AI Travel Gone WRONG: Couple Stranded in Peru!
Artificial Intelligence makes the news for sending travellers to locations that don't exist! We hear about a couple in Peru who were left stranded, after letting AI plan their trip!
We find out what a coffee pot, water pump and a safe box all have in common, as Tripological Reasoning returns with hypothetical scenarios that may or may not be Alun's real life dilemmas. Tales of a Trip crosses a border with no passport stamp! We hear from a fellow travel podcaster who attempted to get into Laos without having technically been to Thailand. Nothing a game of snooker and a small bribe can't fix!
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BBC Travel article: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250926-the-perils-of-letting-ai-plan-your-next-trip
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
01:30 - Two worlds collide: AI vs Travel
07:30 - Fake destinations & ChatGPT hallucinations
09:30 - Are “hidden gems” dead?
11:42 - Triplogical Reasoning: Hypothetical travel mishaps
21:14 - Tales of a Trip: Bribing the authorities at the Laos–Thailand border
26:16 - Adam's Russia/ China border crossing
29:00 - Final reflections
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TRANSCRIPT
Alun:
[0:02] Hello and welcome to this episode of Tripology. It's the only show where the two hosts creep
in tiptoeing about planet Earth with ever such speed. I'm Alun and I'm here with the ever misleading Adam.
Adam:
[0:17] It's one hell of a show today, mate. We've got an article in the beginning, a really fun article we're going to talk about when two worlds collide, the travel world, the real world and the futuristic world of AI. Then in the second section of the show, we've got a tripological reasoning where you're going to ask me what on earth would I do in this situation it's completely hypothetical and then of course at the end of the show we've got everyone's favourite section is Tales of a Trip where we hear from one of you guys.
Alun:
[0:39] What an excellent summarisation of the show to come it's all very very exciting.
AI in Travel: The Collision
Alun:
[0:44] An article you say using artificial intelligence in the travel world do pray tell.
Adam:
[0:50] I know that is something that you're um well something you've got experience in very first hand I remember when you were waltzing around shanghai with chat gpt up your arm yeah.
Alun:
[1:00] I think that there's two categories of people and their relationships with ai you've got the doomers the people that think ai is going to take over the world and it's a terrible thing and people who dare to have a glimmer of hope thinking actually ai is a useful tool and if used in moderation it can just make life better i think i probably sit in that camp i think that it can be a good tool to be utilized.
Adam:
[1:23] Yeah so there i was earlier today mate and i was thinking i've got a chat with Alun later what is it we can talk about i went on the bbc website and i went to the travel section as i like to do because that's just sort of my afternoon reading you know when i'm at work and there's nothing to do i like to read about travel and i came up with this article came across this article beg your pardon and it was titled the perils of letting ai plan your next trip so i'm just going to go through the uh the article now and it really is quite interesting um it was published earlier today so the article starts an imagined town in peru an eiffel tower in beijing travelers are increasingly using tools like chat gpt for itinerary ideas and being sent to destinations that don't exist miguel angel gonglora meza
founder and director of evolution treks peru was in rural peruvian town preparing for a trek through the andes when he overheard a curious conversation two accompanied unaccompanied tourists were chatting amicably about their plans to hike alone in the mountains to the sacred Canyon of Humante.
Adam:
[2:27] He said, they showed me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives. Hello, man after your own heart. It was not true. There is no sacred canyon of Humante, said Gongora Meza. The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourists had paid nearly $160 in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Moyapata, which I don't know, somewhere you've been, without a guide. um and they were essentially stranded there and what this guy goes on to say is basically the problem with this is especially somewhere like peru is that if you end up somewhere you shouldn't be as a result of chat gpt just coming up with something fanciful um it says you could find yourself at 4 000 meters altitude without oxygen and no phone signal uh what do you make of that mate well.
Alun:
[3:21] I think that the guy is rightly kind of dismissive of their use of chat gpt obviously they've not done a good job there but i would say we everyone kind of knows that chat gpt hallucinates sometimes sometimes you ask a question and it goes off on a right tangential mess of dialogue so i think basically what they what they've done is the equivalent of asking a very knowledgeable friend a question and then just taken their response at absolute face value and gone on a whole adventure without googling it first.
