Kinabatangan River Adventure: Seeing Borneo's Big 5 on a Budget
Eye-eye, Captain! Alun's cruising through the Borneo jungle this week. We hear all about his trip along the Kinabatangan River, as he attempts to see Borneo's big 5 on a budget! Impaired by an eye infection and up to his eyeballs in antibiotics, could having a big nose give him the edge? Will Alun finally catch a glimpse of a wild Orangutan?
Prepare for road rash in this week's Tales of a Trip, as we hear from a listener whose Vietnam motorbike trip scarred him for life. He happens to be a fantastic content creator and an even better bloke! Follow Tom here: https://www.instagram.com/tomcharliedesign
Submit your travel stories: https://www.tripologypodcast.com/talesofatrip
Support the show and access the Lost & Found section. This week, Adam relives an evening he spent in a remote region of New Zealand's South Island, where he was treated to a very authentic, very homemade, Indian curry. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tripologypodcast
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
02:45 - Alun's optometrist appointment
03:45 - Alun's private hostel dormitory
05:44 - Borneo's Big 5
08:06 - Kinabatangan River Cruise
17:29 - Alun's last hurrah
23:38 - Tales of a Trip: Vietnam motorbikes & mishaps
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TRANSCRIPT:
Alun:
[0:02] Hello, and welcome to this episode of Tripology. It's the only backpacking show where the hosts are actually backpacking and doing a show. It's a backpacking show. I'm Alun, and I'm here with the ever Arboreal Adam.
Adam:
[0:18] It's so nice to be back. Thanks, everyone, for joining us again for another fantastic week. I've got to start off by saying I apologise for my lighting. I'm in a holiday park in the middle of nowhere and there's a motion sensor it is a communal area there are other people in the room so any noises bumps and farts you do hear it's them and it's not me we're going to continue on from last week we're going to hear about Alun's adventures over in borneo did he see one of those orange apes and then of course we've got tales of a trip at the very end one of you lovely listeners sending in one of your travel stories and then i'm going to tell you a wicked story in the lost and found section where i had a very authentic homemade indian curry in a campsite in the absolute middle of nowhere, Alun.
Alun:
[1:01] The Lost and Found section, of course, available exclusively on Patreon. There's a link in the description for those of you interested in splashing out a bit of the old cash. I don't think anyone will mind about your lighting, Adam, on accounts of no one watches anyway. Everyone just listens intently, like sort of people with their eyes closed around a campfire. And that's very nice. I like that. Indeed, last week I promised to continue my story. Keen-eared listeners, fans of the show will remember that I had an eye infection
The River Safari Experience
Alun:
[1:30] when I went to Sepilog and the Bornean Sun Bear Sanctuary. But I decided to continue my adventure in spite of the eye infection and book a three-day, two-night river safari on Kinabatangan River, one of the best places to see wild, orangutans.
Adam:
[1:54] I'm very jealous mate i am jealous because it sounds like it's right up my street now is this a river cruise in the sense that you're going to be sleeping on the boat or do you get off at various points and sleep with maybe you know homestay local family cooking up some nice borneo grub.
Alun:
[2:08] I had very little information going into it adam i booked the cheapest possible river cruise i could find where it's kind of a package you stay with a lodge they take you out on the river a few times a day i won't name the lodge because i did reach out saying hey award-winning podcast perhaps perhaps it
would be beneficial for both of us if an orangutan was cited didn't receive a response book just same as everyone else and as a result the lodge will remain nameless but i was quite excited to go with him mate i just had the eye infection to deal with beforehand so on the morning they were going to do a hotel pickup on the morning of the pickup i beelined into town went to an optometrist and said can you give me a salve an ointment some sort of cure for this malady my eye was all big and red I was in glasses I said what can you do for me she said, sprinkle this on your eye as often as you can basically and it should tide you over until you come back from the jungle so I thought okay good to know thanks for the salve and onwards picked up and taken all the way to Kinabitangan River.
Adam:
[3:19] That's amazing, mate. I'm very glad you found an optometrist in these, well, you were able to in these far-reaching places. I can see through the camera lens that your eye looks pretty good, almost back to brand new, you might say.
Alun:
[3:33] Yeah, I mean, it was many weeks ago that this happened. So if you had just said, I can see the remnants of an infection, I would have been pretty offended. But we got there, mate, to this place. I booked a hostel, everyone else on the whole damn trip booked private rooms the result of which was that my i just basically had a very large private room oh.
