Pad Thai: The Truth Behind Thailand's National Dish
Pad Thai is Thailand's National dish but is it authentic Thai food? Is the Pad Thai an overrated tourist trap that has its roots elsewhere? We find out the real story behind Thailand's most iconic dish in this week's rather spicy episode! What's a white guy got to do to find some 'authentic' Asian food around here?
We continue the Thailand theme in Tales of a Trip, as we hear from a listener who's been backpacking Southeast Asia. On their trip through Thailand, they had a travel epiphany whilst wrestling with a scooter. This one's not for beginners! Adam also shares the story of his nail-biting flight into Queenstown. Adam's a nervous flyer at the best of times... This amount of turbulence will have you out of your seat, literally! Tune in for Thai food culture, backpacking tips and travel stories!
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
01:38 - Accommodation: Queenstown, New Zealand vs Siargao, Philippines
04:58 - Alun's worryingly settled in paradise
07:34 - Plane turbulence and passengers screaming on Adam's return to Queenstown
13:23 - Rice for Breakfast: Pad Thai
25:36 - Tales of a Trip: Listener submission
28:33 - Our final thoughts and reflections
What's your favourite Thai food? Submit your travel stories to: https://www.tripologypodcast.com/talesofatrip
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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 actually can be asked to go travelling all the time. We're here, as evidenced by our backdrops, you know, our respected backdrops, crazy if anything, gallivanting around. I'm Alun and I'm here with the ever terrified Adam.
Adam:
[0:25] Alun, it's been a couple of months since we recorded, mate. We're rusty, but we are slightly more well-travelled than the last time we spoke.
Alun:
[0:32] Last time we spoke, you were physically in front of me, I could tell, because if I outstretched my hand, it would meet raw skin and bone in the form of my actual friend, whereas now we're very much existing on a digital highway. If I extend my hand thusly, I'll simply touch the camera lens in a manner that can only be described as obstructive for a video podcast, so that wouldn't be
Alun:
[0:56] Good would it where are you now you flew away from me at breakneck.
Adam:
[1:00] Speed yeah i'm now in queenstown i managed to get here in one piece we are going to touch on that very uh very lightly in a few minutes but um i'm currently in my apartment in queenstown so i did uh if you remember a couple of episodes ago we spoke about the the scam the old scam uh of my apartment in Queenstown listen to Patreon if you want the full story but i managed to get somewhere to live albeit for an arm and a leg but it's bloody cozy mate let's touch
Alun:
[1:27] On our accommodation because i'm currently recording from what can only be described as a literal corrugated iron shack on the wonderful island of chargau so what kind of a accommodation have you conjured for yourself.
Adam:
[1:39] It doesn't look too dissimilar to an iron shack um but it's actually a converted section of my landlord's house you go up some stairs on the outside of their house and then we occupy the roof effectively.
Alun:
[1:52] Do you find it vaguely melancholic that you live above your landlord and then have to interact with them on an almost daily basis?
Adam:
[1:59] It's quite difficult to walk past their place and not look right into the windows because they've got these kind of floor-to-ceiling windows. One thing I will say, and I do have to be very careful how loudly I say this, is that condensation is quite an issue in Queenstown. It's very cold outside and people heat their houses on the inside which causes quite a lot of condensation and I've had a couple of conversations with my landlord and he said, you know, Adam, we have looked at your place a few times in passing and we notice you never open your windows. Can you please open your windows more often so the mould doesn't form and it doesn't cost us thousands of dollars?
Alun:
[2:33] It's suspicious condensation, isn't it? Because it always makes you wonder what's going on inside that building, which is so damn hot. But it's causing this opaque condensation to form all over the windows.
Adam:
[2:48] I can say from first-hand experience, if you don't open the windows and you don't address the mould that is forming, it will become a serious issue that affects the structure of the building. So I've got no doubt that they are keen to make sure that we do open the windows and they're actually monitoring us. So I make sure it's the first thing I do when I get up every single morning is open all the windows to get a bloody draft in.
Alun:
[3:10] Well, I'm glad you're settling in so well. In my shack, I have not really interacted with my landlord much other than when a pipe behind the property burst. And she also comes and collects my linens once a week, which is very, very nice. Apart from that, I'm monitored only by a gecko inhabitant who I'm fairly certain lives in the roof because I find his feces, let's not shy from the subject. Geckos, of course, emit, you know, a salmonella ridden fecal matter that comes with its own bit of basically guano, a little white tip, which is the urine of the gecko.