Adam:
[3:57] Actually that's you make a good point actually because that would be my second port of call after saying to chat gbt we imagine the first question was tell me some great places to go in peru yeah and then the moment it sends you it comes up with a the result surely the second thing you
would do is just google it to have a look at some pictures or go on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, isn't it?
Alun:
[4:17] Absolutely. Certainly. I mean, I would expect you to do that to me. If I asked you for recommendations for some place that you've been to and I've not, let's say Vladivostok in Russia, if I said...
Travel Planning and AI's Flaws
Alun:
[4:30] you know, Adam, what should I do in Vladivostok? And you gave me a list of five things. What I'm not going to do is jump on a plane and go to Vladivostok for those five things without first being like, okay, well, let me figure out which one of those I want to do, where to go, where to do it. I'd believe you that they exist, but I wouldn't just use you as the only reference book.
Adam:
[4:51] It is a really strange thing, actually, to do some of the work and maybe not the most important thing the article then continues and says according to a 2024 survey 30 percent of those surveyed who used ai to help plan their travels reported that it could not provide enough information while around 33 said their ai generated recommendations included false information so is that something you came across when you were in china did you get taken to a location that didn't exist.
Alun:
[5:17] Kind of yeah i mean but i think it was just because i struggled to read the signage.
Adam:
[5:24] As a result of not being able to speak mandarin well.
Alun:
[5:27] I think this yeah i think basically it said you've got to go to this dumpling shop but it used english to convey that information to me and when i arrived on the street where the dumpling shop was supposed to be it didn't say dumpling shop it had a series of chinese characters.
The Influence of Technology on Travel
Adam:
[5:46] Uh well so so that we don't end up so that we don't end up going around in circles here with ai and technology and social media and all that sort of stuff does ai form part of that and is it actually hindering our experience of travel or do you think that it exists sort of separately and it should be used or treated with a sort of different level of respect or exigent uh what's it what's it demands yeah that's it i said the french oh.
Alun:
[6:17] Are you dating.
Adam:
[6:18] You're a french person yeah that's what i'm trying to speak french as much as i can but because her english is so much better than my french um we would have quite boring conversations in the evening if if we just only spoke in french adam's.
Alun:
[6:32] One of those people that if you're doing a bit of french he'll do that kind of feign thing where you confuse it i'll be like oh you're right mate I'll go oh bonjour oh sorry.
Adam:
[6:39] Sorry hello I just got back from France sorry that's what I say in France sorry.
Alun:
[6:45] Sorry um look I think this sort of problems always existed to some extent I remember when I was traveling around Africa and I can't exactly remember where it was but it might have been Zambia.
Adam:
[6:58] Nice me.
Alun:
[6:59] And my then partner we were searching for something to do.
Adam:
[7:02] And we.
Alun:
[7:03] Were googling like one of those lists like an aggregator of like this is the top 10 things to do in this town this quite small town and in all of those lists was go and visit the little model village.
Adam:
[7:20] Okay.
Alun:
[7:22] And I was quite excited. I thought, well, I mean, look, there wasn't that much to do in this town. So we thought, let's go and check out the model village. Because quite insane for a model village to make it to the top of various best thing to do aggregators. So it must be quite exceptional. Some of them really raved about this village. So we went to where the village was supposed to be. And it didn't exist.
Adam:
[7:45] Oh.
Alun:
[7:47] And it just wasn't there, right? And my partner was like, oh, okay, whatever, right. moved on but i couldn't let it go because i was like what happened there and i really was digging in online like
what is it that occurred that meant that that was just a field and not a model village despite so many places raving about it and it turned out that basically it was someone's did a proposal as like a university project right like oh wouldn't it be nice for like the community to build a model village and they like presented on it and like done a video maybe where it was like the model village and it had just been there was so little to do in that town that that university presentation got like picked up and just inserted into the algorithm about things to do in that town it didn't exist it never existed not even one model house ever was placed there it was just a university project so can we blame chat gpt is what i'm saying because human writers have been making the same mistakes for years yeah.
