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063 I Got Myself Into This · bit of a Rambler

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello there. My name is Kai, and I am a
0:03
Speaker 1: bit of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and
0:07
Speaker 1: tell stories. And one of the things I didn't learn
0:11
Speaker 1: very well for a long time is not to drink
0:15
Speaker 1: so much that you put yourself in dangerous situations. So
0:20
Speaker 1: this series of episodes are going to be called I
0:23
Speaker 1: got myself into this because none of these unfortunate events
0:27
Speaker 1: happened to me as entirely the fault of some outside actor,
0:32
Speaker 1: and in fact, almost all of them are entirely my
0:35
Speaker 1: fault and something I did or chose to do, like
0:38
Speaker 1: drinking beers and then doing something dumb that resulted in
0:42
Speaker 1: consequences that I did eventually learn from. And this is
0:46
Speaker 1: not a recommendation of how you should travel or anything
0:50
Speaker 1: like that. This is just saying that even though I
0:53
Speaker 1: did a whole bunch of dumb things, my travel experience
0:57
Speaker 1: has been great overall. And really these are just entertaining
1:01
Speaker 1: stories so that you can listen to someone who lives
1:06
Speaker 1: a little more recklessly than you and doesn't recommend it
1:09
Speaker 1: for most people because it's a crazy thing to do
1:13
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. So with that in mind,
1:16
Speaker 1: just have fun with these. These are things that are
1:20
Speaker 1: my fault that I thought it would be fun to
1:22
Speaker 1: share and that some of you might find funny. I
1:26
Speaker 1: do like talking about these again. I still find a
1:29
Speaker 1: lot of them funny. Remembering them now does make me laugh.
1:33
Speaker 1: So I'd like to share some dangerous things I happened
1:37
Speaker 1: to cross and some stupid things I did. I want
1:40
Speaker 1: to start with the most fun consequence of drinking. That
1:46
Speaker 1: was still very dangerous, but it's definitely the strangest event
1:51
Speaker 1: that turned out okay. So when I travel, I talked
1:56
Speaker 1: about walking before. I like to travel at a pace.
1:59
Speaker 1: I don't like to rush around or run some hectic
2:02
Speaker 1: speed to get where I'm going. When we went to
2:06
Speaker 1: eat Showcow, Bill and I would usually ride bicycles. It
2:11
Speaker 1: was a good way to discover new spots, and it
2:13
Speaker 1: was a good way to exercise some because we knew
2:17
Speaker 1: we were going to be drinking a bunch of beer and
2:18
Speaker 1: eating way too much food, so bicycling was kind of
2:22
Speaker 1: a way to offset all the calories we were taking in.
2:25
Speaker 1: Plus we both liked bicycling. But when we cycled, Bill
2:31
Speaker 1: always pumped real hard on the pedals, and he was
2:35
Speaker 1: always getting somewhere, which is how most people bicycle. Those
2:39
Speaker 1: leg pumpers. I am much more like if you pictured
2:43
Speaker 1: a late seventies Italian movie, just sort of gently pedaling along,
2:52
Speaker 1: like looking around at the sun in the sky around me,
2:57
Speaker 1: just like look at this, look at this world. And
3:00
Speaker 1: by me. So frequently I would have to pedal to
3:03
Speaker 1: keep up with Bill while he was shooting his way
3:06
Speaker 1: home after another barbecue or hotpot or something. And after
3:11
Speaker 1: a rousing bout of beer and barbecue one night, I
3:14
Speaker 1: was real drunk, real happy, and contented and decided to
3:20
Speaker 1: let him shoot off like an arrow and I would
3:22
Speaker 1: just enjoy my leisurely ride home. But after I was
3:26
Speaker 1: riding for like forty minutes by myself and he had
3:29
Speaker 1: continued to the town we lived in, I looked around
3:33
Speaker 1: and realized I had no idea where I was. And
3:37
Speaker 1: this wasn't a huge concern because I knew I was
3:39
Speaker 1: in the general area. I was heading west out of
3:42
Speaker 1: the city, and like I said, Beijing was so much
3:46
Speaker 1: less developed even a decade ago than it is now
3:49
Speaker 1: that there weren't many roads leading out the general direction
3:52
Speaker 1: I was going. So I was going in the right direction,
3:55
Speaker 1: and I knew the name of the town, and I
3:57
Speaker 1: had asked people before, where is this town? And they
4:00
Speaker 1: pointed me, and eventually I got back to my town.
4:04
Speaker 1: This all happened like a couple months, maybe three months
4:08
Speaker 1: tops after I got to Beijing. I don't even think
4:11
Speaker 1: it was three months. So I just wasn't familiar with
4:14
Speaker 1: the area, but I knew generally where I was heading.
4:16
Speaker 1: But I had also just had a giant dinner with
4:19
Speaker 1: we'll say twenty beers. Chinese beers are two percent generally,
4:24
Speaker 1: so I was pretty tired, and I decided that I
4:28
Speaker 1: could lay down because most of it was just empty
4:32
Speaker 1: fields all around me, take a nap, and then continue
4:36
Speaker 1: on my ride in a couple hours. And if I
4:39
Speaker 1: just kept going down the road and started asking people
4:41
Speaker 1: where is my town by Jiatuan, someone would be able
4:45
Speaker 1: to tell me where to go, and like, which road,
4:47
Speaker 1: Oh you just went on whatever you took a right
4:49
Speaker 1: instead of a left. Plus I wouldn't be as sleepy drunk,
4:54
Speaker 1: so I would understand any directions they gave me better.
