Vienna impressions, AirBnB, and flying Chinese

In Episode 2 of Southern Summers and Northern Winters, Mark and Anders reflect on recent travel experiences, focusing on Vienna’s rich history, cultural landmarks, and the allure of Mozart concerts. They weigh the benefits of Airbnb versus hotels and explore how over-tourism impacts cities like Barcelona. The episode wraps up with insights into traveling in China, including challenges like restricted internet access and navigating visa regulations.
Southern Summers and Northern Winters Podcast transcript Episode 2
Anders
00:09
Hello everybody and welcome to Southern Summers and Northern Winters, the second episode. Hi Mark, how are you doing?
Mark
00:18
Hi Anders, I’m great. The second episode, all keen, let’s talk.
Anders
00:22
The big episode 2. Let’s see how it goes. Yeah, so in this episode, We’re starting to ease into some of the many, many topics that we have lined up for this podcast series.
Anders
00:37
And as I was last week, I was in Vienna with my family, Vienna, Austria. I think We can just talk a little bit from from there on because mark you have been were you there with your family as well or Wait, what was that before you? Had a family.
Mark
00:54
I was certainly there. I was certainly there with my family Yeah, it was a bit bit bit further back than when you were there. I believe it was probably more might have been 2017 or 2018 but I guess the thing with classical cities like Vienna is a lot of the attractions don’t change because a lot of them are sort of historical based, aren’t they?
Anders
01:15
Yeah. This was the first time we were there with our son, Anton. He’s 14 and I believe it’s 16 or 17 years since our last visit in Vienna. Just as a couple back then.
Anders
01:28
And boy has it changed. As you say, a lot of the attractions are the same, but it was a different vibe this time, maybe because we had our son with us, I guess. But There were a lot of tourists, as seemed to be the trend in European big cities at the moment. A lot of international overseas tourists.
Anders
01:58
But, you know, I guess it’s what it’s current trend. And you can easily get away for just 3, 4 days, an extended weekend on a quick trip. And they will feel like You’ve been regenerated with energy and you’ve got new inspiration. It’s a quick and easy solution for many people to just go to a city and dive in for a couple of days within a relatively small geographical area, I guess.
Anders
02:36
It’s a lot like driving across Australia or the US. I mean, you’ve got everything within like a few kilometers.
Mark
02:48
Definitely.
Anders
02:49
Yeah, yeah.
Mark
02:49
I think there’s a real, there’s a real kickback against over tourism, I think going on at the moment in a lot of places in Europe. I know cities like Barcelona are really, really strong on it and have been for a long time. I remember going to Barcelona, I think maybe the same time I went to Vienna.
Mark
03:05
And even back then, 8 years ago, or 7 years ago, there were signs on walls like an alleyway saying, go home tourists, tourists, we don’t need you, things like that. Because I think Airbnb is a big culprit behind a lot of it and that’s what a lot of people were kicking up about because no longer can traditional families, especially in Barcelona, traditional Catalan families can’t afford to live in the centre of Barcelona because apartments are all rented out as Airbnbs where people are getting, you know, 2, $300 a night instead of, you know, charging 2, $300 a week for families to live.
Anders
03:40
Yes, true. That’s a huge Airbnb. It’s a whole different kettle of fish because we’ve had good and bad experiences with exactly that as well.
Anders
03:56
But in terms of local communities against Airbnb, I can certainly understand that because it disrupts the whole dynamic of a local community when, first of all, when people can no longer afford living there because the apartments are being, or houses are being bought by investors, professionals who only buy them in order to…
Mark
04:24
Yeah, to profit.
Anders
04:25
To profit and do Airbnb rentals.
Mark
04:28
Takes the authenticity away from the neighbourhoods, I guess.
Anders
04:31
It does, doesn’t it? I mean if a
Mark
04:33
lot of tourists are moving in. Yeah. Or moving in, moving out, moving in, moving out.
Mark
04:37
Yeah. They’re all short term.
Anders
04:39
There’s no continuity. There’s no, I mean it’s just people and they don’t really care about the local area, how it looks and
Mark
04:50
they don’t
Anders
04:51
take any ownership. That’s what I like in a city, in a local community is that you know people and you know that other people like to live there hopefully and they will protect the local parks and streets and don’t make graffiti on the walls and stuff like that.
Mark
05:18
This is true. I mean, look, I had a look the other day, actually, because I stayed in Airbnb in Melbourne, I think maybe 3 weeks ago. But in all the years I’ve been traveling, I had a look and I reckon I’ve stayed in under 10 Airbnbs in the last 15 years.
Mark
05:34
So not through any choice. So I just generally find staying in a hotel just as convenient. And I guess on the added front, It’s not keeping someone out of an apartment in an area I go to if I’m staying in a hotel because the hotel is already there. So unless I really have to and unless there’s a really big advantage of staying in an Airbnb, well generally we just stay in a hotel.
Anders
06:02
Exactly. Well, last week we stayed in a, it was called a residence. So it was a flat and it was in an old townhouse, but the whole house, I think there were like 15 flats, it was owned by the same, is owned by the same company. They have more locations around Vienna.
Anders
06:24
And for a family, we have a teenage son, so we were definitely in need of 2 bedrooms. Yeah, for sure. It can be a little costly if you need 2 hotel rooms.
Mark
06:38
2 hotel rooms, I hear.
Anders
06:41
So we did that, but I don’t know about the local policies, legislation in Vienna, how that works. But it was a local community and there were lots of local people around. So it seemed like the balance had not been disrupted there.
Anders
07:00
I think it was the only-
Mark
07:02
I think actually we stayed in a local apartment too when we were in Vienna on a street in 1 of the suburbs. I actually remember this. Finally, yeah, it was on a second floor and the apartment had 2 bedrooms and a kitchen and things like that.
Anders
07:17
Like if you’re
Mark
07:17
gonna stay for a week, you know, sometimes it’s handy to have a kitchen, you know, and sometimes it’s handy to have a laundry because, you know, everyone needs to wash their clothes and you take a T-shirt to a hotel and it costs you $20 to get a T-shirt washed.
Anders
07:29
That’s exactly it. We had all these amenities. We had the kitchen, we had the washing machine, the dryer, everything.
Anders
07:36
It was a fully equipped flat. And it was cool because we’re also just around the corner, really. There were bakeries and supermarkets. And So we just went down and made our own breakfasts in the flat.
Anders
07:49
So, so, that’s another cost saving thing because many European hotels, they will charge you anything from 15 to 30 euros per person per day. For just a breakfast buffet. Right. So it’s, it can quickly, it could quickly amount to, yeah, well, 80, 80, 75, 80 euros a day.
Mark
08:16
Definitely just for breakfast.
Anders
08:17
Yes for breakfast. And it’s not even good.
Mark
08:22
Well, food they added on, like, you know, if they can get you, they can, they’ll get you with the extra costs, won’t they? I find that on, I guess, if you’re going on like, you know, ferries and you’re in airports, similar sort of situation. If you need to eat or you need to do something and you’re stuck in an area where you actually have to pay, you’ll certainly pay, won’t you?
Anders
08:45
Absolutely. That’s where they will hit you with their way of making money. I mean, we’re going to get into this in a later episode, but just the airport terminals, it’s huge business. It’s big business.
Anders
09:00
And they will rip you off anything before you go into security. In the security situation, they will strip you from anything, from bottled water to anything edible, and then you can just spend your money in the terminal, in this secured area.