Adam:
[8:51] Well you're not wrong i mean there's this whole instagram versus reality thing and maybe maybe the onus is on the instagram the influencers the travel influencers to portray a side of travel or a location that is maybe more realistic i don't know where where you draw the line because is from a certain angle isn't ai only kind of doing what us lot do anyway because you know.
Alun:
[9:15] The top the.
Adam:
[9:16] Top 10 things to do in any city i rarely agree with those lists by the way i mean they.
Alun:
[9:20] Are they're.
Adam:
[9:21] Quite generic if they get up to the you know the top few entries on google they're normally there or thereabouts the same you kind of have to scroll down a little bit further to get to a list that's written by someone who's more similar to us.
Alun:
[9:35] Yeah, you usually have to type in something like, oh, backpacking Zambia on a shoestring budget.
Adam:
[9:41] Yeah, I mean, hidden gems now has just become completely redundant. I don't think a hidden gem exists because if you're typing into Google, you know, hidden gems, Budapest or whatever... Every single person and their dog who's ever been to Budapest has probably found that same list.
Alun:
[9:58] Just get a jewellery shop.
Adam:
[10:02] Once it becomes the default to type in hidden gems, it's just going to be so ubiquitous and overrun with tourists. And as we learned on the last week's episode, if there's one thing I don't like about travel, it's other tourists.
Alun:
[10:15] Yeah, I think hidden gems is a funny one. Because if you were going to write the actual hidden gems, you wouldn't get many hits on Google. I think because we're living in this gamified system where you've got to like say the right things in order to get ranked on a search engine if I was going to do a hidden gems thing about Chargau where I'm currently living I would say like oh there's this moody little beach sort of 30 minutes away from the town you can go and sit there and watch crabs if you want that's my hidden gem but that ain't no one's typing that in so no one's ever going to discover it.
Adam:
[10:47] The location to the apartment you're in you say when you're in the kitchen you can smash the uh the window frame out that's a hidden.
Hypothetical Travel Scenarios
Alun:
[10:55] Gem yeah yeah if you need to break in it's a hidden gem you can take whatever you like no.
Adam:
[10:59] But you know we digress i mean ai it's getting getting its claws into travel, it hasn't affected us just yet if anything it's benefited the show but uh i don't know i won't be asking chat gbt uh to curate an itinerary for me without sort of doing my double and triple checking.
Alun:
[11:18] I think that's our message for the listening audience. If you are going to use ChatGPT to plan your travels, and I do recommend you give them a little ping, ask them a few questions, always double check on Google first, else you might end up going to a model village that doesn't really exist. Now though, Adam, it's time for me to ask you some hypothetical questions, because I've got something on my mind that I want to know what you would do if it happened to you. Hypothetically, it's triple-on. check in. Triplogical reasoning, Adam. Hypothetical backpacking questions. Sort of backpacker training ground where I ask you things just to see what you would do, see if you're a good backpacker. But this week I have a range, a few questions. I just want to know, just kind of
quick fire, what is it that you would do if these things happened to you? Let's say you're living somewhere on the road.
Adam:
[12:16] Like a bus stop.
Alun:
[12:17] Yes, yes. Or perhaps a tent in a ditch. Let's say you're on the road, you're living somewhere, and the place you're staying has a range of amenities.
Adam:
[12:27] Right.
Alun:
[12:28] And one of the amenities that you use regularly, let's say sort of a coffee pot.
Adam:
[12:35] Right.
Alun:
[12:36] You were walking from the kitchen area to where your cup is on a table, and you dropped it, and it smashed into proverbial smithereens all over the ground, shards of glass everywhere. Would you, I mean, what would you do, basically? would you would you contact your landlord and tell them that you smashed the coffee pot or would you would you try and replace it without knowing or would you what would you do.
Adam:
[13:01] Uh so the coffee pot came comes with the apartment does it sort of i didn't bring it there i didn't buy it myself this.
Alun:
[13:09] Imaginary apartment yeah.