4:59
Speaker 1: So that was my I was going to find a
5:02
Speaker 1: comfy spot to just lie under the stars. It was
5:07
Speaker 1: I was already fairly outside of the outer Ring road
5:11
Speaker 1: as far as I could judge, so it wasn't very busy.
5:14
Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of cars or anything, and then
5:16
Speaker 1: I would just take a nap, wake up and continue
5:19
Speaker 1: my journey from there. The next thing I know, my
5:25
Speaker 1: eyes snap open, and I'm looking up at the lightning sky,
5:31
Speaker 1: the morning sky, and it's not just getting brighter, it's
5:36
Speaker 1: definitely the sun is up, maybe seven am, so it's
5:39
Speaker 1: several hours later. I didn't rest my eyes. I fell asleep,
5:44
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of cars, like morning rush
5:46
Speaker 1: hour cars going on as everybody got to work. But
5:49
Speaker 1: I was confused because I was already outside of the city,
5:53
Speaker 1: so I don't know why there was why the cars
5:55
Speaker 1: were so loud around me if I had slept off
5:58
Speaker 1: the side of the road. So then I looked to
6:01
Speaker 1: my left and then I froze, and I looked to
6:06
Speaker 1: my right really slowly, and I froze because I wasn't
6:12
Speaker 1: sleeping in the middle of a traffic lane, which is
6:15
Speaker 1: maybe what that sounds like. But what happened. I did
6:18
Speaker 1: decide to sleep on the railing of an overpass over
6:25
Speaker 1: the last Outer Ring Highway, So, like I said, I
6:29
Speaker 1: had passed outside of that, but I must have decided
6:33
Speaker 1: that the railing was wide enough that it looked like
6:36
Speaker 1: a comfy spot to lay down. So my spine and
6:41
Speaker 1: head and both legs were kicked up on the railing
6:46
Speaker 1: of an overpass above the highway, and when I woke up,
6:51
Speaker 1: I was just lying supine, reclined on this railing, on
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Speaker 1: a railing, and when I looked left, I saw rush
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Speaker 1: hour traffic zooming underneath me, hundreds of cars every minute,
7:05
Speaker 1: just you know, roaring down the highway. So I slowly
7:12
Speaker 1: took my one crossed foot over the other one and
7:17
Speaker 1: then leaned to my right until I jumped down onto
7:22
Speaker 1: the sidewalk of the overpass bridge that I was sleeping
7:27
Speaker 1: on that I had been sleeping on on the railing
7:30
Speaker 1: of My bicycle was next to me on its kickstand
7:34
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk, unlocked. They have giant sidewalks, so it
7:38
Speaker 1: wasn't taking up half the sidewalk, but you know, it
7:42
Speaker 1: was a bicycle on the sidewalk, just parked haphazardly on
7:46
Speaker 1: its kickstand. My backpack with its laptop inside was wide open,
7:51
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I must have gotten something out
7:53
Speaker 1: of my backpack and then I just left that on
7:55
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, and I wasn't alone on this bridge, like
7:59
Speaker 1: a bunch of people were walking down the sidewalk back
8:02
Speaker 1: and forth, but they all just must have seen the
8:05
Speaker 1: crazy Lauai sleeping on the railing of an overpass and
8:09
Speaker 1: been like, yeah, sometimes foreigners sleep on overpass railings. They're
8:14
Speaker 1: just weird like that. And none of them took my laptop,
8:18
Speaker 1: which is shocking because China is the only place I
8:23
Speaker 1: ever had things taken if you leave them alone for
8:26
Speaker 1: a second. But that did not happen here. I'm thinking
8:31
Speaker 1: it was because I was farther out of the city,
8:33
Speaker 1: because in my little town, everyone's real laid back, very
8:36
Speaker 1: respectful in a different way than one from the USA
8:41
Speaker 1: might recognize. But I found the people living outside of
8:45
Speaker 1: the city generally safer and more respectful of personal belongings.
8:51
Speaker 1: And one of those data points is my open backpack
8:54
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk that I was asleep next to with
8:57
Speaker 1: my unlocked bike, and none of my longings were absconded with.
9:02
Speaker 1: And while that's kind of remarkable to me, the amazing
9:05
Speaker 1: thing is that I managed to sleep on the railing
9:09
Speaker 1: of a bridge for a good five hours straight without
9:16
Speaker 1: tipping over either onto the bridge or down into the underpass.
9:21
Speaker 1: With rush hour traffic, and that no one tapped my
9:25
Speaker 1: shoulder to check if I was okay and jolted me awake,
9:29
Speaker 1: so that I got surprised. They just kept walking on past.
9:33
Speaker 1: That's the image from this story I like to remember
9:36
Speaker 1: the most, or I like to think about just serenely
9:41
Speaker 1: snoring away on the railing of this bridge, and everybody
9:46
Speaker 1: in the city just going about their day walking in
9:50
Speaker 1: into the city over this overpass. And so I picked
9:53
Speaker 1: up my backpack, got on my bike, kept going down
9:56
Speaker 1: the road, recognized a few things. I was on the
9:59
Speaker 1: right way home, and I got back home eventually. But
10:02
Speaker 1: I never slept on an overpass again, and I believe
10:07
Speaker 1: I actually considered it some other drunk night after a barbecue,
10:13
Speaker 1: I saw like a particularly wide railing, and I was like,
10:17
Speaker 1: that must be what I thought that other time I
10:20
Speaker 1: slept on a railing, because it does look pretty wide
10:24
Speaker 1: and comfortable for a bridge railing. But luckily I didn't
10:28
Speaker 1: take that risk more than one time. Since I'm talking
10:33
Speaker 1: about stupid things I did after I drank, though, I
10:37
Speaker 1: might as well talk about Oh god, I just thought
10:41
Speaker 1: of another one. Okay, you know this is the first
10:46
Speaker 1: stupid drunk thing I ever did while traveling outside of China,
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Speaker 1: like seriously dumb, and let's just get right into it.
