Anders
00:01 – 00:36
Recording in progress. Well, let’s just kick it off, Mark. Because before we start talking about your past few weeks, then we should really record it. The thing about we start chatting like always and then we forget to even introduce the episode. So let’s just start by doing that. Hello and welcome to Southern Summers and Northern Winters. Once again, hi Mark, how are you?

Mark
00:37 – 01:09
I am very good Anders, back on the ground here in Australia after maybe 19 days possibly running around China, well not really running around China, and Thailand is in 1 city in China and 1 city in Thailand, so that was good enough. And really enjoyed our time away, like we had some extremes from 0 degrees in snow to 33 degrees in sweat. So yeah, we’ve seen it all while we were away certainly weather wise and

Anders
01:09 – 01:31
yeah we didn’t we didn’t even get to make like an impromptu spontaneous session because I mean well you were there and the time difference was different and and it was just you know it was all Christmas and New Year’s so so we texted a couple of times but I mean it wasn’t it wasn’t to be

Mark
01:31 – 01:49
wasn’t matching up When I wanted to do it in China, we were out somewhere and the internet in the place that I was, was absolutely terrible. I was lucky to, some stages get Facebook on. So I could only imagine that it was probably going to cause more problems trying to record it than what it was worth.

Anders
01:51 – 02:40
That’s the thing. I mean, recently I’ve seen a lot of commercials, advertising for VPN clients that you can buy. But the thing about it is maybe it works. I’m not using a VPN myself. But recording is another add-on to what may cause a delay. So when we sit and chat like we do live here, we do record this, but we should have, we should not have more interferences than necessary, or more filters or things to be bypassed. So the more direct it can be, the better. So, but how was your trip? Let’s dive right into that.

Mark
02:41 – 02:48
Let’s kick it off. So, yeah, the plane left half an hour late. The plane landed an hour late.

Anders
02:49 – 02:50
As they sometimes do, yeah.

Mark
02:50 – 03:02
The plane then set us on the runway for half an hour before unloaded us so at that stage I was I was a tad bit frustrated after 12 13 hours

Anders
03:03 – 03:10
and at what time At what time a day did you get out of the plane then? Because this was late into the evening wasn’t it?

Mark
03:10 – 03:51
Yeah, it was maybe 8.30 China time, so it was about 11.30 Australian time, but we had been at the airport. We got arrived at the airport at 730 am Australia. Yeah. It had been 18 hours earlier than that to go because we were staying in a hotel to go and drop the car off at airport parking and then get transferred over to the airport. And so it had been a really it had been a really long day by the time we got to China and then to top it off, which was really nice. I thought it was there with a nice sign that she was holding up saying I love you mom and dad.

Mark
03:51 – 03:52
So that was

Anders
03:52 – 03:55
yeah you posted that. Yeah, that was great

Mark
03:55 – 04:34
so that was that was nice, but then we were gonna catch a train into where he lives and because the plane was delayed we were too late to catch a train to the stop that needed to where we needed to go because the metro would have shut down before that so that caused more more hassles so then we had to book a car which was okay the car the price it wasn’t really the price that wasn’t going on there but yeah it was just just a little bit of extra hassle and then because we couldn’t get to the train station that’s where we were gonna get picked up from to take them back to the apartment, but we had to get out somewhere else.

Mark
04:34 – 04:58
So yeah, so it was a little bit of a snowball effect on the first day. And then we got there and it was about midnight and the people that Willow lived with met us and we went and had a Chinese barbecue at midnight and had some beer and cooked some skewers and things like that in the restaurant. So in the end I think we got to the apartment and to bed about 22 hours after we left.

Anders
04:58 – 05:00
Whoa yeah.

Mark
05:00 – 05:32
That was a big day but it ended up okay And we got to China safely and we stayed in a nice apartment that Willow’s family owned. So that was quite good. And yeah, so it went on from there. The weather was about 0 every day I actually got to see the snow on the beach which was what I was what I talked about it did actually the 1 day it’s not happened to be on the beach when it snowed oh yeah I was quite happy about that

Anders
05:32 – 05:38
yeah that was 1 of those Well in the old days you would call them Kodak moments

Mark
05:40 – 06:09
It was the only day it snowed when we were there and me and Marley Happened to be down the beach that day Rebecca was in the apartment with Willow in her apartment where she lives and yeah me and Marley were getting a bit bored of sitting around doing nothing so we said okay let’s go for a walk down the beach it was 2 blocks away about 500 meters and Just as we got to the beach I could see these big black clouds coming over. I thought it was going to rain but it was snow. And it snowed for about, maybe about an hour and a half.

Mark
06:09 – 06:40
Not enough to leave any real trace of it on the ground but definitely enough to catch it in your hands and see it on your jacket and things like that. So that was a real treat for me because like I said, I come from a place where it doesn’t snow where I live myself. Like I would have to drive 2 or 3 hours up into the mountains to possibly see any snow. So to actually catch it snowing was a was a real trick for all of us then I rang Rebecca and she was you can’t run and down to the beach

Anders
06:41 – 06:42
because because of the snow

Mark
06:42 – 06:52
there’s a bit of a snowfall yeah so a little thing I’m used to little minds possibly when you don’t see that thing all the time.

Anders
06:52 – 06:53
Yeah, exactly.

Mark
06:53 – 06:58
Yeah. In Europe like yourself, you’d go, I don’t really care because I see snow everywhere. Yeah.

Anders
06:59 – 07:18
We even this, we still have a little bit of snow lying on the ground outside. It was over the holidays, it actually snowed quite a bit and it’s gone now, but apparently it comes back this coming weekend.

Mark
07:18 – 07:19
Is it?

Anders
07:19 – 07:34
Yeah, but not much. Not like, you know, when I was a kid, I tend to say that, you know, it was meter high for months on end, which it wasn’t, but that’s how I remember it.

Mark
07:34 – 08:18
It’s amazing how we remember things as kids isn’t it I always remember it being hot hot hot time yeah summer when I was a kid and now I always say we haven’t had a really good summer for a long time like a really hot summer but yeah saying that we’re probably having the hottest summer here that we have had, I reckon, in a decade, literally. Wow. Hot days in the 40s, but constantly in the 30s. Yeah. So constantly hot. 32 today. It was 39. We missed out on this on Saturday and Sunday last week, it was 39 both days, 41 in Melbourne, and we landed on the Monday and it was 22 and raining, so that was quite nice to that instead of landing.

Mark
08:19 – 08:21
21 degrees,

Anders
08:21 – 08:24
22 and raining. That’s a typical European summer day.