Mark
09:17
That’s like add on after add on after add on.
Anders
09:20
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I
Mark
09:22
was watching a YouTube video actually last night. This guy I watch and he was taking a ferry from the north of Denmark to Iceland. So it takes like 3 days.
Mark
09:34
So I was really interested in it because it’s something I would, I would like to do going forward at some stage. But I added it up and for like 3 days, it was something like a thousand euros for
Anders
09:46
tourists to do it
Mark
09:47
by the time you add, by the time you add, okay, so get this breakfast was breakfast was 50 euros a day for 2 people. And dinner was 90 euros a day for 2 people. So I mean, once you’re on board, you got to eat obviously.
Mark
10:02
So unless you bring, bring all your food with you, I guess, and want to eat noodle cups and sandwiches like that for 3 days. But so they charged you to get on, there was a certain base rate, and then if you wanted a room, then there was another rate, and then you had to buy, you could buy an alcohol package for your room, which wasn’t much. It was like 6 cans of beer and a couple of soft drinks and a couple of chocolate bars or something like that. Yeah.
Mark
10:24
But in the end, it was about a thousand, well over a thousand euros for this 3 night cruise
Anders
10:28
from Denmark to Iceland. On top of the ticket to go to Iceland.
Mark
10:34
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. And then where you land in Iceland is right over on the other side away from Reykjavik.
Mark
10:40
So then you would have to fly to Reykjavik, possibly from where the ferry comes in, or you’d have to get a slow bus. Like, I’ve driven halfway to where it was before 1 day from Reykjavik and it took about 8 hours. So I can imagine the bus would be 15 hours maybe overnight. But yeah, so it all adds up and Iceland is really expensive as it is.
Mark
10:59
So it is.
Anders
11:01
Yeah, it is Good to
Mark
11:02
have a dream.
Anders
11:03
It’s a remote island and you know, almost anything costs a lot of money. So yeah. And Well, back to Airbnb.
Anders
11:17
I mean, it’s something that… Would you recommend Airbnb in general, Mark? I don’t know if… Because I’m a little split on that.
Anders
11:27
Yeah.
Mark
11:28
Well, that’s why I don’t look at it first off. And I must admit, I’ve only started looking at it more lately because I get sick of the things that you were saying like paying for breakfast and yeah what really annoys me is I hate paying for parking like I’m already staying at your hotel like you know and then you want me to pay another say in Australia Australia’s probably not too bad I don’t really know like in Melbourne it might cost you $30 a night for parking, but when we were in Auckland last year, we stayed at Voco, which was a pretty flash hotel, and it was $68 New Zealand a night to park your car. Like that’s 68 bucks.
Mark
12:05
That’s crazy. Like, and the car park was right next door to them. And it probably wasn’t even theirs. Like it was probably, they just rent the space off someone else, you know, and then charge you an absolute fortune to park there.
Mark
12:16
So that really annoys me most is paying for parking. And because we live a fair way out of the city, like 2 or 3 hours from Melbourne, we, you know, we have to drive down to the city and there’s no public transport in our town. So I can’t just jump on a train to go to Melbourne. So I have to get on to take us to the train station and pick us up which is 25 kilometres away or I have to drive and then I have to go for parking.
Mark
12:41
So Airbnb off then you can filter out free parking which is quite handy I think, especially if you’re going for 2 or 3 nights. It’s not too bad if you’re only going for 1 night, like I can handle 30 bucks, but if I’m paying $100 parking on top of my 2 or $300 a night in the hotel, you know, then it all starts to spiral out of control.
Anders
13:01
Exactly, Exactly. And the next thing about Airbnb is that we’ve happened, this has happened to us twice. Once in Berlin and another time in Denmark, that it was cancelled from the owner shortly before our arrival.
Anders
13:22
And we had, you know, we had in the Berlin situation, we had my mother flying in from Denmark and we were coming by train from Munich. It was booked months ahead. And what we realized was that as we were arriving, there was a big fair in Berlin, a travel fair or expo. So probably what had happened was that, and this is just me guessing, but they realized they could actually get
Mark
13:52
more. More. I’m
Anders
13:55
guessing you’re right. By renting out to some businessman coming in who do not care about the cost. No.
Anders
14:01
So like 2 or 3 days before it was just cancelled. And this is 1 of the things that, you know, that’s really a deal breaker for family travelling. You can’t live with that. I mean,
Mark
14:17
that’s just… Definitely. I can’t say I’ve ever had 1 cancelled, but we rolled up to 1 in… Where were we? In a city called Bandung in Indonesia where we had booked 1, and it clearly stated that it fitted 4 people.
Mark
14:31
So we rolled up to this apartment that was about the size of a laundry once we got in there. And like there was 1 queen size bed and there was 1 sofa bed. Okay, So it really probably would have fitted for, but there was no, there was no linen for the sofa bed. There was no blankets.
Mark
14:51
There was no pillows. There was no sheets and I rang them and they’re like, Oh yeah, now there isn’t any. And I’m like, well, I clearly stated there was going to be 4 of us. Like, so you would think that that was mandatory.
Mark
15:03
So we had this whole discussion where she would only give me a refund if I didn’t give her a bad review. Oh. So…
Anders
15:15
That’s like taking the guest hostage.
Mark
15:17
Yeah, basically. And that’s what she was doing. She was like, I’ll give you a refund if you are if you only leave if you leave a positive review And I need you to leave the review before I give you the refund.
Anders
15:27
That’s that’s Outrageous. Yeah
Mark
15:31
So yes, I think I used 1 for a good few years after that, not for that specific reason, but yeah, but that’s 1 of the things I guess that happened to us. And that’s the thing, you’ve got no real recourse with Airbnb because You haven’t got front desk staff or anything like that, I guess, like you have at a hotel, have you? And, you know, and if something happens and you got to wait for them to to message you back and all these sort of things like that.
Mark
15:57
Yeah, so so yeah, that’s good and bad, isn’t it?
Anders
16:00
Yeah, yeah.
Mark
16:01
All systems.
Anders
16:02
And quite frankly, I must say it’s often it’s not even cheaper than hotel. Because people, this I can actually understand if I were a private person, I had a room in my house inviting foreign people in, probably charge as well. But it has to be, I believe the idea of Airbnb was originally that you could actually travel and stay overnight.
Anders
16:35
Accommodation would be somewhat cheaper than hotels, but as it has evolved as a platform, it’s really gotten expensive. We have a neighbor here in our area, because my mom was coming and so I was looking for Airbnb accommodation within close proximity of where we live. And there were a few, but it was basement rooms with no natural light coming in, or it was an attic room. And it was more than 100 euros per night per person.
Anders
17:13
And if you’re 2 persons sharing a room, about 200 euros, you could easily get a 200 euro hotel room in Munich. So that’s where we ended up. So I think you really have to be careful with Airbnb.
Mark
17:30
I think they have the cleaning fees are sometimes outrageous on Airbnb as well. Like I’ve noticed that like the cleaning fees can be similar like half the price of half a night’s accommodation there. Like 80 dollars or 100 dollars in Australia is the cleaning fee sometimes.
Mark
17:46
I’m like surely it doesn’t someone’s not working for 2 hours or 3 hours to clean this place the your small apartment like
Anders
17:54
and often it’s written in tiny letters that they want you to leave the cleaning fee cash on the dining table so yeah it’s not being ripped it’s not being officially reported as income anywhere. No, of course not.