10:57
Speaker 1: So I was on my first trip outside of China
11:02
Speaker 1: after I decided to permanently leave, which I was going
11:07
Speaker 1: to leave in October, it turned out and Octoberfest would
11:12
Speaker 1: be starting in Munich, and I thought, yeah, sure, let's
11:14
Speaker 1: just go to Munich and you can say you've been
11:17
Speaker 1: to Octoberfest. Which the food there was fine, the music
11:22
Speaker 1: there was loud, I don't know, it was fine. I
11:26
Speaker 1: liked the quiet beer tents outside of the main Octoberfest park,
11:30
Speaker 1: and I loved my little campground that I was in.
11:33
Speaker 1: But maybe I don't understand enough or I didn't understand
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Speaker 1: enough about German culture at the time, especially to really
11:39
Speaker 1: get into the swing of the celebration. The thing was,
11:43
Speaker 1: I didn't really need to. I loved being in Munich,
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Speaker 1: in Germany. It was a new country after I had
11:50
Speaker 1: been in China for a few years. I was excited
11:53
Speaker 1: to find out all these new things. The city itself
11:56
Speaker 1: is gorgeous, the architecture of the parks. I was speaking German,
12:00
Speaker 1: and it was a fun time regardless of where I was,
12:02
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to experience Octoberfest and just see
12:05
Speaker 1: what it was like in real life. And I did.
12:08
Speaker 1: Now the stupid thing occurred back at my little camp
12:12
Speaker 1: that I mentioned I loved. There was a small town,
12:17
Speaker 1: maybe a twenty minute walk away from this big outdoor
12:21
Speaker 1: field encampment where all of us Octoberfest poor travelers were
12:25
Speaker 1: staying at the time, and I just had a little
12:27
Speaker 1: tent there. I still hadn't gotten rid of my tent yet,
12:30
Speaker 1: so I would walk through the town every morning and day,
12:33
Speaker 1: and that was more fun than Octoberfest for me. There
12:36
Speaker 1: was bakeries and delis, and once I discovered this hardware store,
12:41
Speaker 1: I was really excited, not because of the hardware, but
12:44
Speaker 1: because they had like a homemade treats section, and one
12:49
Speaker 1: of them was a BlackBerry wine and elderberry wine. So
12:54
Speaker 1: instead of buying a ten dollars beer from Octoberfest and
12:59
Speaker 1: then walking around the extremely crowded fairground and looking at stuff,
13:06
Speaker 1: I could buy a ten dollars jug of this BlackBerry
13:10
Speaker 1: wine and enjoy that on a leisurely stroll around or
13:14
Speaker 1: in the comfort of my tent, which was set up
13:18
Speaker 1: like a cozy little camper nest. Oh, and there was
13:21
Speaker 1: a food bar there, so you could get French fries
13:23
Speaker 1: and small snacks, and I got a bunch of cured
13:29
Speaker 1: Deli meats and cheeses and enjoyed BlackBerry wine at the
13:32
Speaker 1: dining area they had there. So that was a pretty
13:35
Speaker 1: good time. It lulled me into this sense of security,
13:40
Speaker 1: and I even saw travelers around me being kind to
13:43
Speaker 1: other travelers and sharing food and drink, and I got
13:48
Speaker 1: into it. We all shared stuff. I actually met the
13:51
Speaker 1: magician kid from that meme where there's a bunch of
13:55
Speaker 1: kids walking in a line getting a certificate and then
13:58
Speaker 1: one of them snaps out a magic wand and looks
14:02
Speaker 1: at the camera directly like, yeah, I'm wearing a cloak,
14:06
Speaker 1: this is a wand, I'm a wizard, and then keeps
14:08
Speaker 1: walking on. I met that kid when he was like
14:11
Speaker 1: fifteen years older because I was a vine or something
14:13
Speaker 1: I can't remember, and he did magic tricks for us there,
14:17
Speaker 1: and he showed us the meme and then looked at
14:19
Speaker 1: him and we're like, yeah, that pretty much looks like him.
14:21
Speaker 1: Maybe it wasn't, but it definitely looked like the guy.
14:25
Speaker 1: And that would kind of be a weird, really specific
14:29
Speaker 1: claim if that wasn't actually him, but he became a
14:33
Speaker 1: magician and still was into it and did a bunch
14:35
Speaker 1: of coin tricks for us when we were all sharing
14:37
Speaker 1: wine and eating French fries and chicken wings or whatever.
14:41
Speaker 1: So it was a very communal experience, and it was
14:43
Speaker 1: my first camping, traveling experience on the road. I had
14:49
Speaker 1: traveled to China and lived there for years, but you know,
14:52
Speaker 1: I was still living in an apartment there. I was
14:54
Speaker 1: still living in a city. I was still going to
14:56
Speaker 1: a job. And here in Munich, I was free completely
15:00
Speaker 1: for the first time for many responsibilities. I had money
15:02
Speaker 1: to travel for an indefinite amount of time. I just
15:06
Speaker 1: had a backpack on my back. I did have the
15:08
Speaker 1: tent still, but that was just about it. So being
15:11
Speaker 1: in this big traveler, much more hippie seeming community, I
15:15
Speaker 1: felt pretty comfortable around everyone in there, and so and
15:19
Speaker 1: I was perpetually unsober, not wasted all the time, but
15:23
Speaker 1: always floating on a bit of a buzz. I wasn't
15:26
Speaker 1: thinking as carefully as I might otherwise have. So there
15:31
Speaker 1: were great showers at this facility, also, this campground that
15:35
Speaker 1: I was paying to camp in. So I went inside
15:38
Speaker 1: and I was going to take a shower and most
15:41
Speaker 1: of my stuff I left back in my tent, so
15:44
Speaker 1: all I had on me where my jeans and shirt.