Mark
08:25 – 09:11
22 and raining. It was. I actually got home and I was cold. I had to put a jumper on because we’d been in Bangkok, obviously as well. We’re going to be 33 degrees every day and steaming and so yeah walked out the airport in Melbourne I was like jumper or something yeah I was literally coupled but which was quite strange because I’m not 1 to wear a jumper if I don’t have to but yeah it felt cold after being in the in the tropical heat of Bangkok for 10 days. But heating back up 30 degrees every day since then and 37 1 day next week or something so it’s been a really warm, warmish summer I would say in Australia without being off the charts in the 40s but being a lot of days in the 30s

Anders
09:11 – 09:11
which

Mark
09:11 – 09:20
a lot of people like that. I like plenty of days around the 25 mark but weather and taxes you can’t change him you need to pay

Anders
09:21 – 09:26
it’s just it’s just those things yeah yeah we spent

Mark
09:27 – 10:05
7 days in China which was which is good after the other China twice going to where Willow lives I can 1 word I can describe it as is possibly frustrating, a little bit. I think if you’re in Beijing it would not be quite as frustrating, but because where Willow lives, I think I’ve said this before, there’s not so many English speakers, so it can get a little bit testing, and that’s our fault because we don’t speak Mandarin, obviously, and they don’t speak English. So it was a little bit frustrating, some places trying to order food or even get a ride somewhere or even ask a question.

Mark
10:05 – 10:10
Actually, probably is probably the most frustrating. Like, you know,

Anders
10:12 – 10:13
yeah, you

Mark
10:13 – 10:18
know, things like that. And I don’t even be down there. You know, yeah.

Anders
10:18 – 10:19
So is well,

Mark
10:19 – 10:20
I try to

Anders
10:20 – 10:23
is Willow learning Mandarin or can she speak

Mark
10:24 – 11:40
as as leading to my next story. Okay. Coming home. So we will be able to get her on the podcast. So Willow is coming home on the 7th of February for 2 weeks. Oh! Lands on a Friday morning. And on the Monday morning, I have to take her back to Melbourne to the Chinese embassy to get a student visa because she’s been accepted into a Mandarin course that runs at the Kindow University and if she passes this course it’s an intense course over 6 months where she got to learn to speak read and write Mandarin and she passes this then she can apply at the same university to go into a Bachelor of Arts or whatever something she wants to do to do a degree because in China it costs about equivalent of about a thousand dollars a year to go to university where yeah I hear it’s maybe 15 to 20 thousand dollars a year to go to Go to university so she doesn’t speak a lot of Mandarin She reckons she can she picks a little bit some pieces up because she’s obviously lived with the Chinese family for 6 months so apparently she’s going to learn Mandarin, flat out and go to university in China possibly.

Mark
11:40 – 11:44
So I hope my daughter succeeds.

Anders
11:47 – 11:50
Well she’s a smart girl, obviously she can do this.

Mark
11:50 – 12:19
She’s smart And I love her. She’s not the most dedicated student, or she wasn’t in high school. Who is? I hope she really applies herself to this. Yeah. Because her mother said to her, what are you going to do if you don’t pass this? So it’s like, oh, this re-enroll and go and do it again. Yeah. Okay. Then fair enough. You’ve got an answer. So I think it will be really hard to learn to read, write and, you know, and talk Mandarin all within 6 months.

Anders
12:20 – 12:39
But if she gets to understand Mandarin, obviously the better she can become, the better. But that is where I see the future. I mean, whether we like it or not, we’re gonna have to deal with China in the

Mark
12:41 – 12:41
future.

Anders
12:45 – 13:08
China is manufacturing literally everything we use in the Western world. And the more you can understand their culture and their language and their folklore, the better chance you will have of getting a great job. Definitely. Yeah, so…

Mark
13:08 – 13:11
It’ll be nice to see her home for 2 weeks.

Anders
13:11 – 13:13
Yeah, we’ll have her on.

Mark
13:13 – 13:23
Yeah, I’ll obviously be running around like a madman, Melbourne to pick her up, back home, back to Melbourne to get her visa probably back home back to Melbourne to go pick up the visa back home back to the airport

Anders
13:23 – 13:23
yes all

Mark
13:23 – 13:39
this will all this will occur within a 2 week period I guess well she hopes it will be because she’s got her She flies back to China on the 21st and she’s got to present herself at the school to enroll on the 23rd with her visa.

Anders
13:40 – 13:41
Oh yeah well.

Mark
13:41 – 14:03
Hopefully this is, they’re telling her, because She’s got an invitation letter from this university with an acceptance. The embassy are telling her that it’s only, you know, it’s like a fata complete. You just got to come roll up, fill out the forms, you know, pay the fee, we’ll take your passport and come back 2 days later or 3 days later and pick it up and it should all be good.

Anders
14:03 – 14:05
So yeah, well,

Mark
14:05 – 14:08
hopefully if it’s as easy as you said, well then that’s all good.

Anders
14:09 – 14:12
Well, it sounds like a formality really. Yeah, yeah,

Mark
14:12 – 14:28
it’s definitely. So it’s a pity she had to fly back to Australia to do it. She couldn’t change it in China, which I know happened into a lot of places where you can’t change your visa status when you’re there you’ve got to actually leave the country you know and come back to your place of origin and things like that so

Anders
14:29 – 14:50
you got to keep those people busy you know you have to I mean it’s where the tax tax dollars, go and, and, you know, for, for diplomacy, for, for embassies and, and, and yeah, well, That’s just how it works. You know, I don’t think any country is different. It’s just

Mark
14:52 – 14:55
why we were in now. We visited a couple of Christmas.

Anders
14:56 – 14:57
Yes, you did.

Mark
14:57 – 14:59
Yeah, I would.

Anders
14:59 – 15:10
Yes. And this was 1 of my next points on the list, because how do you compare these to because you’ve here in Germany and seen the real thing

Mark
15:11 – 15:31
on a much smaller scale. I will say that in China. Yeah, way smaller than what you would say. Actually, maybe 1 we went to might have been on similar size, I think something you’ll know to that, 1 that has the little ferris wheel at the residence near Munich like in a little court there.

Anders
15:31 – 15:33
Yeah in the inner court yeah.

Mark
15:33 – 15:56
Yeah in the inner court so a small 1 with maybe I know we probably went to 1 that maybe had 20 or 30 stalls or something like that. Yes, yes. They did some really good Chaslik, You know some nice meat on a stick that they were barbecuing that was good. They had they had glue vine both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, so we tried them both the alcoholic 1 was better of course.

Anders
15:56 – 15:59
Oh, it’s the same thing here.

Mark
15:59 – 16:24
Not white wine, yeah. The non-alcoholic 1 was like a hot pair of wine, so there was like half a pair in it, which was quite nice and different. So yeah, they had all the usual foods and things like that that you would see. Crafts, So much like a European market. If you had the pain of getting to this 1, so as much as like 5 dollars Australian, but they gave you a free tote bag, you know, with it.

Anders
16:24 – 16:47
Yeah. Okay. So what kind of crafts do that? Because here in Europe you can you can buy your your gloves or or or furred furred house shoes or whatever. I mean, you, you, you, or a sweater, a jumper, all kinds of jewelry and stuff. What, what did they sell there?

Mark
16:48 – 16:55
Yeah, look, they had a lot of handcrafted jewelry and stuff like that that they were making charms and bracelets and

Anders
16:55 – 16:55
okay

Mark
16:55 – 17:25
and that sort of stuff but mostly it was food to be honest with yeah it was mainly mainly food stalls there was 1 I’m trying to think what Rebecca and Willow bought, but yeah I think mainly necklaces, you know bracelets, all just little trinkety things like that that they were selling. Not so much Christmas ornaments like you would see in Europe because to be honest with you Christmas was pretty was really low is really low-key in China.