Adam:
[3:57] Oh right because you would you would thought well you just booked a dorm i guess that's the cheapest option.
Alun:
[4:01] Yeah that's.
Adam:
[4:02] Pretty good isn't it quids in.
Alun:
[4:04] We're all doing the same thing we're all doing like it's all fully catered right you know you get your meals you get the same number of cruises on the river you get jungle walks and all that sort of stuff, all the same package, but it was significantly more expensive.
Hostel Surprises
Alun:
[4:19] if you went in a private room i paid about a hundred dollars for the whole thing which is about the price you'd pay for hostels and meals and all that activities anyway and i just had a huge room with different beds and i took it a little game to hop between the beds each of the nights that i was staying there to see which one was the best like a sort of kinky little traveling goldilocks.
Adam:
[4:43] Goldilocks yeah that's so funny um did anyone else know did the other people that were staying in private rooms did they know that you had paid a lot less money and then maybe lucked out with a an absolute dorm to yourself.
Alun:
[4:55] When you have got an eye infection you're feeling a little bit self-conscious maybe low about yourself one way that you can acquire some self-esteem is to tell everyone how stupid they were to book the private room and how um You are just having a wonderful time in the dorm room. No one, of course, wanted to join me in the dorm on accounts of the putrid eye infection, but I did manage...
Adam:
[5:20] Oh, is it contagious?
Alun:
[5:21] I don't think so, no, but it looked like it should have been.
Adam:
[5:25] And you lent into that, did you?
Alun:
[5:27] Yes. I said, careful of the pillows in the dorm room. They've had ever such a problem since I've arrived.
Adam:
[5:33] Especially the bottom bunks. Yeah.
Alun:
[5:35] So I did make some friends, though, in spite of my aesthetic appearance, and we headed out on the very first cruise of the day. Do you know what the Borneo Big Five are, mate? Can you name them off the top of your head?
Adam:
[5:49] Yeah.
Alun:
[5:49] I hope so, because I fucking can't.
Adam:
[5:53] Orangutans.
Alun:
[5:54] Well done.
Adam:
[5:54] Number one.
Alun:
[5:55] Yeah.
Adam:
[5:57] Maybe pygmy elephants.
Alun:
[5:59] That's it. They're in there.
Adam:
[6:01] Yeah. Um... Another P, palm oil plantations?
Alun:
[6:05] No, they're all animals, Adam.
Adam:
[6:09] Well, I mean, would I be silly not to say the clouded leopard? Is that?
Alun:
[6:12] No, they're too rare to include in the big five.
Adam:
[6:15] Oh, really? Okay, interesting.
Alun:
[6:18] But you're right, a lot of them do begin with P.
Adam:
[6:20] Pygmy hippopotamus? Is that a...
Alun:
[6:22] Those are in Africa.
Adam:
[6:24] Wrong continent, cool.
Alun:
[6:25] Never mind, I'll finish it off for you. You've got orangutans, you've got pygmy elephants, You've got proboscis monkeys.
Adam:
[6:35] Oh, those things with the spoon flappy, flobby noses.
Alun:
[6:39] Yes, Adam, with the floppy noses.
Adam:
[6:41] I know those.
Alun:
[6:42] You've got the rhinoceros hornbill.
Adam:
[6:46] Oh, yes. An amazing bird. Majestic.
Alun:
[6:49] And the crocodile.
Adam:
[6:50] Oh, a crocodile. Wow. I didn't know that.
Alun:
[6:53] Yeah.
Adam:
[6:54] That's wicked. Very cool. So you had a hit list.
Alun:
[6:56] Can you guess which of those I was most excited about?
Adam:
[7:00] Probably the orangutan.
Alun:
[7:01] Orangutan was the top. Can you guess my number one? My number two?
Adam:
[7:05] Number two. What would I say? I'd be embarrassed if I get this wrong. Would it not be pygmy elephant? I mean, they're fairly rare.
Alun:
[7:16] No. No, because everyone likes the elephants. And I love an elephant. But you know me, I love primates and apes. So the monkey that you just criticized by saying it had a flabby nose was something that was very high up my list indeed. Indeed, I'd often thought as a child, what if an animal was out there that looked a little bit like me, but up a tree?