15:47
Speaker 1: But I didn't want my jeans to get wet because
15:49
Speaker 1: they took a long time to dry, so I left
15:52
Speaker 1: my jeans hanging on the outside of the shower door stall,
15:55
Speaker 1: where there was a hook for them to hang. But
15:59
Speaker 1: some of you might be thinking, shouldn't you take your
16:02
Speaker 1: pants with your presumably wallet inside the stall, You should,
16:07
Speaker 1: I didn't. Halfway through the shower, I heard a weird
16:10
Speaker 1: noise and opened the door, and no one was in
16:12
Speaker 1: the room, so I thought I was hearing things, But
16:16
Speaker 1: that was the sound of someone going through my jeans
16:19
Speaker 1: and rattling the door, probably from pulling on the jeans,
16:23
Speaker 1: pulling on the hook connected to the door, and then
16:26
Speaker 1: running away with my wallet, which was already a problem
16:30
Speaker 1: because I did have all of the money I took
16:33
Speaker 1: out of the ATM a couple days ago in there,
16:36
Speaker 1: but was actually a bigger problem because right before I
16:39
Speaker 1: took the shower, I had received a priority mail package
16:44
Speaker 1: from my parents in the United States, because it had
16:48
Speaker 1: my birth certificate and my Social Security card in it,
16:52
Speaker 1: and I had just put them in my wallet forty
16:55
Speaker 1: five minutes before, but I figured I would take a
16:58
Speaker 1: shower first before I secured them inside my rucksack, inside
17:03
Speaker 1: my tent. Should have done that, didn't do that, got
17:06
Speaker 1: my wallet stolen, So I lost my driver's license, my
17:10
Speaker 1: social Security card, my birth certificate, my passport was in
17:15
Speaker 1: my other pocket, and they went for the wallet, of course,
17:21
Speaker 1: so I did still have my passport. And after I
17:25
Speaker 1: figure out what happened and realized how dumb and trusting
17:28
Speaker 1: I had been for no reason. There's no reason you
17:31
Speaker 1: should have been that dumb or trusting. But I was
17:33
Speaker 1: just going with the flow at that point, and I
17:36
Speaker 1: do still tend to let the flow direct me. But
17:38
Speaker 1: I do make sure that important documents and my wallet
17:41
Speaker 1: are secured and within visible sight, and I don't leave
17:44
Speaker 1: them in a public area anymore because knowledge is power.
17:49
Speaker 1: And I checked back every day for the following two weeks.
17:52
Speaker 1: I was there to see if they at least returned
17:54
Speaker 1: the wallet with the important documents and license, even if
17:57
Speaker 1: they just took the cash. But they didn't. I don't
17:59
Speaker 1: know what happened to any of that. I reported those
18:03
Speaker 1: documents having been stolen. The US government basically enters you
18:09
Speaker 1: into an Excel spreadsheet, puts a little dot next to
18:12
Speaker 1: your name, so that if your identity is cod doing
18:16
Speaker 1: anything weird, they can be like, Okay, it's probably that
18:18
Speaker 1: guy who got his identity stolen. I got lucky. Nothing
18:22
Speaker 1: ever happened to me. They probably just took the cash
18:24
Speaker 1: and then threw the wallet away in the bottom of
18:26
Speaker 1: Octoberfest trash. And that's lying in a Munich dump somewhere
18:32
Speaker 1: thirty feet underground. So that was just me being naive
18:35
Speaker 1: and believing in the power of traveling, which is an
18:40
Speaker 1: extremely powerful guiding force. But yeah, don't leave valuables in
18:47
Speaker 1: a public place and then lock yourself on the other
18:52
Speaker 1: side of a door, away from your valuables. Yeah, it's
18:56
Speaker 1: not that other travelers aren't kind and gracious, or campgrounds
19:00
Speaker 1: aren't safe and relatively secure. They are. This is more
19:05
Speaker 1: like I decided to go scuba diving and then left
19:09
Speaker 1: my tank at home and wanted to see what would
19:12
Speaker 1: happen if I breathed seawater. Oh boy. I met this
19:17
Speaker 1: girl later that evening who showed me she had a
19:20
Speaker 1: card in a bluetooth little fob, so like if her
19:24
Speaker 1: card in her wallet got taken too, far away from
19:27
Speaker 1: the fob in her other pocket. Then it started beeping
19:29
Speaker 1: and she would know it was separated from her, and
19:31
Speaker 1: I was like, you won't believe what I just did.
19:34
Speaker 1: And then for like ten minutes she just explained to
19:37
Speaker 1: me how I was stupid and didn't I realize how
19:40
Speaker 1: dumb that was, and what was wrong with me that
19:43
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that how dumb was I? Anyway, That's
19:47
Speaker 1: how I learned to pay a minimum of attention to
19:50
Speaker 1: the belongings I have. And I have never knock on
19:53
Speaker 1: wood lost anything since that is not true. I have
19:57
Speaker 1: never lost a critical document again. This one time, I
20:02
Speaker 1: was bicycling in Beijing and I hit a bump on
20:06
Speaker 1: a downhill slope and a bag I had attached to
20:11
Speaker 1: my like a saddle bag, and I checked it before
20:14
Speaker 1: I went down this hill. And then I went down
20:18
Speaker 1: the hill and when I looked down, the saddle bag
20:19
Speaker 1: was gone, and I was like, oh, okay. So I
20:22
Speaker 1: just rode back up to the hill like a one
20:24
Speaker 1: minute ride, and it was gone, and the streets were empty.