Mark
18:11
I think there was a big hooha about Australia a few years ago, how they were hiding all their fees. So in Australia, they’ve actually got to state all their fees on their site. So you can’t actually now say leave the cleaning fee.
Mark
18:25
It’s got to officially be on Airbnb’s booking platform. So there will be the apartment fee, then Airbnb’s fee and then the cleaning fee will all be listed, which is quite good.
Anders
18:39
Yeah. So, last week in Vienna was not booked by Airbnb. It was an official hotel. I think it was booking.com actually, where we booked it.
Anders
18:50
And it was, as I said, a residence flat, a residence house. And there were lots of other children’s families in the house because it was the Halloween week here in Europe. And so it’s a school holiday. And yeah, there were lots of Germans, but it was also a holiday week in Austria, in fact.
Mark
19:17
Okay.
Anders
19:17
So, so yeah. So maybe that’s why a lot of, no, it’s, I’m just thinking maybe it was, that was the reason why there were so many people in Vienna last week, but, but it was, there were so many overseas tourists. Yeah.
Anders
19:31
Really. Lots of, of Americans, and lots of, of Asian tourists.
Mark
19:39
Were they the loudest people in the room, the Americans? You could hear them coming?
Anders
19:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it’s funny you should say that. We went to the Sisi Museum.
Anders
19:53
Yes,
Mark
19:54
I know what you’re talking
Anders
19:55
about. She’s a very popular person. I think 200 years ago there was an empress in Austria, in Bavaria, called Elisabeth and her nickname is Sisi. And she’s still very popular to this day as a historical figure.
Anders
20:14
And Yeah, so we went to that museum and they had a special exhibition where you were led into like narrow corridors and it was dark and it’s probably an interesting exhibition, but it was so over, they let too many people in at 1 time. Although you had booked your time slot ahead, you book that online and you book your ticket online and you pay everything online. So it’s all, but still there were too many people allowed in within the same time slot or they were staying too long. I don’t know.
Anders
20:51
But, but, so, so it, it really wasn’t a good experience. And the reason for that was that there were lots of American tourists with their audio guides. And they, you know, they, in the audio guide, you push a number, because there’s a sign saying, push number 10 here, and then they would listen to that whole explanation, which could probably take up to 2 minutes and they wouldn’t move whilst they were listening to that. So the whole exhibition was like a bottleneck to get through.
Anders
21:27
And then you could get into their living quarters and the original rooms and all of that.
Mark
21:33
So they still have the Crown Jewels, are they still on display at there?
Anders
21:37
No they were not. I think that’s a separate, it’s in the same location, the same castle or palace but they will charge you another 10 euros to get
Mark
21:49
in there. I think we went to the Crown Jewels, I think, and didn’t go into the, but I distinctly remember that it was in the same sort of castle complex or the same
Anders
21:58
palace there.
Mark
21:59
It is, yeah. So yeah, and we went there. I found the…
Mark
22:03
Yeah, I think it’s…
Anders
22:04
Yes, that’s the 1
Mark
22:04
at the Hofburg, yep. I found the crown jewels really good when we went there. They were quite unique, but they also had a lot of like religious artifacts, which religious history interests me.
Mark
22:14
I’m not religious by any sense of the imagination. I don’t go to church or anything, but often find it interesting that there can be, you know, 100 pieces of the Holy Cross scattered around and everyone’s, everyone’s got 1, you know, every church in Europe seems to have a piece of the, a piece of the cross or a piece of the crown of thorns or something like that. So I always find that quite interesting. But, and there was quite a few so-called relics from, you know, the time of Christ in the Austrian center where the crown jewels were held.
Anders
22:51
In general, there are lots of churches, Catholic, it’s a Catholic area, southern Germany and Austria. So the churches are, I wouldn’t say over-decorated, they’re heavily decorated with gold and marble.
Mark
23:13
They’re very ornate, aren’t they?
Anders
23:15
Yeah, they are very ornate. Which is beautiful, But like you, Mark, I’m not in any sense, a particularly religious person. But I enjoy I enjoy this gigantic quietness when you get into a big church room.
Mark
23:37
Especially if you get 1 where there’s not many people around. I remember going to the, I think is it the Pilgrimage of the Weiss, the Weiss out near Lindyhof Castle in Germany. Yeah, I’ve been there a couple of times.
Mark
23:49
There’s never many tourists there, both times I’ve been there. And it’s a very nice church out there and surrounded by paddocks and not in a city, just out in the middle of a middle of nowhere. So I always found that to be a nice church. A couple of times I have called in there.
Mark
24:05
So, but I find churches really interesting and like I said, I’m not religious, but I like the size and scale, I guess, of a lot of them. And you know, the stained glass windows and I find it interesting that people that are possibly buried in there and you know different things like that. It may sound a bit macabre but it’s all a bit of interesting history.
Anders
24:26
And you can really feel the weight of the centuries, the history there. I mean, you sit there and it’s, like I said, it’s quiet. It’s massively quiet.
Anders
24:37
And it’s a nice temperature as well. It’s usually a little bit cooler than the… So if you come on a hot summer’s day, it’s nice to get in there and just sit down and just reflect. It’s a nice place to reflect and just gather your thoughts before you go out to the crowded streets again.
Anders
25:04
And in Vienna, there are so many churches. I would say in general, Vienna, Austria, is really a place that it’s probably inspired many fairy tale authors, you know, because the whole architecture is very much like Disney and the Grimm brothers and, you know, it’s very ornate. The churches are very vast and big and decorated. So if you’re into that kind of stuff, Vienna is definitely the place to go because you can walk around for days just looking at
Mark
25:43
the churches
Anders
25:45
and palaces.
Mark
25:47
Palaces, yeah. Passades. Yeah, most definitely.
Mark
25:52
In Vienna, I often say that Vienna is probably maybe the most regal city I’ve ever been to possibly, like because there is just so many palaces and buildings and you know, manicured parks and gardens and all that sort of stuff going on in Vienna that’s for sure.
Anders
26:11
Yeah unfortunately speaking of manicured parks we went to the Belvedere. It’s an art museum now. Gustav Klimt, The Kiss is probably the most prominent.
Mark
26:25
I’ve been there but never went inside. Walked the garden from the front to the back where the fountains are still
Anders
26:31
there. Yeah, it’s all there but the bushes, the trees and stuff, it was a little bit, it didn’t look healthy, honestly. They had a lot of these small manicured hedges and stuff. I guess they had a drought probably this summer.
Anders
26:52
So it was all brown stuff. They looked like they were going to be replaced. So there were gardeners all over. So it wasn’t really a…
Anders
27:02
That was stunning or striking. But I could sort of see how it was meant to be, I guess.
Mark
27:11
Imagination goes a long
Anders
27:14
So another thing you could definitely, if you’re into Mozart, Mozart used to live in Vienna and this is 1 of the things that we didn’t do this time around because we simply didn’t have enough time. But if you’re into Mozart, you can definitely go to many of the places where he would perform his work.
Anders
27:41
And there’s a place where he used to live as well. I think he died in Vienna as well. So, so yeah.
Mark
27:50
Sounds a sounds a bit like Warsaw. They hang their head on a lot of Chopin places when I’ve been to Warsaw. Yeah, there’s tons of tons of Chopin stuff going on in Warsaw.
Anders
28:01
And 1 of the things that is a little touristic But 1 of the things that that in terms of Mozart you can have the Mozart Kugel Have you ever tried 1 of those those chocolate filled chocolate?
