’t get anyone to, you know, be in shops or, you know, do the less fancy jobs, I guess. It’s just, if I ask Anton, he’s got, you know, ambitions, like, it’s probably healthy to have ambitions.

Anders
08:03 – 08:14
All he wants to do is has something to do with, you know, online media, YouTube, music, whatever. It’s all good and fine, but you better have a backup plan, don’t you?

Mark
08:20 – 08:21
You know, whether it’s a good thing

Anders
08:21 – 08:22
or it’s a good thing or a bad thing,

Mark
08:22 – 08:41
but people these days want to do or younger generation want to do what they want to do. And there’s no way of looking out of that. Like, you know, when I was young, I just wanted a job. It didn’t really, it didn’t really matter what it was. And you know what, if you still ask me now what I want

Anders
08:41 – 08:41
to

Mark
08:41 – 08:45
do, I want to travel and get paid for it. That’s about the only thing

Anders
08:45 – 08:47
I can actually tell you that I actually

Mark
08:47 – 08:48
want to do.

Anders
08:49 – 08:50
that’s actually the

Mark
08:50 – 08:54
jobs, the jobs I just do because I need to do them. I need to make a living,

Anders
08:55 – 08:56
you know, and there’s better jobs and

Mark
08:56 – 09:02
there’s worse jobs, but you know, it’s doesn’t pay, doesn’t pay to think too hard about what you’re doing sometimes. No,

Anders
09:02 – 10:01
no, no, no, no. Exactly. And I mean, well, you’re good at telling about what your experiences are in terms of traveling. So that’s absolutely within reach, I would say, that you could find a way to make a stable income on your travels. I mean, it’s doable. It’s absolutely doable. Oh, before we start, before we talk too long, Mark, I have a suggestion in terms of the microphone, because sometimes the loudness and, you know, it varies a little in your end. But I’m going to, after this session here, I’m going to send you a suggestion, like for a microphone arm, flexible thing that you can install and then work

Mark
10:01 – 10:01
better.

Anders
10:02 – 10:47
That probably would work better because it’s all about the proximity to the microphone. And I would love to have the energy and dynamic that when you’re talking. So it’s about making whatever works for you. Yeah, so I think that could work. I have the same thing. I have a flexible thing here. And it works for me. I think it would work for you as well. So I’m just going to send it afterwards. It’s basically an Amazon screen dump. It costs 20 euros. It’s a flexible arm. So it’s really easy. But let’s let’s dive into the to the podcast with the with the intro and everything.

Anders
10:47 – 10:55
And then we can talk what talk, you know, what today’s topic was was tick off or

Mark
10:57 – 10:58
things we want to do or

Anders
10:58 – 11:18
things we want to do. Yeah, exactly. And I also want to touch base on those crickets that you ate online. Because that was cool. Okay. Hello, Mark, and everybody, welcome to Southern Summers and Northern Winters. How are you, Mark, this week?

Mark
11:20 – 11:21
I

Anders
11:21 – 11:22
am very good, Anders. Another

Mark
11:22 – 11:32
week living the dream, as they say. Well, someone’s dream, maybe not quite mine this week, but work, life. Yeah. Still here, still living large, aren’t we?

Anders
11:33 – 11:35
The things we do when not traveling. We

Mark
11:38 – 11:39
do in between the things we love.

Anders
11:40 – 11:41
Exactly.

Mark
11:41 – 11:42
To do the things we love.

Anders
11:42 – 12:23
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We were just talking before we started the actual podcast. We’re talking about, you know, we both need to do things not really travel related in order to, you know, maintain a living. and having a family and a life. Because the thing about making money just by traveling is something that is absolutely, it depends on what level you travel, of course, but it’s really hard to do. We should probably be honest about that. Yeah.

Mark
12:26 – 12:47
Look, a certain I think there’s a small amount of people that can do it. There’s an at varying levels. Yeah. because as we’ve touched on before long-term travel or earning money while you’re traveling is not earning money and going on holiday because it’s like we said before it’s totally different yeah

Speaker 2
12:47 – 12:48
it is

Mark
12:48 – 12:59
live like you’re going on holiday so to earn enough money to travel long term like I know people who tell me that they do this on actually I’ve got a really good friend

Anders
12:59 – 12:59
who

Mark
13:01 – 13:02
who runs a

Anders
13:02 – 13:03
Thailand website

Mark
13:03 – 13:11
and she’s living in Thailand at the moment and she tells me she can do this on two and a half thousand Australian dollars a month

Speaker 2
13:11 – 13:12
yeah

Mark
13:12 – 13:14
so that’s probably 1200 euros a month

Speaker 2
13:14 – 13:14
yeah

Mark
13:16 – 13:33
living on And she seems to stay in an apartment, apartment’s pretty nice, and she states local food and does stuff like that. So, so yeah, so you can do it on as little as, as that in Asian countries, certainly. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3
13:33 – 13:34
You know, probably South America as well. You could

Mark
13:34 – 13:35
possibly

Anders
13:35 – 13:35
do

Mark
13:36 – 13:39
that. But definitely not Australia,

Anders
13:39 – 13:40
North America or Europe. No.

Mark
13:41 – 13:44
That’s for sure. So, you know, and

Anders
13:44 – 13:44
she

Mark
13:44 – 14:02
works on a couple of websites that she has and and yeah, it makes enough coin to. To live in Asia, she was making more much like everyone, everyone was making more before Google penalized everyone 12 months ago, but that’s a whole different subject.

Anders
14:02 – 14:48
Yeah, it’s a different can of worms. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you know, and also like you say, and we’ve said it before here in the podcast, Well, it all looks very nice and glamorous. But behind the scenes, you know, I’ve seen families break up because of this. You know, it really looks great. And the photos can be stunning. But being an influencer, being a travel blogger, vlogger, is hard work. Creating content is something that, you know, you really have to think about it all the time all the time it’s

Mark
14:48 – 14:52
a thankless thankless uh job

Anders
14:52 – 14:52
i

Mark
14:53 – 14:55
would say um because you know

Anders
14:55 – 14:55
you

Mark
14:56 – 14:57
you often receive no thanks for it and

Anders
14:58 – 14:58
and i

Mark
14:58 – 15:03
must admit i i get frustrated because i speak to people who even from my own

Speaker 2
15:03 – 15:03
town like i was

Mark
15:03 – 15:11
walking i walk my wife to work when i’m home yeah This guy, I know, stopped me and he said, I thought you’re still in Thailand. And

Anders
15:12 – 15:12
I said,

Mark
15:12 – 15:20
nah, I’ve been home for about a week, but I’ve been posting something every day to drag out my social content. And he said,

Anders
15:20 – 15:20
yeah, I’ve

Mark
15:20 – 15:22
been reading all your stuff and things like

Anders
15:22 – 15:22
that.

Mark
15:23 – 15:29
And I think we’ll… Okay, I didn’t know that because you never hit the like button like, you know,

Anders
15:29 – 15:29
yeah

Mark
15:30 – 15:33
And I must admit that frustrates me. Yes,

Speaker 2
15:33 – 15:33
it

Mark
15:33 – 15:33
does.

Speaker 2
15:33 – 15:33
Yeah,

Mark
15:34 – 15:50
I think it doesn’t take much to Hit the like button if you say it I try and do it when I see other bloggers stuff, because it’s not just about self-gratification of someone liking your content. If someone on Facebook hits the like button, then

Anders
15:50 – 15:50
that’s

Mark
15:50 – 15:56
more likely to spread your content to people that follow that person

Anders
15:56 – 15:57
as well.

Mark
15:57 – 16:03
So it’s actually more about a mathematical reach on Facebook’s algorithm if people

Anders
16:04 – 16:05
I was going to yeah

Mark
16:05 – 16:10
like your posts so yeah so I get quite frustrated when people say to me yeah

Anders
16:10 – 16:10
I

Mark
16:10 – 16:10
see all your stuff

Anders
16:11 – 16:11
on

Mark
16:11 – 16:15
Facebook and I think to myself well I’ve never actually seen you like any of it like

Anders
16:15 – 17:02
exactly But I think most people, they don’t understand this. Only people like us who work with this stuff all day and every day, we just… Exactly like you say, why don’t you just like it? Because that will trigger the algorithm and we will get higher rankings. At the moment, for any listener here, please do like us on Facebook as well, because that will… enable us to provide you with more of the same content. So, so Mark is maintaining our Facebook presence for the podcast. And it’s, it’s, it’s great stuff. I enjoy it, not just because I’m part of it, but because it’s just good content.

Anders
17:03 – 17:07
And and we hope you would you would think that too. So please do like

Mark
17:07 – 17:09
us definitely.

Anders
17:09 – 17:20
Yeah, definitely. Speaking of online, yeah, speaking of online content. I saw you eating crickets over the weekend. Were they tasty?

