From the Road: Three PodFriends Reminisce About Bangkok [S8.E40]

Greg 00:00:06 On this special On the Road episode, me and my special co-host talk to three friends of the podcast about Thailand.

Kellan 00:00:12 So if you've ever thought about Thailand. After you've left, you like this episode of the Bangkok Podcast.

Greg 00:00:34 And welcome to the Bangkok Podcast. My name is Greg Jorgensen, a Canadian who is back in Canada for a few weeks enjoying the daily highs of 18 degrees. Although that's about as cold as I'd want it to get.

Kellan 00:00:45 And I am telling Jorgensen, precocious child and special co-host as I sit this Tim Hortons hot chocolate and enjoy not sweating.

Greg 00:00:51 That's right. So listeners, as you may have guessed, I am not recording as normal this week. I am in Canada with my son and he is my special co-host this week. While Ed remains warm and toasty in Thailand and I remain cold and chilled in Canada, and my son Kellan is joining us as special co-host of Sweet Kellan. Where are we standing right now? Can you describe where we are?

Kellan 00:01:13 we're standing in the middle of a nice, lush forest at our friend's house with basically nice trees everywhere.

Greg 00:01:22 Yeah. And, what's the weather like right now?

Kellan 00:01:25 It's nice. Like how much? Like 16 degrees.

Greg 00:01:28 Let me check my watch right now. Actually, it's 12 degrees right now.

Kellan 00:01:31 Oh, degrees.

Greg 00:01:32 Yeah. And what's the what is it doing right now in the weather?

Kellan 00:01:35 It's raining.

Greg 00:01:36 Yeah. It's raining.

Kellan 00:01:37 It's raining.

Greg 00:01:38 We are in a little island called Salt Spring Island, just off the coast of Vancouver Island on British Columbia. And we're staying at my buddy Chris's house for a few days, and he is actually going to be a guest on this week's show. And this week's show is going to be a little bit different, because we are sort of having a Bangkok from the road theme. I'm going to talk to three Previous guests of the Bangkok Podcast, who all live in Canada and who I will all be visiting, and they're just going to give their thoughts about Thailand and living away from Thailand and how they miss Thailand and various other things. So a bit of a strange show this week.

Greg 00:02:11 The format is different from normal, but, you know, we're, we want to stick to our schedule. And we thought that while we were here, we could do something different and have a little bit of fun with this week's show. What do you think, buddy?

Kellan 00:02:21 Yeah.

Greg 00:02:22 And, usually what you what, you listeners can't see this right now, but you're looking at. What are you looking at? An axe. An axe. So you chopped wood for the first time yesterday. Chopped firewood? How'd that go?

Kellan 00:02:33 Very good.

Greg 00:02:34 Yeah. Yeah. Mummy, mummy's a little bit concerned that you don't have, safety gear. Safety gear? But that's okay, because Ed, who is, of course, my co-host, is always telling me that I should make sure that you should learn more Canadian things. And chopping wood in a forest while it's raining is certainly is about as Canadian as it gets. Anyway, with that out of the way, we are going to move into our interviews.

Greg 00:02:56 We've got three short interviews for this episode. Really fun stuff, great people. And we're going to talk a little bit about Thailand from Canada, as I am, covering my head and looking forward to getting back to the tropical weather. So thank you guys. And, Kellan, thank you for joining me as a special co-host. Maybe you'll have your own podcast one day and you'll be raking in the big podcast bucks. What do you think? Sure. Yeah, yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. On to the interviews. Well, I am happy to be sitting down here in the intergalactic headquarters of pylons kitchen pylon, Chongqing.

Pailin 00:03:43 Close enough. Island Dong Ngan is how you say.

Greg 00:03:48 Pylon from formerly hot tie kitchen. Now pylons.

Pailin 00:03:51 Kitchen. No, no, this is my biggest marketing mistake. Okay. The show is called Hot Thai Kitchen. So everything I do is under the umbrella of Hot Thai Kitchen. But my YouTube channel, I named it Thailand's Kitchen. Okay. Big mistake.

Pailin 00:04:07 If anyone wants to start any sort of like, social media business, you should never have two different handles for your business. But the reason I did that was because when I started, I didn't want to. I wanted to keep the options open in case I wanted to do non Thai food going forward.

Greg 00:04:26 Oh.

Pailin 00:04:27 Right. In one in case I wanted to branch out, but I never did. 17 years later I'm still doing.

Greg 00:04:34 Thai.

Pailin 00:04:34 Food.

Pailin 00:04:35 So Highlands Kitchen was a mistake.

Greg 00:04:38 Well listeners, you may have guessed that I am not in Bangkok. I'm actually in Vancouver right now sitting down with Pailin, and we first met when you came on our podcast to talk about Thai food and what it's like in Western countries and what people think about it in Canada. And, Yeah, it's really nice to see you again in Vancouver here, when me and my son are here on vacation. And I'm happy to be in your studio here, which is quite the setup. I have to say. That's one reason why your videos always look so great.

Greg 00:05:06 Kudos to your brother for setting it up.

Pailin 00:05:08 Yes, yes, all the courts make it look a lot fancier than it is.

Greg 00:05:13 The cabin. The cabin is everywhere. so how are things? tell us what's new with your empire.

Pailin 00:05:20 Well, the newest thing is that my new, new, old book has just come out. So I say new old because, my first book called Hot Thai Kitchen this year is its 10th anniversary. So the publisher has released a 10th anniversary edition. I've added a whole new chapter to the book and updated all the information that, you know, it's been ten years. So a lot of things I do differently now. I've learned some new things with regards to ingredients and availability. So we did a lot of update to my book and that's the the newest thing.

Greg 00:05:58 Cool. When you go you come to Bangkok like once a year, a couple times a year.

Pailin 00:06:02 Once or twice a year.

Greg 00:06:03 Do you pick up new like techniques or get in touch with the motherland to sort of update your knowledge? How does that work?