Alun:
[3:49] So I often find those littered around. there's a couple of cockroaches but I will say I love this shack very much the Wi-Fi exists on its own power generator so it never goes out the air con's incredibly powerful and it's just become a sort of home for me I like it a lot there's a cooking stove there's tuna here fresh tuna available Shah Gau in the Philippines is where I'm at, in japan sells for a lot of money here is like a kilogram for 400 pesos for like five dollars and it's the same damn fish it's a yellow fin tuna so i'm eating that almost every day my mercury levels are through the roof i can barely see but for all the mercury i've been consuming but i am having quite a beautiful time is.
Adam:
[4:37] This where you tell me that we're branching out into uh maybe owning a fish farm somewhere in Siargao.
Alun:
[4:43] I'm a fishmonger now. Yes, a Siargao based fishmonger. I've been surfing an awful lot. I've been training a lot of jujitsu. I've got my very own motorcycle. It's actually like a moped, not a real motorcycle. And I'm really settled in, in a way that makes me terribly afeard for the future of this podcast, because it's really, I'm becoming based here in chargau so at a certain point i'm gonna have to rip myself away from this gorgeous paradise stop surfing stop training axe all my friends into the night and uh just start traveling again for the sheer hunger of the tripological audience how.
Adam:
[5:22] Long have you been there now how long you've been based in that one place
Moped Mastery
Alun:
[5:25] 48 hours and i love it no a month a month i've been here a month adam i've been here a month yeah.
Adam:
[5:31] I mean that shows how little we've been speaking uh it's good to do that from time to time mate it's good to have stability predictability get yourself a routine you know fork out for a mobile phone contract and car insurance and all this sort of stuff how's the moped riding going
Alun:
[5:44] I've become from someone who was considered a moped rider with a lot of hubris behind the behind the steering wheel tripology's worst driver, the tripology's worst driver someone who crashed the moped 60 of the time driving it, uh i've become hesitant to say one of the world's best
moped riders but certainly i attract quite a lot of attention when i'm riding down the road so deftly always a helmet on which a lot of people you know in Siargao don't wear a helmet i always do even.
Adam:
[6:19] Locals don't wear a helmet?
Alun:
[6:20] The locals aren't wearing a helmet mate you'll scarcely see one local who chooses to wear a helmet but with me you'll notice me in my bright blue helmet and i even have a spare helmet that if i want to give anyone a lift they can don the bright pink oh.
Adam:
[6:35] Okay that's pretty cool um what are the roads like around that way i mean what i'm imagining basically are these straight roads some of them have got turns in meanders through like are they rice fields are they like along the beach with palm trees and all this sort of stuff
Alun:
[6:48] No chargal is very much a paradise a surfing paradise you've got cloud nine one of the best surf spots in the world and the roads meander around beautiful tropical locations every 500 meters a new beach offering untold possibilities in the surfing department so you can imagine me sort of blitzing around what can only be described as one of the most wonderful places on earth it's just it's a beautiful beautiful time here i want to start calling it home i flew in here via propeller plane that's the only way to get to chargau You can take a boat to Siargao from Cebu City, or you can fly from Manila or Cebu. And that plane got me thinking, my goodness, I hope Adam has a story about turbulence on a plane. And you've told me that you do.
Adam:
[7:34] Yeah, well, this is actually, you know, the flight that I took almost directly after leaving you. I made it to Brisbane in one piece, thank goodness. And then the flight, which I think from Brisbane to Queenstown is only about three and a half hours. One big bug bearer of mine I do want to preface this story by saying this is the lack of communication from the pilot or whoever's managing the plane and the passengers when there is turbulence because I don't know how you feel about this.
Alun:
[8:00] You want to hear him get on the tannoy more often?
Adam:
[8:03] Yeah I think so just build a rapport with the passengers you know if there's going to be a bit of turbulence they normally announce it beforehand they say you know in the next few minutes we are going to go through a turbulent area don't worry about it the seatbelt signs are going to come on just stay seated everyone's going to be safe no problem.
Alun:
[8:16] I've got to be honest, guys, I'm absolutely shitting myself.