Mark
17:20 – 17:26
And grasshoppers. You know what, when I went to China in September,

Anders
17:26 – 17:26
I said,

Mark
17:27 – 17:31
okay, I’m gonna eat a scorpion or I’m gonna eat a spider. Okay, because

Anders
17:31 – 17:32
I’ve seen

Mark
17:32 – 17:39
them all the time. So I got to Beijing and I I was with Willow and she

Anders
17:39 – 17:39
said

Mark
17:39 – 17:40
she was going to try one

Anders
17:40 – 17:40
too

Mark
17:40 – 17:41
and I said okay and then we got

Anders
17:41 – 17:42
to where

Mark
17:42 – 18:10
they were and they were huge and I went I went no I can’t I can’t do it because you know what my real fear is that if I ate a spider and I bit into it and it was gooey on the inside well yeah you know I know they’re fried so I know they’re not going to be They’re not going to be gooey on the outside. But if I bit into something and it was gooey on the inside, I don’t know where I’d go with that. I think I’d, you know, I might bring it straight back up.

Mark
18:10 – 18:14
Yeah. So when we were in Thailand, we were at this little night market

Anders
18:14 – 18:14
and they

Mark
18:14 – 18:20
were selling grasshoppers and bugs and like larvae and

Anders
18:20 – 18:21
all different sort

Mark
18:21 – 18:28
of stuff like that. So I thought, OK, I’m going to get a bag of grasshoppers and And try

Anders
18:28 – 18:32
them out. So she filled up this bag of grasshoppers and put some pepper and seasoning on them

Mark
18:32 – 18:43
for me. And I took them home and I tried a couple of them. I must admit, I only had two of them. Not really because they weren’t nice,

Anders
18:43 – 18:44
but they really didn’t have much

Mark
18:44 – 18:52
taste at all because they’d just been fried. Yeah. More crunchy than anything. It was just had some grasshopper legs in my teeth. I was pulling out.

Anders
18:53 – 19:03
Oh, yeah. Yeah, because the legs aren’t really, you know, the legs aren’t probably, it’s just legs, you know, it’s like a bone or something. Yeah, that’s

Mark
19:03 – 19:16
it. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, so it was, it was good. Good to give him a try. And if I get back to Thailand next time, I’ll get more adventures. I tried that scorpion all about, the spider

Anders
19:16 – 19:16
I

Mark
19:16 – 19:22
was talking about, but yeah it probably wasn’t the worst thing I tried while

Anders
19:22 – 19:23
I was overseas, when we were in

Mark
19:23 – 19:23
China I

Anders
19:23 – 19:24
tried sea

Mark
19:24 – 19:31
snails And they really weren’t that nice. Yeah. And

Anders
19:31 – 19:31
I only

Mark
19:31 – 19:37
tried that because I was with Chinese people who were begging me on to try it because they loved them. So,

Anders
19:37 – 19:39
yeah, under normal circumstances, they’re not

Mark
19:39 – 19:41
something that I would I would have

Anders
19:41 – 19:42
tried. And they were

Mark
19:42 – 19:43
really big snails,

Anders
19:43 – 19:44
not like the little ones you see

Mark
19:44 – 19:45
in France. These things

Anders
19:45 – 19:46
were

Mark
19:46 – 19:49
like the size of a slug. Like they were huge.

Anders
19:50 – 20:44
I’ve often, because you are traveling currently a bit in China, and I’ve often, as we have been talking, I’ve often thought about what I would personally do in terms of eating in China. And it’s just, I’m picky when it comes to meat and seafood. And I know they have a different culture and tradition in China and in many Asian countries. I, I, I would be really reluctant to, to take on anything. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what was, um, so, so I would struggle. I mean, um, you, you, obviously you’ve heard of all the, the, the, the very, very extreme things that they eat like snakes and, and, uh, brain monkey, uh, monkey brain and what, whatnot.

Anders
20:44 – 20:55
I’m sure it’s it’s not all that bad. But but but there are things you know, that that culturally would be somewhat difficult for me to eat, I guess.

Mark
20:56 – 21:09
So for sure. Yeah. Just in day to day life, I guess. In China, I’ve never really seen anything that’s Out of the ordinary, I’m sure there’s, you know, restaurants that sell the sort of things you were

Anders
21:09 – 21:11
mentioning, but I assume they sell them for a high

Mark
21:11 – 21:14
price. So for normal people who are just going into

Anders
21:14 – 21:14
a street

Mark
21:14 – 21:19
restaurant or something like that, you know, you really just get your seafood, your chicken and your pork.

Anders
21:19 – 21:21
Yeah. For most

Mark
21:21 – 21:31
people. But I do understand what you’re saying and the connotation. Look, I often read, you know, ridiculous stuff in Facebook groups, you know, I’m coming to

Anders
21:31 – 21:31
China. I don’t want to

Mark
21:31 – 21:33
eat any cats, you know

Speaker 2
21:33 – 21:34
and all this sort of stuff like

Mark
21:34 – 21:38
this and I’m like There’s not

Speaker 2
21:38 – 21:38
people

Mark
21:38 – 21:56
running around killing cats and serving them up no no and and and things like that there was donkey, I think I seen maybe so But other than that, but then again, I’ve eaten horse in Kazakhstan. So yeah Yeah, why don’t we eat horse when we eat a cow?

Anders
21:56 – 22:13
Yeah, but horses, we have a horse butcher in Munich. Still to this day, I mean, the salamis are apparently good. I mean, and up until, I would say, Second World War, that was pretty common to eat like a horse beef, horse steak, whatever. Yeah.

Mark
22:14 – 22:16
I remember there was a big outcry a few years ago.

Anders
22:16 – 22:17
They found that Aldi

Mark
22:17 – 22:23
were putting it in sausages or something mixed with, you know, mixed with the pork and

Anders
22:23 – 22:23
yeah.

Mark
22:24 – 22:26
Yeah. Like a huge outcry cause we’re all eating horse,

Anders
22:26 – 22:27
but

Mark
22:27 – 22:38
I mean, we eat cow, we eat sheep, we eat deer, you know, I don’t really see that it’s just cause we’re, just cause we’re not programmed to, to eat horse, you know,

Anders
22:38 – 22:39
things like that.

Mark
22:39 – 22:39
So

Anders
22:39 – 22:39
we

Mark
22:39 – 22:46
go, well, it’s a bit strange, but you know, it’s no stranger than eating a cow really when you, um, when you break it down, is it so?

Anders
22:46 – 23:04
Yeah, no, that’s true. I mean, the only thing that, that, that, You know, eating a predator like a croc or in Scandinavia, northern Scandinavia or here in mid-Europe, a bear. A bear can also be something that tastes somewhat different.

Mark
23:06 – 23:12
I have seen bear on sale in Tallinn old square and I reckon at Helsinki harbour.

Anders
23:13 – 23:13
Yeah, something. Yeah,

Mark
23:13 – 23:15
because

Anders
23:15 – 23:17
in Finland you can eat bear. Yeah.

Mark
23:18 – 23:20
Most definitely, so you

Anders
23:20 – 23:20
do

Mark
23:20 – 23:37
see, but speaking of crocodile. Maybe it was an alligator, I’m not sure, but walking down Khaosan Road in Bangkok last week or the week before, they had a crocodile on a spit, like its head was still on

Anders
23:37 – 23:37
like

Mark
23:38 – 23:38
and

Anders
23:39 – 23:39
everywhere from the

Mark
23:39 – 23:48
head down had been scum. So they were just shaving bits of It’s a crocodile flesh off if that’s what you wanted to try. So yeah, it was quite

Anders
23:49 – 23:52
bizarre. Was it a big one?

Mark
23:53 – 24:00
No, I wouldn’t say it was like Australian sized crocodile. I’d say if anything, it was probably a baby. It might’ve been maybe a meter.

Speaker 2
24:00 – 24:01
Okay.

Mark
24:01 – 24:17
Maybe. So yeah. So I don’t know whether it was, yeah, I don’t actually know. I kept walking because the guy, there was a big sign saying, you know, if you want to stop and take photos, it costs you this. So I thought it was this. And I was quick enough to have my video camera going as I walked. But yeah, so I don’t know

Anders
24:17 – 24:17
whether

Mark
24:17 – 24:18
it’s

Anders
24:18 – 24:19
said crocodile. So

Mark
24:19 – 24:21
maybe just a little one.

Anders
24:21 – 24:27
So it was their version of a lamb, you know? Yeah, on a spit,

Mark
24:28 – 24:29
ready to go. But other than

Anders
24:29 – 24:30
that, I can’t say

Mark
24:30 – 24:35
I’ve really eaten many strange things. I’ve tried jellyfish in Thailand. How do you

Anders
24:35 – 24:37
eat that? Chewy, as

Mark
24:37 – 24:38
you expect.

Anders
24:39 – 24:44
Yeah. Do they boil it? I think it

Mark
24:44 – 24:52
was fried, but it was like marinated in, um, it was marinated in sauce and chucked on a barbecue. But once again, it was just,

Anders
24:53 – 25:32
yeah. There’s something about texture that in a Western world, we’re kind of used to, well, fleshy texture or, and it’s very, it’s very psychological, I guess, because you expect something with, for instance, chicken meat, you’re expecting a certain texture. And Alex, my wife, when she, when she tasted crocodile she said it tastes like chicken but the texture is different and and and so it played tricks on her mind you know it was it was yeah yeah so it does like yeah

Mark
25:32 – 25:38
yeah sometimes if you just if you think if you think it is something

Anders
25:38 – 25:38
you know and

Mark
25:38 – 25:42
you eat it then you know your mind can can correlate that

Anders
25:42 – 25:43
sometimes you know like

Mark
25:44 – 25:46
but then once you’re told that it’s not you go

Anders
25:47 – 25:54
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s like frog legs in France frog legs are also a bit like chicken but

Mark
25:55 – 25:57
Actually, so I have had frog legs as well.