Mark
28:13
I think I have actually Yeah, but they got the liquidy center in them. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark
28:18
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I’ve had 1 of them.
Anders
28:20
That’s the Mozart Bowl or kugel. Yeah.
Mark
28:23
Yes, I have
Anders
28:24
so yeah, there’s a whole shop just for that.
Mark
28:26
Yeah Speaking of food. Did you go find the big the big schnitzel?
Anders
28:30
We found the house but yeah, and and honestly, I didn’t want to queue up for an hour to get in.
Mark
28:36
No, that’s fine. I agree. I wouldn’t have either if that was the case.
Anders
28:41
Yeah, and it was the case. It’s in fact, many of the kind of institutions that let me say institutions when it’s a classic thing you have to do. That was the schnitzel is 1 thing, but also we there’s something called Cafe Centrale or Cafe Sacher in the Sacher Hotel, they had the Sacher Torte, the Sacher Tarte chocolate cake.
Anders
29:09
In all these places, you have to line up and just wait to get a seat. And quite frankly, to go into these classical Vienna cafes, the value for money is not that
Mark
29:24
good. No, I hear.
Anders
29:29
So, we just say
Mark
29:30
no people will pay for it. That’s why. It doesn’t have to be great value.
Mark
29:34
People I guess want the Instapitcher, don’t they? Or the snapshot. And you
Anders
29:39
could see the people lining up were overseas tourists. They were not locals. They were not locals at all.
Anders
29:47
So even if I get into 1 of these big cafes, I would still want the Vienna feeling, the Vienna vibe, and you don’t get that. It’s not, I don’t mean to sound like a, like, like a big idiot here, but, but if it’s filled with overseas tourists, like myself,
Mark
30:03
It’s not local, is it really?
Anders
30:05
And that’s not really local. I want to experience a local vibe. So what we did was we found some of these side alleys where they have the small cafes with also a true Vienna feeling.
Anders
30:17
And we went in there and they’re scattered all over the city. And you could actually get like a piece of cake and a coffee or hot chocolate or tea for decent money. Yeah.
Mark
30:30
So let’s be honest, not a lot of tourists go 1 block or 2 blocks off the main streets really know. So you know, all you got to do is walk a little bit off the beaten path and you’ll often find better value restaurants, bars, cafes, you know, things like that.
Anders
30:45
I always say go where the locals go.
Mark
30:47
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Like we get, I get asked this all the time, mainly about barley because there’s a, like barley is notorious for what’s called barley belly, I guess, where, you know, you can get, It’s like a gastro or a food poisoning I guess and generally lasts 24 48 hours, you know and I makes you really sick But and you know people like oh, you know, I don’t know where to eat And I always say if there’s a lot of lot of Indonesians eating there go and eat there because I have a theory in Bali that most people get sick who are staying at hotels that have a buffet and they wheel the buffet out every day and what’s not been eaten goes back in the fridge and gets reheated the next day and then comes back out.
Anders
31:27
Although that’s not, yeah, yeah.
Mark
31:30
This is my theory on what happens in Bali is that you get sick when you eat at places like that. So go to local places like go to local hole in the walls as long as there’s plenty of Indonesians there and or plenty of Austrians there in that case or even in China plenty of Chinese. If you see lots of locals just go and eat there it’s always going to be good The food’s going to be fresh and it’s going to be cheaper.
Anders
31:49
We had the same experience in Rome. We went to Rome a couple of years ago and, you know, looking for a place to have a pizza, classic Italian pizza, you know. Yeah.
Anders
31:59
Go where the local Italians sit, you know, they will know. They will. They will know a good pizza
Mark
32:05
And they’re not going to eat bad pizza.
Anders
32:08
No, exactly. So yeah, that’s speaking of Bali, is it true that you should stick to the 1 side heading to the 1 coast heading towards Australia because the 1 heading up towards the Chinese Sea is not the healthiest.
Mark
32:29
I’ve been to the north coast of Bali and it’s actually getting further developed at the moment. But we went there about 5 years ago, and actually, all it lacks is infrastructure, actually, when we were there. It’s probably different now, but the water was really clear.
Mark
32:44
A lot of people go up there. It’s popular for dolphins, and it was probably actually 1 of the worst experiences I ever had when it came to that. I was staying at this beautiful little resort on the beach and so they’re like, you know, we can go and find some dolphins 1 morning, you know, so it was like, it was cheapest chips, like $10, $10 a person. And so all of us piled into this traditional Balinese sort of longboat, you know, like catamaran thing that has the bits out the side.
Mark
33:12
So we’re going to find these dolphins. And after about 20 minutes, there was about 100 of these boats chasing a pod of about 8 dolphins. Oh, 0. Like it was really sad in the end.
Mark
33:21
And in the end I said, ah, look, we had enough, mate, just take us back to the shore. But that’s an Asian thing, similar to over-tourism, Asians don’t believe in that either. Like it’s just a free for all. So that I really wasn’t happy with.
Mark
33:39
And I often still, I tell people that all the time when they say what’s there to do in North Bali. So don’t go chasing dolphins because-
Anders
33:47
Don’t do the dolphins, no.
Mark
33:49
That’s pretty sad. That’s a pretty sad thing to do. So, but most of the, getting back to what you’re saying, though, but most of the tourists that go to Bali, 90% of them would be on that coastline that’s facing down towards Australia.
Mark
34:01
That’s for sure because the infrastructure is not there up the top. It’s more local tourists and more Indonesians because there’s actually that coastline is close to Java, which is the biggest island. There’s a ferry that goes between the big island of Java, which is where Jakarta and the biggest cities are, and Bali takes about half an hour to get over on ferry, so it’s pretty popular with local Indonesians up that area, and much cheaper than
Anders
34:26
the South. Yeah, because I’ve just heard that the Chinese are filling the waters with God knows what, and it’s just kind of floating down towards, or out towards Bali and Indonesia.
Mark
34:42
Yeah, I don’t know. There’s a lot of rubbish always on the beach in India because they haven’t really got a great sewer system. There’s a lot of small rivers and creeks that flow through there and there’s not a lot of, you know, people just throw their stuff out on the street and that’s just, and you’ll get, If there’s a flood, it all flows out to sea and then it all flows back up onto the beach.
Mark
35:04
And that’s what happens. So it’s
Anders
35:06
local rubbish, it’s not the Chinese. Yeah,
Mark
35:07
no, no, it’s local rubbish a lot of it. So then the next morning they’re out there with locals, they’re out there with their rakes covering it up, things like that, you know, picking it up, trying to get it off the beaches. But you know, the problem with Bali is it was never designed for the amount of tourists that are going there now so all the roads are tiny you know There’s no real infrastructure actually trying to build a train system at the moment.
Mark
35:33
They’re gonna start it Next year, I think they’re gonna build underground subway to try and alleviate Some of the traffic problems, but this will be a 10-year plan and it’s funded by China and Japan and places like that They’ll be all paying for it for them And so then I assume people will be paying for it for the rest of their lives to pay it off. But like a lot of the roads in Bali are probably a little bit more than maybe single lane, like a few 1 and a half cars across. So it can take you anywhere up to 3 hours to travel 20 kilometers across the island. So the traffic is the traffic is just, it’s, it’s crazy.
Mark
36:08
And you can’t catch public transport because it gets caught in the same traffic as, you know, as a taxi or a ride share. So, So yeah, so you just sort of go to where you’re going to stay and try and stay there as much as you can.