20:28
Speaker 1: Nothing was there. There were a few people, but someone
20:31
Speaker 1: must have saw it, grabbed it ran away. In the
20:34
Speaker 1: two minutes. We'll say that it took for me to
20:37
Speaker 1: get back up the hill to where it must have
20:40
Speaker 1: fallen off, because I checked it right before I went
20:42
Speaker 1: down the hill. I did lose my laptop and something else,
20:48
Speaker 1: but I had my phone and my wallet in my
20:49
Speaker 1: pockets and my passport, so I still had everything I needed.
20:52
Speaker 1: I still made my flight. It was just a very
20:55
Speaker 1: bizarre experience. That was the only other thing I've ever Nope, no,
21:00
Speaker 1: that's not true either. I actually got drunk at a
21:02
Speaker 1: barbecue and left my laptop in a backpack on the
21:06
Speaker 1: table and then calmly rode away on a bicycle, and
21:10
Speaker 1: when I went back a few minutes later, and then
21:13
Speaker 1: when I went back for it, it was gone. So laptops
21:16
Speaker 1: are like not expensive in China, so it sounds like
21:20
Speaker 1: they're not cheap. You know, there are a hundred bucks
21:22
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I had so much free money to
21:26
Speaker 1: spend that losing a laptop did not hurt me at all.
21:32
Speaker 1: It was just another dumb symptom of being drunk and
21:36
Speaker 1: having too much money for the first time, and being
21:39
Speaker 1: younger and just not paying attention to the things I
21:41
Speaker 1: should have paid attention to, and even losing all of
21:44
Speaker 1: my documents was only dangerous in an obscure, roundabout way.
21:48
Speaker 1: I wasn't in any immediate direct or physical danger because
21:52
Speaker 1: I lost my documents. And there are plenty of services
21:55
Speaker 1: around for tourists who meet unfortunate situations, or in my case,
22:00
Speaker 1: get themselves into unfortunate situations. In contrast, the next story
22:06
Speaker 1: is more dangerous, but again was entirely of my own doing,
22:12
Speaker 1: which was while I was in Thailand, and it was
22:14
Speaker 1: certainly not dangerous because any of the people there. I
22:18
Speaker 1: was walking between cities, and I did that. I had
22:22
Speaker 1: already been walking through a few cities in other countries
22:24
Speaker 1: and it was fun, and so I was doing it
22:27
Speaker 1: through Thailand too. I just liked following an offline map.
22:30
Speaker 1: I had maps me and I would just look around
22:33
Speaker 1: and see what road looked okay, or what road went
22:36
Speaker 1: over a mountain that would have a good view. And
22:38
Speaker 1: that's how I was doing. I was just going along
22:40
Speaker 1: and following the offline maps and discovering places as I
22:43
Speaker 1: went along. And I saw this one really thin road
22:47
Speaker 1: that would go through some interesting looking terrain, and so
22:50
Speaker 1: I took that and I followed it for twenty five minutes,
22:53
Speaker 1: but it started looking very like residential, and there was
22:57
Speaker 1: nothing else around, but I just kept walking along the
23:01
Speaker 1: road because there was only one road. And then I
23:05
Speaker 1: heard a dog shout and this enormous pit bull leapt
23:10
Speaker 1: from a line of bushes, and I mean, he wasn't huge,
23:15
Speaker 1: but pit bulls are real dangerous and scary no matter
23:20
Speaker 1: how big they are, because they don't get super small either,
23:23
Speaker 1: and he was just bark bark barking at me, and
23:27
Speaker 1: someone came out of a house. After a while, I
23:30
Speaker 1: was walking backwards slowly, and the dog was just following me,
23:33
Speaker 1: barking super aggressively, and the teenager who came out of
23:38
Speaker 1: his house tried to speak to me in Tie, but
23:40
Speaker 1: I could only say, like me go there, sorry here city,
23:43
Speaker 1: like really bad die. And so his mom came out,
23:47
Speaker 1: who could speak super good English, surprisingly because we were
23:50
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, and she explained to me
23:53
Speaker 1: that this road wasn't a thruway into the city anymore.
23:57
Speaker 1: They built a home, so the road ends now their
24:00
Speaker 1: home at the end of this thin road that I
24:02
Speaker 1: had been walking on. So this whole like five minute time,
24:06
Speaker 1: they're talking to me. That pitbull is just like I'm
24:08
Speaker 1: going to eat your legs. I'm gonna eat all of
24:10
Speaker 1: your legs off, shouting barking at me, and the mom
24:14
Speaker 1: asked the teenager to like take the dog back, but
24:18
Speaker 1: they had two pitbulls, so the other one came out
24:20
Speaker 1: to join when he started taking the first one back,
24:23
Speaker 1: and I just started walking away back toward the road
24:26
Speaker 1: to go back to the main road I was originally on.
24:28
Speaker 1: And I have two pit bulls running around me and screaming, barking,
24:32
Speaker 1: and I picked up a stick. I didn't wave it
24:35
Speaker 1: toward them or anything. Except in Thailand, I have a
24:39
Speaker 1: dog whacking stick very often because for some reason Thailand
24:43
Speaker 1: dogs in particular are aggressive. Among countries, I have to
24:47
Speaker 1: have a dog aggression episode and try and like put
24:49
Speaker 1: this together because some countries dogs are super aggressive and
24:53
Speaker 1: some countries dogs are very chill. And I haven't found
24:56
Speaker 1: a correlation. It doesn't matter how much food they have. Yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: I have to figure that out. So these two pit
25:03
Speaker 1: bulls are screen barking at me. The teenagers like, stop
25:08
Speaker 1: at you guys, but he's clearly not very worried about
25:10
Speaker 1: them attacking. The property was big, so I still had
25:13
Speaker 1: like one hundred yards to walk back to the gate.