Seeing Proboscis Monkeys
Adam:
[7:43] Oh where'd you go from there you don't look like one of those monkeys Alun my goodness you look more like a macaque or what's a really good looking monkey is there one what's a good monkey.
Alun:
[7:52] Proboscis monkeys to me i like them i think it's nice it's.
Adam:
[7:57] A sign of intelligence the ancient greeks loved a big nose was that the romans.
Alun:
[8:01] Yeah both i think everyone loves them um we got on the river cruise mate and we're zipping down kinabatangan river the first thing you see is a proboscis monkey because they're like ubiquitous they're everywhere yeah yeah and everyone's like oh wow proboscis monkey i'm like putting my hand up at the front of the boat with my eye all bleeding out of the socket and i go excuse me how many proboscis monkeys are in a troop excuse me is the proboscis itself uh utilitarian or is it just a secondary sexual characteristic or excuse me are they highly territorial monkeys or does the female of the species have a smaller proboscis or it'll just select the males based on the size of their appendage and i just learn a lot mate i learn a lot about proboscis monkeys you're.
Adam:
[8:46] The boffin at the back of the class everyone's like fuck you know who's this kid.
Alun:
[8:49] Yeah that's amazing go on then you're.
Adam:
[8:51] Going to share some details then what's going on.
Alun:
[8:52] Um yeah i can tell you there is a secondary sexual characteristic the proboscis monkey the larger the proboscis the more attractive the monkey and when the tour guide told me that i've never felt so justified and yeah you know seen in my whole life because i've always been telling people that what's going on here is attractive yeah.
Adam:
[9:12] How bloody shallow all the different species are right.
Alun:
[9:16] Um that's that's.
Adam:
[9:18] Amazing mate so a little boost of confidence you know forget the old eye.
Alun:
[9:21] Yeah a little boost of confidence and i got to see the first of the borneo big five and one of the ones i was most excited about seeing and so that's a good way to start off the cruise isn't it then you go back.
Adam:
[9:31] Yeah wooing the female monkeys from afar yeah love it.
Alun:
[9:35] Tell you what the alpha males look terrified when they saw me coming down on the boat they thought what the hell is that.
Adam:
[9:47] Dear, oh dear, quaking in their boots. That's amazing.
Alun:
[9:51] One of them, they're like hiding their proboscities in shame. Oh, God.
Adam:
[9:57] People at the front of the boat are looking at you going, blimey, we're much closer to that monkey than I thought we were going to be on this tour, just for $100.
Alun:
[10:03] I shouldn't have brought a wildlife lens. I needed like a macro diving lens that's so close up.
Adam:
[10:09] I can't joke about it anymore, mate. I love your nose more than you probably do. you're a handsome devil and uh we all think you are but yeah they're um they're funny looking creatures the old the old monkeys.
Alun:
[10:20] They are yeah iconic.
Adam:
[10:21] You might say.
Alun:
[10:22] And they're made for an exhausting first cruise so then you head back you have dinner you also go on a night cruise but that's a little bit different because you can't see any big fauna there so you're sort of looking at glow flies and we saw you know a few little budgerigars and uh parakeets and the remnants of what something might have been
Night Cruise Reflections
Alun:
[10:43] a crocodile, but didn't really see too much on the night cruise. So I went back to bed, basically, and then you start the whole damn thing again the next day. The middle of the two days is the most action-packed because you've got the back half of the first day and the very beginning of the third day, but it's the second day that's packed full of stuff.
Adam:
[11:03] You didn't see a kingfisher? I remember seeing a kingfisher when I was in Kinabatangan. That was something that was, you know, beautiful, beautiful bird.
Alun:
[11:09] Yeah, you can scarcely move for kingfishers out there, actually. So, like, maybe five or six different types of kingfisher.
Adam:
[11:15] It's one of the small five. Yeah, there's the big five.
Alun:
[11:18] There's the small five. And all the small five are kingfishers.
Adam:
[11:25] So, go on, then. You've got to tell us what happened the second day, because I'm looking forward to it. We're all thinking, me and all of the listeners are thinking,
The Quest for Orangutans
Adam:
[11:31] he hasn't mentioned an orangutan just yet.