Anders
36:20
That’s the beauty about a city like Vienna for instance. The infrastructure is certainly built for lots of traffic and it’s rather clean, I must say. Even Anton noticed this, our son, he said, you know, this is a nice clean city, it’s cleaner than Munich.
Anders
36:42
And Munich is sort of clean. But in Munich we have the situation for the past 10 years, they have been working on expanding the metro and S-Bahn system, the local train system, with extra tunnels under the city. And it’s a massive undertaking. So the entire downtown of Munich is sort of like a big construction site.
Anders
37:11
And it has been for, for 10 years and probably will be for the next 10 years. But after this, it should be better. But the, the, the underground stations are sort of under proportioned at the moment in Munich. So when they’re…
Anders
37:29
Yeah, well, even 1 full train will actually kind of clock all the escalators at the Hauptbahnhof, the central station. Do you
Mark
37:38
ever plan ahead cities to Melbourne?
Anders
37:41
No, they don’t.
Mark
37:42
Melbourne’s the same. Melbourne’s building an underground, trying to build it flat out at the moment because we, Melbourne was never thought would be a city of 5 and a half million people. Like, you know, it wasn’t designed to accommodate, to accommodate, well, that many people who we wanted to use public transport.
Mark
38:00
So I think we’ll be building, I seen somewhere the other day, they’ll be building underground train lines. I think they’ve got a plan for the next 60 years nonstop just to be able to accommodate it. And the problem with Melbourne is they have a rail system, but the rail system goes out like legs of a spider, but nothing goes around. There’s no loop
Anders
38:20
in the middle of it.
Mark
38:22
So you can’t cross lines unless you go back to the city and then go to a different line. So yeah, so they really need to build, They’re starting to build what’s called the suburban rail loop, which is going to link up around there and have a loop around it at some stage, but they’ve only built 1 section that’s been going for the last 8 or 9 years. So by the time they are, I reckon it’ll be about 50 or 60 years by the time they can build this whole loop around because a lot of the lines are 20 or 30 kilometres apart, so
Anders
38:55
the
Mark
38:55
loop is like 100 kilometres or something like that.
Anders
38:58
The further out you get the more distance you have.
Mark
39:01
Yeah, definitely. So they’re about to unleash 5 new underground stations, I think next year in Melbourne, just to start the process and alleviate some of the traffic or some of that, like you said, at the main station in Munich or to stop so many people going through the 2 main stations in the city centre that build a couple, like a few suburbs out that are going to act as main thoroughfares as well, just to alleviate the overcrowdedness of it.
Anders
39:30
Yeah, it’s actually so bad that we as locals here in Munich, we don’t like to go to the city center in the weekend because it’s just, there are too many people and it takes too much time. Yeah. We sort of, cause we go with public transportation when we go to the city centers, you wouldn’t dream of taking your car to the city center.
Anders
39:54
It’s just asking to get stressed if you do that. But yeah, no, It’s overcrowded.
Mark
40:01
Because you have the tram, don’t you?
Anders
40:03
Yeah, we take the tram. You have the
Mark
40:04
tram out near your house, yeah.
Anders
40:05
I remember
Mark
40:06
coming to your house that night on
Anders
40:07
the tram. Yeah, exactly. And well, even that has been renovated, but it’s working now again.
Anders
40:16
So yeah, we take the tram to 1 of the local metro stations and then from there we go to the city center. And we have a couple of options. So we can, there’s usually construction in 1 of these options, but so we can just sort of navigate. Yeah.
Anders
40:34
So as I was typical German planning, like you say, Melbourne will take like 60 years in Germany. Sort of planning for this type of this scale of construction. You know, it takes years. And I’ve been here for 20 years in Munich and I can’t remember, there’s a particular train station called Rosenheimer Platz And I can’t remember this not being a construction site.
Anders
41:03
It has constantly been under construction for the last 20 years.
Mark
41:08
Wow, that’s amazing.
Anders
41:09
And no stop.
Mark
41:11
No stop.
Anders
41:13
So yeah, they are certainly thorough with what they do. It’s, yeah, the Germans, they don’t just move overnight. I saw actually a YouTube clip of someplace in Germany.
Anders
41:28
I don’t know why this should be Germany. I can’t relate to it because what they were doing is like a time lapse. They were doing an overpass, renovating an overpass bridge where you had cars coming under and cars coming over. And they would just, I think it was literally within 1 night, they would tear down the old bridge and have a new module constructed thing driven in and by morning it would be paved and ready for traffic.
Anders
42:07
It looked amazing, but as I said to my wife, you know, this can’t be Germany because that would take like a year or 2.
Mark
42:14
It would definitely take that long in Australia as well, that’s for sure. They just finished, just near where we live, they’ve been duplicating a highway. So they just had 1 lane up and back, and so now they’ve tried to put 2 lanes on either side.
Mark
42:31
And this stretch of road is maybe, maybe 60 kilometres, I would say, at the most. And I’ve just finished it and it’s taken 10 years to duplicate this section of road. And I often think, what happened when people were building our country? If we were building, if we were building 60 kilometres of road and it was taking 10 years to do it, how would countries have ever managed anything back in the day, because now they’re just obviously so bogged down with red tape and policy and procedure that this is just how long it takes and if it gets over 35 degrees well we have to have the day off and if there’s a drop of rain well then we have to have the day off as well.
Mark
43:09
Yeah and
Anders
43:10
what does the union say?
Mark
43:12
All this garbage like this And then they wonder why we’re in debt, why the country’s in debt. No, yeah, it’s just, yeah.
Anders
43:20
It’s the same thing.
Mark
43:21
It’s not going down that path.
Anders
43:21
No, no, no, it’s the same thing all over the world. We have a political situation in Germany as well at the moment. It’s really, you can have all your opinions and we don’t go into that.
Anders
43:31
But as you quite rightly indicate here, bureaucracy is really to run amok and it’s all over the place, all over the world. And yeah, it’s not really for the benefit of anyone. But the people working within the bureaucracy, making Excel spreadsheets I guess.
Mark
43:55
That’s right and spending money that doesn’t exist, it’s just on a balance sheet somewhere you know, they’ll never see or never touch and that will all be repaying for the foreseeable ever.
Anders
44:07
Yeah, exactly.
Mark
44:09
But that’s life, hey, isn’t it? So in Vienna, did you go to the other palace, the 1 that’s out of a
Anders
44:15
little bit?
Mark
44:16
Schönbrunn. Yes, Schönbrunn. Yes.
Anders
44:18
No, we did not. Because we, we, we can’t, and I guess this is another takeaway from, from a, from a week in a, in a big European city. Yep.
Anders
44:27
You get to a point where you, you sort of, you’re, you’re saturated with impressions. It’s just sort of you’re filled. And we came to that point on Thursday, we said, should we go to Schönbrunn today? Or we could also do it.
Anders
44:44
We had time on Friday before we were leaving in the evening. But none of us really felt like it because we said, oh, we’ve seen so many churches and so many palaces. It’s just too much. And that wouldn’t be fair to the attraction as well.
Anders
45:01
I mean, it wouldn’t be fair to Schönbrunn if we went there and we just weren’t in it. We didn’t feel like it. We were thinking about just going because it costs money to get in. Of course.
Anders
45:13
We were thinking about just going there and, you know, walk around the park and just enjoy the vibe. But we said, you know, we will be back in Vienna anyway, at a later point in time. So, so, we just left it there, but, yeah, that’s, that’s, have you ever felt that particularly with kids? I guess.