Anders
17:25 – 17:26
Yeah.

Mark
17:26 – 17:45
I found this out after Gallimere like the family that Willow lives with like they this was not even a public holiday they just go to work like it’s a normal day so yeah some Christmas decorations up but mainly in shopping centers so it’s obviously you know they want people to buy retail as you do.

Anders
17:45 – 17:47
It’s an excuse for selling more stuff.

Mark
17:47 – 17:51
Yeah. Much like Australia does with Halloween. We do that like in Australia, Halloween’s

Anders
17:52 – 17:53
same in Europe. Yeah.

Mark
17:53 – 18:42
Yeah. On the borderline, but shops fill themselves with lollies and buckets and goblins and pumpkins and all that sort of jazz in hope that it’s going to take off. So yeah, China was on the low key but we did have a really lovely Christmas evening because we actually left on Boxing Day the day after Christmas. So we packed up all our stuff from the apartment that we were staying in and we dragged it all over to Willow’s apartment where she lives with the Chinese family and we had a really nice meal there and some drinks and stuff like that for a little party for about 3 or 4 or 5 hours and then we jumped in a taxi at 10:00 on Christmas night and headed to the airport and stayed in a airport hotel because we were leaving at 08:00 the next morning.

Anders
18:42 – 18:43
Okay. But

Mark
18:43 – 19:02
it was quite nice we had lots of traditional Chinese food, places near the coast where we live so they love their seafood, prawns, oysters, pippies, you know what a pippies little shellfish thing like size of a penny or a 10 cent coin and so it’s like a like a mini oyster but real bini oyster like oh

Anders
19:03 – 19:08
okay I think I’ve seen them I’ve seen them on markets yeah yeah

Mark
19:09 – 19:31
they had these sea snails okay I tried 1 I tried a sea snake and I wanted to like it because the Chinese people we were with were really wanting to like it and they loved it. They were eating tons of them, but I put this big sea snail in my mouth and it was like a slug. I had to fish it out of the shell.

Anders
19:31 – 19:32
Oh man.

Mark
19:32 – 20:20
And I chewed away on it for a little bit and it was very chewy, very very chewy like to the fact where I just couldn’t get it down. I was just chewing and chewing and chewing and then I got a serve yet and just pretended to cough and dropped it in the serviette but yeah I thought I’ll give it a try so and I did so which leads me on to another story I actually tried some deep-fried grasshoppers in Thailand so I had a crack at the at the grasshopper and he was he was a little bit crunchy as well well he was really crunchy nothing in him he was obviously big fried and that was all he was with shells but I found myself picking some legs out of my teeth so that worked well I only had about 3 or 4 of them but I seen a bag of them and I tried it.

Mark
20:20 – 20:28
They’re walking around selling scorpions and spiders and all sorts of fancy stuff there on Kosan Road which is a popular road in Bangkok.

Anders
20:28 – 20:29
Yeah I’ve been there too. Yeah I

Mark
20:29 – 20:55
used to be for tourists and I could get these and all that back in the day so I thought I’ll go the lesser of all evils and and just try the grasshopper So I bought a bag of grasshoppers, cost me about 50 cents Australian. Yeah. Very old money. I went, OK, now I’ve tried that with them. There you go.

Anders
20:56 – 22:04
So that leads me to a question, because This is 1 of the fascinating things about traveling and seeing various cultures around the globe. The food culture, I mean, because if you think about it, you know, you say the Chinese, they have all these seafood. And in Thailand, you tried insects, what we would describe as insects. Really, where I’m from in here in Europe, we like shrimps, for instance. But a shrimp is really just like a sea insect, isn’t it? It’s just so what I’m where I’m going at is, it’s just your mind really. I mean, the taste there and the texture may even be similar to like a shrimp or whatever you tend to like, but because it has a different origin, it’s just your mind playing tricks on you isn’t it.

Mark
22:04 – 22:11
So do you eat the shrimp just straight like or do you have sauce on it or you know dip it in anything like?

Anders
22:11 – 22:19
Yeah well we can we can either fry them or boil them and put them in some rice.

Mark
22:22 – 22:27
Yeah so we have we have prawns which are similar to shrimp, but I think they’re bigger than…

Anders
22:27 – 22:29
Yeah, they’re somewhat bigger, yeah.

Mark
22:29 – 22:30
Yeah, so they’re a bit…

Anders
22:30 – 22:33
And we have those too, but they’re imported. Yeah, yeah.

Mark
22:33 – 22:55
So, but in Asia, like in China or even in Vietnam or Cambodia they will fry the whole prawn like so they need to sleep You eat the whole lot whereas Another your country but in our country you rip the head off. Yes. And you rip the tail bit off as well, and you know, and then you just take the white flesh bit in the middle.

Anders
22:55 – 22:58
Yeah, we only eat the middle. Yeah. Yeah. But in

Mark
22:58 – 23:21
Asia they deep fry it, so it’s all crispy, and then you just eat the whole lot like if you go out to a restaurant I think I had a seafood this was in Thailand I had a seafood pad thai so we had it had prawn in it but they had taken the head off it which was okay but they left the the tail bits on it so and they had fried it up and it was crispy and

Anders
23:21 – 23:22
crunchy okay

Mark
23:22 – 23:49
so yes but yeah in Australia we would yeah we would pull the head and tail off it because traditionally in our family or maybe not all families but we just eat them raw like and give them in see this different seafood sources and things like that or you might think so that’s a really sit at the table with a bowl like maybe a kilo of them and they might be like 4 of us and we sit there showing them and ripping the heads off and you know eating them as we go like a

Anders
23:49 – 23:51
just like eating pistachios or something

Mark
23:52 – 24:16
yes like that definitely but with a kilo bag of prawns yeah instead especially around this time of year like Rebecca and Marley and Willow really like prawns. I’m not, I can eat them but I find prawns much like crayfish. They’re just like lobster. They’re a white flesh and unless you put something on them they don’t really, they’ve really got a great deal of taste to them.

Anders
24:16 – 24:17
So yeah,

Mark
24:17 – 24:27
it’s what you add on to them that I guess can make them taste all that much better. But yeah prawns is definitely a big Christmas traditional thing sort of

Anders
24:27 – 24:33
yeah well it’s probably in season at Christmas in Australia I would I would reckon I mean it’s

Mark
24:33 – 24:47
definitely but most of them let you get a fresh off a boat you buy them in the supermarket they’ll come from Vietnam or somewhere anyway yeah probably the ones you wait they’re all they’re all in front imported frozen and then defrosted in the in the supermarket deli Or you know wherever you get your cold meat section

Anders
24:47 – 24:48
from exactly where you are

Mark
24:48 – 24:49
and that’s where you buy

Anders
24:49 – 24:50
them exactly

Mark
24:51 – 25:31
Yeah, but in China because we were on the coast you could just they were just buying and fresh I think and bringing them around much like the sea snails and The pippies as they call them and bits of fish and things like that because this town of Qingdao is renowned throughout China for its Seafood is like a whole Like street food street. That’s the seafood restaurants. Oh, yeah, 500 meters to a kilometer you know it’s this seafood restaurants on each side of the street like savering you can go up They got the big glass tanks, and you can pick out your fish that you want or or whatever you want And they’ll take that fish out of that Tank and they’ll take him out the back in 10 minutes later.