Adam:
[8:22] If there are any pilots or people that work for airlines that listen to this show, could you please email us or contact us somehow and let us know what goes on behind the scenes? Because I don't know if pilots go through training.
Alun:
[8:33] I'm fairly sure they have some degree of training. Yeah, I think normally they do a short course.
Adam:
[8:39] I mean, just in speaking to passengers about things like turbulence or any issue, because, you know, pilots, you'd have to imagine when they're going through turbulence, and I have spoken to some pilots about this. One pilot that I used to play football with, he did tell me, if you're fine, the plane's fine. So, you know, the next time you're scared on the plane, just remember, if you're sitting in your seat upright and you're still watching your film, the plane is probably fine. However, in this scenario, Alun, when I was on my way back to Queenstown, it was the last half an hour of the flight and I was bricking it. Because the turbulence was more than I'd ever experienced, actually more than I thought a plane could take without crashing.
Alun:
[9:18] Yeah, I don't like that your football pilot friend said that analogy about if you're fine, the plane's fine. Because I think you stopped being fine quite early on in a flight often because of the anxiety. So you would check in with yourself and be like, am I fine? No, I'm not. If I'm not fine, the plane's not fine. It doesn't work.
Adam:
[9:41] I've just burnt my finger on the food. um no no i mean what we i think he means if you're not dead the plane's fine yeah uh but but anyway it was announced in this case it was announced the pilot did say it's going to be very turbulent don't worry it's perfectly normal the winds are high and
also when you go into queenstown i don't know if you've ever flown into queenstown but anyone listening to this who has will know that it is pretty hairy on the way in because you come through sort of a mountain range and then the runways very short so as soon as they land as soon as they get the wheels on the ground they have to whack the air brakes on in order to get the plane to stop before you go off into the lake or whatever But the way the plane was shaking around, I mean, people were screaming. I'm just going to go into the top. People on the plane were screaming that there was so much shaking. Everyone was going side to side. You know, one bloke ended up in someone else's chair. It was absolutely mental. Did he?
Alun:
[10:35] Do you think he was an opportunist?
Adam:
[10:38] We've been eyeing that chair off on the other side of the aisle while flying.
Alun:
[10:41] Yeah, he'd been waiting for the opportunity. I bet he couldn't believe his look when the pilot said that there was about to be turbulence. he was like under in his seat belt getting ready to leap.
Adam:
[10:51] Um it's crazy the only thing that gets me through moments like that and i do admit i know you've alluded to it i am a bit of a scaredy cat on flights because i just sort of think if if anything goes wrong you're dead i mean the brace position saves you from absolutely nothing so i don't
Alun:
[11:06] Think it's designed to i think it's designed to sort of end it all quickly.
Adam:
[11:10] Oh you really i have heard that people say it's to protect your teeth so they can identify the body i think
Alun:
[11:16] That's apocryphal the whole dental record thing but what i think it does is make damn well sure that your spine flies through your frontal cortex in a manner that stops any suffering.
Adam:
[11:26] Oh god um fair enough well honest if nothing else don't
Alun:
[11:31] Quote me on it but i think if you've braced and the plane's crashed you're probably, right in if you've been on a plane crash during the brace position and you feel like it saved.
Adam:
[11:40] I would have said that in these moments where I'm feeling very anxious and scared, I look around. And as long as no one else is worried, I sort of think, okay, well, you're the only one who's reacting like this. This is largely happening in your head because no one else even looks bothered. Then every now and again, you see the air hostesses or the people that are walking around the plane that work for the airline. Sometimes they sit down and they strap themselves in. And then I think, oh, fuck. Okay, this is serious. and i mean at this point in the flight all of all the people working on the flight were strapped in holding on for dear life everyone was there doing the same thing and um yeah i just i've it made me not want to fly really it's
Alun:
[12:21] Nerve-wracking isn't it when you see an air hostess crying and texting her family come on love hold it together i've got a friend here who believes if he's fine the plane's fine and you're making him not fine.
Adam:
[12:32] Shouting up at the tannoy tell the truth you fucking prick um no but there was an old lady that was a few rows behind and i mean she was probably in her 80s and i turned around and she just looked at me and winked and said you'll be all right mate you'll
Alun:
[12:48] Be right mate and if there is turbulence i'll probably end up in your chair, mate lovely to talk about turbulence but i tell you what there's been a hunger brewing in the minds of the audience, a hunger that I think only you can sate. And it's the kind of hunger that a well-timed, well-planned, well-thought-out food review would go some distance in preventing in the future. And that's the way that I like to announce your food item.