Alun:
[11:34] Well, yeah, mate. And the theme continues, because the second day... Every time you go on a cruise on the second day, you're thinking this is going to be the one where you see the orangutan. And every time we did go on a cruise, we accrued more wonderful sights. We saw a crocodile. Tick it off, baby. We saw a rhinoceros hornbill. Oh, yeah. We saw a, well, we saw everything, right? Apart from the pygmy elephant and the orangutan. At one point, it's time for a little jungle trek. So we park up the boat. we start plodding through the jungle, but we have to turn back because the guide sees on the floor the unmistakable print of the most pygmy of all elephants. You guessed it. It's the pygmy elephant. It left a print so fresh that the guides were like, we simply can't progress because if a pygmy bull elephant sees you, it will ask questions later.
Adam:
[12:32] Oh dear. Okay. So the sword just halted and then you're all thinking you're looking around you're looking get.
Alun:
[12:38] Back on the boat.
Adam:
[12:39] Yeah so safety amongst the crocs yeah.
Alun:
[12:43] Famously they can't swim.
Adam:
[12:44] The pygmy elephants,
Eye Problems and Antibiotics
Adam:
[12:49] what's a cliffhanger what's going on what's that what happens next.
Alun:
[12:51] Well i was just pausing for a little while you know so we get back on the boat we go back to the thing at this point i don't want to go on and on and on and on about it but my eyes getting so bad that i abandoned the salve and i just thought i luckily had some oral antibiotics in my bag right um and i was able to just to take them they were left over from the time in the philippines where i had a foot infection
so now i'm just like taking high strength amoxicillin and putting salve in my eye and it's just a real mess up there but thankfully i know now that i'm not gonna lose my vision because i'm just on i've given myself the strongest thing yes.
Adam:
[13:29] You're absolutely riddled with antibiotics covered from head to toe outside inside um emanating from every orifice i'm sure.
Alun:
[13:37] So now we're we've got one more cruise left.
Adam:
[13:41] Okay this is an end of day two is this is there one on day three or is it end of day.
Alun:
[13:45] Two? This is end of day two. Day three, you've just got breakfast and you can pay for an additional cruise. It's an extra ten bucks.
Adam:
[13:54] Oh, it seems like a good deal. It also seems like the kind of carrot, something else orange, they would dangle to try and get a little bit of money out of you because they know there's maybe...
Alun:
[14:04] Well, exactly.
Adam:
[14:05] What's a group of orangutans called? I did know that once. Do you know?
Alun:
[14:09] A brothel.
Adam:
[14:10] Yeah, a brothel.
Alun:
[14:15] A thunberg yeah.
New Friends and Last Chances
Adam:
[14:17] Don't don't chat gpt that let's just go with a brothel of orangutans amazing.
Alun:
[14:24] Yeah so we went out on the very last cruise of the day yeah and a new guy arrived at the hostel a german guy he was one you know there's two types of germans that i've noticed yeah and one of them is like uh one of them is like yeah we've got to go here and then here and then we go on the cruise and it's very good place to see Zerangatan and the other type of German is like oh I'm interested in taking a few pictures I'm interested in you know I've been sort of seeing a few animals recently and I quite like the ginger monkey he was the second type of German and he arrived, in the hostel so now I had a friend I said listen I've slept on all of these beds apart from that one so you take the one i've not slept on amazing how kind of um yeah he put his bags there now he's on his first day i'm on the last cruise of the second day we head out together we're on different boats okay once again an hour down the river we fail to see an orangutan it's.
Adam:
[15:27] Not great that ten dollars is looking ever so sweet.
Alun:
[15:29] Opportunity over we meet for dinner me and this girl that i was talking to she's sort of became my closest friend on the whole damn kinabatangan river we said we can't believe it we've not seen the orangutan we see the german guy get off the boat and he goes, oh my god it was so great to see the most ginger of all the apes and we went you didn't he went yeah did you not oh dear you saw an orangutan your very first cruise he said yeah i saw a whole family of orangutan baby orangutan adult orangutan of the both male and the female variety.
Adam:
[16:08] The pimp who was running the.
Alun:
[16:09] Brothel we saw the whole family so i mean i was enraged yeah.
Adam:
[16:17] I mean it's difficult in those circumstances to just be completely happy for someone else and seeing something that was so incredible because you had yet seen one so um i do feel that pain even though you know there'll be people listening to this and probably us listening back thinking well it's great for them that they saw one.
Alun:
[16:37] Yeah but.