Anders
25:57 – 25:57
I

Mark
25:58 – 26:04
should say that. I had barbecued frog legs in Cambodia, because they were a French colony. So I found

Anders
26:04 – 26:05
that all right. Have you had

Mark
26:05 – 26:06
frog legs?

Anders
26:06 – 26:25
No, I have not. Because I stopped. I was about to eat one. And then I stopped. And someone told me that it was frog legs. And oh, sorry. I can’t do that. I don’t know why. That was the psychology again. Because I would have probably eaten it without thinking about it. And it

Mark
26:25 – 26:28
does, it looks like a chicken wing a little bit like, um, yeah, the

Anders
26:28 – 26:29
bit I had. Yeah. So I

Mark
26:30 – 26:31
was sort of like, yeah,

Anders
26:31 – 26:32
okay. Like, you know,

Mark
26:32 – 26:36
to an extent I try and, I try and eat stuff if I can.

Anders
26:37 – 26:48
Yeah. Why not? I’m saying, why not? And I’m really, really, I’m not adventurous in any aspect when it comes to food. I’m sorry. I

Mark
26:49 – 26:51
think I’ve got better as I’ve gotten older. When

Anders
26:51 – 26:51
I was

Mark
26:51 – 27:05
younger, I wasn’t either. But I eat a lot of different food now that I would never have eaten when I was younger, I guess. But that comes with age. Knowing that’s not really going to hurt

Anders
27:05 – 27:06
me is that the worst

Mark
27:06 – 27:07
that can happen is I, uh, well.

Anders
27:09 – 27:20
Yeah. The only thing is, I mean, whoever thought of, you know, like a scorpion or, or a spider, big spider, but it was, you know, Oh, I’m going to fry that and eat it.

Mark
27:20 – 27:23
Shock value. You’re like, you know, it’s

Anders
27:23 – 27:24
all aligned

Mark
27:24 – 27:28
at the tourist everywhere you go. Like they were walking around with them, you know, on a

Anders
27:28 – 27:29
plate

Mark
27:29 – 27:32
here or on a, you know, on a. like in a case or

Anders
27:32 – 27:33
yeah

Mark
27:33 – 27:34
on a bit of board pinned up

Anders
27:34 – 27:35
like here you

Mark
27:35 – 27:43
go you want a spider you know like yeah yeah no i don’t yeah no thank you very much so

Speaker 5
27:44 – 27:45
oh yeah so

Mark
27:45 – 27:53
you know that was the crickets were i mean the grasshopper seemed the least intrusive of the things that they were selling where i was at night so i went okay

Anders
27:54 – 28:47
let’s try one They’re saying, you know, in terms of food crisis and how to feed the world in 50 years or something like that, we have to think, you know, in different ways of getting our protein. And insects are probably, and larvae and all these things, that’s probably a healthy and nutritious source of protein, I guess. And I don’t think we’re going to sit and eat like recognizable insects and stuff that we don’t want. I think it’s going to be dried up, powdered and just, you know, put into different context. I think that’s the way we’re going to eat in the future.

Anders
28:47 – 29:11
I don’t think I don’t think we’re going to have like a salad with crunchy crickets on. You can if you want, of course. But I think to people like me, it’s probably just going to be like a powder or paste or something and we can put it into whatever. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s…

Mark
29:12 – 29:16
Funnily, talking about things like that with…

Anders
29:16 – 29:18
Not really, I’m going off a

Mark
29:18 – 29:19
little bit, but I was

Anders
29:19 – 29:20
watching YouTube before

Mark
29:21 – 29:41
and Costco, they have Costco in Europe? No, they don’t, no. Okay, okay. So Costco is like a membership supermarket, a wholesale supermarket. Anyone could join. No, I think in Australia, I think it costs you $60. To join Costco. So and my stuff is sold in bulk there. So if you’re

Anders
29:41 – 29:41
going to buy

Mark
29:41 – 29:41
a

Anders
29:42 – 29:43
butter, you might have to buy

Mark
29:43 – 29:51
like five blocks of butter or, you know, toilet paper or, you know, that sort of thing. So it’s all, all done in, in bulk measures to save

Anders
29:51 – 29:51
money.

Mark
29:51 – 30:05
But I was just watching this American lady and there’s like, um, there’s like a, a box that they sell for for preppers. You know what a prepper is? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anders
30:06 – 30:06
Yeah.

Mark
30:06 – 30:43
Doomsday is coming along. Yes. And so this preppers this preppers container. We’ve seen this big plastic drum, and it cost $80 US. And I had a look, they do sell them in Australia, $169. And it has 150 servings, OK, that last 25 years. And they’re just all packet mix, where you add water and you can boil them up. But there was like soups and pastas. and all these type of things. She made everything that was in this Prepper’s kit and tried it out.

Speaker 3
30:43 – 30:43
Most of it

Mark
30:43 – 30:49
was really good. Most of it’s like the packet pasta that you make on the stove with the

Speaker 3
30:49 – 30:49
milk

Mark
30:50 – 30:55
and water sometimes. Different chicken and vegetables

Anders
30:55 – 30:55
or

Mark
30:55 – 30:55
dehydrated

Speaker 3
30:55 – 30:56
stuff that you

Mark
30:56 – 30:59
boil and things like yeah

Anders
30:59 – 30:59
for 25

Mark
30:59 – 31:01
years So she reckons

Anders
31:01 – 31:02
that it there was about 15

Mark
31:04 – 31:04
Meals, so last

Anders
31:04 – 31:05
year about a week if

Mark
31:05 – 31:08
there was like maybe a family of four of you

Anders
31:08 – 31:08
So I

Mark
31:08 – 31:12
found that quite I found it quite interesting. I know it’s gone off topic, but

Anders
31:12 – 31:13
no no It’s rather costly I

Mark
31:13 – 31:14
would say isn’t it

Anders
31:14 – 31:14
I mean

Mark
31:19 – 31:32
Yeah, it is. So I think you could maybe more to do with the fact that last 25 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. But I mean, you could buy pinned baked beans and spaghetti that would probably last you 25 years.

Speaker 2
31:32 – 31:32
Yes.

Mark
31:32 – 31:33
Easily as well,

Speaker 2
31:33 – 31:33
you know, and

Mark
31:34 – 31:50
yes, in salmon or corned beef or, you know, tuna or whatever you wanted, I guess it would last. Same amount of man of time but because we’re in a world of convenience people probably Despite and put it in the shed and go. Okay. Well something

Anders
31:50 – 31:51
happens I don’t have

Mark
31:51 – 31:53
to actually physically go out and buy bits and

Anders
31:53 – 31:53
pieces

Mark
31:53 – 31:54
exactly

Anders
31:55 – 31:55
Just in

Mark
31:55 – 32:01
this bucket and I can just put it in the shed and forget about it and hopefully World War three or four or five doesn’t come along

Anders
32:01 – 32:49
Exactly, well it’s always good to be prepared but I mean we have extra pasta and canned tomatoes and stuff like that in the basement. What they say here in Europe is that should something happen and we’re in, you know, next door to Putin. So he’s been trying to mess with our infrastructure, which is probably what’s going to happen eventually that, you know, electricity or a water supply or something, you know, could be disrupted. So what they’re advising here is that people should have for at least three days of water supplies for the family. Also for pets.

Anders
32:51 – 33:05
And so that surprised people for some reason. People usually don’t have enough water for an entire family for three days. That’s a lot of water.

Mark
33:07 – 33:08
What would

Anders
33:08 – 33:08
they

Mark
33:08 – 33:10
suggest that is? 15 liters? 20 liters? I think three

Anders
33:10 – 33:12
liters per person per day.

Mark
33:15 – 33:22
for a day. So yes, if there’s three years, 30 litres. Yeah. That’s a fair bit of water, really, isn’t

Anders
33:22 – 33:23
it? It is, it is.

Mark
33:23 – 33:25
To be holding like, you know.

Anders
33:25 – 34:18
Yeah. And water has, I mean, water has almost endless, it doesn’t get bad, but if it’s not, If it’s not bottled under like, sterile conditions, it can actually turn bad. So you really shouldn’t keep your water in the basement for like five years and just drink it. It can turn bad. Because you have to be careful with the sterilization and all. So what they suggest is that you either buy bottled water and put it in the basement and then, you know, just keep a supply of water in the basement and just drink from it and refresh your supplies, you know.

Anders
34:18 – 34:37
That makes sense. Yeah, but And we would just probably go down to the river and boil the water. I mean, so, yeah, but, you know, having for three days, three days of food in the basement, I think that’s really not, it’s not worrying me.

Mark
34:38 – 34:39
Is it the ISAR?