Rice for Breakfast
Adam:
[13:18] It's rice for breakfast.
Alun:
[13:26] Wow, did those chopsticks really just pick up that egg yolk in a manner that can only be described as a brand new animation? I think it probably did. Wonderful, isn't it? Adam, talk me through your food item, baby.
Adam:
[13:40] Well, with the launch of the new artwork, the new structure of the show, the format, all these
different items and things, I thought, what better way to kick off Rice for Breakfast with the backpacking food that is pretty iconic? I think if I said to you, one dish that maybe epitomises what backpacking around Southeast Asia is like, what would you say?
Alun:
[14:01] A grilled cheese from 7-Eleven.
Adam:
[14:05] You bastard, you bastard. I mean, you're not wrong. You're not wrong, are you?
Alun:
[14:09] Unfortunately not. Unfortunately, I am correct. I hate to be right, but often I am.
Adam:
[14:15] So in any case something a bit more culturally specific shall we say is of course the hailed the world-renowned the celebrated pad thai are you a fan of the pad thai it's one of
Alun:
[14:26] My favorites honestly mate if you get a good pad thai a spicy big bowl of pad thai and you chunk into that thing with a pair of chopsticks deftly handled i think there's no you know almost no greater joy on this planet.
Adam:
[14:42] Fair enough fair enough i mean i do want to preface this by saying that the pad thai albeit a great dish is probably not the best uh thai food would you agree with that one
Alun:
[14:55] Of my favorite thai foods mate i know that you're a big fan of banana leaf salad and fucking like uh whatever else.
Adam:
[15:01] No the but the papaya salad the papaya salad i think is actually the most perfect dish i think it might be the best dish on it for me
Alun:
[15:08] I like a pad thai more than i like a salad but that's just me and this is your food item.
Adam:
[15:16] Well, the pad thai, a little bit of history for you. A lot of people think it is just quintessentially Thai food, which maybe in this day and age it is. However, it does actually have roots in Chinese cooking.
Alun:
[15:25] It doesn't. It does.
Adam:
[15:26] It does. A lot of good things come from China. They originate in East Asia. And due to immigration over the last two, 250 years, things like that, obviously there's been a transfer of culture and some of that transfer has involved cooking methods. And Thais traditionally don't, you know, we're talking hundreds of years ago here, didn't typically cook with stir fries and woks but pad thai actually translates to it's kind of thai stir fry um some kind of pan some people get this right you'll find this interesting some people think that the pad thai was actually created around sort of the 1930s by a prime minister who was in power at the time and due to problems with the war and there was floods around that sort of time which resulted in a rice shortage he was promoting people eat more noodles hence creating a national dish or the need for a national dish and that's where the pad thai came in he
Alun:
[16:20] Was smart wasn't he because i imagine there was scarcely a papaya salad in sight during that time and so he diverted attention in another.
Adam:
[16:28] Direction yeah it's important to sustain uh the people that worship you um but anyway there are also other records some reports that say actually the dish wasn't documented in either cookbooks or any sort of mention in books and things until the 1960s so it might actually be far more recent now i again i preface this by saying i do think that a pad thai a great pad thai you've said spicy being the operative word is an amazing food but i do fear that it is to thai food what cheddar is to cheese do you know what i mean by that a
Alun:
[17:00] Great entry-level cheese that you can enjoy with friends but if you want to be considered a cheese connoisseur and you bring cheddar to a cheese and wine night people are going to look at you like you have some cognitive difficulties.
Adam:
[17:20] No i mean you know i like a pad thai just as much as the next guy Alun but i'm saying if you if you if you love a pad thai more than anything else in thai food you probably haven't had that much thai food it
Alun:
[17:32] Doesn't help with cheddar either does it when when you turn up and you go no but it's extra mature it's extra mature cheddar it's still it's still cathedral city though isn't it still cheddar.
Adam:
[17:42] Still bought it in the cheese aisle of a massive supermarket yeah so you
Alun:
[17:49] Did didn't you and you brought it to our classy cheese and wine night and now stacy's crying so i hope you're happy.