Mark
25:31 – 25:33
You’ll appear on your plate all

Anders
25:37 – 25:39
Still with the eyes on looking at you?

Mark
25:39 – 25:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes if

Anders
25:41 – 25:41
you want

Mark
25:41 – 25:42
the head, mostly with the head,

Anders
25:42 – 25:43
yes, and you’re

Mark
25:44 – 25:44
ready to go.

Anders
25:46 – 25:52
Yeah, So what was the strangest thing you had to eat? Was that the sea snail?

Mark
25:53 – 26:39
That was definitely the sea snail. By a long shot I would say. Most definitely. Because it’s hard to read the menu, we just go into a restaurant and I have a look at and at this point and go in China especially. Thailand’s a little bit different. So you’d just see a lot of their food is obviously based around sort of stir-fries, vegetables and rice and different types of meat and yeah, a lot of that on the go. 1 of the better things I actually did in Qingdao which I found quite fascinating was I visited a Chinese military museum which I was unsure whether the Westerners would be welcome at a Chinese military museum.

Anders
26:40 – 26:41
Yeah. There

Mark
26:41 – 27:01
was no hassle. I had to cough up my passport. I didn’t even have it So they accepted a photo of it. So we went to the Chinese Naval Museum or the People’s Liberation Army Naval Museum. So it’s like the national Navy Museum apparently for the whole country.

Anders
27:02 – 27:02
It was huge,

Mark
27:02 – 27:21
like it was massive, like you could go on full-size submarines and battleships like older ones that were you know maybe from the start of the end of last last century but still with the big guns and everything on them so you could you’re able to walk out on the on the back with the big cannons and things like that and go in the submarine and

Anders
27:22 – 27:29
was this an inside museum or did it has like a like a harbour where you could go

Mark
27:29 – 27:36
to yeah we had a harbour where the boats were but it also had an indoor part that had 4 big galleries where

Anders
27:36 – 27:37
they had lots

Mark
27:37 – 28:15
of guns and cannons and weapons and lots of stuff on the wall talking about the progression of the Chinese Navy from the days when Mao Zedong created the country under the communist banner that they live now and how it’s progressed along. And then once you got to about the fourth gallery, that was modern times, and that was when Xi Jinping appeared on just about every second picture the whole way through it. I reckon that he might have about 25 pictures in the space of about 50 meters. So there’s definitely some propaganda happening as well the, for the current premiere of China.

Mark
28:15 – 28:16
There was no doubt about that.

Anders
28:16 – 28:18
Obviously yeah yeah.

Mark
28:18 – 28:35
But yeah it was quite quite good and quite interesting and I really enjoyed the we spent about 4 hours at this place because it was massive and yeah I really I really enjoyed going and having a look and having to learn about Chinese military history or just any history because

Anders
28:35 – 28:36
yeah really

Mark
28:36 – 28:43
like gun to some different types of museums like that which I found it to be yeah I found to be quite good, especially with the full-size boats and

Anders
28:43 – 29:08
yeah, It’s funny that you would say that you were surprised to that they would let in Westerners or foreigners On the other hand, I’m thinking why wouldn’t they I mean they obviously are proud of their military and yeah well obviously you won’t see any military secrets there.

Mark
29:08 – 29:10
No, no not at all.

Anders
29:10 – 29:11
So it’s… You always

Mark
29:11 – 30:06
see the same people sometimes like in cities like Qingdao If you go to places like maybe a military museum and you’re we were the only Westerners there no doubt about it. Yeah I didn’t say another you know occasionally you’ll you’ll see the same person walking past you a few times. Yeah You know so like definitely keep an eye an eye on you like and what you do like so but it’s much like if you fly on a Chinese airline even from Australia or anywhere there’s always like Chinese air marshals on board but there’ll be 2 2 different guys dressed in black and you’ll walk from the front of the plane to the back and like back up the other aisle or can they do this maybe I’d say once an hour or so just I’m not sure why I don’t know if they think someone’s going to blow the plane up but yeah there’s always definitely some Chinese government air marshals oh yeah as well make sure that everything’s going as planned I guess so

Anders
30:07 – 30:46
yeah I mean Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can never be sure what what’s going to happen in the current world. Things are developing very rapidly. But the thing about being like supervised, I don’t think the Chinese mind, I don’t think they even think about it. They’re just constantly monitored in 1 way or another. That whole idea to most Westerners is like, you know, we wouldn’t like that. But who knows? Probably we are monitored in…

Mark
30:46 – 30:48
I would say we are. We don’t know.

Anders
30:48 – 30:49
We just don’t know it.

Mark
30:49 – 31:19
At least they blanket out front with it like you know and You know and and and they do I don’t think it doesn’t worry them and to be honest it doesn’t worry me I don’t think you if you’re not doing anything wrong. No really no There’s really no concern about you know being spotted every block where there’s a camera Things like that it’s in some retrospects that It could make people feel safer as well. Yeah, that would be the foreign country.

Anders
31:19 – 32:22
That would be the political argument, you know, for the safety of the public, you know, of the people that we need to monitor. It won’t go well in Europe, I can tell you that that political argument is just yet before you even make it because we won’t accept it. It’s particularly in Germany, there’s a very, very high awareness of your privacy, Which is 1 of the reasons why the Germans are so far behind digitally. It’s come to an almost ridiculous point, but literally we write pen and paper, we fax things, stuff like that. And in China you can’t even, from what I’ve heard, you can’t buy like a cell phone without you know they taking your picture or you have a digital

Mark
32:23 – 32:42
phone. For sure you have to hand everything over in order to get that done. 1 thing I did, I’m not quite sure if this is if This happens in Europe or somewhere else around the world but boarding a plane to leave China the other day in Qingdao You didn’t have to show your boarding passes. They had facial recognition. You look at the camera

Anders
32:42 – 32:42
Yeah,

Mark
32:43 – 32:51
and it let you through which I found was fantastic I really I was really on board with it because I hate having to pull everything out again.

Anders
32:52 – 33:10
Yeah, but absolutely. By the convenience of it, it’s brilliant. The German side, I’ve lived long enough in Germany to say you know where does where is that data stored and and what do they do with it you know

Mark
33:11 – 33:49
you had to actually have you stand into the airport anyway to get through customs so Add the image anyway, so from when you when you went through customs or when you went through immigration to actually get into the you know the international departure. Can you ring my mum, I’m just doing a podcast. Thank you. Yeah, so they already had your picture when you went in and they’d already scanned you know your fingerprints and stuff which they do in China regularly

Anders
33:50 – 33:50
so I

Mark
33:50 – 34:26
guess it was already in the system from about an hour beforehand when you when you went through and yeah and actually they also had it in Bangkok they weren’t using it I don’t know whether it was this getting implemented But the actual screens were there when we went to board out of Bangkok, but they went yeah, they weren’t Yeah, I really enjoyed it because Normally Once you go through and you check your luggage and you show me you show me a passport and your boarding pass to go through Immigration then you go in and you wait for your flight to be called But then your flights called then you got to pull it all out then I

Anders
34:26 – 34:27
yeah

Mark
34:27 – 34:39
So good because it’s 4 of us we just put away in a bag and then you go back up and you have to pull it all out again. So for me to actually go up there and just look at the camera, I was like, everything.

