Latest / Wander the World with Pippa Hudson / Wander the World: A for Adventures helps you explore local gems
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to Wonder the World.
- 0:01Speaker 2: And in today's episode, we are joined by a couple
- 0:04Speaker 2: who have made it their mission to help us all
- 0:06Speaker 2: fall in love with our own backyards as it were.
- 0:09Speaker 2: The names Seleka Suliman and aliskir Jan Muhammad. There are
- 0:13Speaker 2: the duo behind a platform called A for Adventures, which
- 0:16Speaker 2: is a travel and lifestyle platform with thousands of followers already,
- 0:20Speaker 2: and they are just as passionate about discovering South Africa
- 0:24Speaker 2: as the creators of the platform are. And basically, this
- 0:27Speaker 2: duo uncover hidden gems, small towns a little off the
- 0:31Speaker 2: beaten track. They also uncover great places to find the
- 0:34Speaker 2: perfect cup of coffee or croissant for breakfast, or to
- 0:37Speaker 2: try something a little different that isn't just your standard
- 0:40Speaker 2: tourist experience. So they're all about loving the local and
- 0:44Speaker 2: encouraging us to be tourists in our own country. And
- 0:47Speaker 2: the best part of all, of course, is that means
- 0:49Speaker 2: you never have to go through the trauma of a
- 0:50Speaker 2: visa interview ever. Again, Celera and Asco welcome, It's wonderful
- 0:54Speaker 2: to have you with us.
- 0:55Speaker 3: Thank you so much, it's really cool to be here.
- 0:57Speaker 4: Thanks thanks for having us. It's A turned to your
- 1:01Speaker 4: listeners as well.
- 1:02Speaker 1: Let's start with the name A for Adventures.
- 1:04Speaker 2: What's the origin or are we going to see iterations
- 1:06Speaker 2: BCD and Eastill coming in future?
- 1:08Speaker 4: No, actually, I think so. It's it's our names. Basically,
- 1:13Speaker 4: the first A on A for Adventures has got my name,
- 1:16Speaker 4: s is Salah has name, and I think it puts
- 1:18Speaker 4: together what we want to do. We want to be
- 1:21Speaker 4: adventures in all.
- 1:22Speaker 3: We want to help people be adventurous. Yeah.
- 1:24Speaker 5: So we were like, you know, let's just keep it simple,
- 1:26Speaker 5: not too complicated, Okay.
- 1:28Speaker 2: The adventurous spirits something that's been instilled in you by
- 1:31Speaker 2: the people came before you, or something that's been your
- 1:33Speaker 2: thing to say, I refuse to live a quiet life like.
- 1:36Speaker 1: Those who've gone before me. I'm want to do it differently,
- 1:39Speaker 1: I think the latter.
- 1:40Speaker 5: Yeah, Like we've both grown up and not traveling way
- 1:44Speaker 5: too much, and you know, at some point we just realized,
- 1:47Speaker 5: funnily enough, it was you know, this cathartic moment on
- 1:49Speaker 5: top of table mountain very literally to say that, well,
- 1:52Speaker 5: this is such a beautiful country that we live in
- 1:55Speaker 5: and we we really need to take advantage of that
- 1:57Speaker 5: and explore it. Yeah.
- 1:58Speaker 4: One hundred percent. And I think one of the things
- 2:00Speaker 4: that we realized being in South Africa is that often
- 2:03Speaker 4: we don't know what to do because we think everything
- 2:05Speaker 4: is expensive where it's for tourists or something like that.
- 2:07Speaker 4: But what we have realized that's not the case. You
- 2:09Speaker 4: can go up Timber Mountain that's free, and there is
- 2:12Speaker 4: so much more to explore that we're in a budget
- 2:14Speaker 4: friendly way and learn about our beautiful country.
- 2:17Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons I asked you guys to
- 2:18Speaker 2: join us here today, because we have I mean, and
- 2:20Speaker 2: there is place for make no mistake, there's place for
- 2:22Speaker 2: the luxury experiences and the wonderful lodgers and the new
- 2:25Speaker 2: hotels and all those things. Absolutely not saying don't use them.