Chasing the Ginger Ape
Adam:
[16:37] You kind of feel like they saw one at your expense.
Alun:
[16:40] I was happy for him but i quickly went to the owners of the lodge and said listen you've got to get me on that you've got to get me on that trip tomorrow and they said it's perfect because the german boat saw orangutans we know where their nest is so we'll beeline for that nest at five o'clock tomorrow morning and i said book me in baby and they said we've not got any spaces and I said find a couple of spaces then because I'm really fucking skinny and my nose can just hang off the front of the boat so I actually don't take up much room.
Adam:
[17:13] Did I mention I've got a travel podcast?
Alun:
[17:14] They said all right we'll find you a space we'll get you on the boat just pay us some money so I paid him some money went to sleep my eyes healing at a wolverinesque rate fueled only by amoxicillin and willpower I get on the boat in the morning beeline down Kinabatangan river head to the nest where the German saws the baby orangutan and they're in the tree I see my very first wild ginger as the day it was born, adolescent orangutan oh.
Adam:
[17:50] My goodness how wonderful.
Alun:
[17:53] Yeah well.
Adam:
[17:54] What were the emotions you were you were feeling in that moment because it sounds
Emotions in the Wild
Adam:
[17:57] like quite a journey to get there.
Alun:
[17:59] Yeah both.
Adam:
[18:01] Emotionally and and quite literally.
Alun:
[18:03] And medically medically yeah dude they are so cool the arboreal ginger ape the tree dwelling creature that moves slowly from branch to branch so as to avoid detection by a potential predator knowing that the adolescent was in fact joined by a mother and a father who were deeper in the forest but it come to the riverside getting collecting like little bits of leaves off the tree such a fascinating intelligent creature that have a sort of culture of their own when an orangutan sees an orangutan which it which says it wants to say hello to it It will pick off food stuff and blow them. Like, not as an instinct, but as like a cultural practice. They're so intelligent and so refined, these apes, to see the majesty of this creature up in the tree. I was blown away by it. And I looked around the boat as if to say, God, you know, what kind of an experience we have. And the girl that I was friends with went, I can't believe the other guy saw three orangutans.
Adam:
[19:02] Oh, you're joking. Oh, no. she.
Alun:
[19:11] Was emotional actually she was.
Adam:
[19:12] Where was she from just out of interest she's.
Alun:
[19:14] From the uk she's from the uk.
Adam:
[19:15] Ah is it was it not like a dry sense of humor kind of comical timing it.
Alun:
[19:21] Was i think she was actually quite tearful she was so excited to see the orangutan but as soon as she said it i thought that's a great punch line.
Adam:
[19:26] That is amazing mate i i was right there with you and i'm sure we all were but um i remember when i was looking was watching the orangutan so so sort of so close so much closer than I expected all those years ago, I remember thinking to myself, how on earth is that not a human in a suit? They are so human-like. it was your breathtaking stuff on it if you've not if you've not seen one in the wild it really is quite something i don't know if you've if you felt sort of your stomach going or was it like a um you were jumping for joy because you'd succeeded in your no.
Alun:
[20:03] My my eye felt quite sore but i had no digestive symptoms.
Adam:
[20:08] You know what i mean though i mean you'd all you'd all shared that sort of experience together maybe a sense of community there was a german actually on my trip who was maybe also the second type of german you mentioned uh who took 220 photos in 45 minutes if uh my memory serves me correctly so i hope you got some bloody decent shots of this this adolescent by.
Alun:
[20:30] Way of the german who was a photographer and a bloody nice chap and a really interesting guy who's developing a travel app and he's like really really.
Adam:
[20:37] Cool.
Alun:
[20:37] I like that german a lot that's how i know i can sort of do an impression of someone if i like.
Adam:
[20:41] Them and.
Alun:
[20:42] He went And I'm so happy for you as you saw the ginger ape. I'll give you all of my pictures. I have over, you know, he took a lot of them and they're really, really beautiful. So we'll share some of those snapshots. Dude, really, really good and very different to the experience of Sepalong. It is a really different thing to see an orangutan in the wild. That's my first wild ape. I famously passed up on the opportunity to see gorillas in Uganda because I was so put off by the $600 minimum conservation fee. So my first wild ape, and by proxy, my best wild ape.
