about me
Rainbow Beach, Queensland, Australia
Vision Quest Summit – Abraham Lake, Nordegg, Alberta
Preface
If you’re here reading this, let me take a moment to thank you for taking the time out of your life to learn about mine. I greatly appreciate it.
Before we start, I will preface you by letting you know there are 2 versions of this, the TLDR; and the full thing. The full thing is quite in depth, and I intended for it to be that way so you can get to truly know me and my journey, even if it’s only through a screen. I am transparent in nature, so I wanted this section to reflect this.
So if you don’t care to learn the full story and you want to skip to the TLDR, click HERE. I won’t blame you for doing so. For those looking to take a deeper dive into who I am, let’s begin.
bEFORE tRAVELING - tHE bASICS
My name’s Jamie, I’m a 32 year old Canadian male and I’ve been travelling around the world for the past 7 years. I have a mixed background, with my father being half English and half Welsh and my mother side being full Japanese.
Prior to travelling, I graduated from the University of Alberta in 2016 with a Bachelors of Kinesiology degree with a Major in Sports Performance. I also played collegiate football for the U of A during my studies, where I played Sam Linebacker and also was the backup place kicker and Punter.
Football and school were the focal points of my life for nearly a decade. Beginning in my first year of high school and extending to 7 years after graduating high school, nearly all of my time was dedicated towards football and school. I mean it literally, as it took anywhere from 60-80 hours per week of my time. While it was time consuming, I loved every minute of it, and it gave my life structure. However, that structure however was bulldozed when the minute my final University game ended.
My Final Football Game vs University of Calgary, 2015
How and why I Decided to Travel
Fun Fact: I actually delayed graduating by a year in order to play out my final year of eligibility for football. I took the minimum 3 classes necessary in order to play collegiate sports, but as soon as that final whistle went, I dropped out of my fluff courses and my University career was done. While it may seem awesome not having to study anymore, it was actually terrifying. As I mentioned previously, Football and School were what my life revolved around and now all of sudden, I had neither. 80 hours per week of structure and following direction dissipated in an instant. Now, for the first time in my life, I had to figure out what to do without anyone or anything dictating my life..
WHERE DO I BEGIN!?
I did what most people who come out of severely regimented situation do.. Party and LET LOOSE! I indulged in all the foods I couldn’t eat while training, caught up on all the drinking I missed out on during University. Stayed up until whatever hour of the night I pleased. It was great! Until it wasn’t.
After a couple months of this lifestyle, I realized that I was still in the same place that I started. I still didn’t know what I was going to do with my life and now I was chunky and out of shape from months of late night McDonald’s and Excessive drinking. I had no immediate job offers out of school, so I got a job working as a painter for my sister’s painting company to make ends meet while figuring myself out.
It was during this influx period of my life where I came across a show on Netflix called ‘Departures’. The show is about 2 young Canadian guys who went on an around-the-world trip for a year, including destinations like Thailand, Jordan, India and Papua New Guinea. These guys decided to take a year off of work in order to travel the world, something they’ve always wanted to do. They had an opening in their lives and decided to make the most out of it. As I started watching this show, it ignited the desire in me to travel and see the world too.
At first the idea of travelling long term was a pipe dream, but I soon realized that doing a trip like theirs was entirely possible. I also had this massive opening in my life to do whatever I wanted, and while I looked at it before as a burden, I realized it was a massive opportunity. I had no kids, no girlfriend at the time, no debts, no animals, no house, I had no anchors whatsoever keeping me to one place. It just made too much sense not to do it, but as you can imagine, it’s not always that simple.
Departures. – The Show That Change My Life
Even though I had the opening in my life to travel and follow the boys from Departures, I still had a lot of anxieties and worries about actually doing it. I mean, could I really leave and do what they did? Is it safe out there? Will I die? Will I get robbed? I had many variations of questions along these lines. However, the thoughts of doubt were equally accompanied by thoughts of curiosity and wonder. The imagery I saw from Departures never left my mind, and the thought of seeing those sights for myself in person ultimately prevailed.
One night, my friend Nick and I were at my house talking about the idea of travelling and making a trip together. It was a lot of hypothetical, but after discussing a couple of places, and hyping ourselves up about it, we ultimately decided Thailand made the most sense.
Other than the Thailand episode of Departures being my favorite one, my sister had gone to Thailand a couple years prior and loved it and Nick’s mom had a history of spending long periods of time in Thailand, and so it made entirely too much sense for Thailand to be our jumping off point.
We decided that we needed some time to make money and also prepare ourselves mentally for this big trip, but we wanted to make it a reality. So we decided to put our money where our mouth was and we booked a one-way ticket to Chiang Mai 6 months in advance, departing at the end of summer. The date had been booked. August 30th. The pipedream turned into a reality.
My Instagram Post After Finally Taking The Leap To Go Travelling
Beginning life oN THe Road - 7 Months in aSIA
Nick and I Departing For Chiang Mai, Thailand – August 30th, 2016
During the 6 months that followed, I worked my tail off, penny pinched, got back in shape, and thought about life on the road every day at work. For the first time since football ended, I was working towards something again, and I had so much life.