- 2:29Speaker 2: But I love the fact that you guys are all
- 2:30Speaker 2: about saying, keep it accessible, make it something that an
- 2:33Speaker 2: ordinary South African who has to worry about a budget
- 2:36Speaker 2: can still do and see and experience without necessarily having
- 2:39Speaker 2: to spend half their annual savings to get around the world.
- 2:43Speaker 1: That's even before you've got the visa.
- 2:45Speaker 2: I mean, what was the very first place that you
- 2:48Speaker 2: visited together when you decided you were going to do this,
- 2:50Speaker 2: What was the first thing to populate the site.
- 2:53Speaker 4: So I think before the site, I think Stellenbosch came
- 2:55Speaker 4: to mind. So we visited Stellenbosh. I think it was
- 2:57Speaker 4: a four day trip and just being there. What we
- 3:00Speaker 4: tried to do is we wanted to do everything that
- 3:02Speaker 4: was everywhere, and we found that there was not one
- 3:04Speaker 4: space where we could find something where Muslims as well.
- 3:07Speaker 4: So halal is so important to us, and that is
- 3:09Speaker 4: something that we wanted. Accessibility and often many people said, oh,
- 3:12Speaker 4: Stellbush is a wine city, but it's not. Actually it's
- 3:15Speaker 4: a place that anyone can visit. And making that accessibility
- 3:19Speaker 4: part so critical is so useful, I think. And I
- 3:22Speaker 4: remember the budget being so important because we always open
- 3:25Speaker 4: up the Excel sheets of the Google sheets and for
- 3:27Speaker 4: us that budget matters and we were able to do
- 3:31Speaker 4: that and that really made a difference for us.
- 3:33Speaker 3: Funny enough, that wasn't our first post.
- 3:34Speaker 5: Oh hey, The first post was probably actually the Table
- 3:37Speaker 5: Mountain hike, because you would think that there is so
- 3:40Speaker 5: much information out there about it, but we wanted to
- 3:42Speaker 5: do the scenic one instead of just going straight up,
- 3:45Speaker 5: and it took us quite a lot of searching to
- 3:47Speaker 5: actually find even though it was such a popular thing
- 3:49Speaker 5: and that was probably our first post. And I mean
- 3:52Speaker 5: when I look back at it now, I think we've
- 3:54Speaker 5: come such a long way.
- 3:57Speaker 3: How many years ago was that almost?
- 3:59Speaker 5: For this?
- 3:59Speaker 3: Ok?
- 4:00Speaker 4: Yes?
- 4:00Speaker 2: For it now important to emphasize this is not your
- 4:04Speaker 2: full time job. You both have careers and income streams.
- 4:07Speaker 2: This is a passion and a passion that you love
- 4:09Speaker 2: sharing with other people. But I think that also emphasizes
- 4:13Speaker 2: what I was saying about accessibility and budget consciousness, that
- 4:16Speaker 2: they travel with budget restrictions and with having to juggle
- 4:20Speaker 2: a work life and all those things that normal people
- 4:22Speaker 2: face in life, and that is reflected in the kinds
- 4:25Speaker 2: of stories that are shared on their platforms. Now, you're
- 4:27Speaker 2: partly about finding entire new destinations to visit, but.
- 4:31Speaker 1: You're also sometimes about saying.
- 4:33Speaker 2: Let's find the best cup of coffee or the perfect
- 4:35Speaker 2: plate of eggs for breakfast, or whatever it may be.
- 4:38Speaker 2: When you approach a new destination, do you go with
- 4:41Speaker 2: a sort of completely blank slate and open mind, or
- 4:43Speaker 2: do you sometimes go to a place with a fixed
- 4:45Speaker 2: idea that somebody has told us you can find the
- 4:48Speaker 2: best briosh in the Western Cape in Napir and that's
- 4:52Speaker 2: where we're going this weekend to eat Briosh.
- 4:54Speaker 1: How does it work?