Anders
45:32
Yeah, definitely. Kids can do 1 or 2 attractions a day and then you just kind of…
Mark
45:37
Yeah, they’ve had enough. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the time, haven’t they?
Mark
45:41
When we went on, when we spent like 3 or 4 months or 5 months in Europe in 2019, like that, the kids were well and truly over going to palaces and churches and castles and things like that. By the end of it, and it’s the same with Asia with temples, you know, they go to a couple, but after that, you know, you go, okay, it’s just another ornate temple with, you know, with a stupa on top as they call them and it’s going to be painted yellow and white and you know, and it’s going to have gold bits on it that look like every other temple in Asia that you see. And that’s fair enough too. So yeah, but I definitely hear you.
Mark
46:14
It’s definitely more fascinating for the first few days or the first few weeks if you travel in long term than it is by the end.
Anders
46:22
Yeah and then sort of we spent the last day and a half or so just you know hanging around just you know enjoying the vibe of the city is really good as well. And we had a really good… The last thing we did before leaving to the Central Trade Station, accidentally we went into the Peter’s Church And they were rehearsing for Mozart’s Requiem.
Anders
46:52
It was a concert that was to be held in that same evening, but we were allowed to get into rehearsals. And that was really a good experience because there were lots of people there anyway. People can really walk into a church and just sit and reflect. But the orchestra and the choir was rehearsing.
Anders
47:14
So we got a treat there with Mozart’s Requiem. And Alex, my wife, she’s not really into classical music, but she said this was a good experience. This was really, really good. She really enjoyed that.
Mark
47:26
Sometimes it’s about where, it’s about where you are, you know, or, You know, yeah, it’s always about where you are. Like I often have foods overseas and I go, yeah, they’re really good. Or, you know, something I come back and I try and have it in Australia.
Mark
47:38
And it’s just not the same because it’s about, it’s about what you’re experiencing in the moment when you have it and you know, you wash yourself over with that experience and that taste and that smell and that sound. And then it’s very hard to reproduce that when you’re not in that moment.
Anders
47:55
Exactly. Exactly. And we were just kind of, I wouldn’t say exhausted from impressions, but we’ve had enough. We had had enough by that point.
Anders
48:06
So we just wanted to sit down for just 5 minutes or so. And then that church came in handy, just to have a few minutes rest. And then they were rehearsing. So we actually ended up sitting there for half an hour.
Anders
48:20
It’s just like, wow, this is really nice. Kind of moving in fact, with the musical vibe and yeah.
Mark
48:27
It’s important to rest too. Like it’s important to slow down. Like I, my wife makes me slow down because I’m pretty gung-ho because I’m always at the belief I may not come back to this place.
Mark
48:37
So I need to see as much as I can see.
Anders
48:40
And
Mark
48:42
why I’m there. Like, you know, And so I set out to do this a lot and you know, and probably a lot of it, I’ve not taken in as much as I can because I’m just there to go and see it. And I say, hey, okay, I might only be here for 3 weeks, 3 days, so I’m going to see this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.
Mark
49:00
And I rush around like a chook with its head cut off, as they would say in Australia. But my wife is always tapping me on the shoulder saying, hey, we’ve got to slow down a bit here. We’re going too far.
Anders
49:11
Just take it easy. That’s actually a good rule of thumb. You should really, because I can understand if you’ve paid a lot of money to come from far away, to a destination, you obviously want to have as much as at all possible for that money.
Anders
49:28
I can understand that. But There’s a chance you will not really enjoy it that much No, if you don’t slow down your pace and and and yeah, so I’d say actually sometimes less is more
Mark
49:42
Yes, you’re right. Let’s see small sometimes. So that’s that’s that’s true.
Mark
49:46
I actually find it. I quite enjoy going back to a place the second time when I’ve actually been and seen a lot the first time. So then I can just go, yeah, okay, this is all good now. I’m not in any great rush to go and see everything or do everything because I’ve already actually seen it all.
Mark
50:05
So now we can just, you know, take your time and do this and do that. And if we want to go back there and see these places again, we can. But if we don’t and we miss out, It’s no big deal because we’ve already been there and done that.
Anders
50:19
Exactly. Like you said, with the Bavarian church here in Bavaria, you’ve been there a couple of times. So probably when you go there now, you kind of, you know what to expect and you go, just go in and, and reflect and sit down and just enjoy the place instead of being focused on all the ornamentations. Yes.
Anders
50:37
So it’s, yeah. Definitely. I kind of felt the same thing when we were in New Zealand for 3 months. The scenery, the nature in New Zealand is breathtaking.
Anders
50:51
Really astounding and just beautiful. But you come to a point after like 2 and a half months of just seeing mountains and pastures and whatnot. It’s just too much. And it’s actually, You don’t do it justice.
Mark
51:19
The shock and awe effect is gone.
Anders
51:22
Exactly. I remember standing making photographs with my camera and I’m just taking some photos here now because I can’t take it in right now. It’s just too much. And then these are my favorite photos now, like 10 years later, because I knew that, yeah, well, even though I couldn’t really take it in, I would still remember once I saw the photos.
Anders
51:49
So that’s a good thing. But but yeah in the New Zealand, I owe you 1. I need to come back The last at least the last month was was just too much.
Mark
51:59
Okay, let’s go to New Zealand holiday time. Yeah Come back to New Zealand at some stage for sure. Like I said, I’ve only spent about 5 days here in total, even though it’s the closest country to where I live.
Mark
52:15
I’ll head back there at some stage. I’ve just got to find the time and find the holidays that I need running out of work holidays. So I’ve got to keep my head down for a little bit after we go to China in December and for 6 months or so and hopefully bank up some work holidays and do something.
Anders
52:37
Your next destination is China, right? You’re going
Mark
52:40
to see… Going to China on December 18th and we’ll be in China until Boxing Day or December 26th and then we’re flying to Thailand for 10 days I think and then back to Australia.
Anders
52:55
Spending your New Year’s in
Mark
52:56
Thailand? Yes, I’ll be in Bangkok. So spending about 10 days in Bangkok. I might make a few day trips out of Bangkok though.
Mark
53:03
I might go to to Pattaya or Wahin or Ayutthaya which is another place so or Kanchanaburi. So yeah but I really enjoyed Bangkok last time we were there. I found Bangkok was a real melting pot of modern versus old. And, you know, I like street food there and things like that.
Mark
53:27
So and like I said, it’s been 5 years since I’ve been to Bangkok. So I thought we’ll just go there for 10 days. It’s simpler in the end. 10 days is not really enough time to move around to too many places.
Mark
53:37
So I was like, we’ll just go and log there. We book an apartment there on booking.com like you, with 2 bedroom apartments. It’s got Marley will be with us and it’s got a pool there and so it should be quite alright and if we decide to go out and do a few things we will and if not we might sit around the pool in the warmth and drink some beers or eat some food or all of the above. So we’ll really just swing it and see what’s going on.
Mark
54:04
I’ve only booked maybe 1 thing. I booked a riverboat cruise 1 night for dinner in Bangkok the other day. But other than that, there’s not really too much I’ve got on my radar.
Anders
54:14
So we enjoyed, we enjoyed Bangkok too. We, we, Anton was only like 3 years old at the time. But we had a hotel right at the riverfront.
Anders
54:25
And it was just fascinating to just sit there and watch all the traffic on the main river there going through. It’s really lots of boats there. And it was the easiest way for us to get from where we were in the hotel to the city center. It was actually just down the street around the corner there was like what’s really like a bus stop really.