Pailin 00:06:09 Yes.

Pailin 00:06:10 So usually when I go to Thailand, it's not so much the cooking technique, it's more the ideas and like because the cuisine is always evolving, right? Like we've got the classics that will always be there. But like, you know, Thai even the traditional dishes today at some point was new. At some point somebody made it up and it was new. So the cuisine is always evolving. So every time I go to Thailand, I pay a lot of attention to what's what's popular right now that wasn't popular before. What are people? What combinations of food are people doing now? And with the rise of social media, it's kind of gotten out of control a.

Greg 00:06:47 Little.

Pailin 00:06:47 Bit. Yes, because now a lot of people are doing things for social media, so they're doing things that are really cool and cool in quotes. Unexpected or wild just to get views and clicks. A lot of them I find actually not great as food. but people are just really trying to get views on their businesses, right? So I think there's pros and cons to to social media is it really is driving people to come up with new things, but it's also driving people to come up with clickbait things.

Pailin 00:07:24 Right, right. Where it just looks really awesome. But like, do we really want to eat that? You know?

Greg 00:07:29 Yeah, yeah. You know, many years ago, back when I was, when I was living in Calgary, you know, 20, 28, 30 years ago, one time I mixed strawberry vodka into scrambled eggs, strawberry. Some like some strawberry liqueur. It's actually pretty good, but I was surprised at how good it was. if only Instagram was around back then. I mean.

Pailin 00:07:54 You would have gone.

Greg 00:07:54 Viral. Yeah, exactly. Yes. But that's what you're saying is that people are just doing these crazy things that maybe are not adding to the to the Uber, like.

Pailin 00:08:04 The enjoyment.

Pailin 00:08:05 Of the food. Right? A lot of times they're doing it for the visual, like things that are overstuffed and piled high with toppings. Like if you're on Thai social media, Thai food, social media, very soon you'll start to notice that there's a theme there of things that are overstuffed, overloaded with crab and egg yolks and oozing things and just way too much of something.

Pailin 00:08:30 And it's just to get food.

Chris 00:08:34 Sources oozing everywhere, you know, like there's just there's just that.

Pailin 00:08:39 that appeal of things that it's it's like porn for food.

Chris 00:08:43 Right? It's like.

Pailin 00:08:44 Everything just looks.

Chris 00:08:45 Ultra.

Pailin 00:08:46 Extreme and.

Greg 00:08:48 Everything's got to be bigger. Better. More colorful. More. Wow. Shock value.

Pailin 00:08:52 Yes. And then when you go and eat it, it's like that was way too much egg yolk or whatever, you know.

Greg 00:08:57 Have you ever seen those restaurants that do a Bloody Mary? But they put like, insane things, like an entire hamburger through a skewer topped on your Bloody Mary or something?

Pailin 00:09:06 Exactly. Things like that. And and that I don't love. that's the one thing I really try to like. I'm not gonna look at that, but I. I do pay attention to where people at. What are people liking? What are some trends that are that are coming along? And one thing I've noticed recently is there's definitely a lot more emphasis on regional cuisine.

Pailin 00:09:28 People are like, ooh, northern food. They're really paying attention to that, like in Bangkok, right? Or like, oh, this is southern food. This is food from the eastern provinces. So there's a lot more of that, which I really love. and, and I think that's been made possible by social media because before northern food has always been around, but is kind of contained in the North, and it's hard for it to get out into the rest of the country because it wasn't a good vehicle for people to share it. But now with social media, when somebody goes to Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, they can share those photos. And and now I think the regional food has become more popular thanks to the ability for people to share so easily.

Greg 00:10:07 Right. Well, I mean, Austin Bush wrote a Northern Thai cuisine and a Southern Thai cuisine cookbook years and years ago.

Pailin 00:10:13 I have it.

Pailin 00:10:14 Sitting right here. There it is. Food of northern.

Greg 00:10:15 Haven't talked to Austin in years, but, and then you've got Andy Ricker and chefs like that that are sort of, I think their sort of old school pre social media when they were specializing in cuisines like that.

Greg 00:10:27 But certainly the platform wasn't there in previous years to.

Chris 00:10:30 Yes.

Greg 00:10:30 Blasted out globally. Yes. Yeah. recently like like last year I think eight months ago there was a list that came out of the top 50 restaurants in the world, and six of them were in Bangkok. Really? Yeah, which is pretty impressive.

Pailin 00:10:44 That's wild. I mean, one thing that Bangkok does really well is fine dining. Yeah. You know, as you know, living in Bangkok, it's like, if you want to spend money in Thailand, in Bangkok, you can.

Chris 00:10:55 You can.

Pailin 00:10:56 Very easily. And they take that fine dining to, to a level that I think even play places in Canada doesn't.

Greg 00:11:04 I'm hearing from people who live in this world that there's a little bit of a backlash against it now because like, especially when you go for a tasting menu, not everyone wants to sit there for three hours and have everything come out and just be so indulgent. And, you know, sometimes you just want to go and have a meal and leave.

Greg 00:11:24 so I don't know. I personally would not really like it. That being said, when I went to Gauguin's Kitchen years ago and had his tasting menu, my mind was blown right out of my face. but I also find that you can get what I call dining whiplash, where you drop 2500 baht on a, on a meal and you're stuffed. And then you come outside and you see some woman cooking on the side of the street and you're like, wow, I could have been just as stuffed and spent 40 baht on some delicious chicken and sticky rice, you know?

Pailin 00:11:54 yes, yes.

Greg 00:11:56 What's the, landscape like for Thai and Asian food in Canada? Now, what's going on? All right. Are there people still pouring peanut sauce on everything and calling it side chicken wings?

Pailin 00:12:06 Sadly, yes. The people are still pouring peanut butter based sauce on things and calling it Thai. but there's actually been a bit of a boom in Thai restaurants in sort of the big city. So Toronto and Vancouver.