Anders
34:39 – 35:22
That’s, I absolutely agree. This is where I guess this is where things are headed anyway. But but there is there is some anyway. But there is some legitimate concern in terms of hackers, they hack their way into like a huge database. What do they do with all this information? Your facial. I was even hesitant now I had done it because it was just too much of a hassle not to do it, but on my cell phone, there’s facial recognition. So I just look at it and it opens up. But for a long time, I didn’t do that because where are they keeping this?

Mark
35:25 – 35:28
All the best hackers in the world come from China so I felt safe doing it in China.

Anders
35:29 – 35:31
Yeah yeah yeah.

Mark
35:31 – 35:54
Well that’s what they say anyway. Yeah so I found that was quite good at the airport, at the airport in China. So they’re really strict in China at the airport. Like they go through everything in your bag. Really got pulled basically every single thing out of your bag literally in China so they’re security don’t you think

Anders
35:54 – 35:57
they could x-ray anyway so just show that

Mark
35:57 – 36:16
everywhere yeah yeah but if anything electronic or like even even your battery pack like for your mobile phone they want to see it because some of them are made to different standards and if it’s not up to a must be a certain standard or fault or something they’ll take it off you throw it away so which is

Anders
36:16 – 36:24
Which is funny because the cheapest batteries not living up to like proper standards, they’re usually manufactured in China aren’t they?

Mark
36:24 – 36:57
Oh, everything is manufactured in China, isn’t it? This is the thing, So yeah, but I don’t know, this might be a bit controversial, but I find China a little bit like Germany. Everything’s in order, like there’s an order, everything runs orderly most of the time and there’s a way to do everything and you know and yeah so yeah like it’s yeah it’s much like Germany in that respect at the airport or you know while you’re waiting things like this.

Anders
36:57 – 37:05
But from what you’re telling I can tell they’re taking it a little further in China than they are in Germany.

Mark
37:07 – 37:57
My daughter said, like I said to her, we’re at the market or we’re out somewhere. And I was like, there’s so much food when you travel in China that comes on a stick. Everything is on a stick. Like if you go to a night market you know all the food that you can buy 90% of it is on a stick and I said go with all the food on the stick and she said China is all about convenience and I’m like okay that makes sense Same with the face scanners at the airport. That’s convenient. It’s all about I don’t know where it’s because there’s so many people and you know convenience is a big thing when you’ve got a billion and Plus people I guess living in your country, but yeah sort of all ties in there And anyway, they can make it easier and quicker and probably still store your data without you actually thinking that’s what they’re doing they’re making you think that’s convenient possibly but yeah they seem to be doing it.

Anders
38:01 – 38:11
So how was that in Thailand for comparison? You said they were implementing something at the airport maybe? Yeah, in Thailand they

Mark
38:11 – 38:15
had the same screens to look into but they weren’t working in Thailand.

Anders
38:15 – 38:15
So

Mark
38:16 – 38:25
it’s something they’re just bringing in like to scan your face at the boarding gate as well. Yeah, I assume every country, every country will have.

Anders
38:26 – 38:37
Probably and Thailand is a big tourist destination. So, so obviously they will want to have to, you know, get people through bottlenecks at the airport very fast and

Mark
38:39 – 39:21
Come from the organized airport in China I in a city of 10 million people where there wasn’t that many people at the airport and everything was orderly and clean and nice and then we landed in Bangkok and it was like a chaotic bomb and yeah at the airport in Bangkok. It was like oh my god. What’s happening here is people running everywhere But I sort of like that mass chaos as well a little bit because too much organization can be a little bit boring and it’s good to step out of the box that we have in Western countries a lot where, you know, we’ve got a law for everything and everything should be done this way.

Mark
39:21 – 39:33
And, you know, so I find that I find a bit of freedom in like jumping in the back with took took with my seatbelt ripping around the streets of Bangkok and, you know, and things like that.

Anders
39:33 – 39:36
Yeah. What is this a different experience?

Mark
39:36 – 39:44
I didn’t die. Life didn’t Life didn’t come to an end. You know I didn’t actually have to put that seatbelt on. So

Anders
39:45 – 39:56
I guess in China you would have a sense that you would be Your photo would be taken if you didn’t if you didn’t put that seatbelt on wouldn’t you?

Mark
39:57 – 40:06
So they actually do tell you that like If you get into a ride share there, especially the person in the front, they don’t really care about the back. The person in front, they’re like, could see better.

Anders
40:06 – 40:06
Yeah, because

Mark
40:06 – 40:19
yeah, because they would see you, but I don’t know because, can’t have a conversation with the drivers. I don’t really know whether they get fined or not, but they would always… Let’s make sure the person in the front had the seatbelt on. In the back, they didn’t really care.

Anders
40:19 – 40:20
So the person in

Mark
40:20 – 40:37
the front, they wouldn’t take off until you had your seatbelt on. And the same in Bangkok as well. So, but it was all good. And like you feel those in China, we’ll be back. We’ll have to go back to China, I guess, at some stage.

Anders
40:37 – 40:42
So you don’t want to be in trouble with the authorities when you get back, you

Mark
40:42 – 40:54
know, I Love China Just in case they’re listening, China is a great country, I really love China, I enjoy going there, and I’ll be back in October, okay? Fast track me through immigration.

Anders
40:54 – 40:55
All good, all good.

Mark
40:58 – 41:07
I do, I think a lot of people who have negative image and negative connotations about China are people that have never been to China.

Anders
41:08 – 41:09
Exactly right, yeah.

Mark
41:09 – 41:21
They don’t really know about China. I fight battles with these people on YouTube all the time. People always leave me comments like, I cannot follow you anymore because you like China and all this sort of stuff I always say have you been to China

Anders
41:21 – 41:22
yeah and

Mark
41:22 – 41:37
they’re like no and I say well you know it’s pretty easy to have an opinion manufactured by the Western media and fed to you you know on television and things like this. So I feel you’ve been there. Yeah. I have an open mind about what’s going on.

Anders
41:37 – 42:18
1 of my best friends, he’s regularly in China. He’s doing a lot of business. He’s importing stuff from China, manufactured in China. And he says, you know, it’s great. He goes, he travels there about once or twice a year to just make sure that things are in order. And he’s even got a full time employee to coordinate things locally. But he needs to be there from time to time and he says you know it’s it’s always like you say it’s always probably managed it’s always nice and clean it’s always you know as you would expect.

Anders
42:20 – 42:21
So yeah.

Mark
42:22 – 42:51
I don’t know what people expect it to be like I don’t know whether they think it’s like a third world country or you know or you know that the police are walking around 1 step behind you or that you know that your liberties are curtailed. As far as I can see the only liberties that are curtailed is that you can’t access Facebook and Instagram, Google, you know basically because they don’t want you to. They don’t want you to reading negative stuff about their own country.