Adam:
[21:18] That's amazing, mate. I'm very, very happy for you. Hopefully it's inspired you to go and see more. I do share your sentiments when you are paying huge sums of money to go and see what is essentially sort of something in the wild can be difficult to navigate, especially if you're traveling on a budget. So glad that extra $10 got you... the the jackpot.
Alun:
[21:41] There was something nice about seeing it in the nick of time as well i always think that seeing a wild animal if it's hard to see it is somehow more rewarding in the sense that like you know i've tried to see wild tigers now on four separate occasions i've dumped a lot of money into seeing wild tigers and
never have and i just know when i see a wild tiger for the first time i was all the more excited as a result so i'm so happy that i got to see an orangutan at the end there yeah.
Adam:
[22:05] Much cheaper much cheaper to go to a zoo and see all these things of course.
Alun:
[22:08] Yeah or indeed a brothel um.
Adam:
[22:15] That could stay in. That's lovely.
Alun:
[22:17] So I decided my eye was all healed.
Adam:
[22:20] Super. Fantastic.
Alun:
[22:22] I'd seen the ginger ape.
Adam:
[22:24] Yeah.
Plans for Brunei
Alun:
[22:25] Cipadan, the diving spot, is closed for the month of November to repair the reef.
Adam:
[22:30] To repair the reef?
Alun:
[22:31] Just let it cure itself.
Adam:
[22:33] Oh, right.
Alun:
[22:33] And exactly at midnight on the 30th of November, it's done. It's healed. It's back to normal. No one ask any questions. Dive there again. Spend your money. so they're repairing sipper down at the moment so uh i can't go there and i decide look at that just there i don't count countries mate but there's one other country that resides here on the island of borneo that i haven't been to do you know what it is i.
Adam:
[22:59] Do it also begins with a b it's brunei.
Alun:
[23:02] I thought let me see what happens if i tiptoe over to brunei by way of labawan I was going to do it by ferry because the bus trip is really long, just the same price, and you get seven passports copped for it because you have to go from Sabah to Sarawak to Brunei, out of Brunei again, back into Sabah, then to Brunei. I didn't want to cop the passport stamps. I didn't want to cop the seven hours.
Tales of a Trip
Alun:
[23:28] I thought I'd get a ferry, Labuan, Brunei. That's on the next episode. now though we want to hear from a listener about their greatest travel story in an item that you like to call tales of a trip.
Tales of a Trip:
[23:40] So i found myself in vietnam it was me and my friend we were about one and a half months into a three-month trip around asia we'd done thailand vietnam and now we were
going the next country was going to be bali but we're in vietnam we're about halfway up and we bought these motorbikes we thought we were the the dog's bollocks i'm sorry i'm not sure i'm I'm sure you guys will edit this out we thought we were the dog's bollocks we sprayed them our own colours we like graffitied all over them they looked class, mine was baby pink and like I think.
Tales of a Trip:
[24:12] Like light blue or something it just looked awesome and obviously it wasn't like it didn't look like a moped they look like motorbikes even though they're only they're only 50 uh 50 cc is it 60 cc i'm not really sure but anyway they're weak they're the lowest cc you could get fast forward we meet these two girls they're both english girls i was with my best friend and we convinced these girls we're like guys let's go on this this trip north together and in vietnam everyone goes north to south or south to north because it's a long skinny country and they're like okay sounds good so let's let's let's do this trip together so we had these two smoking hot babes they were on their mopeds and me and my friend were on our motorbikes and we were their plan was to go up and go through all the way up through vietnam and stop along the way and it was going to be this beautiful adventure anyway let's say like day two day three something like that uh i'm going down the road and i'm following my best friend and i get a puncture in my tire and i realize um that the tiny is replacing so luckily someone just in the area was literally right there they come out they they re uh they give me a new tire i pay the money blah blah everything's fine what they didn't tell me or because obviously there's a language barrier is is that when you replace a tire you should drive it you shouldn't go straight into the motorway because it's oily you should drive it around like local streets and that sort of stuff first me not knowing this.