25:16
Speaker 1: So I could leave their property. And the pit bulls
25:18
Speaker 1: were getting closer with every bark, and they kept snapping.
25:21
Speaker 1: And then the first one, the white one, was biting
25:24
Speaker 1: at my leg like he would if I hadn't moved
25:26
Speaker 1: my legs, he would have bit my legs. So I
25:28
Speaker 1: did have to start hitting him away like with the stick,
25:31
Speaker 1: because he was biting at my legs. And then he
25:35
Speaker 1: ran away ten feet, ran forward five and took a
25:39
Speaker 1: flying leap at me, the first white pit bull, to
25:43
Speaker 1: which I took a step back to get out of
25:45
Speaker 1: his trajectory and used the branch I had picked up
25:49
Speaker 1: like a baseball bat and swung it and cracked the
25:53
Speaker 1: dog right across the ribs. But since pitbulls are one
25:59
Speaker 1: solid muscle made of steel, the branch broken half across
26:04
Speaker 1: his body and he landed and just kept barking and
26:07
Speaker 1: biting at me. He did back away a little, but
26:09
Speaker 1: did not stop shout, barking and going after bites. I
26:14
Speaker 1: deterred them both with the half a branch left over,
26:17
Speaker 1: but he didn't take any more flying leaps at me,
26:20
Speaker 1: which is good. It was like he was as high
26:22
Speaker 1: as my face. It was crazy. And we get almost
26:26
Speaker 1: to the front and gate, and then the original one,
26:28
Speaker 1: the first one who saw me, that same slightly bigger
26:31
Speaker 1: one that took a leap at my face. I started
26:35
Speaker 1: to say, okay, thank you, and I turned away, and
26:37
Speaker 1: as soon as I turned my back, that first pit
26:41
Speaker 1: bull leapt at me. And I saw that happening in
26:44
Speaker 1: the corner of my eye, so I turned fully so
26:47
Speaker 1: that my backpack was between me and him, and I
26:51
Speaker 1: felt this impact, and I looked back and the pit
26:55
Speaker 1: bull was attached by his jaw to my rucksack like
26:59
Speaker 1: an e like a knine eel, just latched on there
27:04
Speaker 1: and not moving. And I shook the rucksack like with
27:08
Speaker 1: my shoulders, but his giant bowling ball head just stayed
27:11
Speaker 1: gripped on there, and his body shook and he stayed
27:14
Speaker 1: out clamped onto the rucksack for like I don't know.
27:17
Speaker 1: It must have been thirty seconds at least, which is oh,
27:21
Speaker 1: a few seconds does seem like a long time, but
27:22
Speaker 1: it's a long time if it's a pitbull clamped onto you,
27:26
Speaker 1: a foot away from your flesh. So it was pretty crazy.
27:29
Speaker 1: And that rucksack still didn't tear. It's the same rucksack
27:33
Speaker 1: I'm using today. Fifteen years later. It is crazy how
27:37
Speaker 1: durable that rucksack is. The only thing that has ever
27:41
Speaker 1: broken on that rucksack is the when the pit bull
27:46
Speaker 1: did it, he one of his tooths bit into a
27:50
Speaker 1: piece of webbing, like a pocket of webbing on the outside,
27:53
Speaker 1: and there's one piece of frayed webbing, and none of
27:57
Speaker 1: the other webbing has frayed since that at whatever ten
28:01
Speaker 1: twelve years ago. But that's the only part of the
28:04
Speaker 1: sack that the rucksack that doesn't look new. It's a
28:07
Speaker 1: remarkable piece of equipment. So anyway, this pit bull wasn't
28:11
Speaker 1: letting go, and he's hanging off the back of my rucksack,
28:14
Speaker 1: and the ti kid is yelling at him, and the
28:16
Speaker 1: time mom is yelling at the pit bull. But the pitbull,
28:18
Speaker 1: of course is a pitbull, so he doesn't care what's happening.
28:21
Speaker 1: He just wants to murder something. The teenager was hitting
28:24
Speaker 1: the dog with sticks to try and get it to detach,
28:28
Speaker 1: but like I said, pitbulls are one giant muscle, and
28:31
Speaker 1: he didn't care at all. I just kept walking, and
28:35
Speaker 1: I just walked with a pit bull attached by jaw
28:39
Speaker 1: to the back of my rucksack for the remaining ten
28:43
Speaker 1: feet or twenty feet to the gate, whatever it was,
28:45
Speaker 1: and the entire like two hundred three hundred foot walk
28:49
Speaker 1: back to the gate of the private property that we
28:52
Speaker 1: had been walking toward this whole time. The second black
28:55
Speaker 1: pit bull was still scream barking at me the whole
28:58
Speaker 1: time and jumping around aggressively, while now this first one
29:02
Speaker 1: was latched onto the back of my rucksack. And when
29:05
Speaker 1: I got to the threshold of the gate that was
29:09
Speaker 1: like their property, the pit bull attached to my rucksack
29:12
Speaker 1: finally dropped off and bolted back, and the black one
29:16
Speaker 1: followed him, and the two of them ran into this
29:18
Speaker 1: line of trees back in the yard closer to the house.
29:23
Speaker 1: But like in a second, they were so fast and crazy.