Pailin 00:12:24 so ten years ago, when we first talked, I think most Thai restaurants offered more or less the same thing. Like, you can go to any Thai restaurant and they're going to have the same things. They're going to have pad Thai, green, red, yellow curry. They're going to have chicken satay. They're going to have all the things which, by the way, I still keep trying to tell people the chicken satay is not a thing in Thailand, that you can only get pork satay like it's a box. You have to go looking for chicken satay.

Greg 00:12:50 There's a lady on my soy that has has satay.

Pailin 00:12:53 Well, yes, some you can find something, but for the most part, yeah.

Greg 00:12:58 Pork is the man.

Pailin 00:12:58 Pork is the satay of Thailand champion. But they don't sell it here in Canada? No, in Canada, in the US to there. Nobody sells pork satay, right? Yes. No, no. Come back to this and explain to you why in a minute.

Pailin 00:13:13 But you cannot get pork satay, which is the main satay in Thailand. In Thai restaurants here in North America. Okay. Now Thai restaurants. So there's been a big boom of sort of more innovative places, places that offer unique things that you don't, you don't typically see in the standard Thai restaurant menu. and I think it's because of this. So the first wave, the first generation of Thai restaurants in the US were basically built as a way to make a living, right? They're Thai immigrants. They didn't speak good enough English to do a lot of different jobs. So what can they do? They can make Thai food. Yeah, right. So they make Thai food. And they didn't they didn't have, like, a mission behind it to spread the love of Thai cuisine, of whatever. They just needed a way to make it a living. And if that means they got to put ketchup in pad Thai. So be like, we gotta sell it. We gotta make this palatable and cost effective.

Pailin 00:14:12 And they didn't have a lot of ingredients, so they had to make a lot of substitutions. So that's the first wave of Thai restaurants. And they were all pretty much identical, because once one person found a formula that worked, everyone didn't want to break it. It's like we're going to build a business. We need to make sure it works. We're going to do what's been proven to work, right? Right. The new generation of Thai restaurants now, however, are built by people who are actually passionate about Thai food and they want to share what real Thai cuisine is all about. They are the young people who are more creative. They're not as afraid to, to try things that haven't been tried before. So I think this is the new generation of Thai restaurants, and I'm seeing a lot of of better things definitely coming out of them, because they're no longer constrained by like, we have to make this work. Yeah. And we're we're not going to risk anything. Yeah.

Greg 00:15:05 Interesting. Okay.

Greg 00:15:08 Last question. I want you to tap into this with your Food Network, but I want to cut. Okay. My million dollar idea and sleazy bars and cheap drinking establishments across Canada. It's just tradition to have peanuts or pretzels or something like that. I am convinced that if you got into the system with beer, like little bite sized bits of love with along with like a cold beer dude, that's a winning formula. I think people would go crazy for that.

Pailin 00:15:35 It's so good. And by the way, shameless plug here in my book sub I there is a recipe for love with hot. Okay, it's also on my website, but yes, it is the best food to go with beer. It's like salty sour and it's oh, it's so much better than buffalo wings, right?

Greg 00:15:53 Yeah. And they're and their buffalo wings are messy. You've got the dipping sauce, the glaze whatever. Love mustard is just pop. Pop.

Pailin 00:15:59 Yeah, yeah. Can I tell you, speaking of pork, why they don't sell pork? Oh, yeah.

Pailin 00:16:03 Same here. Okay, North Americans don't eat pork.

Greg 00:16:09 Really?

Pailin 00:16:10 Yes. I mean, that's a that's an overgeneralization, but it's it's very true. Pork is the least popular meat in North America by a long shot. So when I used to work at and I found this out because I used to work at sort of like casual, not casual, quick, like food court, Thai restaurant. Okay. And they had, like, chicken and beef and fish and, you know, but nothing was made with pork, which for Thai food is very strange, right? When you go to a tire shop in Thailand, like half of the of the things are made with poor. So when I asked them, I said, why don't we have anything with pork? And they said, we have tried many times and people just don't order it.

Greg 00:16:49 Really?

Pailin 00:16:50 Yes. They just there is something about pork that people just they would rather have chicken. So Thai restaurants I am convinced. When they first started selling satay they did pork and people didn't.

Pailin 00:17:03 It didn't take. But when they did chicken, it's like it just flies out like sad chicken. Satay is the most popular Thai appetizer in almost every Thai restaurant. It just flies out the window. And if you had it pork, it wouldn't sell.

Greg 00:17:19 Wow. That's crazy. They're missing out on one of the simple joys in life, which.

Pailin 00:17:22 I know.

Greg 00:17:23 Like a pork satay with sticky rice. God, there's nothing better than that.

Pailin 00:17:27 Yes.

Greg 00:17:28 Well, there's some education to be done. So you're you're.

Pailin 00:17:31 I've been trying to talk about pork satay for ten years.

Pailin 00:17:34 And there's still.

Pailin 00:17:35 No sat on menus. I'm failing.

Greg 00:17:37 One day or another is going to reach the tipping point, and then you're gonna have to come out with another book that's gonna be all pork recipes or something.

Pailin 00:17:43 Oh my God. Yes.

Greg 00:17:46 Well, thank you for allowing us to check out your awesome studio. Fantastic job with that and the book and everyone check out the YouTube channel Hot Thai Kitchen or Pillans Kitchen.

Pailin 00:17:56 the easiest way, I think Hot Thai Kitchen is my website. That's where all the recipes are. And if you want to reach the YouTube channel, there's a link that takes you there. But if you just google Hot Thai Kitchen, I will come up. Yeah yeah.

Greg 00:18:10 Yeah. Cool. And for our patrons, we're going to put out some photos of me standing in the studio kitchen like squee! I'm in the middle.

Pailin 00:18:17 Of.

Greg 00:18:18 I'm here. Well thank you pylon. Lovely to see you again.

Pailin 00:18:22 Thank you.