Anders
54:52
Yeah. With just the boat.
Mark
54:54
Hop off, boat stop. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, it’s good.
Mark
54:57
So yeah, so I’m really, I’m probably actually looking forward to going to Thailand more than I’m looking forward to going to China. Not that for any other reason than the fact that it’ll be cold in China. I think it’ll be about 2 degrees or something is the average. Minus 3 to 2 is the average where my daughter lives.
Mark
55:15
So obviously there won’t be a lot of wanting to go out and do too much the weather you know could be snowing could be a not that’s an excuse but you know it doesn’t say where we are and I don’t really like the cold weather all that much to be honest with you so I’d much prefer it to be warmer than colder. So we’re just going to actually we’re going to China only for a week to see my daughter but we’re also not staying in the city centre this time. We’re staying out near where she lives in a small apartment so I don’t really know what’s around that area either. So yeah, it’ll be a bit
Anders
55:54
of a surprise but… It’s China. It’s China.
Anders
55:57
There will be something. There will be something around.
Mark
56:00
Most definitely. And at this stage I’m not quite sure we might even be heading back to China again after that in possibly April to do something to do with our website. So I’ll just wait and see whether that eventuates but it was quite exciting the offer we got so I’ll just wait to confirm that before we talk about it
Anders
56:18
okay next time don’t jinx it don’t jinx it no
Mark
56:21
I don’t want to at this stage so yeah but yeah so yeah so I’ve got a few things up our up our sleeve at this stage but that’s about it that I’ve got planned and yeah I’m not quite sure what’s going
Anders
56:34
on next year. We had
Mark
56:34
some friends from the UK who are wanting to come out. They’ve got a teenage son. So, and we went to their wedding last year in England.
Mark
56:42
So we might do something in Asia with them. But other than that, just some local trips. I need to go and I want to go back to Tasmania in Australia as well. Oh, yeah, yeah do a few things.
Mark
56:52
So but but It’s always it’s always on the on the top of my list of things to do. Some people live to work. I work to live so Yeah as much as we can
Anders
57:02
of course And that’s what I find fascinating about you and your family. You really kind of, you live, you walk the talk as you said, I mean, because a lot of people say, no, traveling is too expensive. But it really depends on how you prioritize all your…
Anders
57:18
Of course, I put it in black and white terms right now, but it’s really hard. But of course, I know there are people less fortunate, obviously. But for most people, like just normal people working and having a family, there is a way to kind of save money every month and just prioritise travelling. Yeah, I
Mark
57:44
mean it’s simple isn’t it sometimes. I mean you know you stop buying coffee, stop buying your lunch, you know, this little things like that all soon add up, you know, so and yeah, I don’t know, it is what it is.
Anders
57:56
You
Mark
57:56
either love it or you don’t and you either find that you want to buy a big house and a big car or you want to travel or, you know, and if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford all those things, well, that’s even better, but not a lot of us, not a lot of us can.
Anders
58:08
Neither can we. I mean, do you have that sort of a TV program in Australia where they will, they will have, They will cast like broke families in financial terms and they will, then they will analyze their whole financial situation and get back on track. And then, and then it will help them getting, you know, their financial situation in order.
Anders
58:33
Yeah, it does. But sometimes, you know, it’s really their own fault. For sure. Because once they start analyzing, well, you go to the like Starbucks every morning, buy a $5 coffee or a pastry.
Anders
58:54
That’s $10 a day. And I mean, adding that up, that’s $300 a month. Stuff like that.
Mark
59:01
There’s 3 and a half thousand dollars a year, that’s enough for a holiday. It is. Literally, isn’t it?
Anders
59:06
It is. Just think about these little things. Obviously, we enjoy going to our local diner or cafe every once in a while, but we are very sure, very aware that we can’t do this every day.
Anders
59:19
We can’t even do it every week because there are things we would much rather like to do. So yeah, it’s all about prioritizing really. And I think you and your family, Mark, you’ve you’ve you’re doing this really, really to your next example to us all in terms of traveling. I really enjoy following that because yeah.
Mark
59:43
Dreaming of the day where we can travel full time, but we’ll see what happens in that line in the next few years so that might happen but yeah hopefully when we go to China like I said we can do a podcast from China.
Anders
59:53
Absolutely, absolutely. See what happens.
Mark
59:55
Last time
Anders
59:56
I was
Mark
59:56
there the internet was a bit dodgy so I’m not quite sure what to test it out maybe.
Anders
01:00:00
And see it, see how it goes. But yeah, lots of interesting stuff going on in China. So that will be good to talk about that. AndM
Mark
01:00:10
yeah, also from a touristic point of view, what can you and what can you not do?
Anders
01:00:16
Definitely. Definitely. 1 thing I will tell you though is that airfares to China are so cheap. Like I was looking at some today from Australia, like you can nearly go to China from Australia return for around 600 Australian dollars.
Anders
01:00:30
So what’s that? Maybe 300 euros like
Mark
01:00:35
to
Anders
01:00:35
go to China it’s a 12 hour flight so it’s a 12 hour flight each way for around 150 euro each way like that is I could be I’d be lucky to be able to fly from Melbourne to Perth and back for under that price. Would it be cheaper to fly to China than it would be to fly to Perth? I think it’s because there’s a glut, much like Chinese cars, there’s a glut of Chinese airlines that fly into Australia, there’s around 11 of them, I think, at the last count that fly into Australia.
Anders
01:01:04
So the prices are always ultra, ultra competitive, which should make it pretty attractive for people to go to China. And I believe Even from Europe, prices are pretty cheap because Chinese airlines still have the right to fly over Russia, which makes their flight time a lot quicker than it is for European carriers who are not allowed to fly over Russia at the moment. That’s why I read the other day, 1 site, BA and KLM, and I think even Air France have cancelled a lot of their China services because they can’t compete with the Chinese airlines who can fly over Russia so now, but then hence the problem with that is, and I read the other day that these airlines are now going to the European Union and they want a tariff placed on Chinese airlines because it’s unfair because they can fly over Russia and make their flights cheaper and faster and we can’t.
Mark
01:01:56
Fine, let’s have more bureaucracy then.
Anders
01:01:59
Bureaucracy run mad, isn’t it? Can’t let anyone get ahead of the pack, can we? I thought we lived in a democratic society, not a communist society where everyone was meant to be even.
Mark
01:02:12
What’s your experience in general with Chinese airlines? Because I’ve flown into Hong Kong and Shanghai and out again and it was really just on European or think once it was even on Australian airline, I can’t remember. But yeah, I never flown with a strictly Chinese airline.
Mark
01:02:33
What’s your experience there?
Anders
01:02:35
So last time when we went in September, we flew with 1 called Xiamen Air, and we flew with Air China, who is like the national flag
Mark
01:02:45
carrier. That’s a national, yeah.
Anders
01:02:47
And they were both, you know, my view is I sit in economy. So the seats are going to be so-so,
Mark
01:02:54
the meals
Anders
01:02:54
are going to be so-so in all airlines and the Chinese airlines were no different. The seats were okay. The meals, they fed you, actually, they probably fed you more on the Chinese airlines than they do on the Western airlines, to be honest with you.
Anders
01:03:07
And they were around more often with drinks. So I think the hospitality side of it, the food and beverage side was better in economy than I’d experienced with a lot of Western airlines. So like all things China, sometimes it’s hard to, the language barrier was an issue on Xiamen Air, but not so much on Air China. Everyone on Air China spoke English, but not so much on the other 1.