Adam:
[13:10] Yeah in this imaginary apartment uh first port of call i'd be pretty frustrated actually i hate breaking things it happens almost never very rarely and you know I work with a lot of glass as you can imagine working in the wine industry so I'm always polishing hundreds of glasses a day very rarely break one so this already would be very strange for me to for drop a glass coffee pot yeah but I would be I would be beside myself I'd sweep it all up for sure I'd regret all the coffee that I was wasting and I think I would probably leave it a very long time before notifying the landlord hoping.
Alun:
[13:43] That what would happen in the interim period.
Adam:
[13:45] Um Well, maybe that I wouldn't see them, probably. I think...
Alun:
[13:51] Ever? You just go without telling them?
Adam:
[13:52] No, no, I'd replace it for sure. I'd try and replace it if I could.
Alun:
[13:56] Yeah.
Adam:
[13:58] But, yeah, in all honesty, I mean, things not exactly like that. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I know in that situation it would be one of those things that was in the back of my mind thinking, I've got to do that tomorrow.
Alun:
[14:09] Yeah, yeah.
Adam:
[14:09] I've got to maybe address that next week. And before you know it, it's two months. And then the person approaches you and says, where the fuck's the coffee pot? And you go, ah.
Alun:
[14:16] Yeah, I can empathize. I can empathize with that. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so you'd basically go as long as you could. Okay, well, that's interesting. Another hypothetical travel backpacking scenario. If you were on the road, staying somewhere, for example, and there was a bunch of amenities provided, and one of them was a safe, and you were about to put something in the safe, and the handle of the safe door just came completely off in your hand into pieces. So the safe no longer worked.
Adam:
[14:49] Yeah, it sounds quite unsafe.
Alun:
[14:50] Yeah, what would you do? Because you can't replace the safe, obviously.
Adam:
[14:54] Yeah, so hang on, in this situation, the safe is now open?
Alun:
[14:59] Well, it's hypothetical, the situation, but I imagine the safe would be open and unable to close, yeah.
Adam:
[15:05] Ah, so it's redundant, it's completely redundant, and now no longer operates as a safe at all.
Alun:
[15:11] Yeah, yeah, the handle's just broken.
Adam:
[15:15] Uh okay the landlord's getting a call about that one i think.
Alun:
[15:18] Okay because you don't think that's your fault because obviously you were just trying to use a safe as intended and it opened yeah.
Adam:
[15:25] I think that's a faulty piece of equipment.
Alun:
[15:27] Does it make it more awkward to do the coffee call and the safe call in one go like let's say you were moving out soon or something and you just have would you just do them both at the same time or uh.
Adam:
[15:40] But you could roll it into one because if both those happens if both those things happened completely hypothetically.
Alun:
[15:46] Yeah then.
Adam:
[15:47] What you could do is if you did need to make a call and it was around the time you were leaving said hypothetical apartment.
Alun:
[15:53] Maybe.
Adam:
[15:54] You could say that you smashed the coffee pot as a result of the handle coming off of the safe.
Alun:
[15:59] Yeah or you could move it into the conversation you could be like oh yeah and the glass went everywhere it was really unsafe speaking of which, i like it good ideas mate i.
Adam:
[16:12] Think this is probably what i would do that the handle coming off of the safe feels less that you had less control over that i think that's a faulty piece of equipment, i think that's something that's imperative to the airbnb or the apartment itself i think not having a safe immediately means that there's like a change in the offering.
Alun:
[16:32] Oh really i i would have thought of the safe as quite redundant um because there's obviously a lock on the door of the house which.
Adam:
[16:39] You know all too well because you've been locked out multiple times the listener won't know this but we had to cancel last week's recording because you locked yourself out of your own apartment.
Alun:
[16:47] Yeah yeah stuff like that does keep on happening anyway one more hypothetical situation if you were sort of um on the road you were traveling and um maybe you were staying somewhere with some amenities that were provided one of them was a was a water pump which was actually purchased new for you and uh sort of like it gets put on top of a big water jug and it pumps the water out so you can have clean drinking water and all that sort of stuff um and then one day uh it just stopped working and uh whenever you push the button it just made a sort of whirring noise but it sputtered out and it just wasn't working anymore um what would you do in that situation this.