Tales of a Trip:
[25:32] I go straight back onto the motorway. And as I'm trying to catch up with my friend, I'm going a little bit faster. I think I see somewhere that he's pulled into. So I put on the brakes. The whole bike comes to a screeching halt. The back wheel flies out. I fly off and tumble, tumble, tumble. The bike's tumbling, tumbling. Somehow from some freak of nature, I end up standing up. And I'm standing up. and the bike i look over the and the bike is still um the bike is still like tumbling so the bike still got momentum i looked down at my leg it's absolutely pissing blood it's crazy loads of locals come out to me they throw water all over me anyway i've only got 30 seconds so what do i have to do i have to wait there for my friends to come back i had no phone signal at all this is before the times of i guess like phone service uh over there if you're a tourist i had to wait for my friends to come back i was smoking cigarettes to come back my time's running out uh and i had to wait on the side of the road and hitchhike back with this broken bike until someone came and let me put the bike on the back of their van to drive back to the nearest city it was traumatic i had to go to the hospital cheers guys well.
Alun:
[26:37] Done tom they're clocking in of course when you submit a tales of trip at the trip you've got just three minutes so well done on sticking to the schedule a wonderful story of course falling victim to that which claims many travelers it's a motorbike moped experience crash in vietnam yeah.
Adam:
[26:56] Uh i imagine there are thousands of people listening to this who will be able to relate to that story tomo thanks ever so much for sending in a story amazing very well told uh it's it's just one of those and it mate where you never think it's going to be you.
Alun:
[27:13] Well especially when you're neglected to be told about an oily tyre, I'd be very upset. I would be like Tom, I would rip back onto the motorway with that greasy, greasy wheel and not expect anything to happen. But I do empathise with that experience. I've told before the story on the pod when I came off
my bike and... similar to Tom, had no cell phone reception. And there's a unique feeling of just having to wait, injured at the side of the road thinking at some point my friends will realize that i'm not behind them.
Adam:
[27:47] I don't.
Alun:
[27:47] Know when that will be but at that point they will backtrack expecting to find a bleeding version of me so you've just got to wait haven't you really.
Adam:
[27:57] Yeah i mean the thing with those with these incidents and even though this seems like it wasn't tomo's fault i mean it was just due to information he didn't have available to him and it was just one of those things it was a shame it sounds like he i don't know whether it's he's told the story in detail to kind of save the listeners but i bet it was pretty gruesome if the villagers were coming out and dousing him with water to try and wash off the blood and that sort of stuff i bet the the cut or wound or whatever he had yeah as a result of the crash was pretty rank i.
Alun:
[28:27] Think if we'd given him four.
Adam:
[28:28] Minutes we'd have got an extra minute of like blood and gore oh there were veins hanging out.
Alun:
[28:33] Of my calf.
Adam:
[28:35] Yeah incredibly descriptive and graphic um but but i think what people should take away from tom's story um or kind of extrapolate from it i guess is that usually not in tom's case but usually when uh backpackers are racing around let's say southeast asia or south america wherever on mopeds or motorbikes and they do have accidents it's usually because they've been driving like dickhead.
Alun:
[29:01] Yeah or they've just not wiped down the wheel with a kitchen towel or something similar before getting on the motorbike but definitely like when I crashed in in Vietnam it was because I categorically didn't know how to ride a moped or a motorbike.
Adam:
[29:16] And yet as.
Alun:
[29:17] A 21 year old thought I probably can though.
Adam:
[29:21] Yeah I mean you definitely can it is within your capabilities but maybe sort of a week's training in, say, Hanoi, where I learned to ride my motorbike.
Alun:
[29:33] It's not to say- Or even an hour would have benefited me.
Adam:
[29:37] Yeah i mean when i think of the sort of shit that we got up to on on my motorbike because i did almost exactly the same i imagine it was very similar to the trip that tom did up and down um up and down vietnam i spent two months on a motorbike and i mean i haven't told my mom this but i nearly lost my life so they are incredibly dangerous but they are an immense amount of fun and i struggle to think of a better way to experience a country especially one like vietnam than by a motorbike so yeah take care but my god are they fun i.
Alun:
[30:08] Agree with you adam and thank you tom very much for sending that story in if you have a story a travel story perhaps you want to talk about the time you came face to face with a gorilla or the time you.
Adam:
[30:20] Whitewater rafted.
Alun:
[30:21] On the river nile send it in it's tales of a trip on topology podcast there is a link in description three minutes your greatest travel story just like tomo did now though we're going to go to the lost and found section the section in patreon there's also a link in the description if you want to hear that it goes on after the theme music we're going to head there right now.
Adam:
[30:39] Thanks ever so much we'll see you there, Guys. Bye!