Anders
42:52 – 43:18
Which is a little funny for a Westerner to think about. They have this honor and pride codex I guess that that you know we don’t really understand because I mean I patriotism this is another thing patriotism for instance for an American that’s that’s a badge of honor whereas in Germany patriotism is a little frowned upon

Mark
43:18 – 43:36
doesn’t watch in Australia either I think we’re all here to hate our government, basically. We’re not like our government, that’s for sure. So I can’t think of anyone I know who says, yeah, the government’s doing a good job and I really love our government. There’s no way that’s happening anymore.

Anders
43:36 – 44:06
No, no exactly and I mean in China the thing about, I mean what could possibly happen If people were to criticize the government, I mean, what’s the worst thing that they will lose face a day or 2 and then as a politician, that’s what you do all the time in the Western society. But they have a different way of seeing things there. So I think a lot of it has to do with the old men governing the country doesn’t it?

Mark
44:06 – 44:28
Oh, most definitely. There’s no doubt about that. I guess in some ways, I mean everything affects different people in a different way and you know at the speed that China are able to build infrastructure and things like that they can build it because they got me can say this is where we’re building it.

Anders
44:28 – 44:28
Oh yeah.

Mark
44:28 – 44:57
The way it’s going. Yeah. And it doesn’t matter what you think about it as you know a population or as a people who are living there or if there’s a tree frog there or something like that like that. That’s the way we’re building it and that’s where we’re building it and we’ll have it finished in in 2 years. Whereas in the West, you know, we would be debating the tree frog for the first 5 years. Yeah. We even even laid a pillar down on this railway track. And then, you know, then we’d have to pay 15 different consultants to do a plan.

Mark
44:57 – 45:01
Yeah. To see. And then we would have to have a tender with 10 different people. And, you

Anders
45:01 – 45:01
know, yes.

Mark
45:01 – 45:09
And by the time we got around to it, it would be 10 years we wouldn’t have even built anything like it and China would have built 10 of them by that stage.

Anders
45:10 – 45:14
And you’re really forgetting the political committee that it will have to go through.

Mark
45:18 – 45:49
And I mean that’s not helpful for everyone. I realize that in China. You know obviously people are displaced and things like that by the government being able to rule with an iron fist and do what they want to do. But you know in some ways I don’t know if there’s a happy medium in the point the way we do things and communism does things but I just find that in the West we’re so bogged down with red tape and rules and yeah and worrying about what everyone thinks that nothing’s actually really getting done.

Anders
45:49 – 46:45
No, that’s true. I absolutely agree. I mean, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but just an example, the subway system in Munich is undergoing a massive expansion and renovation. Then they discovered asbestos in many of the old subway stations and obviously that had to be removed and new fire protection and all these things. The thing about it is I’ve been coming and living in Munich for the past 20 years. I cannot remember any time, any time at all where it wasn’t 1 big construction site. It’s just constantly something. And as soon as they finish 1 place, they start like a hundred meters away digging again and doing something new.

Anders
46:45 – 47:35
And as soon as 1 subway station is finished, well, maybe a couple of months later they pull down the wall panels because they want to do something new. And it’s just, there’s always something going on. And I always joke about why don’t they just sit down and plan this thing properly and get it done once and for all and then we could live 50 years without having this mess all around. But it’s because of committees and the political decision making system but also because of the rules the Germans love their rules And once a rule is in place, they don’t really like to change it.

Anders
47:35 – 48:09
Because they’re very conform and they trust the system in many ways. Although if you cast them privately, they will tell you differently. But officially, they will always say, the system is there so that we can all be be sure that nothing corrupt is going on which is obviously not the case but it’s just you know and in China it’s just the the opposite you know things get done Like you say it’s just yeah don’t have this all these interferences

Mark
48:10 – 48:45
really hard to go to gain a Sense of what they think about their government, I guess because even Even the people will I lose with like they’ll ask you what do you think of China but they will never make any real statement themselves about what their government like they just say I think China’s a bit misunderstood which I think is a fair statement. Yeah, it’s discussed. But, you know, so but I would I would doubt you would ever hear many Chinese saying bad about their system. I think because it’s that on a thing as well.

Mark
48:45 – 49:18
Like they don’t want to be seen to be criticizing a lot of them. No. You know, especially ones that are in, I wouldn’t say privilege, but ones that are doing well and are well off. Like there’s no real need for them to criticize the system that they’re in. You know, they’ve got good jobs, they’ve got good pay, they’ve got all the luxuries that anyone in the West would have and you know and more and their country’s secure so there’s no real need for them to to criticize their because that’s all they’ve ever known I guess

Anders
49:18 – 49:25
yeah I guess and I guess if they criticize they would they could actually lose their their position yeah

Mark
49:27 – 49:27
but but

Anders
49:27 – 50:07
that’s true because that’s just because we are brought up differently in the West. We’re brought up, it’s okay to have a critical mind here. And those of us who have a critical mind and we think about things and we observe things, It’s hard not to once you start, isn’t it? It’s just, I would notice these things in China. Obviously I wouldn’t want to interfere, I wouldn’t want to criticize publicly, but I would in my mind, I would observe and say, that’s odd, but that’s just because I come from a different part of the world.

Mark
50:08 – 50:14
I mean really, in the West we may have an opinion but we can’t really enact change.

Anders
50:14 – 50:15
No, that’s true.

Mark
50:15 – 50:21
Can we? So we can say this is wrong but in the end the government is going to do what the government wants to do

Anders
50:21 – 50:21
yeah and

Mark
50:22 – 50:44
and so the only real difference is is they don’t talk about it and they go along with what their government wants to do we can talk about it disagree with their government but our government’s still gonna do what I’ve got to do so the systems the systems everywhere are closely aligned It’s this that our government says okay. You’ve got the liberty to say you don’t like it But we’re not necessarily gonna take that into consideration. We’re exactly

Anders
50:44 – 50:48
we don’t care about your opinion anyway, so Go ahead

Mark
50:48 – 50:53
Say what you want. Yeah Really

Anders
50:53 – 51:11
yeah probably I would even say sometimes you know the Chinese maybe they’re even smarter because they just live with the fact and then and we in the Western world we just we’re just stupid enough to think that are that we can change something which which we probably can’t

Mark
51:18 – 51:28
yeah yeah I said we live within the system we live with. And everyone can have a better life, everyone can have a worse life. But I’m sure your life’s fine, my life’s fine. So

Anders
51:28 – 52:20
that’s the thing. That’s the thing about, for instance, that we see in Russia at the moment, because the war in Russia and Ukraine and 1 of the real concerns for Putin is actually if the public starts to suffer too much, As long as the public feels safe and they’re more or less comfortable and to whatever extent they’re used to, He can pretty much do what he wants. At the moment, the media are full with things here in Europe about the public in Russia are suffering. And that’s when Putin is facing trouble on a domestic level.

Anders
52:22 – 52:45
I guess what you said leads into what you were saying. As long as the Chinese population feels safe and secure, who cares what the government does? It’s the same thing here. It’s just differently in the Western world. But as long as we more or less feel safe and secure and we can travel, we can, you know, things are okay.