Greg 00:18:34 All right. Now we're going to jump in for a quick interview with my very good friend. Chris and I met Chris in Thailand after he spent decades. It was decades in Japan.

Chris 00:18:45 Oh, I would have been there probably 15 years, possibly before I got down to Thailand.

Greg 00:18:51 Okay. All right. So you wrote the Lonely Planet guide in Japan for for years, which was very cool. And then you moved to Thailand and, and that's where we met up. And we used to go on long bike rides and hang out and get up to shenanigans and things like that.

Greg 00:19:05 And now, Chris, you live on this wonderful island called Salt Spring, which is just off the coast of Vancouver, and you very generously allowed us, me and my son, to stay with you for a few days while we're here. So, this is a great lifestyle you have, man. It's a great place to be.

Chris 00:19:23 Yeah. I have to say, we kind of felt fell ass backwards into the perfect place for me and my wife and kids. I hadn't even heard of these places, these islands, before we moved to Victoria in 2016, right? We were living in Japan and we didn't really want to raise the kids in Japan because the educational system becomes a little bit too strict. starting around the beginning of middle school, and we didn't really want to raise the kids in the States because we wanted to live in a place that had socialized medicine. And maybe I wasn't so keen about spending my taxes to support, things like the invasion of Iraq.

Greg 00:20:09 Okay. Fair enough.

Chris 00:20:10 But we wanted a place where they.

Chris 00:20:12 Where English was widely spoken or the main language. and so Canada pretty much fit the bill.

Greg 00:20:18 Right. And here you.

Chris 00:20:19 Are.

Greg 00:20:20 Yeah, but you get back to Asia once a year.

Chris 00:20:22 I get back backstage at least twice a year. Twice a year? Yeah. So I'll go to Japan. I'll spend some time every fall and spring in Japan. And if I can make it happen, I'll get somewhere else. Like Nepal. where I like to go trekking.

Greg 00:20:37 Well, one of the things that is always funny because you you always email me from the airport on your way through and you're at Bangkok or something, and you're talking about how painful it is to be in Thailand, but not be in Thailand, you know, as you're transiting to Kathmandu or something like that. What, what what about Thailand has that pull? Right. We always talk about yeah, it gets under your skin for some reason.

Chris 00:20:58 Yeah. Well, I always like to say like, never go to Thailand in the middle of your life, okay? You can go early.

Chris 00:21:05 And then there's a possibility you'll find other places that you might like almost as much. Or you can go late in life where you're going to be there and you're just going to spend the rest of your life there. But if you go in the middle of your life, you are always going to find something lacking about the next place you move to, and you're just going to sit around thinking, I can't wait to get back to Thailand, you know? so, like, when I'm passing through Suvarnabhumi, on the way from, say, Tokyo to Kathmandu, I just hear the accent here. Are people speaking Thai. Hello? Yeah, that Thai Thai accented English or Thai. And I can smell the air and I start thinking, well, you know, maybe I don't have to go traffic. Maybe I can just go through customs and just get on the Skytrain or whatever and get downtown. I mean, easily some of my most, my happiest experiences and days were spent in Thailand, both before moving there, which you helped us with, when I was just living in Japan, we'd go down there for a lot of us, we were.

Chris 00:22:06 I was English teaching at the time. We'd just go down and spend like a month in Thailand. It was just a completely known and well traveled route for, gaijin, for foreigners working in Japan. Yeah. Yeah.

Greg 00:22:19 That's that's that's cool. And you're like Mr. Salt Spring and you're we're walking around the town and like, hey, Jim, how's it going, Bob? What's up? Dave? And they're all, hey, how you doing? It's like. It's like an old 1950s TV show or something. But everyone we talk to is we get like, oh, this is my friend visiting from Thailand, and they're. Everyone's fascinated by it. It's so interesting. They're like, oh, either I've been there quickly and I'd love to go back or like, wow, what's that? Like this. This soft power thing really is working out for Thailand.

Chris 00:22:49 Oh for sure. But this island is unique because when you move out to the country, we can call this moving to the country if you want.

Chris 00:22:56 Yeah. Generally you're going to be surrounded by people who may not be that sophisticated. They might be lovely, but they might not be well-traveled, sure, or aware of the greater world. But the way I described Salt Spring is it's city people living in the country.

Greg 00:23:13 Oh, okay.

Chris 00:23:14 And yeah. And of course, we're super close to two amazing cities, which is Victoria and Vancouver. and so people here, they've traveled. You know, not everyone, of course, but a significant percentage of people have done their year backpacking trip in Asia or down in South America. So, you know, maybe back in my hometown in Connecticut, if I said, oh, I've been to Thailand, they'd say, oh, isn't that dangerous?

Greg 00:23:40 Oh yeah.

Chris 00:23:40 Okay. Yeah. You know, and in point of fact, of course, New Haven, Connecticut is infinitely more dangerous than Thailand could ever be. Is where you're from. Yeah, that's where I grew up. but here, if you say I've been to Thailand, they'd be like, well, the Andaman Sea side or the South China Sea side.

Chris 00:23:58 Oh, really? You know, or did you go north or did you stay in, Bangkok? They know about it. And they just appreciate, you know, and they're interested to hear exactly where you went and what you did right in Thailand. So it's very you know, the people are we're all sort of on the same page here. Interesting. Yeah. We appreciate you appreciate each other's, you know, travels and stories.

Greg 00:24:21 Can you get any Thai food on Salt Spring. I don't know, Thai restaurant.

Chris 00:24:27 There's no Thai restaurant. Once in a while, there'll be a Thai pop up at a restaurant. Okay. But we can get decent Asian ingredients here. Of course, we're not going to get such great tropical fruit or things like that. And we miss that.

Greg 00:24:41 You know, fresh mango smoothies. Oh.

Chris 00:24:43 Occasionally we will get mango steins at a place called Earth Candy farm here on the island, and we'll always buy those in once in a while. A so-so mango might come up from Mexico.