Anders
34:40 – 34:43
Yes, the ISAR. Yeah, exactly. And

Mark
34:44 – 34:45
it’s pretty clean. It

Anders
34:45 – 34:46
would be, yeah. I remember it being blue when I

Mark
34:46 – 34:47
seen it.

Anders
34:47 – 35:07
yeah no it’s it’s it’s pretty it comes from the mountains and and obviously it runs through various cities along the way before it even gets to munich and so yeah it’s it’s not it’s not completely clean um but uh if you boil it it certainly would be drinkable absolutely it’s clean enough that you go yeah okay that

Mark
35:07 – 35:09
looks okay to take home and boil like

Anders
35:09 – 35:10
we live

Mark
35:10 – 35:13
next to a river here in um A

Anders
35:13 – 35:13
river runs through our

Mark
35:14 – 35:17
town, but the water is pretty brown and murky.

Speaker 2
35:17 – 35:17
I wouldn’t

Mark
35:17 – 35:23
say it’s polluted. It’s just a mud based river where there’s no rock on the bottom. It’s just

Speaker 2
35:23 – 35:24
like, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark
35:25 – 35:31
When it flows that, you know, it just picks up the mud and stuff off the bottom of the river and things like that. So it’s, it’s a brown.

Anders
35:33 – 35:34
Are there any wildlife in the river?

Mark
35:35 – 35:36
There’s fish in there.

Anders
35:36 – 35:38
Okay. Well, that’s good sign.

Mark
35:38 – 35:58
Yeah. There’s a fish and, there’s always ducks and birds floating around on top of the river but I think it’s churned up a lot too because we’re downstream from a major dam that’s about 15 kilometers away so obviously when they let the water out of this dam and it comes rushing down

Anders
35:58 – 36:01
the river it stirs everything up

Mark
36:01 – 36:08
as well so it’s um but yeah it gets it’s it’s definitely I mean I used to swim in there as

Anders
36:08 – 36:08
a

Mark
36:08 – 36:15
kid as you do when you’re a kid you used to jump off the town bridge that came into town. It was about, you know, 20 foot up or something like that. And

Anders
36:15 – 36:16
as you

Mark
36:16 – 36:21
get older and then it dries out and you can look at the bottom there and you go, man, that was crazy jumping off

Anders
36:21 – 37:01
there. Yeah. They do this here as well. Yeah. The kids do this here as well. And they have, there are places on the river Isar and some of the side rivers that, where they can actually, there are certain goes down a level a little bit and the steam can be pretty tough or the current and they can actually surf. So they have like a line and they hang on to that line and then they can surf on the river, which looks pretty cool. You can look it up.

Mark
37:02 – 37:02
I’ve been

Anders
37:02 – 37:02
to

Mark
37:02 – 37:12
Munich a few times. I’ve never ever been there to see it. It’s always listed when you read about Munich. One of the things to go and see is the people surfing the river.

Anders
37:12 – 37:23
Yes. They have surf clubs and everything here in Munich. And we’re central Europe. We’re in the mountains. And people think, surf clubs? I mean, yeah, but it’s a thing. Do

Mark
37:24 – 37:27
they have them crazy people that go swimming in the middle of winter, like in

Anders
37:27 – 37:29
Munich? They have that as well, yes. In a

Mark
37:29 – 37:30
frozen club where they

Anders
37:30 – 37:33
go. We have these people as well.

Mark
37:35 – 38:04
Brave, brave souls. Being in Poland with some friends and the couple we were with, her friend was a part of one of these clubs and we went down and watched her bathe in the Wisła River in just down southern Poland there one day and there was a whole group of them and they come out and they’re all pink as you know, the blood had definitely, you know, run to the edge of the body and things like that. But they recommend that you have a cold shower every morning and

Anders
38:04 – 38:06
things like that. That’s what they say.

Mark
38:06 – 38:09
Yeah. So, but I just, I can’t come to it.

Anders
38:10 – 39:02
I think it was last winter. I haven’t seen it this winter. But last winter, there was a guy we were walking, like a Sunday stroll just down to the river and over the bridge and just, you know, as we do sometimes. And then I was looking from the bridge and down to like a small, a little bay almost with, you know, by the river and literally frozen with ice and and there was a guy with a hammer and or an axe an ice pick or something like that and and he was building like a hole where he could sit and I couldn’t help to stop and and watch and and uh sure enough as as he had this this it was almost like slush ice um a hole there and and And he sat down and he seemed to enjoy it.

Mark
39:05 – 39:11
Sometimes the temperature of the water could possibly be warmer than what it is outside.

Speaker 5
39:11 – 39:11
I

Mark
39:13 – 39:29
don’t know what the temperature of the water is in snowy areas in Europe, but often here at times, if you go swimming off season a little bit, yeah, the water can definitely be warmer than the outside temperature. So you

Anders
39:30 – 39:30
get out and you’re

Mark
39:30 – 39:32
actually colder when you get out than

Anders
39:32 – 39:32
when you’re in.

Mark
39:33 – 39:33
That’s

Anders
39:34 – 39:48
why they invented the ox boots, isn’t it? Because when the surfers got off from the water, they needed to wear something warm because the air was colder than from where they came.

Mark
39:50 – 39:51
Swimming is once you

Anders
39:52 – 39:52
she

Mark
39:53 – 40:10
commit to going in and you know, and you go go higher than waist level, you know It’s the whole bit of getting in Taking minutes to get in

Anders
40:10 – 40:12
there yeah yeah look you

Mark
40:12 – 40:14
should just run straight in and jump

Anders
40:14 – 40:53
yeah exactly and that’s true that don’t don’t don’t overthink it hi it’s just like everything yeah like everything So today, Mark, we were actually going to talk about, we’ve come way off already, but we should actually talk about, as we do always, we should talk about things or places where we wanted to go, like, you know, dream destinations and stuff like that, because we mentioned that last week, that probably was going to be a good topic. What’s your current, like, bucket list place where you have not yet been, but really would like to go?

Mark
40:55 – 41:28
I’m going to say Greece, but that’s mainly my wife’s bucket list destination. I’m not against going to Greece. So, um, so Greece will be somewhere that we will definitely go. It’s not a wish. It’s something that will, uh, that will happen. I was actually, like I said, looking at flights as early as Christmas time this year, cause I don’t mind winter and off season. And, you know, because we’re not big beach people, like I love sitting at the beach and I like it being summer, but I’m not, a big have to go in the beach and swim.

Mark
41:28 – 41:35
I did a lot of beach swimming when I was a kid because we used to go holidays, I’d much prefer to go in the pool than the beach. But yeah,

Anders
41:35 – 41:45
so the biggest beach lion, as we would say in Europe, a beach lion is something, someone who thrives on the beach. And yeah, yeah,

Mark
41:45 – 42:05
yeah. Like you often, you often say in Bali, a lot of Leathery as I call them. Yeah Europeans who are you know, who look like they’re an old bit of a little leather like an old motorbike jacket But in brown, you know, there’s been as much time as I can playing in the Sun and you know Defrosting before they go back to the snow.

Anders
42:05 – 42:15
Yeah, I like to say it’s these people they look like like if you you can imagine like a bike where you just throw a leather jacket on

Mark
42:20 – 42:22
And there’s a lot of Germans, I can tell you. Oh,

Anders
42:22 – 42:25
absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know a few of those. Yeah.

Mark
42:27 – 42:52
So to me, it wouldn’t really matter whether I went to Greece in summer or winter. I’d actually prefer winter because I get to the stage where I’m disliking crowds more and more when I go places. And I think that Greece would be really, really crowded in the summer months. So I actually quite prefer to go in winter or the shoulder season leading into winter or leading

Anders
42:52 – 42:52
out

Mark
42:52 – 43:27
of winter. Because as long as I don’t have to pull on and put off a snow jacket and a beanie and a pair of gloves, I’m happy to wear a jumper and a pair of pants every day and wander around. But I don’t know if that’ll happen this year because the prices seem a little bit outrageous to fly Europe at Christmas time, even though I did find a relatively cheapish flight that was around $2,400 return to Australia or about, I don’t know, what’s that, about maybe 1,400 euros or something.

Anders
43:28 – 43:29
Sounds about right, yeah.

Mark
43:29 – 43:48
But you had to go from Greece to Rome, to Milan, to Amsterdam, to Xiamen in China, and then to Melbourne on the way home. And it was like 40, 42 hours. So it was a little bit, it was a little bit adventurous for my, for my liking. I could get off,

Anders
43:48 – 43:48
I

Mark
43:49 – 43:56
could get off for two days at each of these places on the way, that would be fantastic. But yeah, but no, not today, not today.

Speaker 2
43:58 – 43:59
No, I don’t

Mark
43:59 – 44:05
think so. By the time you had four or five hours, you know, before

Anders
44:05 – 44:06
you go and then another four hours

Mark
44:06 – 44:14
for me to get home, you know, it’d be a 50 hour flight, it’d be over two days to get from Athens back home. So,

Speaker 3
44:14 – 44:14
and

Mark
44:14 – 44:15
good airlines like Qatar

Speaker 3
44:16 – 44:18
are wanting three and a half

Mark
44:18 – 44:19
thousand dollars return

Speaker 3
44:19 – 44:20
like to

Mark
44:20 – 44:42
fly to Athens at this time of year. I think we’ll probably just go somewhere, might go to another beach destination like the Philippines. But yeah, I definitely would like to go to Greece. I’d like to go to Egypt too, just to see the pyramids. Yeah. I think it’s always somewhere where I’ve always wanted to go.