29:27
Speaker 1: He dropped off and ran back inside. But that was
29:31
Speaker 1: a visceral shock when he leaped at me, and I
29:35
Speaker 1: managed to put my rucksack between me and him. Then
29:38
Speaker 1: he latched onto my rucksack. And I don't know if
29:41
Speaker 1: you've ever seen pitbulls rip things apart or creatures apart,
29:46
Speaker 1: but they are aggressive. So I just got a shout
29:49
Speaker 1: out to Kathlon for that rucksack. Again, that thing saved
29:52
Speaker 1: my a butt, And to be clear, I got myself
29:56
Speaker 1: into that it was a very thin road, It wasn't
30:00
Speaker 1: on the map. There was a sign in tai that
30:03
Speaker 1: I didn't translate, couldn't translate at the time, and it
30:08
Speaker 1: very much looked like private property. But the road continued
30:11
Speaker 1: on through it, and there was a house I could see.
30:15
Speaker 1: So there were plenty of reasons I should not have
30:18
Speaker 1: been taking that road and I should not have entered
30:20
Speaker 1: that property. So I just want to be clear that
30:23
Speaker 1: this is not something you're going to encounter at all
30:27
Speaker 1: in cities or towns around Thailand. This was tens of
30:30
Speaker 1: miles out, three days into walking between cities in the
30:35
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere on private property. The family was still
30:38
Speaker 1: super nice. They just had a couple of crazy pit
30:40
Speaker 1: polls as pets and rural dogs in Thailand are aggressive,
30:47
Speaker 1: gotta do a dog's episode. I haven't pulled the threads
30:50
Speaker 1: together yet though, so I don't know why some countries
30:53
Speaker 1: have aggressive dogs and some countries have totally laid back dogs.
30:57
Speaker 1: Sticking with Thailand since we're already mentally there. Another dumb
31:02
Speaker 1: thing I did, while maybe on that same trip it
31:05
Speaker 1: might have been, was choosing to walk under the blazing
31:09
Speaker 1: sun when I knew there was no shade, so I
31:15
Speaker 1: had a bottle of water. But I had to get miles,
31:19
Speaker 1: like ten miles or something across an uncharacteristically dry and
31:25
Speaker 1: deserted stretch of road, and the sun hadn't quite risen
31:30
Speaker 1: yet when I strolled into the town that I was
31:33
Speaker 1: going to start the next stretch of my journey from.
31:37
Speaker 1: So there was a small morning market like there usually
31:40
Speaker 1: is in Townsend, Thailand, and I picked up some fruit,
31:43
Speaker 1: I think, just a not a lot of food, but
31:47
Speaker 1: I saw that one of the ladies had fried crickets,
31:50
Speaker 1: which taste great. They're just like small crickets, maybe an
31:56
Speaker 1: inch or inch and a half long, and they fry
32:00
Speaker 1: them up so they just get super crunchy the outer
32:04
Speaker 1: shells and there's no like squishy parts inside, and then
32:08
Speaker 1: they pour some salted spice mix on top, so it
32:12
Speaker 1: straight up it just tastes like popcorn. When I tried
32:14
Speaker 1: them the first time, I was like, oh, this is great.
32:17
Speaker 1: So I just got a bag of those to snack
32:19
Speaker 1: on while I walked to the next town, and I
32:21
Speaker 1: had made a ten mile walk pretty easily. I'm just
32:24
Speaker 1: gonna say ten miles I can't remember the exact but
32:26
Speaker 1: it was pretty far, so I was pretty confident that
32:30
Speaker 1: I just need this little snack between the two towns.
32:33
Speaker 1: I was walking, but I was sort of on a hill,
32:36
Speaker 1: so I could see the road going off into the distance,
32:40
Speaker 1: and like I said, the sun was rising, so it
32:44
Speaker 1: was bluish sky like. It was still very comfortable weather,
32:50
Speaker 1: and the temperature was okay, as in not murderously hot,
32:55
Speaker 1: which Thailand can get for my sensibilities very quickly and
32:59
Speaker 1: very often. But I could see the road itself that
33:02
Speaker 1: I was going to be walking for a long time,
33:06
Speaker 1: which is very rare in Thailand. Everywhere as a jungle,
33:09
Speaker 1: so I don't know what this stretch of road was
33:11
Speaker 1: up to. But there weren't many trees. There were a
33:15
Speaker 1: few like huts you can stay in and hide under
33:19
Speaker 1: so that the sun doesn't murder you if you get
33:21
Speaker 1: caught out in the sun, or handmade bamboo rest pavilions
33:26
Speaker 1: rather than a hot But I looked at the map
33:30
Speaker 1: and I did the time, and I thought about the
33:32
Speaker 1: sun coming up, and I thought it would be okay.
33:35
Speaker 1: So I started walking down that road, crunched a couple crickets,
33:39
Speaker 1: and just kept strolling on down and the sun came
33:43
Speaker 1: up and it got a little warm, and then the
33:45
Speaker 1: sun came up more, and I was like, how far
33:49
Speaker 1: am I? And then the sun came up more and
33:51
Speaker 1: it was hot. And then it was nine am and
33:54
Speaker 1: it was real hot. And then it was ten It
33:57
Speaker 1: was real, real hot. And I still hadn't made it
34:01
Speaker 1: within sight of the other town, so I was maybe
34:03
Speaker 1: halfway at this point, and I was putting up with
34:07
Speaker 1: the heat, but I have a rucksack on my back
34:11
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I had my sun sleeves
34:13
Speaker 1: at this point, so I was getting burned. And I
34:18
Speaker 1: eventually just ducked into one of these huts that they
34:22
Speaker 1: have every kilometer or so. And it's not like an
34:26
Speaker 1: air conditioned room or anything like that. It is a
34:29
Speaker 1: bunch of bamboo poles open, no walls, with a bamboo
34:35
Speaker 1: pole roof on top, unthched, and I just had to
34:42
Speaker 1: hide from the sun because I had nothing to do.