Chris 00:24:54 But I mean.

Greg 00:24:55 Float a float over on the water.

Chris 00:24:56 Yeah, but I mean, it's. You kind of learn after living in a place like Thailand, that when you're in Thailand, eat or where you're in anywhere, eat what's good there, you know, like if you're on the Everest base camp trek, you probably could get pizza. But should you get pizza on that track? you should get d'Albert or whatever else they're serving. They do that very well. Yeah. Pizza's not going to be great. And so yeah that's cool.

Greg 00:25:23 Well, your your kids lived in Thailand too when they were younger. And do they have fond memories? I mean, your kids probably just have flashes of images and stuff. yearning to go back or anything?

Chris 00:25:34 Yeah. Oh, yeah. they talk about it all the time. So when we actually moved there, you helped us find an apartment, and we moved down there very quickly without much planning.

Greg 00:25:46 Right. That was on Soi just off of right by Chung on CBS station.

Chris 00:25:49 Yeah. This was when Fukushima happened, and we weren't exactly sure what was going to happen with the reactors. And so for one month, we just said, let's go live in a service apartment in Bangkok, because my son was very young and my wife was very pregnant with our daughter, and you really hooked us up. You know, it never would have happened without you. You sent us a video of this apartment, which turned out to be great.

Greg 00:26:12 I remember, that was fun.

Chris 00:26:13 Yeah. And you introduced me to someone who could help me get a journalist visa. But we went down there on such. We were so far out on a limb we had no long term visa, okay? We had almost no stuff. We had an apartment that we had never seen and my wife was very, very pregnant.

Greg 00:26:30 Jesus. Yeah. All rolled it together. That was. Yeah, that must have been a hell of a leap.

Chris 00:26:34 Yeah, I, I kind of felt like I've never committed so hard for something so sketchy.

Chris 00:26:39 Luckily, I knew Thailand and Hideaway. My wife had been down to Thailand once, so we both had, good experiences. And so while we were living there, we would say, you know, my son was very young and he would sometimes cry in a restaurant. And in Japan, people there nice and their polite, but they don't love kids the way they love kids in Thailand.

Greg 00:27:01 You've talked about that before, the the attention that kids get.

Chris 00:27:05 Oh yeah. Kids stars. They're just stars of the show and they they can get away with almost anything. And so we'd be sitting in a restaurant and my son would start crying, and a waitress would just come scoop him up and just go away with them, and it takes a bit of getting used to.

Greg 00:27:21 It could be alarming at first.

Chris 00:27:22 Yeah. Yeah. You know, a stranger in a in a country, that you don't live in has just disappeared with your son into the back of a kitchen or something without taking them out to the street.

Chris 00:27:34 And you, you know, you get a bit nervous, but, you know, then then they come back with, like, there would be three of them clustered around him, and he'll be smiling, and they'll just be remarking how cute he is and like. And then we're on the Skytrain. And when my wife got on the train, I might be carrying my son and they would see how pregnant she was. It was like a fight among the ties to be like, who can have the honour of giving up the seat for this woman? Like she was not permitted to stand, you know. And so it was just a wonderful experience. You know, I already loved Thailand from going down to the islands. I love the Thai beaches and snorkeling and stuff. And so we went back to Japan for a couple months, and then it was kind of a cold day, and I got home from working in my office, and Hardaway said to me, because we were already thinking about moving out.

Chris 00:28:24 I had been in Japan a long time, and we were just thinking about maybe we should try somewhere else. We were looking at Switzerland and Portland, Oregon, places like that. Right. And then hideaway just said to me, what about Thailand? And I just looked at her and said, if you're serious, we can be there tomorrow. Let's just go. And so that's when we contacted you, right? Yeah. Because I had, I had we had met because you were researching an article for the Toronto Star about people running tour businesses. Right.

Greg 00:28:56 And, and as we're wrapping up here, let's, let's talk about that. So you, you run, some walking tours and you have a really, really great resource website for Japan.

Chris 00:29:07 Yeah.

Greg 00:29:07 Which you still manage. Right.

Chris 00:29:09 Yeah. It's been amazing. I was working for Lonely Planet. I did Lonely Planet Guide books for about 20 years. And finally, just a colleague of mine decided to start running walking tours. And he did well because obviously he was known as the Lonely Planet guy.

Chris 00:29:23 And so I figured I should do this. Start offering guided tours in Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka. And then we when we decided to move, to Thailand, of course, I reached up to you, and you really hooked me up, you know, basically gave me a life in Thailand. And, you put me in touch with a guy who, did websites about, Thailand, and you thought we could perhaps do something together about Japan. And that gentleman became my business partner at Inside Kyoto, which is an online guidebook inside Kyoto.

Greg 00:30:05 Com. Yep. Right.

Chris 00:30:06 Exactly. And we also have inside Osaka. Com and truly tokyo.com.

Greg 00:30:11 Okay.

Chris 00:30:11 And those have been. absolutely fantastic for us.

Greg 00:30:16 They're great resources. I like scrolling through them because, you know, I'm a huge Japan nerd and just just seeing all the little the hidden details, you know, the same thing that that I find after two decades in Thailand, you know, all of you go behind this house, you'll see a special thing.

Greg 00:30:30 Or, you know, the history of this wall is interesting or something really, really strange like that. Your website is full of stuff like that.

Chris 00:30:38 Yeah. I mean, we've been at it for several years now, probably seven years. So it's kind of a hodgepodge and amalgamation of all my little favorite places, and we try to keep it updated. And so that's been really good for us. And it gave us the flexibility to consider moving somewhere like this like Canada. Right, right. And you know, I can work remotely. of course I have to go to, you know, all those cities. I stopped doing Bangkok and I stopped doing Hong Kong tours, but I, you know, Japan is still full steam ahead, and it's really my main thing. And it dovetails very nicely with my tour business where we offer small, intimate, usually walking tours of Kyoto, of Kyoto, Nara, Tokyo, just the main tourist cities. Yeah. so it's just been a fantastic, you know, and we owe that to you because I certainly never would have met my business partner.