Speaker 3
44:42 – 44:45
For some reason, I’ve never really planned a trip there.

Mark
44:47 – 44:51
It’s just sort of a bit out of the way, I guess. And

Anders
44:51 – 44:53
this is probably one of the reasons why I’ve never been to Greece either.

Mark
44:54 – 44:56
Because we travel long distances,

Anders
44:56 – 44:59
I try to pick a destination and then go to

Mark
44:59 – 45:02
places that are around it, because that makes it easy. So if I was going to

Anders
45:04 – 45:04
Germany, I might

Mark
45:04 – 45:06
go to Holland and

Speaker 2
45:06 – 45:06
France.

Mark
45:07 – 45:10
Poland, you know, because they’re, you know, they’re just around it,

Speaker 2
45:11 – 45:11
you

Mark
45:11 – 45:19
know, so to go to Greece is like flying across the other side of Europe from, um, yeah,

Speaker 2
45:19 – 45:19
but you

Mark
45:19 – 45:32
are right. Like a whole, whole extra trip, you know? Yeah. And I guess if I was to go to Greece, well, then I’d probably go to Turkey as well, because, you know, they’re, um, once again, then they’re next to each other or to, um, not

Anders
45:32 – 45:33
Romania. What’s

Mark
45:33 – 45:36
the other one where Bucharest is in

Anders
45:36 – 45:57
Romania. That’s Romania, yeah. What’s the one next to Romania? Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia. We should have our, at least have our geography in place.

Mark
46:04 – 46:13
There’s Greece on one side and Turkey on the other side Okay, a lot of Brits go there’s a beach holiday they’re on the Black Sea

Speaker 2
46:15 – 46:18
Yeah

Mark
46:18 – 46:18
Another

Speaker 2
46:18 – 46:19
browser here

Mark
46:19 – 46:32
just to have a look on this side of my computer because Let me see search it up I will search it on my phone because

Speaker 5
46:33 – 46:33
that will be

Mark
46:34 – 46:35
will be Asia.

Speaker 5
46:38 – 46:41
Countries near Greece.

Anders
46:44 – 46:49
It could be Bulgaria. Bulgaria. Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of.

Mark
46:49 – 46:53
Bulgaria. Sofia is the capital now. It’s like, now it comes to me. So

Anders
46:53 – 46:53
I could

Mark
46:54 – 46:56
go to Greece,

Anders
46:56 – 47:00
Bulgaria, Turkey as a trip because

Mark
47:00 – 47:03
they’re all, you know, they all borderline each

Anders
47:03 – 47:03
other. That’s

Mark
47:04 – 47:21
an area that interests me. So is the Balkans. The Balkans is an area that interests me. Like I’ve been to I’ve been to Serbia and and Montenegro. Yeah, Croatia and there that’s a nice area. I always thought I would want to go to to now

Speaker 5
47:21 – 47:30
where am I? I can’t even find what I’m looking for once again.

Mark
47:32 – 47:48
to Macedonia because Skopje, which is the capital of Macedonia, and Macedonia is only a small country, but it borders six other countries. It does. Around it. So I’ve always in the back of my mind thought Skopje might be a good place to go and base myself for

Speaker 3
47:48 – 47:48
a

Mark
47:48 – 47:52
month or two months and hire a car. And you could drive into Kosovo, you could drive into Albania.

Speaker 3
47:53 – 47:53
You

Mark
47:53 – 47:59
can drive into Bulgaria, you can drive into Greece, you can drive into Macedonia.

Anders
47:59 – 48:00
Absolutely. So

Mark
48:00 – 48:05
there’s a lot of countries around there.

Anders
48:07 – 48:32
And it’s probably… Macedonia, I wouldn’t imagine it to be too expensive. I mean, it’s you could probably get good accommodation, good quality accommodation and, you know, at an affordable price. And from there on, just plan your trips. That’s actually a good idea, because you are right, it’s in the middle of South-East Europe, really.

Mark
48:33 – 48:37
I’ve always thought that Scopia might

Speaker 2
48:37 – 48:37
be a good

Mark
48:37 – 48:44
place to base yourself for a few months and explore all around it. Because I’d say that there’s a lot of borders close to it

Speaker 5
48:44 – 48:45
for a small country. So

Mark
48:45 – 48:58
definitely tick off a few other countries around that area to have a look at. But yeah, like, um, so yeah, so I would say that Greece and pyramids are another

Anders
48:58 – 48:58
big

Mark
48:58 – 49:32
one. And I would like to go to South America at some stage. Yeah. To Argentina or to Patagonia at the bottom of Chile. Look, I could keep real enough places forever and ever, but, um, but yeah, I don’t really know if I’ve got Any really, really, really, really strong bucket list places? Like, there’s a lot of places I’d like to go to, and there’s not one that I feel like I have to go to before I die or anything like that. You know, I know some people are driven by a mission that they have to

Anders
49:32 – 49:36
go to. Well, you have already traveled quite a bit, haven’t you? Yeah, I’ve been to a

Mark
49:36 – 49:40
lot of places. So yeah, so there’s,

Anders
49:40 – 49:41
you know,

Mark
49:41 – 49:45
maybe I could go to South Africa and do a safari and see the big five. I think that would

Speaker 2
49:45 – 49:45
be.

Mark
49:46 – 49:48
Oh yeah. Yeah. Be pretty cool

Speaker 2
49:48 – 49:48
to

Mark
49:48 – 49:50
go see the

Speaker 2
49:50 – 49:53
lion and the tiger and the giraffe and the hippo and there’s

Mark
49:53 – 50:00
one other that make up the big five safaris. Yeah. as they call them and you can do a day big five

Anders
50:00 – 50:01
safari from Cape Town

Mark
50:01 – 50:03
and it’s only a couple hundred bucks like

Anders
50:03 – 50:04
a person

Mark
50:04 – 50:23
which seems pretty reasonable for what you’re going to see. I don’t quite know whether I safety issues in South Africa, but you know, they reckon if you stay in the tourist part of Cape Town, it’s very safe, it’s very modern, it’s very pretty, and

Anders
50:23 – 50:24
it

Mark
50:24 – 50:28
looks really pretty, actually, Cape Town, like, you know, they’ve got a gondola that goes

Anders
50:28 – 50:29
up to the top of that mountain, Cradle

Mark
50:29 – 50:31
Mountain, that’s in Tasmania, but it’s…

Anders
50:32 – 50:33
Yeah,

Mark
50:33 – 50:39
I’m sort of mountain there behind it. And you know, the beaches are beautiful. Wouldn’t go to in the beach too much on sharks there though. But

Anders
50:39 – 50:43
yeah, but yeah, penguins, I guess they have penguins as well.

Mark
50:44 – 50:51
Same latitude as Australia. So similar, similar weather. Yeah, as well as what we do here in Australia.

Speaker 2
50:51 – 50:51
So,

Mark
50:51 – 50:56
um, but yeah, I could definitely see myself going to there.

Anders
50:57 – 51:45
I recently saw, um, a documentary, a travel doc on South Africa. And yeah, it’s there are certain areas where you wouldn’t want to go. The thing about South Africa, because we’ve been discussing this as well, my wife and I, we, you know, it’s one of the places we haven’t been. And we know a lot of people who have been there. And they talk highly of it. And they’re really, really, you know, were really satisfied with their experiences there. And I can actually absolutely relate to that. I can understand why, because it is beautiful. And the culinary, I mean, the South African kitchen, you can eat well.

Anders
51:48 – 52:34
heavily meat based. And yeah, no, it’s, it’s all good. The thing about it is, it’s, it’s, it’s very, it’s very split, because there’s a very poor part of South Africa that you are not going to see as a rich tourist coming from from anywhere outside you you you won’t you won’t see it you will drive in in in protected uh cars drive by the these these shanty towns and and and um yeah poverty and crime is is a huge thing in south africa and and uh yeah they they try to you know kind of you know, protect the tourists from that.

Anders
52:34 – 52:35
But I

Mark
52:35 – 52:38
don’t want you to see the less glamorous

Anders
52:39 – 52:39
parts

Mark
52:39 – 53:11
of it. But it’s another one of those destinations, I guess, much like coming to Australia, it’s a long way away from everywhere for you. So it’s even a long way away for Australians. I think it’s like 10 10 or 12 hours in Australia as well. And there’s not really any other countries around it, Zimbabwe, but I think they’re in sort of political and economic strife as well, and things like that. But I say that, and I think sometimes you get a picture in your mind, and then you go somewhere, and it’s totally different. You

Anders
53:11 – 53:12
go,

Mark
53:12 – 53:15
oh, that’s dangerous, or that would be rugged, and you go there

Anders
53:15 – 53:15
and

Mark
53:15 – 53:20
go, well, It’s not really it’s just another city in another country, you know, and

Anders
53:20 – 53:21
yeah, I mean, it’s

Mark
53:21 – 53:23
sensible about what you do, you know,

Anders
53:23 – 54:09
of course, I mean, surely you could go to less glamorous places in South Africa, as long as you don’t wear your Rolex and and all your jewelry and just tone it down a bit, right? Yeah. But yeah, you’re right about Africa. Africa is a thing where we’re actually pretty much in the same time zone, more or less here in Europe. And it would, it’s not too far to fly down. And it would be a whole different cultural experience, to say the least. And I’m sure it will be mostly it will be a pleasant experience. I’ve I mean, reading a lot of books from people who’ve been there and you know, they’ll say it’s like you say, it’s not as bad as people would think.