- 4:55Speaker 5: Sometimes it is the latter, but not too often. I
- 4:58Speaker 5: think we both like we've realized that, you know, everyone
- 5:02Speaker 5: has different palets, especially when it comes to food, and
- 5:04Speaker 5: so we kind of like going in with just you know,
- 5:07Speaker 5: an empty slate, no pre We won't read the reviews, especially,
- 5:10Speaker 5: I like, I won't check because I know that it
- 5:12Speaker 5: will probably color my opinion of it, and then we
- 5:15Speaker 5: will try something completely random from the menu. Sometimes we
- 5:19Speaker 5: might try a couple of things, and we both have
- 5:21Speaker 5: different tastes as well, so that's nice to.
- 5:23Speaker 4: Kind of can't tell you something that we don't like.
- 5:26Speaker 4: We don't like the top ten or top fifteen things.
- 5:29Speaker 3: Yes, we don't believe though I think.
- 5:31Speaker 4: I think those are very specific for a generalized group,
- 5:34Speaker 4: and as human beings, we're all different, I think, yeah,
- 5:36Speaker 4: and that that uniqueness has to come out. And even
- 5:40Speaker 4: when we review something, we often say that, you know,
- 5:42Speaker 4: this is Alaska's experience, this is sally A's experience. Try both,
- 5:46Speaker 4: actually experience both and open yourself up to that, you know.
- 5:49Speaker 4: So definitely we are planners. Planners, planners because I'm an engineer.
- 5:53Speaker 4: She's a public health specialist by background. But I think
- 5:56Speaker 4: for us that travel is all about getting long. It's
- 6:00Speaker 4: about trying something that nobody has recommended and then sometimes
- 6:05Speaker 4: failing that way. Because failing is such a critical part
- 6:07Speaker 4: of traveling.
- 6:07Speaker 2: I think your second guest to say today how important
- 6:10Speaker 2: traveling is in our failing is rather in our life
- 6:13Speaker 2: experience that you learned so much in the moments where
- 6:16Speaker 2: things don't go according to plan, and you might have
- 6:18Speaker 2: it sounds like you, like me, a big planner, that
- 6:21Speaker 2: half the fun is the preparation for the trip before
- 6:23Speaker 2: you even get there. But sometimes things do not go
- 6:26Speaker 2: your way. Let's talk about some of the experiences that
- 6:29Speaker 2: you've had because of the plans going off the beaten track.
- 6:32Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to ask you about favorites,
- 6:35Speaker 2: because I know this isn't as you said, it's a
- 6:36Speaker 2: very personal thing. But you each want to share with
- 6:38Speaker 2: us an example of a time where things didn't go
- 6:41Speaker 2: according to the plan but you ended up discovering something
- 6:43Speaker 2: wonderful or experiencing something amazing.
- 6:46Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, oh honeymoon was a very good experience.
- 6:48Speaker 4: In here, I'm going to share something that I was
- 6:50Speaker 4: outside of South Africa, but I think it's still worth it.
- 6:52Speaker 4: We were visiting Spain in March, I think, and for
- 6:55Speaker 4: the first time in ten years, it was raining in March.
- 6:57Speaker 4: I mean, imagine that right in our honeymoon Lovely. So
- 7:00Speaker 4: I'm at the airport. I've never seen the weather, and
- 7:02Speaker 4: I look at the weather and I know it's raining,
- 7:04Speaker 4: and I become the whiny baby that I am, and
- 7:06Speaker 4: I start complaining and my wife is like, what.
- 7:08Speaker 1: Do you want to do?
- 7:09Speaker 4: Now?
- 7:09Speaker 1: The planet is right there.
- 7:12Speaker 4: But regardless of that, what we did was we got there,
- 7:15Speaker 4: we went to the nearby spaces. I think we got
- 7:18Speaker 4: some cheap winter where and we started exploring the city.
- 7:22Speaker 4: We were soaked, drained, but the reality was we had
- 7:25Speaker 4: something that we wanted to plan and we wanted to
- 7:27Speaker 4: explore it, and we were like, the rain is not
- 7:29Speaker 4: going to get on over awhere. And I think sometimes
- 7:32Speaker 4: we often think about and I'm particularly bad at this,
- 7:35Speaker 4: often think about the bad things and then just realizing
- 7:38Speaker 4: that follow the plan, it'll work out.