Greg 00:31:36 You're too kind. Well, let's work on a salt spring. like serious salt spring or something.

Chris 00:31:42 I'm thinking about it, man. I mean, it would be a completely. It would be a much smaller thing. It would just be kind of like a labor of love.

Greg 00:31:49 Maybe a Wikipedia page, but,

Chris 00:31:50 Yeah. I mean, I just wonder how many of my neighbors would hate me for, I mean, right. A lot of people, I think, to a certain extent, try to keep this a well-kept secret. Right. And it can't really absorb. It can't absorb quite as many tourists as Bangkok. I would say.

Greg 00:32:06 I don't think.

Chris 00:32:07 So.

Greg 00:32:08 We're we're in your car right now, and we're driving some by some very bucolic English England looking green fields and pine trees and, It's a it's a lovely little island. Oh, that's great man. Well, thank you for giving us an update. And every time you pass through Bangkok, anytime you want to jettison your plans and come out for some some street food, let me know, because that's where I'll be.

Chris 00:32:30 Oh, for sure. That's high on my list. Not just transit the place. And now that now that we got our place set up here, I hope it's kind of a a good cycle. You come here on a regular basis and answer the phone on a regular basis.

Greg 00:32:44 That's our cue to go. Thanks, Chris.

Chris 00:32:46 All right. All right, Greg, thank you.

Greg 00:32:48 Thanks, Matt. All right. We are here with the OG, co-host of the Bangkok Podcast, living in Victoria, British Columbia. Mr.. Tony. Joe, Tony, good to see you again, man.

Tony 00:33:09 Hey, Greg. Good to see you.

Greg 00:33:11 What's keeping you busy these days? You're living in Victoria, which is coincidentally the same city my mom lives in. That's why I'm here. And, what's going on with Tony? Catch us up.

Tony 00:33:19 Yeah. For those of you who don't know Victoria, no one knows where Victoria is. So whenever I travel, I tell people I'm from Vancouver and people are like, oh, Vancouver.

Tony 00:33:26 And then the funny thing is, is I've always found, like, people in Asia, they don't really know, like Canada too much for some reason, maybe Europe, I can't remember. But like, people always ask me like, do you eat poutine? Like they seem to know, like Montreal. Okay, actually, I didn't even know what poutine was until I left Canada. Really? I never heard of it.

Greg 00:33:43 They're so funny. I didn't know what it was until I was like, 20, 25. I don't know.

Tony 00:33:48 What it was. And I was like, Trevor, I think it was in Europe or wherever. I can't remember where I was, but people were like, oh, you like poutine? I'm like, I don't even know what that is like. Do you speak French? I'm like, no.

Greg 00:33:57 Are you from Canada? Where are you from, Vancouver or Toronto? Binary choice.

Tony 00:34:02 So yeah, I tell people I'm from like Vancouver. I'm like, oh, Vancouver.

Tony 00:34:06 Yeah, I'm not really from there, but. And then you try to explain why I'm actually in Victoria is on Vancouver Island, but it's not Vancouver. And then they're cross-eyed and they're like, okay, never mind Victoria Island.

Greg 00:34:16 Well never mind.

Tony 00:34:17 So yeah, basically on the west coast of Canada now.

Greg 00:34:22 The tropical tropical Canada, this is a tropical as Canada gets the weather's quite mild out here. That being said man last night he got down to like four degrees I was freezing.

Tony 00:34:31 Yeah. But if you look at Toronto out east it's like -14 or something like that. You know four feet of snow. So this is the the Florida of Canada because it's the most it's the mildest climate in the whole country. And right, that's what a lot of people retire out here.

Greg 00:34:45 Yeah. The the joke is that Victoria is a city for newlyweds. No newlyweds and nearly dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're out here, live in La Vida Loca, and you've put out some, some really great motorcycle touring videos over the past few years.

Greg 00:35:00 What?

Tony 00:35:00 yeah. So, yeah, for those of you who I don't know if anyone remembers or not, but actually, when I moved to Thailand, the first thing I did was start a YouTube channel. You remember that you were in some of my videos.

Greg 00:35:13 Thai factory. Fake you?

Tony 00:35:14 Yeah, yeah, because I was always interested in video. Yeah. I thought that would be a good opportunity to kind of, you know, learn how to feel while documenting my expat life. So I started the YouTube channel. And, then when I came back here, I was kind of like, yeah, I want to kind of get back into doing video. I was doing a little bit of video work in Japan, and so I was like, I want to get a video. And I was trying to think like, what could I film? And I was like, well, I just bought a motorcycle. Why don't I try to film my motorcycle trip? And that first video I made kind of took off and it's done really well.

Tony 00:35:50 So every year since then, I've gone on a new motorcycle trip and filmed it there.

Greg 00:35:54 Really great. Do you put them on your YouTube channel?

Tony 00:35:56 Yeah, my YouTube channel.

Greg 00:35:57 What is it? Give us.

Tony 00:35:58 A plug. Anthony. Joe, it's just my name.

Greg 00:36:00 It's funny because another YouTube video is basically how we met and I was actually talking about this to someone recently, but you're like big video that blew up in Thailand was when you were caught in like a tear gas explosion battle. And the red shirts when it kicked off in 2010.

Tony 00:36:17 Yeah. And the funny thing is, is that do you remember how the podcast got started? It's such a Thai way of like of how that happened is, yeah. Like I that video went viral. Yeah. You had a house party at your place. You invited me at house party. I showed up there. We met. Yeah. I noticed you had a mountain bike and I was in the mountain biking, so you're like, hey, let's go for a ride.