Adam:
[17:57] I told you you're a cheese connoisseur and you're gonna make me look stupid in front of everyone I've brought
Alun:
[18:01] You to this party expecting a certain joie de vivre, a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain French style of class, and you've brought cheddar. Get out.
Adam:
[18:15] The reels just make themselves on this show. If you don't know what a pad thai is, it's basically a rice noodle dish. It involves things like palm sugar, tamarind. It's sweet, sour. There's some limes in there sometimes or some citrus, peanuts, maybe some shrimp paste, something fermented, fish sauce, of course. Hopefully some chili, some chili and a protein that is often chicken, prawns, maybe tofu, something like that. Sound good to you so far?
Alun:
[18:38] Sounds like it to me.
Adam:
[18:39] Coriander. Do you like coriander? I've never remembered whether you like coriander or not.
Alun:
[18:43] Cilantro for our american listeners i really resonate with with cilantro because when when i first went traveling and i was in vietnam someone went and got me a bang me and i'd never smelled anything like that before i'd never tasted anything like that before and i realized that that novel experience was almost exclusively down to the cilantro within the bang me which i actually think i'd not been exposed to until the age of 21 right.
Adam:
[19:11] Fair enough well yeah it's not everyone's cup of tea obviously um but do you have i know i've put you on the spot here mate um but i've got something quite surprising to tell you my favorite pad thai ever wasn't in thailand
Alun:
[19:23] Are you going to ask me where i think your favorite pad thai ever was no.
Adam:
[19:29] No no well you can you can guess for sure but it's bloody close to thailand i mean it makes sense
Alun:
[19:34] Oh well that's interesting because my favorite pad thai ever was from New Zealand, where you are now. Can you believe it?
Adam:
[19:39] Really? Yeah. Well, if it's where I had a pad thai, then yeah, I can.
Alun:
[19:43] It was in Auckland, and there was this little woman who can only be described as a thai, making pad thai on the side of the street. Well, in a shop, but it happened to be on a corner, and it was very close to where I used to live. And she would serve such enormous portions that during that time in my life, I would go to her and she would provide.
Adam:
[20:05] That goes a long way with you. Yeah.
Alun:
[20:07] You know, I could sustain myself for 48 hours using only one purchase from her.
Adam:
[20:12] Wow. Okay. That's interesting that your favourite pad thai is in Auckland. But maybe a different Thai shop to the one I had one in, in Auckland, which was actually very good. But my favourite pad thai ever was actually in Laos.
Alun:
[20:26] That's incredible.
Adam:
[20:27] Yeah, I remember it's on the outskirts of Vang Vieng and a tiny little shop, just sort of as you enter the town, it gets a little bit sort of bigger and more built up. I mean, it's still a bloody, bloody small town. This was in 2015 and I was really blown away. I almost felt bad for admitting that my favourite pad thai was in Laos. However, it does make sense because a lot of great food in Thailand actually comes from Isan, which is the region in the sort of east of Thailand, northeast. And that's where all these foodies and food bloggers are going now is this to the isan region which is less kind of sweet and aromatic and more sort of spicy and salty and fermented um but what i did want to do mate is tell you about the pad thai i had last night so obviously i put a lot of preparation into this i thought i want to make it fresh i want to make it topical i want to get it uh you know in my mind the best i can so i found a local Thai restaurant in Queenstown and i went there to have a pad thai how
Alun:
[21:16] Did it compare?
Adam:
[21:16] Well i think expectations again are what thwarted me because I'm going to risk sounding like a bit of a knob here but I did... I just went there on my own of an evening, eight o'clock after work. And I spoke to the staff there and I said, look, all I want is the Pad Thai prawns. And can you please make sure it's spicy, please? And she said, yeah, yeah, no problem. I said, is it close to the version? They're all Thai in there, by the way. I said, is it close to the version you're likely to find in Thailand? Because they do build themselves. They market themselves as this like authentic traditional Thai food and, you know, all the chefs are Thai and whatever. So I said, OK, it seems pretty cool. I don't want to go too hard and drill too much, but I just said, you know, can you just please, if it can be pretty close to what you get in Thailand, I'd really appreciate it. After having had six months of non-spicy white person Indian food, obviously in India. And this thing came, I'll put pictures on Instagram, of course. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. Six enormous fat juicy prawns in a sort of semicircle and in this steaming pile of noodles, really fragrant, absolutely lovely. Um and i took i took one bite i took i took you like my description i took one bite and uh i thought okay maybe maybe the chili's underneath because we had had a conversation me and the woman i said i want it really really hot she was like okay you sure you can take very spicy i said yeah i can take really spicy please make sure it's hot she said okay i'll write thai hot thai spicy perfect could you bury
Alun:
[22:45] The chili so the first five or so spoonfuls seem quite mundane and then i'm hit with a sort of intense palate destruction at the end.