Adam:
[17:31] Is happening in complete isolation of the other two events that.
Alun:
[17:36] Are let's just hypothetically say that they're all happening together at once.
Adam:
[17:41] Um i think the the water pump seems like the should be the most important but i care about
it the least maybe i would try and you know better than anyone how bad i am at a taking the initiative to to solve anything and b then actually being able to solve it myself i'd sooner ask you for help or anyone else that's passing by but i would probably try and there's usually a lid on those things isn't there i can imagine the water tank you're talking about does it have sort of a spout and when you compress the lid it goes quite slowly like one of those slow closing kitchen cupboards now.
Alun:
[18:16] In this hypothetical scenario it's very much an electronic pump that is very difficult to analyze just from looking at it it seems like it's completely one sealed unit basically.
Adam:
[18:26] Oh dear and hypothetically quite expensive i.
Alun:
[18:30] Mean that would be my concern.
Adam:
[18:32] If i was you answering this hypothetical question, um okay well i'll get you a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of hypothetical things that are going wrong i think it's interesting.
Alun:
[18:44] That you feel overwhelmed because i feel great.
Adam:
[18:50] That's a long list of things that are hypothetically going wrong in this all together yeah.
Alun:
[18:55] I think one of the problems is if you were to report it it kind of seems like a bit of a piss take doesn't it to do it all at once so then you might try and stagger it out over a period of weeks but then realize that you may not have weeks to go so you would change your plans to potentially stay in this place longer just so you can stagger the various broken.
Adam:
[19:14] Things, just just out of curiosity yeah how how long has it been since these things have have broken in the situation i'm in the hypothetical situation that i'm in are these all am i addressing this as it's happened in the moment.
Alun:
[19:31] I like to imagine I've given you them in chronological order starting about two weeks ago.
Adam:
[19:38] I think that I would feel more and more guilty the more times I interacted with my landlord is what I think the moment you have an opportunity to address something and speak to someone about something. And this goes for, you know, this can be extended into not just any other hypothetical situation, but maybe even real life situations. When you have something to tell someone and you interact with them regularly and choose to avoid it, obviously that's what snowballs.
Alun:
[20:06] Yeah. yeah yeah but obviously this this landlord she wouldn't know that they've happened a long time ago you know she wouldn't be like but i was there the other day why didn't you say anything because she wouldn't know when it had happened and that she's.
Adam:
[20:19] Not going to come in like a forensic detective and start running her finger along the floor smelling it and going hang on a minute.
Alun:
[20:26] That's.
Tales of a Trip: Listener Stories
Adam:
[20:27] Four week old coffee.
Alun:
[20:28] Yeah exactly that would be terrible well those are insightful answers you've given i mean basically you just told me you'd be overwhelmed um in other news everything's going great in the philippines i'm happy and um i'm just glad to do this podcast so yeah man i love traveling i love it very much and now it's time to hear from someone else who loves traveling in a night and we like to call tales of a trip where people give us their three minutes of the greatest travel story of all time perhaps tell us a tale of the time you went and absolutely ransacked an airbnb while you were staying in the philippines perhaps tell a time of the most beautiful sunset you've ever had all that sort of stuff three minutes your greatest travel story let's listen to one right now.
Tales of a Trip:
[21:13] All right guys this is hamo from the wing and it travel podcast love your podcast here's my quick story it's a bit of an old one this is at the lao and thailand border there's a river there and when i got to the lao side to get my exit stamp, i had my passport over and this guy was absolutely
going nuts at me i had no idea, you know none the wiser i haven't done anything wrong just queued up by everyone else, um he didn't like it anyway i told him where to go because i was like well i ain't got time for this so in my ignorant arrogant self younger self i popped on a boat across to thailand got to thailand side and the guy there a bit more professional in a uniform basically said no, you can't come in i said oh why not he goes well you haven't got a stamp out of the country, i was like all right he goes also you haven't got a stamp in the country i was like ah that's the problem no idea how i missed that so he said you gotta go back get your stamps in and then come back to me.