- 7:40Speaker 5: Actually, yeah, I think what comes to mind for me
- 7:43Speaker 5: is a couple of years ago, we did a road
- 7:45Speaker 5: trip across a couple of provinces in South Africa and
- 7:49Speaker 5: we were leaving Kimberly and we were driving the speed limit,
- 7:52Speaker 5: but if you've been to Kimberly then you would know
- 7:55Speaker 5: the potholes of the size of you know, meteorite. Eventually,
- 8:00Speaker 5: we didn't realize we actually needed to drive a third
- 8:02Speaker 5: of you know, the speedim We got into a very
- 8:07Speaker 5: bad situation because we ended up having a puncture and
- 8:10Speaker 5: neither of us in theory, both of us know how
- 8:12Speaker 5: to change tire, but in real life we were just stumped.
- 8:15Speaker 4: We had I never owned a car, so I didn't.
- 8:18Speaker 5: So it was really nice though, because somebody actually stopped
- 8:22Speaker 5: and he's like he was rushing to a meeting. He
- 8:24Speaker 5: told us this and he actually stopped and helped us to.
- 8:26Speaker 3: Change the tire.
- 8:27Speaker 5: Fantastic, and it was such a sweet like experience because
- 8:30Speaker 5: it really reminds you that, like you know, we sometimes
- 8:32Speaker 5: have these perceptions about places and things, but people are
- 8:35Speaker 5: just wonderful if you just give them a chance.
- 8:37Speaker 4: To classic South Africans, we're just lovely, lovely people. We
- 8:40Speaker 4: were there top everyone.
- 8:41Speaker 2: Had the exact same experience I've laid on a couple
- 8:44Speaker 2: of months ago and was the same thing. Fat tire
- 8:46Speaker 2: Stranger coming out of nowhere underneath the car, lifting that
- 8:49Speaker 2: thing up, giving himself covered in Greece and left quietly
- 8:52Speaker 2: without so much as leaving us with his name. It
- 8:54Speaker 2: was just it was one of those moments you are
- 8:56Speaker 2: reminded that people are good, actually more than they are bad.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Just in case anybody who's come in midway to this conversation,
- 9:03Speaker 2: let me just fill you in and catch you up.
- 9:05Speaker 2: Our guests are Selaia and Aliska Silliman of All Selah Suliman,
- 9:08Speaker 2: Aliska Young Mahamad.
- 9:09Speaker 1: Sorry.
- 9:10Speaker 2: You are the duo behind a platform called A four
- 9:13Speaker 2: Adventures and the S. It's a capital aid at the beginning,
- 9:16Speaker 2: a capital s at at the end, civilizing their names.
- 9:19Speaker 1: It is a platform that.
- 9:20Speaker 2: Is all about encouraging local travel and encouraging South Africans
- 9:23Speaker 2: to explore in their own backyard and find all those wonderful,
- 9:26Speaker 2: quirky sites and experiences and people that make this country
- 9:30Speaker 2: so special. Is it primarily for South Africans or do
- 9:33Speaker 2: you find that you get international visitors interacting with you
- 9:36Speaker 2: and asking for advice.
- 9:38Speaker 5: We do get a lot of international visitors asking for advice,
- 9:42Speaker 5: and I think because of that, more recently we have,
- 9:44Speaker 5: especially on our website, kind of geared things towards if
- 9:47Speaker 5: you are visiting, for example, Capelan for the first time,
- 9:50Speaker 5: these are the things you.
- 9:51Speaker 3: Must do, you know.
- 9:52Speaker 5: Or we have itineraries available and we have i think,
- 9:55Speaker 5: you know, organized customized itineries for international travelers as well,
- 9:59Speaker 5: but we find that the needs are usually different for
- 10:02Speaker 5: depending on where you're visiting from.