Mark
52:45 – 53:30
I’m actually unsure that there’s any Russians left in Russia after being in Thailand quite quite Many Russians in Thailand that especially in Bangkok every second voice Was Russian I reckon the plane we caught I reckon the plane we caught from 1 Joe in China to Bangkok, I reckon at least half the plane was Russian. So I don’t know whether the upper middle class is like, okay, let’s get out of here. And the same as when we were in Bali last time, tons of Russians. So, yeah, so they’re upwardly mobile to get out of Russia. And I don’t know if they do some holidays or they’re trying to live in Thailand and in Bali.

Mark
53:30 – 53:35
But it’s pretty easy to get a 5 year visa in Thailand as long as you can show you’ve got some money in the bank.

Anders
53:35 – 53:36
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark
53:36 – 53:38
You can live there. So yeah, lots of Russians.

Anders
53:38 – 53:48
I’m not even sure what the rules are for entering an EU country from Russia. I don’t think there are… Maybe there are planes, I don’t know.

Mark
53:49 – 54:25
When I was in, when I was in in Bali earlier, maybe not this year but last year, just after it sort of all kicked off, so what a lot of them were doing to get to Bali was they were flying from Moscow or Petersburg or wherever and now flying to Kazakhstan because Russia and Kazakhstan are friends yeah but then but there was no ban on them flying from they couldn’t fly from Russia to Bali or you know places like that but they could fly from Kazakhstan from Almaty or Astana or Nusseltland, they could then fly on from there to wherever they wanted to.

Mark
54:25 – 54:43
So it was like a big loophole thing you know they couldn’t fly directly from Russia but if they went to a neutral third party, yeah, like Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan or, you know, 1 of the stans that are slightly friendly with Russia, but are also friendly with the West. So, you know, that was the way.

Anders
54:44 – 55:28
Yeah, that’s probably, I mean, same thing with trains and buses and yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So you just, you just put an extra stop over and this, oh, away you go. Yeah, exactly. Definitely. Yeah, but it’s interesting. I mean, Russians, yeah, they even, even, even like 15 years ago when we were traveling around the world, it’s not 15 years ago, 12 years ago, we saw a lot of Russians in Phuket in Thailand as well. They weren’t really the most tidy people.

Mark
55:28 – 55:43
I don’t think they’re well-liked. I can tell you that. They’re held in the same step as Americans sometimes. Very ignorant and things like that. Very pushy.

Anders
55:46 – 56:12
Yeah and they threw their plastic waste just on the streets. It’s just stuff like that, you know, it’s really… To a point where it was almost insulting to me because I saw it and I immediately reacted. I had my son 2 years old or 2 and a half years old at the time, he even reacted and said, Pop, he’s not allowed to do that. I said, no, he’s not. But you

Mark
56:13 – 56:51
know. Like if you Google it, you’ll find many articles on the Balinese like hating Russians, you know, and things like that. And the fact that they’re all occupying the island and they’re you know starting up illegal businesses and you know and all this sort of stuff. At 1 stage they were gonna stop granting visas to Russians the Indonesians where it was becoming that much of a problem at 1 stage. Yeah, yeah. There’s even an area now on Google Maps in Bali called Little Moscow. Oh! There’s that many of them. So, that’s a bit of an issue for them.

Mark
56:51 – 57:01
What can you do at the same time? Asian countries love the money, so they’re not really going to care where their visitors are coming from a lot of the time, as long as they’re coming.

Anders
57:01 – 57:29
The thing is, they probably should care a little bit about where it’s coming from, because on the long term, it will just hurt their business. For instance, a lot of the people I love, my friends, they don’t go to certain areas anymore because of that because simply become too much to destroy too polluted yeah so so at least they’ve lost that business

Mark
57:30 – 57:44
yeah definitely another thing I noticed in Bangkok you would not have seen maybe last year, not even maybe the year before and you would have went to prison and got hung for is now their acceptance of marijuana.

Anders
57:44 – 57:48
Yeah, They even have cafes now don’t they?

Mark
57:48 – 58:21
Coffee shops. I mean every block there is literally a shop selling weed on everywhere you go. Mind you though they’re pretty self-conscious, but conscious of the fact much like Amsterdam they’re not really walking around in the open smoking which is the ones that are a tourist obviously of course yeah not ties but I wandered into a couple of these shops and and had a bit of a squiz just to see what they were all about and what was going on.

Anders
58:22 – 58:23
Doing your research?

Mark
58:23 – 59:08
Yeah, they actually call it a marijuana medical dispensary. Oh. But you don’t need to have a script to purchase it, so you don’t need to have any medical reason at all. But yeah, literally on every block and you go in and there’s like a menu of maybe, I’m not quite sure how you grow 50 different types of marijuana. Wow. And how you grade it, there’s all gradings of strength of the THC unit all this stuff like that then my prices were looking at like starting from about 15 euros for a gram a bag of marijuana or you could buy a pre-rolled joint for about maybe 5 euros of marijuana but yeah it’s quite it’s quite startling because I always go back to days where I remember people getting hung

Anders
59:08 – 59:09
in Thailand and

Mark
59:09 – 59:10
shot like yeah

Anders
59:10 – 59:11
yeah yeah

Mark
59:11 – 59:17
for being caught with with any you know with a gram of marijuana or even a bit in your bag you know things like that.

Anders
59:17 – 59:25
You were told you need to check your bags extra at the airport to make sure that someone didn’t put stuff into your bag. I mean

Mark
59:25 – 59:47
and now it’s openly out in the air for everyone and I’m sure look I assume that has probably increased their tourism. Like there’s no doubt about it. People go to Amsterdam to smoke pot. So I can imagine, you know, in nice areas like Phuket and things like that, people would be enjoying sitting on the beach, I guess, you know, smoking pot, whatever they do.

Anders
59:47 – 1:00:11
It has been, it has even been legalized partly in Germany last year. And I can tell you from just the other day we were walking in the inner city and it was really just, you know, everywhere you could just, it was just in the air that that smell of weed uses it yeah really again so maybe

Mark
1:00:11 – 1:00:13
it’s finally becoming mainstreamly accepted I

Anders
1:00:13 – 1:00:15
guess so I guess so it’s

Mark
1:00:16 – 1:00:19
I mean it’s the lesser of all drugs apparently.

Anders
1:00:20 – 1:00:41
They say it’s you know alcohol is a stronger drug. Yeah. Again it’s 1 of those cultures in our communities that’s just you know we alcohol is harmless which it isn’t but but it’s considered socially harmless but but yeah it’s a

Mark
1:00:41 – 1:00:58
bit of a saying like you never see a couple of stoners fighting but you know people who have had too much alcohol yeah they’re punching on and kicking cars and breaking windows and doing stuff like that, but a couple of people smoking a joint are more likely to be sitting around eating some food and having a giggle.

Anders
1:00:59 – 1:01:02
Yeah and listen to some music or something like that.