Tales of a Trip:
[22:17] So off I go, in a bit of a huff and a puff. And my mates, who I was with, it was about six, seven when I was travelling at the time, just said, hey, look, you might need this. And that was US dollars and Thai baht. So I stuffed that in my pocket, jumped in a boat, back across the river. And guess who's waiting for me? That same guy and three of his mates. And one of those is some army captain with a gun. Pointed me out in my England shirt as I come back across the river. I was like, oh, shit, I'm in trouble here. And he said, yeah, you, come this way. I was like, right, here we go.
Tales of a Trip:
[22:49] A little bit scared at this point, actually. I'm like, oh, my friends have all gone across the border, and there's a bus waiting for us to go to Chiang Mai. So I got into the room for what seemed like just to get the admin done, and he said, oh, sit down. Do you speak Loishan? I said, no, don't speak Loishan. There was snooker on the TV. Ron O'Sullivan was playing in the Crucible. And he said, oh, you haven't got a stamp in your passport. Why not? I said, oh, I don't know. Must have missed a sign, which is actually generally true. I still don't know to this day why I didn't get a stamp in. He said, your visa's here, but your stamp's not. So you need a visa to get out. So you need a stamp to get out of the country, and then you'll be fine to go. I was like, cool. But he said it's going to cost $70. I was like, what? $70? He goes, yeah. So now I'm not having that. He goes, well, if you don't have that, then you're going to stay in this room for forever. I was like, right, okay. So I sat there for 30 minutes trying to negotiate to and fro, tried everything, silent treatment, angry, nice, bad cop, good cop, all the above and it got to 30 minutes i was like i'm stuck here what do i do i said okay well i've got no choice what are the options he goes us dollar or thai bart i said well give me a thai bart estimation and gave me a thai bart estimation that was seven dollars cheaper i said yeah i'll have that paid the money and as soon as i paid the money stamp stamp in in my passport away you go, and lesson learned there is be calm under pressure be careful of signs and follow the right signs and don't get too angry cheers.
Alun:
[24:13] James hammond from winging it travel podcast one of the best travel podcasts out there go and check it out it's a great show what i will say adam and i think james is a great traveler but if you're there in the laoesian border with ronnie o'sullivan playing snooker on the tv i reckon i'm i'm
chilling i'm spending a little bit more time in there and i think as the time ticks away and you're sort of proving to them that you're comfortable and that price starts coming down but.
Adam:
[24:43] He's got places to be james is a busy man he's got places he wants to go he's there's probably people waiting for him on the other side he's in his england shirt you would have been more patient would you.
Alun:
[24:52] I just think i quite like watching ronnie o'sullivan play snooker so i reckon you've got at least two hours of being very comfortable in that lao asian like office and i just think that at a certain point of time they're going to, having a good time and you're like yeah go on the rocket and they're going to be like oh god maybe let's just say 50 bucks and call it a day.
Adam:
[25:14] So you're trying to put yourself in the mind of an army officer on the border of thailand and laos i don't know if they give two shits mate do you reckon the money went straight in the pocket.
Alun:
[25:26] Uh yeah i think it was bribe money but but my general perspective in a situation like that is i'm just going to rejig the mentality because they're like this guy's trapped in a room with us until he pays us i'm like you guys are trapped in a room with me as well there's.
Adam:
[25:43] Mind games going on.
Alun:
[25:44] Yeah because all you've got i'm ordering a stamp on ebay and saying we'll see what credit case will i get the stamp or are you going to give it to me because.
Adam:
[25:53] The stamps on ebay are a darn sight cheaper than what you're trying to charge me uh let.
Alun:
[25:58] Me just put.
Adam:
[25:58] Myself in james's flip-flops for a second i think i probably would have done what he did. I might have even folded at the 70 US dollars because I don't like going across borders and not being able to meet the criteria or provide documentation or anything like that. It's happened to me on a couple of occasions. There was one time actually when I was crossing from Russia into China
and bearing in mind I'd just spent a month in Russia, it wasn't, I didn't have any problems along the way, apart from the very first day, but that's a different story for a different day. They actually held up a bus that I was on for 45 minutes before we even got into the sort of no man's land in between Russia and China. The Russian authorities weren't happy with my passport. And I'm sure I've told that on a previous episode, but it was amazing. The whole bus was of 60 of us on this bus. And they wouldn't let me through because they didn't believe that my British passport was real. even though i sort of thought thinking to myself your counterparts at the other end in moscow they let me in the country with this so yeah what.