By the time we were about to set sail on our trip, I managed to save $10000, buy entirely too many things to pack into my new 55L Osprey Farpoint backpack (including a misquito net, which I found most hostels would have anyways) and somehow not back out of the trip, even though the build up to my departure date made my excitement/anxiety go through the roof. But, we made it, and we were ready to take off.
Though Nick was going to be my partner in crime on the trip, he was only going to come for a month or so, as he had other things to tend to back home. After initially planning to travel on my own anyways, having my best friend there with me while tackled South East Asia for the first time was definitely needed.
After hugging my loved ones goodbye, we found ourselves standing at the departure gate at the Edmonton International Airport, ready to set sail to South East Asia, mosquito net and all. The time had finally come.
As much as I would like to say it was all sunshine and rainbows from there on, to say Nick and I had a ROUGH start to the trip is an understatement. From a peanut allergy in the Beijing airport and puking on the flight to Chiang Mai (Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I have a peanut allergy and decided to start in a country that uses peanuts A LOT in their foods), to having our bags not show up to Chiang Mai, to nearly losing Nick’s Passport on the ride to our hotel, to getting the typical Asia Belly sickness once getting there, it was a horrific start for the boys, to say the least. It seemed like we were destined to fail, as our bodies were not accustomed to the smells, the heat, the noises of that was the hustle and bustle of Chiang Mai. But like all things, you must adapt and overcome, and we did that.
(Asia Belly = Your stomach’s introduction to the new bacteria found in the local foods, complete with diarrhea and vomiting and an overall horrible time)
After getting our bags and finally changing into clothing appropriate clothing for the 37 degree heat, everything smoothed out from there. We stayed in Chiang Mai for 5 days before heading down to Bangkok to meet my other friends who were also travelling Asia at that time from Edmonton, before heading down to the Islands of Koh Samui, Koh Phan Gan, and Koh Tao. Eventually, the Asia belly finally wore off and we completely indulged ourselves in cheap, delicious Thai food, many nights of drinking and partying, and various tourist activities. We both experienced crashing motorbike rentals like absolute farangs (Thai word for White/Foreigner) and overpaying significantly in order to get our passports back, which would seem like a negative experience, but feeling stomach strong and enjoying the immersion of Thailand, we were having the time of our lives. Hitting our stride well after the initial fumbling, and we decided to take a trip over to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam after our 1 month visa ended.
Ho Chi Minh was insane. 8 million Motorbikes and 7 million people in the city, trying to cross the street was like finding an opening in a swirling school of fish. Going from the chill island life of the Thai gulf Islands to the largest city in Vietnam was mayhem. This mayhem included 5 people on a single bike, a refrigerator still in the box on a back of a scooter, seeing a woman get her purse snatched by 2 men on a bike, driving on the wrong side of the road in a taxi and watching the bikes go around it like it was an every day occurrence, it was one of the truest culture shocks I’ve ever experienced.
3D Art Museum With My Small Friend Nick – Chiang Mai, Sept 2016
After visiting the Vietnam War Museum, visiting the Chu Chi Tunnels and indulging in the best Pho I’ve ever tasted by a mile, Nick decided to make a trip over to Japan, ending our trip together. It was a new phase in my life to solo travel without my main mane, but all good things must come to an end eventually. After hugging my best friend goodbye, I then left to Hanoi in the morning where I would be meeting up Molly, a girl I had met in Chiang Mai, to go travelling together through Sapa Valley and Ha Long Bay.
At the end of our 8 day trip together, she invited me to come stay with her in Chiang Mai for a bit, which is where she was teaching English at the time. With nothing to do and no where to be, I accepted her offer and decided to become a local of Chiang Mai for a month.
Ride Back From Our Trek in Sapa Valley, – October, 2016
Returning to Chiang Mai this time was incredibly different this time around. It was an incredibly strange time to be living in Thailand, as the beloved King of Thailand had just passed away the day I arrived, forcing the whole country into mourning. No music was played, no partying, and everyone needed to wear black everyday for an entire month (in Bangkok an entire year) to pay respects to the King.
Regardless of this rare instance of being in Thailand, I was able to have a wonderful, and enlightening time in Chiang Mai. Molly took me to visit non touristy restaurants, introduced me to her teaching friends where I spouted endless curiosity about their working life abroad, and enjoying the various aspects of living in one place for an extended period of time. It was a very memorable month.
Foreshadowing: Without this experience, I doubt I would have returned to Chiang Mai on 2 separate occasions to live there. This website will eventually contain a lot of content about Chiang Mai
As my visa came to an end and Molly had to return home to America for American thanksgiving, I bought a one way ticket to Malaysia, a country I never planned to visit, but chose to go there because it was the cheapest. Another goodbye, another adventure.