Anders
54:09 – 54:47
It’s it’s and it’s, you hear about these revolutions, you have dictatorships, you have all these things in the old colonies. And yeah, but but still, you know, it’s People have their everyday life. They just live peacefully, obviously in somewhat poverty, but you can have good travel experiences and they welcome you because you bring, as a tourist, you bring money. Yeah, definitely. You bring money. That’s what they want. Yeah. They don’t have much else to live on. So no, it’s, yeah.

Mark
54:48 – 54:49
I think it’d be quite

Anders
54:49 – 54:51
good to go to South Africa

Mark
54:51 – 55:00
for sure. Absolutely. Like I said, there’s not many places that I could say I really wouldn’t go to, you know what I mean? Like, you know, there’s actually, I can’t

Anders
55:00 – 55:00
really

Mark
55:00 – 55:06
think of anywhere where, you know, someone said, if I gave you a free ticket, would you go there? I’d say, yeah, for sure.

Anders
55:06 – 55:32
I would even, I would even go to, I would even consider going to North Korea. It’s one of those destinations where Is it as bad as they say? I’ve been following a YouTuber who’s been there and he said it was really scary, but you know, even he has to, you know, create some buzz around his videos. I’ve

Mark
55:32 – 55:33
been

Anders
55:33 – 55:33
to the

Mark
55:33 – 55:37
DMZ, I’ve stood on the border and looked over into North Korea.

Anders
55:37 – 55:38
Oh yeah,

Mark
55:38 – 55:39
yeah.

Anders
55:40 – 55:40
As we

Mark
55:40 – 56:09
go, we went to the border, yeah, and there’s like an elevator platform where you can look into there with your binoculars and see the North Korean flag and they play, you know, North Korean music at different times. And we actually went down, there’s this tunnel underground and I don’t know if the squeeze, the juice is worth the squeeze, but you had to walk about a kilometre underground. There’s this door There’s a hole in the door, and you can see

Anders
56:09 – 56:11
the other side where North Korea is too. There’s soldiers

Mark
56:11 – 56:24
on the other side, and that’s about as close as you can get. So yeah, but it was an interesting trip, because we went from Seoul to, Seoul’s actually really close to the North Korean border. It’s 60 kilometers away.

Anders
56:24 – 56:32
That’s why they have these hot air balloons that they send over from North Korea with garbage, don’t they? Just to terrorize them.

Mark
56:32 – 56:51
Yeah, so it was a good trip. quite an easy day trip if you’re ever in Seoul to go to the DMZ. There’s a train station right on the border and it’s all set up like an international train station just waiting for the day that North Korea you know, allows trains to

Anders
56:51 – 56:52
go back

Mark
56:52 – 56:52
in. I

Anders
56:52 – 56:54
can get a stamp from this train station,

Mark
56:54 – 57:22
which is, yeah, right on the border. And if it ever happens, who knows, but it would be an interesting train ride because it would then connect onto the, onto the Trans-Siberian if you could go, if they opened North Korea up, because you could go from the bottom of South Korea to Busan and you could go all the way around to Europe if North Korea was opened to train travel. Speaking of train travel, this actually is a bucket list of items.

Anders
57:22 – 57:23
I really want to do

Mark
57:23 – 57:44
the Trans-Siberian from Beijing to St. Petersburg. It is a big one actually on my list. To be honest with you, I’m not quite sure I’ll enjoy it. I don’t know if I’ll enjoy seeing our train for that long, but it’s something I actually that I want that I want to do. But saying that I would probably get off every day, like I would definitely book a lot of stops on the way to

Speaker 2
57:44 – 57:44
see

Mark
57:45 – 57:56
to see a fair bit of Russia as I was going past. And I definitely get off in in Mongolia, which sort of give me a little bit of a thought about next time I go to China and say,

Anders
57:56 – 57:56
Willow,

Mark
57:56 – 58:11
if we go for an extended period of time, whether I can get a train from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, I think it’s only 12 hours or something like that, and go have a look in the capital of Mongolia for a couple

Anders
58:11 – 58:11
of

Mark
58:11 – 58:11
days and then

Anders
58:11 – 58:12
come back to

Mark
58:12 – 58:12
Beijing.

Anders
58:12 – 58:13
So I was

Mark
58:13 – 58:15
actually only thinking this before the episode.

Anders
58:15 – 58:16
So it’s

Mark
58:16 – 58:24
something I might look into because, you know, if I’m in China, Nip over the border for a few days and check out Mongolia.

Anders
58:25 – 58:31
Do you do you have an idea of what that would cost like going from Beijing to say Paris or

Mark
58:33 – 58:35
I Don’t at this stage, but

Anders
58:35 – 58:35
okay

Mark
58:35 – 58:40
it was somewhere around $5,000. Yeah one stage a

Speaker 3
58:40 – 58:42
person. Yeah,

Mark
58:42 – 59:06
that’s depending on what sort of a class you wanted to be like there’s private rooms and then there’s you know there’s communal and things like that yeah But I was also told, though, that it’s a lot dearer if you buy it in the West than actually just rolling up into Beijing and possibly booking it like at the train station

Speaker 3
59:06 – 59:06
in

Mark
59:06 – 59:21
Beijing, like a week in advance. Or, you know, I mean, you’d have to run the risk that you may not get when you want to get, I guess, doing that. And if you’re going to book through a travel agent in the West, well, they’re certainly going to take their fair share.

Anders
59:21 – 59:22
You can count on it. Yeah.

Mark
59:23 – 59:23
So

Anders
59:23 – 59:25
yeah, so you could book it that

Mark
59:25 – 59:37
way. I know there used to be a site where you could book every leg of it and you could pick, you know, where you wanted to stay, how long you wanted to stay, hotels in towns that you wanted to get off in, you know, all this sort of thing like that.

Anders
59:39 – 1:00:22
Because it’s stuff like that, that’s really, that’s really, I mean, train travel is expensive. It’s way more expensive than it should be. Obviously they have huge cost of maintaining the rails and all of that. So I understand, sort of understand it, but in… In other ways, I don’t because it could be already there. Yeah. And the government should make sure they have a proper infrastructure. But what I want to say about train travel is that this is a good way to actually experience and feel how big the world is, the distances. Because when you step on a plane and then 12 hours later you are in Hong Kong.

Anders
1:00:23 – 1:00:31
if you fly from Europe, you don’t really understand the distance that you have just traveled. Right.

Mark
1:00:31 – 1:00:45
Well, this is it. And the Trans-Siberian basically covers half the Earth, like half the known landmass, really. So it’s quite an undertaking. It is.

Anders
1:00:50 – 1:00:56
It is. And if you spent like a month or two, you know, traveling that distance.

Mark
1:00:56 – 1:00:59
There’s enough towns along the

Speaker 2
1:00:59 – 1:01:00
way to get off. I’m

Mark
1:01:00 – 1:01:16
just kind of looking at what they’re telling me. AI is telling me the current cost is about a basic trip can cost I don’t know how much a ruble is. 40,000 rubles to 400,000 rubles. Let’s just have a look at my currency converter. So

Speaker 5
1:01:16 – 1:01:34
what is 40,000 rubles? Open up currency converter. Add currency, Russia. Russian

Mark
1:01:34 – 1:01:37
rouble, so 40,000,

Speaker 5
1:01:37 – 1:01:37
which is what

Mark
1:01:37 – 1:01:54
they’re saying the base cost would be. Oh, there you go. So the base cost, they’re saying, if it starts at 40,000, I don’t know how long ago AI scraped this information, is starting at around 380 euros or 665 Australian

Anders
1:01:54 – 1:01:54
dollars.

Mark
1:01:54 – 1:02:13
So that would be in shared accommodation, I’d say, in rooms where, you know, you’re in bunks everywhere. Yeah. various privacy shared shower and things like that I would guess but so so I guess you know even if you doubled that or or even tripled that to around two thousand dollars or something. It’s

Anders
1:02:13 – 1:02:14
actually not that bad.