34:46
Speaker 1: And it's nine thirty am, ten thirty am, maybe it's
34:49
Speaker 1: still the morning, and it's so hot, and I've run
34:53
Speaker 1: out of water already and there's nowhere that I have
34:55
Speaker 1: been able to refill it, which is extremely uncommon in Thailand.
35:00
Speaker 1: Every place I've walked between before had some kind of
35:04
Speaker 1: convenience store or some kind of tiny town, or even
35:08
Speaker 1: just a neighborhood and tie people have reached out to
35:10
Speaker 1: me many times from their houses from the neighborhoods, just
35:13
Speaker 1: offering me water or even a shower or something as
35:16
Speaker 1: a traveler. But there was nothing on this deserted stretch
35:21
Speaker 1: of road right the only place without a jungle. So
35:23
Speaker 1: I guess that makes sense why nobody was living there.
35:26
Speaker 1: But it was so curious, That's why I wanted to
35:29
Speaker 1: keep walking it. But yeah, I discovered that there really
35:33
Speaker 1: was nothing there. I think I did have like a
35:37
Speaker 1: couple gulps of water that I was rationing out. And
35:40
Speaker 1: with this heat and how much longer I had the
35:43
Speaker 1: sun to go, I had to wait seven hours now
35:45
Speaker 1: for the sun to go down. I decided to just
35:48
Speaker 1: hide in one of these sun huts and try to
35:51
Speaker 1: wade out the rest of the day. And no one
35:54
Speaker 1: came down that road, and all I had was a
35:57
Speaker 1: bag of crickets, which I ate a cut and then
36:01
Speaker 1: realized that warm, oily bugs were not going to cut
36:06
Speaker 1: it in this climate and in the state my body
36:09
Speaker 1: was in so I started getting nauseous, not right away,
36:13
Speaker 1: but maybe around one PM or something. The bugs were
36:16
Speaker 1: really crawling around in my guts, and luckily I didn't
36:21
Speaker 1: get physically sick, but I stopped eating the bugs. So
36:25
Speaker 1: I curled up on the bamboo platform off the ground
36:29
Speaker 1: and just waited for the day to pass. But when
36:33
Speaker 1: I got to around four and I was out of water,
36:37
Speaker 1: plenty of bugs left, I decided to just walk. And
36:41
Speaker 1: maybe that was heatstroke brain, because I really burned my
36:46
Speaker 1: arm and I remember languidly thinking, oh, look at my arm,
36:51
Speaker 1: it's just getting tan finally, and I don't tan, I burn.
36:55
Speaker 1: I'm one of those. But I made it to the
36:57
Speaker 1: next town. It wasn't too far. It was a couple
36:59
Speaker 1: miles more, and it was nighttime, so the nightmark was out,
37:04
Speaker 1: and I got mangoes and coconut water and drinks and
37:07
Speaker 1: all this kind of good stuff, and I was fine,
37:09
Speaker 1: but it felt really dangerous under the bamboo roof, frying
37:15
Speaker 1: under the sun, knowing that my water was slowly running
37:18
Speaker 1: out with each sip I took. And I've never encountered
37:21
Speaker 1: any kind of desert area in Thailand again, so this
37:25
Speaker 1: was just a weird small patch devoid of trees that
37:29
Speaker 1: I could hide in, and I had committed myself to
37:32
Speaker 1: walking several miles into it, and I couldn't walk back
37:36
Speaker 1: to the town because I was, you know, in the
37:38
Speaker 1: middle of this weird deserted area that luckily had that
37:42
Speaker 1: shack or I would have my goose would have been cooked.
37:47
Speaker 1: So those are just a few things. I'm always curious
37:51
Speaker 1: in the road less traveled, and that ends me up
37:54
Speaker 1: in some crazy situations sometimes or dangerous situations. But all
38:00
Speaker 1: of these, as you can plainly hear, are clearly avoidable
38:05
Speaker 1: things that I did not have to do. And usually
38:09
Speaker 1: I assessed beforehand and thought this could be dangerous, and
38:13
Speaker 1: then I just walked blithely into that danger. So for
38:17
Speaker 1: the typical travel experience, there's no risk of you running
38:21
Speaker 1: into these things. If you see a blinding desert, don't
38:25
Speaker 1: walk miles into it before the sun rises and commit
38:29
Speaker 1: yourself to that terrain. Don't wander without any preparation in
38:34
Speaker 1: the backwoods of Thailand, don't trespass on private property, posted
38:40
Speaker 1: private property, and you won't encounter crazy animals. There's so
38:45
Speaker 1: many nice towns and everywhere that you can stay indefinitely.
38:48
Speaker 1: There's no reason to backpack. I just like kind of
38:50
Speaker 1: exploring and doing these crazy things. But your travel experience
38:54
Speaker 1: in Thailander, any other country, Italy or whatever can be
38:58
Speaker 1: as tame or adventurous as you like. These are just
39:01
Speaker 1: things stories that I kind of like to look back
39:03
Speaker 1: on and reminisce about, so I wanted to share a
39:07
Speaker 1: few of them. You can talk to me a bit
39:09
Speaker 1: of a rambler or Gmail dot com or all the socials,
39:12
Speaker 1: and if I hear from you, I'll probably get back
39:14
Speaker 1: to you on the Saturday ramble On episodes. And there
39:17
Speaker 1: are plenty of other situations that I got myself into,
39:21
Speaker 1: and more of those will be coming up in future episodes. Bye.