- 10:03Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 10:04Speaker 4: But I think the thing that we realize with our
- 10:08Speaker 4: platform is that we want to balance up both so
- 10:10Speaker 4: South Africans want to visit their country. We've seen that
- 10:14Speaker 4: they've told us that they sometimes I have two children
- 10:17Speaker 4: and they're like, well, with two children, where cand I
- 10:18Speaker 4: go visit and there are spaces that you can visit
- 10:21Speaker 4: and still explore and the world isn't ended, right, Yeah,
- 10:24Speaker 4: And I think that especially in this budget crisis situation
- 10:28Speaker 4: where everyone is looking at their income very closely, I
- 10:30Speaker 4: think we want to ground ourselves to the reality of
- 10:33Speaker 4: South Africa and show people what they can do and
- 10:36Speaker 4: explore wonderful things right at their doorstep.
- 10:38Speaker 2: Right.
- 10:39Speaker 4: One of the things I think that was one of
- 10:41Speaker 4: our popular videos was the Seras Railway and that video
- 10:46Speaker 4: I think we went to seven hundred thousand views in
- 10:49Speaker 4: just a few days. I think because nobody knew that
- 10:51Speaker 4: there is a train or working train at that time
- 10:54Speaker 4: that goes from the Foreshow to go into the Elgin Market,
- 10:58Speaker 4: and people are fascinated by it, and everyone had so
- 11:00Speaker 4: many queris, so many questions about it, and they were
- 11:03Speaker 4: able to visit this amazing opportunity, this amazing experience, sorry
- 11:08Speaker 4: through this video, and that is amazing.
- 11:11Speaker 1: I believe it is amazing.
- 11:12Speaker 2: I've had a couple of listeners who we've chatted to
- 11:15Speaker 2: and about them before, and a couple of listeners you've
- 11:16Speaker 2: messaged in to say they've done that trip.
- 11:18Speaker 1: I haven't heard a bad word about it.
- 11:19Speaker 2: It's something everybody says is completely unique experience. What's been
- 11:23Speaker 2: your most surprising destination or experience a place that really
- 11:29Speaker 2: wasn't what you thought it was going to be.
- 11:32Speaker 4: Mine has to be the Golden Gate National Park. So
- 11:35Speaker 4: this is this amazing place and I strongly recommend it's
- 11:39Speaker 4: in Free States. I strongly recommend going to the National
- 11:41Speaker 4: park itself and living there. It's incredibly affordable. You won't
- 11:46Speaker 4: have to break the bank for this. It's like being
- 11:51Speaker 4: in heaven. You stay there. The mountains are surrounding you.
- 11:55Speaker 4: It's so so beautiful. Even when you climb the mountains,
- 11:59Speaker 4: you stay there, you will switch off, you won't think
- 12:02Speaker 4: about anything for those couple of nights, a couple of
- 12:05Speaker 4: days that you're there, and I highly highly recommend it.
- 12:08Speaker 5: I think for me a surprising destination was probably joe
- 12:12Speaker 5: Burgh because yeah, I think people and myself included, often
- 12:16Speaker 5: feel that, you know, Joeburg is a city city. You
- 12:18Speaker 5: go there for work, you you know, you kind of
- 12:20Speaker 5: don't really go there for leisure, you don't want to travel.
- 12:23Speaker 5: The first time I visited joe Burgh, I was shocked,
- 12:26Speaker 5: and since then I've wanted to go back so many
- 12:28Speaker 5: times because I still feel like there's more things to do.
- 12:31Speaker 5: It's so different from Cape Town, but in an amazing way.
- 12:34Speaker 5: And I think the mistake we often make is to
- 12:35Speaker 5: compare the two. Yeah, but it's like.
- 12:37Speaker 3: Comparing apples and oranges.
- 12:40Speaker 1: A hundred percent degree.