Mark
1:02:14 – 1:02:15
No

Anders
1:02:15 – 1:02:16
not at all it

Mark
1:02:16 – 1:02:20
would have to be fairly cheap because I don’t think there would be people in Russia there’d be normal

Anders
1:02:20 – 1:02:21
people in Russia traveling on

Mark
1:02:21 – 1:02:23
this. Yes of course. So

Anders
1:02:23 – 1:02:24
so I guess

Mark
1:02:24 – 1:02:28
they would have to have a certain a certain economy class that

Anders
1:02:28 – 1:02:29
can afford it sort

Mark
1:02:29 – 1:02:35
of much like China. does, I guess, you know, they have a lot of options because, you

Anders
1:02:35 – 1:02:35
know, a lot of

Mark
1:02:35 – 1:02:45
Chinese don’t have a lot of money. So. So, yeah, so that’s definitely one I would like to do. But like I said, I’d like to get off at a lot of the places along the way, even just for, you know, just for a couple

Anders
1:02:45 – 1:02:48
of days or something like that. Yeah. But I mean, there’s two

Mark
1:02:48 – 1:03:30
different there’s two different routes. I mean, they call the Trans-Siberian. Most people think the Trans-Siberian goes from Beijing, but I think that’s actually the Trans-Manchurian that goes from Beijing. The Trans-Siberian goes from Vladivostok. So so most people I’d like to go to Vladivostok, though, because it’s right on the edge. Basically, it’s the edge of Russia in Asia. You can get a ferry to Japan and you can get a ferry to South Korea from there and things like that. The world is so really interconnected. You don’t know until you look at things. You can get a ferry from where Willow lives to to South Korea, and then from there you can get a ferry to Japan.

Mark
1:03:31 – 1:03:38
These are all only one overnight ferries. I tend to think of things in a large scope because of where I live and

Anders
1:03:38 – 1:03:38
the fact

Mark
1:03:38 – 1:03:51
that everything is so far away from me. So when I say that, you know, you can catch a ferry, you know, or catch a train or, you know, drive to another country like these guys can, this blows my brain.

Anders
1:03:51 – 1:04:31
Yeah, no, I mean, For me, Japan is also like a big thing. It’s currently what we sort of are able to see here from researching the price levels, it’s rather expensive to go to Japan and accommodation because from Europe, you wouldn’t just go for a week, you would go for like three or four weeks. So it’s not just the plane, the plane tickets are actually sort of affordable, but then comes like hotel or accommodation and eating and stuff like that. And that is fairly expensive in Japan at the moment.

Mark
1:04:32 – 1:04:54
Yeah. And in reality, Japan at the moment, and I think it will still seem expensive, is for Australia, I don’t know what its currency rate is against the euro, it’s the cheapest it’s ever been for Australians to go to Japan at the moment. Okay. Our dollars worth About 30% more against the Japanese yen than it was five years ago

Speaker 5
1:04:54 – 1:04:55
Wow

Mark
1:04:56 – 1:05:04
Which is quite quite bizarre. So and I think it was the second most popular destination for Australians in the last

Anders
1:05:04 – 1:05:05
yeah, once was together

Mark
1:05:05 – 1:05:25
and I was reading this the other day and the Japanese government are actually urging this urging Australians to don’t just go to Tokyo and because the and Kyoto and Osaka because The capitals, these cities are starting to get overrun with tourists because there’s so many tourists going to Japan at present.

Anders
1:05:26 – 1:06:08
It’s popular amongst Europeans too. I mean, we know a lot of people who have either been just, you know, in recent years or are going and yeah, we would love to do that too. We’re actually thinking of maybe in two years we could probably, maybe we could go. There’s a chance there before, because our son is going for a year in boarding school in Denmark. And when he gets back, we actually have, before the school starts again here in Munich, we have almost three months where he does not have to go to school. So three months would actually open a window for us to go to Japan, travel more lengthily.

Anders
1:06:08 – 1:06:10
That would be good.

Mark
1:06:12 – 1:06:13
Yeah,

Anders
1:06:13 – 1:06:40
it has because we are I think I’ve mentioned this before here in Germany, we are kind of stuck to a rather rigid and fixed matrix of school holidays. And because in Germany, you have you going to school physically is is obligatory. And you there’s homeschooling is not allowed. So yeah.

Mark
1:06:41 – 1:06:42
Yeah,

Anders
1:06:44 – 1:07:16
we should we should otherwise while we’re there on those on those lengths we should maybe we should take a an extra trip going down to see you guys because Going to australia is also we’ve been to australia. My wife has been there several have been there several times But it’s another thing that we definitely are going to do. Um At some point, we are coming back to Australia. I would also really love to go to New Zealand again. I’ll

Mark
1:07:16 – 1:07:26
come to New Zealand with you. I’d like to go back. I’ve only been in New Zealand for five days. Yeah. Quite enjoyed it. So I’d like to go back to New Zealand, definitely. So that would be on

Anders
1:07:26 – 1:07:27
my list again. I’ve got so many

Mark
1:07:27 – 1:07:31
places on my list. I’ve just been doing some planning in the last

Anders
1:07:31 – 1:07:31
couple of

Mark
1:07:31 – 1:07:49
days. I think we’re going to go to Lombok, which is an island off Bali. So people reckon it’s like maybe 10 years ago. So we’re looking at going there in maybe May for a week. So we’ll fly to this little island.

Anders
1:07:49 – 1:07:50
Well, it’s not a

Mark
1:07:50 – 1:08:14
little island. The island’s actually the same size as Bali when you look at it on the map. We’re very underdeveloped only a few few major towns a lot of scenic stuff a lot of resorts along the beach Things like that. So we By then I will actually have my scooter license. So it might be a good chance to get out on the scooters on an island It’s not quite as busy as Bali before. Yeah Take that on so we

Speaker 3
1:08:14 – 1:08:15
might go to

Mark
1:08:15 – 1:08:20
have a look. We might go to Lombok It’s a seven nights and because

Anders
1:08:20 – 1:08:20
you

Mark
1:08:20 – 1:08:29
have to fly out of Bali will come back to Bali and spend two nights two or three nights in Bali and Yeah, and come home. So that’s that’s that’s maybe my plan for my

Speaker 5
1:08:31 – 1:08:36
To go and yeah I have

Mark
1:08:36 – 1:08:36
never been to

Anders
1:08:37 – 1:08:43
I’ve never been to Bali. But yeah, everybody that I know, I’ve been there. So you know,

Mark
1:08:43 – 1:08:46
yeah, I’ve been there a lot of times. So I sort of get there.

Anders
1:08:47 – 1:08:47
Am

Mark
1:08:47 – 1:08:54
I wasting going back there? So that’s why hence if we go to Lombok, it’s somewhere different. I don’t mind if I’m going somewhere different. I just don’t want

Anders
1:08:54 – 1:08:54
to

Mark
1:08:54 – 1:09:03
go. I struggle going to the same place all the time when there’s so many other places to see basically,

Anders
1:09:03 – 1:09:04
but I haven’t

Mark
1:09:04 – 1:09:23
been to. So yeah, but Bali’s easy because it’s only six hours from Australia. It’s only two hours time difference. So we can go, we can come back, we can go back to work the next day. It’s convenient more than anything. And five and a half hours to six hours is good flying time. It’s not

Anders
1:09:24 – 1:09:33
too much of a… It’s like Europeans going to Mallorca or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Canary Islands for summer. Yeah,

Mark
1:09:33 – 1:09:34
that’s it. That’s

Anders
1:09:34 – 1:09:35
it. So that’s

Mark
1:09:35 – 1:09:38
sort of like that. I mean, I would love to, you know, go

Anders
1:09:38 – 1:09:38
to Sri

Mark
1:09:38 – 1:09:56
Lanka. I’ve been there. That’s sort of on my list. You know, I’d like to, I’d like to go to Japan. Like you said, I’d like to go to Taiwan. As I keep reeling all these. places off you know there’s even places in near bali uh east timor or timor timor least

Speaker 2
1:09:56 – 1:09:56
yeah

Mark
1:09:56 – 1:10:04
it’s called um you know which you could fly to and go there like to go to komodo komodo island which is near bali where all the komodo dragons are

Anders
1:10:04 – 1:10:26
actually actually uh our upstairs neighbors are going there in September, I think. Yeah, September, they’re going to Komodo. Yeah. They have some diving, they have some diving excursions. Yeah, so so yeah, that’s, they’re really looking forward to that, you know, the Komodo.

Mark
1:10:27 – 1:10:51
You can do some traditional cruises on our family who did a boat trip from Bali to there and you sleep on the deck of the boat and you know things like that and they bring all the mattresses out and sleep on the deck or you can go on sometimes you can go on a better boat I was looking at one the other day which was three nights four days have your own cabin with air conditioning and you know it takes about three days to sail there from Bali and then you pull up at Komodo and spend a few days there and you know sail back like all these things

Speaker 3
1:10:51 – 1:10:51
were

Mark
1:10:51 – 1:10:56
relatively relatively good priced I just want to leave and

Speaker 5
1:10:56 – 1:11:06
travel yeah fools me. Yeah. Yeah. That’s just life, isn’t

Mark
1:11:07 – 1:11:10
it? So there are a few things that I really want to

Anders
1:11:11 – 1:11:11
do. I have

Mark
1:11:11 – 1:11:13
a million things I sort of want to do.

Anders
1:11:14 – 1:11:34
And that’s the beauty of this nice blue planet on which we live. You know, there are tons, endless opportunities. I mean, really only your imagination and your personal taste will set the limits to where you can go.

Mark
1:11:36 – 1:12:06
I’d also like to go and do the Silk Road, like, you know, so there’s another, there’s another journey through Central Asia. Yeah. China into Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, like, you know, cause you can really then go all the way to Georgia and into Turkey and into Europe. Basically you can go from, once again, you can go from China all the way to Europe, but not via Russia, via Central Asia. Yeah. So yeah, that’s a big world. There’s so many things I could do.