Tony 00:36:39 You know, because you have those videos where you ride around. Yeah, right. So I was like, hey, that sounds cool. So I remember this. We arranged to meet like on a Wednesday or something like that. The bike shop that I was going to rent a bike from. Okay, we get there and the bike shop is closed as they would be on a Wednesday in the middle week for no reason whatsoever.

Greg 00:36:57 I don't remember any of.

Tony 00:36:57 This because it's Thailand, right? Okay, so you're like, hey, that's close. I'm like, why? Like it's Thailand. Oh, okay. Well, I guess we're gonna do something else. So then I remember we went for coffee, and that's what I mentioned to you. I was like, hey, I'm thinking about starting a podcast to accompany my YouTube channel. Oh. And you're like, hey. Yeah, I thought about starting a podcast, too. And that's how that podcast started. So that bike shop had never been closed.

Greg 00:37:19 We wouldn't even be here now.

Tony 00:37:21 We may not even be here.

Greg 00:37:22 I do tell people about us, you know, sitting in front of a laptop going, who's this? We're talking into pantyhose stretched across a cross stitch frame.

Tony 00:37:29 Yeah.

Greg 00:37:30 Good times. So, the guests on the show were pylon, who runs, pylons, kitchen. Hot Thai kitchen. Oh, yeah. She was talking about Thai food. And then I talked to my buddy Chris, and he was talking about how Thailand kind of gets under your skin. Even though he moved away, he still thinks about it a lot. So what are your thoughts on Thailand? You mentioned to me the other day that you still think about it and you like to visit, but what's going on? Is it still under your skin? Do you still think wistfully about it?

Tony 00:37:56 yeah, actually, the thing is, I. I was in Thailand last year for the first time in a while. Yeah, because I was. I went back to Japan to renew my visa.

Tony 00:38:07 I still have a visa in Japan. So I went back there to renew it, and while I was over there, I was like, hey, why don't I take a quick holiday over to Thailand just for a few days and relax and see what it's like over there? And when I was over there, I was kind of like, man, I actually wish I booked more time. I only booked like three days there.

Greg 00:38:25 Oh, yeah.

Tony 00:38:25 Okay. It was just like a quick trip back, you know? And I was like, I really enjoyed my time there. And I was like, man, I kind of actually wish I booked a longer trip here. And so, like I kind of mentioned the other day, I've been toying with the idea of maybe moving back.

Greg 00:38:40 Breaking news.

Tony 00:38:41 Yeah. Because kind of getting a little bit bored of Victoria. I'm not married and I'm not dead, so, you know.

Greg 00:38:51 Oh, you nearly either of them.

Tony 00:38:53 Hopefully. I'm not either one of those.

Tony 00:38:54 So. But, I think kind of like, I kind of missed the experience of living in a new country. The unexpected, you know?

Greg 00:39:06 Yeah.

Tony 00:39:06 And but I'm actually. But I'm at the age now where I'm like, I don't want to go through all this unexpected crap that I don't know anything about. You know, like, I kind of I want to move somewhere new, but somewhere somewhat familiar, a little interesting.

Greg 00:39:19 Yeah, man. Like, at this age, if I move to a new country, I built up a lot of street cred in Thailand. And I don't want to go through, like, resetting that to zero and working on it.

Tony 00:39:28 You know, I don't want to do that either. Right. When I'm young, I'm like, yeah, man, I get ripped off. I'll do all this stuff, I don't care, I'll be fun to venture. Now I'm like, man, I have no time for that. Just give me the straight and narrow.

Tony 00:39:39 So I kind of like thinking just just, you know, just not really research it too much. But I kind of thought, well, I enjoyed my time living in Thailand. I liked it there quite a bit. It'd be kind of fun to kind of move back, maybe for a few years and live that expat life again.

Greg 00:39:56 That's interesting. And it's fun because like, you're not starting from zero, but it's still chaotic enough to give you sort of keep you on your on your toes a bit. Yeah, right. What you don't get in Canada.

Tony 00:40:09 You know what it is. I think we talked about this once a long time ago. Is that when you're in Canada, or are anyone who, I guess when you're in your home country, even if you're away for a while. Like if you for you like you've been in China for, like you said, almost half your life now. Right?

Greg 00:40:22 Next year will be half my life. Yeah, 25.

Tony 00:40:24 Years. But the thing is, almost every day, something unexpected happens, right? Yeah.

Tony 00:40:30 Whereas here, nothing unexpected happens. Everything is predictable. You know how to do everything. Like, nothing is kind of odd or strange. Whereas in Thailand, no matter how long you live there, it's common to experience something unexpected daily.

Greg 00:40:46 Even the stuff that is expected is still cool. Like like riding a motorcycle taxi or eating a noodles on the side of the street. It's. Yeah, it's sort of like, oh, I'm an Asian man.

Tony 00:40:56 So I kind of missed that aspect of it because in Japan it's even worse. I mean, nothing unexpected happens in Japan. They plan unexpected events. In Japan, you're like, okay, we're gonna have ten meetings, and on this day you're going to show up for two minutes late. Oh, okay, guys, you know, so Japan, nothing unexpected happens here. Nothing really does because everyone's old or dead, you know? So I kind of miss a little bit the kind of excitement, feeling of living in a foreign country and be like, man, I can't believe I'm over here.

Tony 00:41:24 Like I'm way on the other side of the world.

Greg 00:41:26 And yeah, yeah, I feel that way for the the hot season. I mean, I'm over here enjoying this cool weather right now. It's like 38 degrees in Bangkok. And even then when I'm sitting there going, oh my God, this is just hot as balls. I kind of still like the the romance of it, the adventure of it, like the reminder that I am living this life outside of what was my original trajectory. Yeah. The norm. Yeah.

Tony 00:41:49 So originally I've had this thought for a while, and originally I tried to move to Europe. I looked I almost had a job with the company, like I do marketing for motorcycle tour company. Oh, cool. Right. Which I thought would be perfect for me with my marketing background, my passion, motorcycles and all that. and that was in Spain, so I was almost going to move to Spain, but it kind of fell through. So I looked at a few other countries I could move to over there, and just getting the visa was really difficult.