Adam:
[22:55] Yeah so you know i i think the dish typically is supposed to be mixed so i thought look don't worry just keep eating three four mouthfuls later still no spice so i'm thinking god i don't know what's going on here i mixed it mixed it again another two or three mouthfuls absolutely no spice at all it was just sweet and a little bit sour so i called called the restaurant over the restaurant i called the waitress over and i said And excuse me, but this isn't spicy at all. It's actually more sweet. And she said, oh, if you want, we sell fresh chili for a dollar. I was like, no, I'm not going to buy extra chili. Can you just make it spicy? And she was like, oh, if you want, we can give you chili flakes. They're free. And I was like, oh, this is awkward because, you know, I don't speak Thai and her English
wasn't good enough. and she said the only way you're going to make this spicy effectively is if you buy this extra chilli sauce would have
Alun:
[23:55] Been nice if she was up front about that from the start.
Adam:
[23:57] Wouldn't it this is one I want to get your thoughts on what do you think went wrong it wasn't just not spicy enough for me it actually wasn't spicy at all I
Alun:
[24:07] Think whatever went wrong in that interaction happened about 35 years ago mate I.
Adam:
[24:12] Don't know.
Alun:
[24:19] No, I think, you know, you can't have it all. If you want good Thai food, you have to go to Laos or Thailand. And I think you maybe went in with lofty expectations, but you presented as a white guy asking for authenticity. And in the modern age of traveling, that is a hard, hard thing to come by. But i would like to to say that was my favourite rice for breakfast of all time it's almost as if there was an exorbitant amount of preparation gone into it and i'm excited to see where the series goes in the future Adam so congratulations on a on a beautiful inaugural rice for breakfast in this the new dawning of the tribological age what i would like to do mate is hear from one of our listeners in this back end of the episode in my favourite item on the show your favourite item on the show the listeners favorite item of the show where you can go to tropologypodcast.com forward slash tales of a trip and you can basically record a message of your greatest travel story send it into it us we listen on the show it's genius really and we want to go there now and listen to one of our listeners best travel story it's tales of a trip.
Tales of a Trip:
[25:36] Hi lads ryan here i'm a recent listener to the pod and i've been really enjoying it so pick up yourselves for that my tales of a trip involves me when i was traveling through thailand a few years ago and as you'll know every man and his dog you know little girl to old grandma they ride scooters and motorbikes to get around in that part of the world and i didn't think that I was going to be getting on one of those because I'm quite sensible and my mum definitely does not know how to set up a
GoFundMe page to get me back if I can update my legs. But in Chiang Mai, there was an excursion where they'd take you through the jungle. You'd visit an elephant sanctuary, like a legitimate, no riding and stuff, but through the jungle and through rivers and up hills. As I said, no experience, beginners welcome. And so I went for that excursion and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my life. It was incredible. But they do play fast and loose with the term beginner friendly. I mean, to be fair, health and safety in Thailand is a little bit lax. My bike had no, the speedometer didn't work. So I had absolutely no bloody idea how fast I was going any of the time. And my training on the bike was, like, 15 minutes in a side street in Chiang Mai.
Tales of a Trip:
[26:59] And I was a bit wobbly, but I was deemed fit enough to, like, join for the scooter adventure. There's a couple of hairy moments where I sort of lost control going up a hill. There's, like, a cliff edge on one side, and I'm sort of, like, wrestling with the bike. I got it stuck in the rivers that we were crossing through, and, like, the bikers had to turn around and, like, drag me out. I got stuck in some clay and my team carried on and I had to be rescued by a random Thai soldier and he pulled my bike out for me and probably due to embarrassment I just got straight back on it and my hand on the throttle and I went corralling into the distance bouncing away and ended up falling off again but I actually remained, I got out of it relatively unscathed and yeah it was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had I mean it's not the while this story but um part of the reason why i wanted to bring it um to you is because uh
Tales of a Trip:
[27:55] Like a lot of experiences nowadays they're very easy to document uh the temptation is so strong because we've got phones and cameras all the time and i'm guilty of it as well but like being on the bike meant that i couldn't just be taking pictures on my phone all the time even though i would have wanted to because the landscape was just like otherworldly it was an incredible part of the world to be in but being on the bike made me have to like be very present and just take it in as it was happening to me and i'm like really grateful for that experience anyway yeah big big fan of the pod cheers lads.