Anders
1:12:08 – 1:12:55
Yeah, and if it wasn’t because I have a personal disliking of the big cruise ships, I’m not really a fan of them because they are really not, I mean, putting thousands of people on a big ship, you know, with buffets and, you know, we’ve seen in Venice how these big cruise ships come in and really disrupt the whole environment of a local community. If it wasn’t for that, I would actually consider going on an Antarctic cruise. I would love to go down there. Yeah, but the only way you can really go is unless you know people and are well connected, you could probably fly down there.

Anders
1:12:56 – 1:13:05
yeah unless you you know any of that you you will have to go on a cruise and and i’m not really a big fan of that i went

Mark
1:13:06 – 1:13:14
on a cruise last year for the first time just the three day one out of melbourne i wanted to uh just dabble my toe you know

Anders
1:13:14 – 1:13:14
yeah

Mark
1:13:15 – 1:13:16
have a cruising experience

Anders
1:13:16 – 1:13:16
yeah

Mark
1:13:16 – 1:13:30
yeah and see what it was like like it was okay it’s not something i would rush back for unless it was a specific reason. There’s a lot of repositioning cruises where they sail at the end of the season to the other side

Speaker 2
1:13:30 – 1:13:31
of the

Mark
1:13:31 – 1:13:43
world, which are relatively cheap and good value. There was one out of Sydney last year that was going to Los Angeles, 21 nights. It was like $3,000 Australian. So you

Anders
1:13:43 – 1:13:44
could basically

Mark
1:13:44 – 1:13:45
go to LA.

Anders
1:13:46 – 1:13:46
It

Mark
1:13:46 – 1:13:49
stopped about five or six places on the way, Hawaii, Fiji,

Anders
1:13:49 – 1:13:49
here or

Mark
1:13:49 – 1:13:49
there for

Anders
1:13:49 – 1:13:49
a

Mark
1:13:49 – 1:14:01
day. So things like that were good value. I actually went on on a Virgin Voyages cruise which was an adults only See lots of jokes about swingers and stuff.

Anders
1:14:01 – 1:14:01
Yeah on

Mark
1:14:02 – 1:14:19
these virgin voyages ones I never saw any of that going on never seen any pineapples on on doors So for people who don’t I want to cruise ship it as a pineapple apparently hanging on the door. That means this wing is But there’s ongoing jokes about these if you watch YouTube, you know,

Speaker 2
1:14:19 – 1:14:19
yeah

Mark
1:14:19 – 1:14:28
pipe in virgin voyages, they’re like, you know We went on the adults only swingers cruises or you know things like this. It could have been happening, it may have been happening, I don’t know, I didn’t

Anders
1:14:28 – 1:14:29
see it, but it was

Mark
1:14:29 – 1:14:36
only out of Melbourne. So they sent the boat to Melbourne for a season and then packed up and

Anders
1:14:36 – 1:14:39
went back to Europe after that and didn’t come back this year. So

Mark
1:14:39 – 1:14:40
one season

Anders
1:14:40 – 1:14:40
in Melbourne

Mark
1:14:41 – 1:15:00
and we went We only had three days. We were meant to go and dock in Tasmania and come back, but the weather was shitful. So we didn’t even dock. We just cruised up and down the north coast of Tasmania and back into Melbourne after three days. And I can’t say I loved it. Eating was like in a food hall in a shopping centre.

Speaker 3
1:15:00 – 1:15:00
Yeah. You

Mark
1:15:00 – 1:15:10
know, there’s just people. Everywhere really wasn’t that much to do unless you wanted to sit around the pool and drink, you know, $20 cocktails

Anders
1:15:10 – 1:15:10
and

Mark
1:15:10 – 1:15:17
things like that. Like I said, if you’re stopping in different places might be okay.

Anders
1:15:17 – 1:15:17
Look,

Mark
1:15:17 – 1:15:27
I must say probably 25 years ago when when I was probably into drinking a lot more and partying and things like that. I think it would be It would probably be a good thing when you’re young, like you’ve got

Speaker 2
1:15:27 – 1:15:28
some friends

Mark
1:15:28 – 1:15:40
and you know, you want to go and kick up your heels, uh, you know, buy the all-inclusive drink card and things like that and, you know, and go crazy. But yeah, for me, it’s probably not, it’s

Speaker 3
1:15:40 – 1:15:41
not on the top of my list of

Mark
1:15:41 – 1:15:42
something

Anders
1:15:42 – 1:15:42
I

Mark
1:15:42 – 1:15:43
need to do

Anders
1:15:43 – 1:15:44
again in a hurry. You

Mark
1:15:44 – 1:15:51
know, I’d like to go possibly like you on a cruise to maybe Alaska or the fjords in Norway.

Anders
1:15:51 – 1:15:51
Up the

Mark
1:15:51 – 1:15:52
coast

Anders
1:15:52 – 1:15:53
of Norway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark
1:15:53 – 1:16:00
Things like that. More just catch a ferry. I still want to catch that ferry from Denmark to Iceland that we talked about.

Anders
1:16:00 – 1:16:03
Yeah. So, you know, things like that are

Mark
1:16:04 – 1:16:05
on my list.

Anders
1:16:05 – 1:16:05
And I

Mark
1:16:05 – 1:16:10
might even catch a ferry from Lombok back to Bali, I think, which is about

Anders
1:16:10 – 1:16:10
four or five

Mark
1:16:10 – 1:16:12
hours. So there’s an old car

Anders
1:16:12 – 1:16:12
ferry that you can

Mark
1:16:13 – 1:16:16
jump on that travels between Bali and Lombok. So that

Anders
1:16:16 – 1:16:16
might be

Mark
1:16:17 – 1:16:19
something different as well. So, yeah.

Anders
1:16:19 – 1:16:54
Yeah, I mean, it’s just like you say. probably we’re too old for these cruise ship experiences. I mean, it’s, but to me, it’s also about, I just saw the world’s, you know, a video from the world’s largest cruise ship ever launched. And I was just thinking, is it really necessary? Is it really? Like those dimensions, it’s just ridiculous. And yeah.

Mark
1:16:55 – 1:16:55
I

Anders
1:16:55 – 1:16:55
love

Mark
1:16:55 – 1:16:59
it. Like in America, there’s all these cruises from Miami, you know, into the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Anders
1:17:00 – 1:17:12
Yeah, I’ve been to one of those as well. That was worker related. But but but still, it was it’s not it’s not that it’s a bad experience. Like you say, you know, it’s just Yeah, not really.

Mark
1:17:12 – 1:17:13
So we choose to do first.

Anders
1:17:13 – 1:17:17
Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And I mean, I

Mark
1:17:17 – 1:17:20
know plenty of people who go on, who love cruises. Like, you know,

Anders
1:17:20 – 1:17:20
my

Mark
1:17:20 – 1:17:23
parents used to love cruises. They went on five

Anders
1:17:23 – 1:17:23
or six

Mark
1:17:23 – 1:17:24
of them. And,

Anders
1:17:24 – 1:17:24
you

Mark
1:17:24 – 1:17:31
know, for some people I can see the convenience of it. They only have to get up, you know, go feed yourself anytime you

Anders
1:17:31 – 1:17:32
want.

Mark
1:17:32 – 1:17:33
You know, if you

Anders
1:17:33 – 1:17:33
want to get off the boat,

Mark
1:17:34 – 1:17:35
you get off, you have a

Anders
1:17:36 – 1:17:36
short few hours of

Mark
1:17:36 – 1:17:39
sightseeing, come back on the boat, get

Anders
1:17:39 – 1:17:40
fed. You can have a

Mark
1:17:40 – 1:17:40
couple of drinks, go

Anders
1:17:40 – 1:17:41
to the cinema at

Mark
1:17:41 – 1:17:43
night or the stage show. Everything’s in

Anders
1:17:43 – 1:17:43
the,

Mark
1:17:43 – 1:17:45
everything’s in the one area. There’s no hassle

Speaker 3
1:17:45 – 1:17:48
about going out. finding your way home, you know,

Mark
1:17:48 – 1:17:59
everything is right there. For people, I can see the attraction for some types of travelers, you know, that that’s all more holiday-making. Me too.

Anders
1:17:59 – 1:18:33
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of convenience to it. And I think that’s fine. The way we are used to traveling here in our family is just It doesn’t fit. It just doesn’t. So, so yeah. Right, Mark, another hour and a little more. Wow. So, this has been yet another great episode, I think, from Southern Summers and Northern Winters. Thank you for listening. We

Mark
1:18:33 – 1:18:35
hope you all listen.

Anders
1:18:35 – 1:18:53
Yeah, and comment like like we say all the time, please do. Let us know that you’re there. Let us know that you’re listening. It will be lovely to hear from you. We will be back anyway. We will be back soon again. So thank you very much for listening and have a great week.

Mark
1:18:54 – 1:18:58
Otherwise, we will everyone will be back next week.

Anders
1:18:58 – 1:19:06
Yes, we will. Bye. So where do I Stop this recording! Or is it?