Tony 00:42:13 And so I thought, well, you know, I'm fortunately I'm at the age now where I can get that retirement visa.

Tony 00:42:21 So no.

Greg 00:42:22 So that's a double edged sword, isn't it?

Tony 00:42:24 Maybe I might go back to Thailand and, get that visa.

Tony 00:42:29 You know, because one of the things I really do enjoy about living here, though, is not having to worry about visa. Yeah, not having to worry. Have that that mark on your calendar when you got to go to the embassy or whatever you got to do by that date. Right. Yeah. Here. I mean, I don't even know what date my passport expires. I don't I don't have to worry about it.

Greg 00:42:46 If I get Thai citizenship, man, I'm going to staple that thing to my head, my forehead, and just walk around like, I don't have to follow any of your stupid rules for expats.

Tony 00:42:54 You know what's funny is in Japan, they're starting to introduce two tier pricing there.

Greg 00:42:59 Oh, I read about that.

Greg 00:43:00 What's what's going on with that?

Tony 00:43:00 Yeah. Because all the tourists. Right. And the tourists are causing so much chaos because they're not being good little Japanese. And so the Japanese are like, okay, we'll introduce two tier pricing. So I was saying to my mom, I say, what would happen if you went to Japan because she's Japanese, but she she gave up her Japanese citizenship. She has a Canadian citizenship now. Oh, yeah. So I thought, what if you go to Japan? No. You look Japanese. You speak Japanese, you are Japanese, but technically you're not. And I could just see the needle scratch that's going to happen on the Japanese worker's brain. Like, look, wait a minute. You don't have a Japanese ID card? You are Japanese. You speak Japanese? I don't know what to do.

Greg 00:43:40 That is something unplanned. And that's where the matrix glitches out.

Tony 00:43:43 Yeah. You see their brain almost come to a halt for a second and they're like, oh, no.

Greg 00:43:48 I'm actually looking forward to that if I get citizenship in Thailand. It was just like, oh, we need you're this and this and this and just nope, slap that citizenship down.

Tony 00:43:56 Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how they react to that.

Greg 00:43:58 But but it's interesting because the countries like like Canada citizenship is based on basically paperwork. Yeah. But in countries like South Korea, Japan, Thailand it's more like blood.

Tony 00:44:11 Yeah.

Greg 00:44:11 That would that. But they don't do DNA tests yet. Yeah. That's maybe that's coming. Well, I hope you move back and it'll be good to have you in town again.

Tony 00:44:20 And yeah, I'll definitely let you know. I probably have to come back to Japan next year again for visa, so I'll probably make a little bit longer trip over next year. Yeah. And, kind of I'm kind of curious how it's changed, though. One of the things that kind of struck me, I remember, when I last lived in Bangkok was the cost of living was going up.

Tony 00:44:40 Yeah. Ain't cheap. Specifically, I was in this, like, restaurant or whatever, and I ordered a tea, and it was almost like 300 baht. Oh, yeah. I was like, what? Like I'm paying for hot water and leaves.

Pailin 00:44:55 What, are you kidding me? That's almost.

Tony 00:44:58 Like $10. Actually, now it's almost $15 Canadian, you know. Jeez. Like water and leaves.

Greg 00:45:03 Yeah, you got to. You got to work a little bit harder to find those cracks. Like, Bangkok is a cheap city to live in if you know where the cracks are. Right. Right. But you got to. You got to work hard to find those now, whereas before it was easy. You just go over there, go to this Soi go to that soi. But now those boys don't exist because they're. They're so in love with the Singapore way of doing things. Now they're pushing all the street food into hawker centres and things like that.

Tony 00:45:24 Are they really.

Greg 00:45:25 Yeah.

Greg 00:45:25 Which I think is stupid. If people wanted that, they'd go to Singapore. They want Thailand because of Thailand, but. Yeah. But, anyway, yeah, it's not a cheap city. And, you know, things like one Bangkok, the gigantic new vertical city in the middle of this, of downtown that's gone up there changing the the landscape and this and the culture. So you can't.

Tony 00:45:46 Have a like if I move back, I don't know if I would necessarily live in Bangkok or not. I haven't visited many of the other cities very much. Just been to Chiang Mai a couple times and all that, so I can't say what it would be like there, but I did. I did kind of like the last year I lived there. I was kind of like, do we really need another shopping mall in Sukhumvit? Like, really, you know? Like, yeah, of course it's so. Yeah. And like $10 tea. I'm like, come on, man, this is Thai that like, what the hell? So I don't know where I'll end up, but it is something I'm kind of thinking about now.

Greg 00:46:16 Interesting. Well, I'll start up a new video channel. I'll tell you. You remember the Michael Jackson video bad, where they. Those two guys had their hands tied together with a handkerchief, and then they each got a knife. You have to do that with Ed to fight for the co-host position of the podcast. Or you could move to, you move to, like.

Tony 00:46:32 Either move to Chiang Mai or Chiang Mai. Podcast.

Greg 00:46:35 We could we could be frenemies. That's cool man. Well, thanks for thanks for chatting. Good to see you again. And, keep us posted. And when you're in town, let us know. Yeah, we'll have another catch up and I'll take you for tea, but I'll take you to a cheap place.

Tony 00:46:49 Yeah, definitely.

Greg 00:46:51 All right. I'll take it easy. And I guess that's all for this week. Guys. That was a little bit different than usual. Three different interviews recorded in three different cities. One in a studio, one while driving in a car and one while walking around downtown Victoria.

Greg 00:47:13 But we'll be back to our regularly scheduled schedule next week when I'm back in Bangkok, and Ed and I can crash our heads together and think of new topics and ideas, some interesting interviews coming up, and some cool things to talk about. So thanks for listening, guys, and we'll see you back here next week.