Alun:
[28:33] Ryan, you beautiful tripological listener you've managed coincidentally to touch on And key themes of the show being Thailand and motorcycle crashes. Very deftly delivered. That was cool, man, because I like, firstly, he's a man after my own heart, because I've never met anyone who, like me, has crashed a motorcycle and then, through sheer embarrassment and not wanting to impinge on anyone else, got straight back on and subsequently had another crash. So that's like, I empathize and sympathize with you there. I also like what you said about being present in the moment, because I've had the same exact experience recently with all the surfing. Because when you go surfing, you're completely forced by nature of everything would get so terribly wet to leave the technology at home. You like leave the phone off. Leave like any thoughts really that exist outside of the waves at home you just go out on this surfboard and you're just at one with nature so i think that's really cool and ryan experienced that through having his hands literally occupied trying to stay alive on a scooter yeah.
Adam:
[29:45] Thanks ever so much Ryan for sending that in it's a great story and also sends a beautiful message because i think we live in this day and age now where it is becoming increasingly more difficult to be present you know for the first time ever we're seeing that people are going traveling just for the purposes of creating content just for the purposes of making videos about it so it's not only great that ryan experienced the you know driving around a thailand on a scooter in that way but also afterwards reflected on it and said actually no no i was that was a rare time when i was totally present and i wasn't thinking about anything else other than what i was doing in that moment it's funny you mentioned surfing because that was going to be my first question to you was have you found that when you're on a surfboard now is that all you're all you're thinking about all you're consumed by is just that one moment you're
Alun:
[30:28] In i'm finding myself searching for those moments more in life really whether it's through jiu jitsu or through surfing i'm looking to like accumulate skills well that was cool as well that ryan was like i didn't really feel comfortable on a bike but i did it anyway whether that's well advised or not to do things that can result in injury that you're not that good at at least you are trying something and you've got the potential to get better I found myself pursuing like those skill accumulation things but
also things where I'm forced to leave everything that I'm preoccupied with in my day-to-day at home like training does that because my phone doesn't fit in my jujitsu shorts and the surfboard does that because there's no plug sockets out there and I think that there's really is of tremendous value and I encourage everyone to find hobbies where, the disconnection is part of the hobby.
Adam:
[31:24] Yeah also you know as you get older and things that not only do you become more sort of risk averse and maybe aware of the dangers but maybe you just are thrust into fewer opportunities or experiences to learn something new and i love the fact that you're doing uh picking up your surfing again i love the fact that ryan just pushed ahead and even though he maybe couldn't ride a scooter or you know didn't wasn't confident on one just learned anyway because i am someone who learned to ride a motorbike in in vietnam in the north of vietnam and you've got that skill forever then haven't you it's like riding a bike you'll always be able to ride it.
Adam:
[31:56] You would think so but i did try and ride a scooter again for the first time in years when i was in Goa last year and um yeah i don't know that's twigged a memory actually maybe i'll tell that in the Patreon but it didn't go well at all well
Alun:
[32:09] We will hear about that i've also got a story about a terribly rabid little dog so i mean we go over to Patreon shall we that's patreon.com forward slash topology podcast if you want to keep listening to wonderful bonus content after the show if you have heard Ryan tell that beautiful story and you think i've got a story that i would like to share you go to topologypodcast.com forward slash tales of a trip there's also a contact form if you want to ask us a question and you basically there's youtube instagram lots of ways that you can reach out connect with us stripology podcast on everything thank you ryan for sharing your story thank you Tripological audience for listening thank you Adam for a wonderful rice for breakfast and thanks to you that's right you watching this show i love you very very much and we'll see you after in the Patreon section.
Adam:
[32:59] We'll see you there see there. Bye!