Anders
01:03:32
There was maybe 1 stewardess in the economy that spoke English. So she was getting ushered up to her seat all the time every time we wanted something because we were 1 of the few English people on the plane. We were flyers out of Melbourne. Melbourne’s got a, Australia’s got a really big Chinese population, so that’s why there’s so many airlines flying in and out, because it wouldn’t be because that many Australians are going to China, it’s because there’s a lot of Chinese going back and forth between their home country and maybe their adopted country of Australia.
Anders
01:03:59
But yeah, I would have no hesitation in flying Chinese airlines. So, yeah, So I’m flying 2 different Chinese airlines when we go in December. I’m flying with 1 called Capital Airlines, which is another Chinese airline. It’s a subsidiary of Sichuan Airlines, I think.
Anders
01:04:18
And I’m also flying China Southern. So we’ll see what they’re like, I guess, compared to the other ones. But yeah, there’s new airlines. There’s another 1 starting flights into Melbourne in December that I was looking at today.
Anders
01:04:31
So yeah, lots of Chinese airlines flying, flying into Australia, maybe 9, 10 of them into Melbourne.
Mark
01:04:37
Wow. And as you say, it’s not because the Australians are going to China, it’s because their local Chinese communities.
Anders
01:04:45
They have a big Chinese population. And quite surprisingly, like where Willow lives, my daughter, the airline that we’re flying with flies directly which is they only fly once a week direct to the city and it happened to be the day we wanted to leave. So that was, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing because it makes the flight, I’m quite happy to get off a flight after 6 or 7 hours and have a stretch and a walk around the airport and then get back on and go again.
Anders
01:05:12
Or I like to fly overnight possibly if it’s long so that way I can try and sleep for at least half the flight without sitting there. So this flight we’re taking to China is like 11 and a half hours during the day. So I’ll be just stuck there doing not much. So I’ve started downloading podcasts and audio books and things like that.
Anders
01:05:30
I’m like a little kid, I need a lot of different lot of different distractions because I’m not a nervous flyer But I find it really hard to concentrate on anything on a plane like I can’t I’m not comfortable enough to sit there for 2 Hours staring just in a movie So I’ll often be fidgety and I’ll get a book and read that for a little bit and then I’ll put a podcast on or something like that. So yeah, I try and have as many options as I can to get me through the flight.
Mark
01:05:53
So yeah. In the good old days, I remember I used to have an old iPod with music physically, all the files on my device. But nowadays everything is in the cloud.
Mark
01:06:08
And that’s an issue when you are on a plane and you’re off. Yeah.
Anders
01:06:13
Unless you download it all before you go. Yeah. That’s a
Mark
01:06:16
good advice actually to remember that because sometimes you will say, oh, well there’s no connection here. And they will charge you for wifi on board, won’t they? So.
Mark
01:06:26
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Definitely. It will be slow.
Anders
01:06:30
I must apologize there for when you hear this if you can hear a clicking sound because I was clicking my pen there for a few minutes I
Mark
01:06:35
know doesn’t it
Anders
01:06:36
just stop doing it. So So yeah, but like you find entertainment, I guess it’s getting better WiFi should nearly be standard these days for free some airlines are doing it I know Qantas is starting to do it for free So yeah, so like all things it’ll just become part of part of your your experience I guess at some stage and And so it should be like, you know, WiFi makes the world go round, doesn’t it?
Mark
01:07:01
Yeah, yeah. Also, I mean, on trains here in Europe, it’s usually free. It’s not very stable, particularly here in Germany.
Mark
01:07:10
It’s really bad. They haven’t got The infrastructure. The Germans are dragging their feet on technology in general. You wouldn’t think that, but they are in terms of internet and electronic payments and all of that.
Mark
01:07:29
But particularly in terms of fibernet and internet connection.
Anders
01:07:35
5G and stuff like that.
Mark
01:07:37
Exactly. And particularly along the train lines, which often goes across like not very densely populated areas, there’s just no connection.
Anders
01:07:48
I don’t think Australia has Wi-Fi on the train from the last time I traveled from memory. But yeah, so that would be nice to get it on the train, I guess, but if you’re Australian, I guess, or maybe even if you’re German, travelling on the train, we can probably use your data. But for foreigners, it would be certainly nice if there was Wi-Fi everywhere.
Anders
01:08:11
I know I think that when I go to a foreign country, I’m hunting Wi-Fi down everywhere when you’re in a foreign country.
Mark
01:08:19
But on a train, even the Wi-Fi service on a train is dependent on the 5G or 4G network. I mean, because, yeah, maybe they have a better reset, bigger antenna on top of the train, I don’t know. But still, I find that once I don’t have any data on my on my phone I usually also don’t have any data on the on the train Wi-Fi yeah so it’s sort of the
Anders
01:08:44
same same thing in that
Mark
01:08:46
yeah I guess the the broadcasting antennas somewhere you know we use we all using the same and and they are there they are They are not really Modernized
Anders
01:08:58
I’ve stayed at many hotels that are like that the the earlier you get up in the morning, the better the Wi-Fi is once everyone wakes up and starts logging on to the Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi is terrible, but if you get up at, you know, 6 a.m. In the morning or something and using the Wi-Fi, it’s fast as.
Mark
01:09:13
You can actually upload a YouTube video by then. Yeah,
Anders
01:09:16
by lunchtime when there’s a hundred hundred different rooms with 4 people in each room trying to log on to you know a single wi-fi connection
Mark
01:09:23
we had that experience during during covid we actually had it was an issue because in the house where we live we are getting fibernet now yeah finally but we still we’re still using like copper wired telephone lines. But during COVID, where everybody was staying at home, it was really, it was hard to get anything done during the day because everybody was working from home and at night, particularly around 09:00 when you know, usually kids are going to bed, people would start streaming their Netflix and the connection, the speed of your data was dropping. It was terrible.
Mark
01:10:12
But yeah.
Anders
01:10:15
It sounds rather crazy.
Mark
01:10:18
That’s Germany, modern day Germany. Anyways, it’s been a real pleasure as always talking to you, Mark. I think we’ve covered what we wanted to do in today’s episode.
Mark
01:10:32
I hope people enjoy these talks between Mark and I. Go find us everywhere because Mark you’ve been doing a really good job on getting us to be present on various platforms. We have a Grammar Cam.
Anders
01:10:49
We’re definitely on Instagram, we’re definitely on Facebook. So maybe Anders will put a link to them in the show notes.
Mark
01:10:56
Yes, I will.
Anders
01:10:58
Everyone can find them. So trying to publish a couple of days a week in both of them just to just to try and get some more viewers but if you’re already listening we appreciate appreciate the time you spend listening to us 2 blokes have a chat basically
Mark
01:11:13
yes we enjoy it we enjoy it so we do that’s a thing
Anders
01:11:18
yeah that’s it if nothing else we’re you know we’re talking about something we’re passionate about.
Mark
01:11:22
Yeah, exactly.
Anders
01:11:24
That’s what that’s all that counts. But for everyone that’s listening, we really appreciate it.
Mark
01:11:28
Yes. So thank you very much. We will be back soon. We will.
Mark
01:11:32
Yeah. Within a week or so. So thank you very much for listening and until next time. Bye.
Anders
01:11:39
Yes, look forward to tuning in again.
Mark
01:11:41
Bye. Bye.
The Team