Alun:
[27:00] Was what did they suppose that maybe happened that you'd you'd uh checked in on a different passport and then acquired a sort of fake one.
Adam:
[27:08] No because the stamp's in there the entry stamp was in there yeah.
Alun:
[27:12] But you can buy one of those on ebay mate i'm.
Adam:
[27:14] Starting to think that i'm.
Alun:
[27:16] On the russian side.
Adam:
[27:17] No no i i stood with them at one of their booth things the desk while they had three people looking at a computer screen and they were genuinely googling photos of british passports that's quite cool isn't it i was like look it's that one that one matches mine it's the same well that doesn't look like you no that's a different person bad.
Alun:
[27:37] Time for you for chat gpt to hallucinate and make a bright pink sort of like cosmic looking passport this doesn't like what chat gpt says at all sir.
Adam:
[27:46] Yeah um oh poor old james though i um i don't envy him i'm not surprised that he just forked out the money half an hour i don't know if half an hour in that environment feels like a couple of days you don't want to lose any time when you're doing exciting stuff if.
Alun:
[27:59] I'm one of those six other people he's traveling with i'm going back with him in solidarity.
Adam:
[28:03] Yes yeah i mean 100 i like that about you i like it a lot because.
Alun:
[28:08] I'd be frustrated that i was missing the snooker as.
Adam:
[28:10] Well i just hope there.
Alun:
[28:11] Was a chance that the game was being shown on the other side.
Adam:
[28:15] Although, actually, to be fair to the Thai border control and the Laotian border control, That's, I bet they love it when things like that happen. Because I'm not saying that they're the sorts of people that generally or often will kind of, they might welcome a bribe, why not? But when something happens, when it's like a very, a genuine error, do you know what I mean? Like he doesn't have an entry stamp. That's a real issue. So they say, well, I'm sorry, it's 70 bucks. I'm sorry, what do you want me to do? It's your fault.
Alun:
[28:43] Yeah, if I had a sovereign state, I would make the signage for the exit stamp very confusing indeed. i would put like a labyrinth before the stamp and be like okay guys time to get your exit stamp or you can just get on the boat and trance your arm but it might have to come back yeah.
Adam:
[28:57] Do you reckon the england show actually has um done him a disservice there he's seen him you know.
Alun:
[29:02] This white.
Adam:
[29:03] Guy white guy with his backpack on he's wearing an england shirt and they've looked him up and down and gone 70 bucks.
Alun:
[29:09] Yeah if you go and check out uh winging it travel podcast on instagram you might notice that james hammond the host doesn't particularly pass for laoesian i think that might have been a
disservice to him as he tried to traverse the border uh.
Adam:
[29:23] But he has got some amazing stories we do listen to his show on the regs it is great go and check it out it's slightly different format lots of interviews and this sort of stuff with very interesting people he's a great host uh and
Reflections on Travel Experiences
Adam:
[29:34] yeah we we hope you go and check his stuff out as well.
Alun:
[29:36] There's even an episode way back when when we first started podcasting where i'm in scotland talking stories about riding my bike and traveling around the world so that'd be exciting go and check that one out.
Adam:
[29:46] Oh yeah yeah i loved that episode actually it's long wasn't it really long yeah.
Alun:
[29:50] Good podcast like the host all right well thanks very much for sending it in if you've got a great travel story just three minutes great travel story it's www.tropologypodcast.com forward slash tales of a trip send it in to us we can't wait to hear it mate lots of exciting stuff going on but right now we've got to go to the lost and found section for patreon only so if you don't pay for it do pay for it and then you might be able to hear it too happens after the theme music let's go there right now we'll.
Adam:
[30:19] See you there bye.