Mark
1:01:03 – 1:01:16
Maybe another way society’s got it backwards again. Yeah. Because they couldn’t tax it you know now they’ve worked out a way if we legalize it and sell it then we can tax it can’t we? Instead of having a black market. So

Anders
1:01:17 – 1:02:14
in my native Denmark, there’s this Christiania, this hippie city, where, in Copenhagen, it used to be 1 of them. It was never legal, but it was where the police, at least they knew, okay, we’ve got it under control here. Yeah. It’s sort of just based there. And now, just last year, they deteriorated. They tore down that street in Christiania where they would sell marijuana, was called Pusha Street. So the thing was the political decision. But the police said, you know, which was a legitimate argument, they say, you know, it will make it harder for us to control.

Mark
1:02:14 – 1:02:17
Yeah, because we know what’s happening here.

Anders
1:02:17 – 1:02:29
Exactly and now it’s all over the city instead. Yeah. So, you know, yeah. It’s just, but there were some politicians they needed a victory and they need, you know. Yeah.

Mark
1:02:30 – 1:03:04
So once again it goes back to the whole generational thing, you know, that the drugs are bad and everything like that is really bad, you know, and like we said, you know, you’re unlikely to be having trouble with too many people smoking pot, like, you know, but people have been drummed into their heads over the over the journey that you know all the bad for you but like we said you know people drink alcohol and yeah and people smoke tobacco that’s an addictive drug maybe more addictive than you know then yeah then a lot of other drugs like you know We tolerate that because it’s mainstream in that.

Anders
1:03:04 – 1:03:23
Well, this is, you know, apparently humans, we need our substances. I don’t know what it is with us, but, but, yeah, it’s, it’s, Whether it’s red wine or a beer or pot or whatever. I mean, it’s really all just, you know, poison.

Mark
1:03:23 – 1:03:24
Is it a corona? Why was he?

Anders
1:03:24 – 1:03:29
Yeah. Well, were you sitting right now? It’s Friday afternoon. So it is

Mark
1:03:29 – 1:04:12
8 p.m. Friday night. Yeah, of course. Like I said in the previous show I just rushed in the door because we got up at 09:00 and we drove 197 kilometers east up to a place called Cape Conran It’s in far East Gippsland. We’re in East Gippsland, but this is a section of Victoria that’s very under populated and probably remote and it’s like a really wild coastline, lots of rocks and reefs and white sand beaches as far as the eye can see with very few people on on them anywhere. That’s a really wilderness area. A lot of people go there to do deep sea fishing and diving and things like that.

Anders
1:04:12 – 1:04:13
Any dangerous animals?

Mark
1:04:14 – 1:04:48
Yeah there would be, there was, I’ve seen a big monitor lizard about, I would say, nearly a meter long run across the road, but there’d be sharks up there and seals and snakes and all sorts of stuff if you got off road too far. But yeah, it’s in a national park so it comes to an ending at this place called Cape Conran where this white sand beach is, no caravan parks there or anything like that because the national park so it’s a really nice pristine area. I had my niece and nephew were staying up there near this Cape in a caravan park in the bush so we thought we’d get a bit of a drive up there.

Mark
1:04:48 – 1:04:58
I had been out there for 3 or 4 years so it was was quite a nice day but a long day because we stopped at a few towns on the way through and grabbed a coffee and something to eat and had a bit of a look around.

Anders
1:04:59 – 1:05:02
Well that new car of yours needs to run its kilometers doesn’t it?

Mark
1:05:02 – 1:05:46
Well this place is actually closer to Canberra than it is to Melbourne. So that’s how far away it is from mainstream Victoria. So it’s only 230… Well, Orbost is the biggest town. It’s about 20 km away from it. So Orbost is 235 km away from Canberra which is the capital of Australia or 375 kilometers away from Melbourne so So it’s sort of in the middle of nowhere but closer to obviously Canberra. So you’d have to drive out of Victoria through New South Wales and into the ACT and you’d get to Canberra before you’d get to Melbourne which is the capital of the state that Cape Conrad and Orbost live in.

Mark
1:05:47 – 1:06:19
Yeah. So it’s out in the middle of nowhere really. Once you get to this section of Victoria where it is there’s really only maybe 1, you’d leave Lake Centrance and there would be Orbost, Canne River and then there’d be the border. So in about 250 kilometres, there’d be 2 towns until you get to New South Wales border, and then there would be another probably 50 kilometres or so before you get to a town. So yes, it might be close to 300 kilometres with about 2 towns on the highway, and that’s about it. Wow.

Anders
1:06:20 – 1:06:23
You need to make sure you don’t run out of gas.

Mark
1:06:23 – 1:06:57
No, lots of forests, famous river called the Snowy River flows in there as well. So yeah, really, really nice pristine area. I think you can go up there and I’m going to start a couple of nights. I quite enjoyed the remoteness of it all. Maybe that’s because I’ve been in Bangkok and there’s 12 million people running around. And trains and train stations and things like that. But yeah, I actually enjoyed the time up there today. So we might go back up there next month or something. Spend a night or 2 somewhere.

Anders
1:06:57 – 1:06:59
Yeah, of course. A couple of nice

Mark
1:06:59 – 1:07:01
hubs up there and a brewery.

Anders
1:07:02 – 1:07:04
A brewery even, yeah well there’s

Mark
1:07:04 – 1:07:05
a brewery up there.

Anders
1:07:05 – 1:07:08
You got a lot of these micro breweries.

Mark
1:07:09 – 1:07:20
Yeah and that’s what it is it’s called sailors grave. Sailors grave brewery. Had a sampling a sample plate as they call it. So you get a board and they have 6 different types of glasses.

Anders
1:07:20 – 1:07:23
Oh yeah, smaller glasses.

Mark
1:07:23 – 1:07:29
Yeah, little 150ml glasses. So we tried 6 of them. So it was quite nice.

Anders
1:07:31 – 1:07:49
Alright, well we’re going to talk about in the next, let’s leave that for the next episode. We could dive more into Bangkok, maybe your latest experience, but already now this first episode of the year is way over an hour. So as things tend

Mark
1:07:49 – 1:07:50
to,

Anders
1:07:52 – 1:08:08
You have been listening to southern summers and northern winters with me Anders and Mark on the other side of the globe. Do follow us Mark on you’re in charge of the Facebook.

Mark
1:08:08 – 1:08:27
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, go to the website. I’ll give Anders all the information and you can list them all in the show notes coming up from now on and we should be able to click through to all of them and follow us please follow us and if you’re listening ask us some questions like we want some we want some feedback from our listeners and we’re

Anders
1:08:27 – 1:08:27
yeah exactly

Mark
1:08:27 – 1:08:30
answer questions and discuss anything that you want

Anders
1:08:31 – 1:09:15
we are getting more still I’d for the life of me I can’t understand why it takes so long, but the analytics, when you go into dive into like Apple and Spotify, it’s still telling me it needs more data. I guess it needs more time really to sort of properly tell us where people are and how many and so but I can see that we’re trending upwards. We’re trending upwards so there are getting we are getting more traction which is good which is encouraging. So thank you very much for listening and we’ll be back. We’ll be back soon.

Anders
1:09:15 – 1:09:16
Take care. Bye bye.

Mark
1:09:16 – 1:09:18
Okay, take care. Bye guys.