- 12:41Speaker 2: I lived in joy Wick for ten years and I
- 12:42Speaker 2: feel like I only scratch the surface and all the
- 12:44Speaker 2: places to explore in the time that I was there,
- 12:46Speaker 2: And every time I go back, I have that feeling,
- 12:49Speaker 2: firstly of how fast it is and how much it's
- 12:51Speaker 2: grown since I was there. But secondly, how much I'm
- 12:54Speaker 2: missing that is there to be explored. So I completely
- 12:56Speaker 2: endorsed that. I mean, it's the dream to be able
- 12:59Speaker 2: to do this time wanted.
- 13:02Speaker 5: Honestly, No, I think we both love our jobs and
- 13:05Speaker 5: we love the fields that we're in. This has become
- 13:08Speaker 5: a much bigger passion project than we expected it. I
- 13:10Speaker 5: think when we started, we had no idea that we
- 13:13Speaker 5: would I mean in four years we're almost a community
- 13:16Speaker 5: of thirty five thousand people, I think.
- 13:18Speaker 3: Which is unfathomable.
- 13:19Speaker 5: It's so humbling, but probably not full time no, No, yeah.
- 13:25Speaker 4: I think this is also a platform for us eventually too.
- 13:27Speaker 4: So I think something you'll see from our page is
- 13:30Speaker 4: we don't post anything we don't want to do. So
- 13:32Speaker 4: I know sometimes it can become very pressurized where you
- 13:35Speaker 4: do things that you don't want to do because that's
- 13:37Speaker 4: the demand. But very much we have stayed truth to
- 13:39Speaker 4: this aspect that we want to do the things that
- 13:42Speaker 4: we are excited about.
- 13:43Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 13:43Speaker 4: Like Sadah I said, I think we are so passionate
- 13:45Speaker 4: about our own careers as well, where we do so
- 13:47Speaker 4: many social impact work as well, that we want to
- 13:50Speaker 4: create both of these platforms. And I think the world
- 13:53Speaker 4: is moving towards the stage where you do multiple jobs
- 13:55Speaker 4: at the same time, and that's something we really aspire towards.
- 13:58Speaker 5: In to add I think the fact that we don't
- 14:02Speaker 5: just share absolutely everything, I think is something that our
- 14:05Speaker 5: community does appreciate. Like we had someone come up and
- 14:08Speaker 5: tell us like we've changed the way that they traveled
- 14:11Speaker 5: in well, and someone else said that they exclusively trust
- 14:14Speaker 5: our opinion and that because we posted about this particular place,
- 14:18Speaker 5: you know, they're definitely going to go there. And it's
- 14:20Speaker 5: a responsibility that we don't take likely because at the
- 14:23Speaker 5: end of the day, if somebody you know, recommended something
- 14:26Speaker 5: to us and we went and spent our money, then
- 14:27Speaker 5: we wouldn't want to mislead people into you know, just yeah.
- 14:31Speaker 2: I mean it comes down to authenticity as well, and
- 14:34Speaker 2: I think people are getting the more media save we get,
- 14:36Speaker 2: the more people recognize it when they see it and
- 14:38Speaker 2: value it when they see it, because there is so
- 14:40Speaker 2: much of the opposite kind of content out there that
- 14:42Speaker 2: has just baby based on whoever paid me to say this,
- 14:45Speaker 2: So I think hands hands off off to you for
- 14:48Speaker 2: keeping it that way. The last thing to tell our
- 14:50Speaker 2: listeners what we must say Goodbye is where they get
- 14:52Speaker 2: to explore your content.
- 14:54Speaker 3: Any social media platform.
- 14:56Speaker 5: We're they're pretty much everywhere you can search. It's a
- 14:58Speaker 5: four adventures or R underscore. I don't think that's necessarily though,
- 15:03Speaker 5: A for underscore adventures, or you can check out our
- 15:05Speaker 5: website as well. That's just a fadventures dot com and.
- 15:08Speaker 1: Get get busy exploring in your own backyard.
- 15:11Speaker 2: Thank you so much for the work that you're putting
- 15:13Speaker 2: into this platform, and more importantly for joining us today
- 15:15Speaker 2: to share it having with us Celia and Alaska and
- 15:19Speaker 2: the platform you're looking for A for adventures with an
- 15:22Speaker 2: S on the end.