For the proceeding 5 months, it was mostly travelling and not much staying in one place. Since it’s simply too much to cover in an about me section I will make bullet points to highlight and simplify what happened.
-I solo travelled to Malaysia where I met unbelievably hospitable locals and travelers and ate entirely too much of the delicious food. I was an honorary guest at not ONE, but TWO Malaysian weddings with strangers I met for a total of 1 hour and sung Ricky Martin – She Bangs for the bride (I wish I was kidding). (5 weeks)
– Flew from Malaysia to Nepal where I met up with Ashish, a high school friend who was born in Nepal, and I travelled with his family visited his local village, spent new years in Pokhara and conquered my fear of bungee jumping off of the worlds tallest suspension bridge bungee (160m) (4 weeks)
– Flew back to Thailand to meet with Molly, travelling around and seeing old friends before taking a slow boat to Laos from Chiang Klong (2 weeks)
– Explored Laos and did a fair share of partying and sightseeing with Molly, including bar hopping while tubing down down a river, exploring many lagoons in Vang Vien and and the infamous drunk bowling in Luang Prabang (2 weeks)
– Flew back to Thailand and got my Open water certification for diving in Koh Tao, and explored the west side of Thailand and the Island of Koh Lanta (3 weeks)
– Flew back to Malaysia scuba dive and go see friends I made the previous time I was there. Molly and I split at this point so most of it was solo. (6 weeks)
– Took a bus down to Singapore and stayed there for as long as possible before flying to Darwin, Australia to begin working on a Sandalwood farm (4 days)
If you bared with me during all that jumping around, you deserve a pat on the back and a small trophy.
Australian Working Holiday Visa – 1 Year
Honorary Guest At a Malaysian Wedding, Malaysia – November, 2016
Random Photo’s Highlighting Asia – November 2016 -> March 2017
I met a girl named Anna in Langkawi Malaysia where I was able to get the contact information for a Sandalwood farm in Western Australia. Anna had just finished spending a year in Australia working and saving money and she was kind enough to share the farm information with me. With some planning and incessant badgering, I convinced the farm manager hire me, which was great because my money was extremely low at this time. So low in fact, that I had to sell my car back home in order to not go into debt.
So I flew in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, and stayed there for about a week before heading on a bus 10 hours westward towards Kununurra, where I begin my job on a sandalwood farm. If you are wondering what a Sandalwood farm is, Sandalwood is a type of tree used for cosmetics and health benefits. The farm was an hour south of Kununurra, where a random farm hand came and retrieved me so I could begin working.
An important bit of information to know, on a working holiday visa for Canadians, if you desire to stay for an additional year, it is mandatory to work 88 days in regional work, such a farm work, which is what this job was for me. It’s an important tidbit of information that applies significantly to my time in Australia.
I began life on the farm with a 2 week delay of doing nothing. It wasn’t the time of season when I arrived, so I hung out in the giant pop up camp they had laid for us. We each shared a bunk bed room with another worker, which I lucked out on with a super awesome French guy named Thibaut. The layout was 4 trailers aligned in a square with a giant canopy over top. Middle area was common space, 3 of the trailers were lodging, and the other one was a kitchen. There was also a massive river close to the farm, where everyone went fishing for Barramundi, a delicious fish that was an excellent challenge to reel in.
Catching My First Barramundi in Kununurra, April 2017
My Sandalwood Work Crew at our camp – Kununurra, 2017
The Farm life was an interesting one. Everyday we would pick vines growing on the sandalwood trees, fix irrigation problems caused by wild dingos, and do random labour to maintain the Sandalwood trees, all in 38C weather (It sucked). But it paid pretty well and I was getting my days towards my 88 days, which was great.
However, at the 35 day mark, the farm laid off every single labourer due to allegations that the farm was running a Ponzi scheme. It didn’t help that the CEO sold all of his stocks for millions LOL. Either way, I was out of a job and I had absolutely no plan what to do. I even bought a fricken boat to catch fish! Luckily, I was able to sell the boat to a local. But it definitely turned my life upside down.
Since it was sudden, they allowed us to stay there for a couple of weeks to make plans to move. After this grace period finished, I we were all driven back to the town of Kununurra where some people on the farm found jobs, and I made my way to Darwin to look for Pearling work.
My return to Darwin was unsuccessful, as they had no work at the time (or at least not for travelers).There was other work, such as restaurants and cafes, but since I was nearly half way done my 88 days of farm work, I decided to go elsewhere. This ‘elsewhere’ turned out to be Cairns, on the North Eastern Tip of Australia. The method for getting there? Join 2 young German guys (Davide and Alex) that I messaged on a backpackers facebook group, and whom I’ve never met before, on a 26 hour, 5 days excursion across rural Australia. This is peak travelling (or peak insanity, depends how you look at it).
During this 5 days trip, we stopped at National parks, random scenic pit stops, and outback sleep areas. It was a pretty insane road trip, especially over 5 days. The reason it was so condensed was because I had 2 of my former teammates from University who were in Cairns, but only for a couple days. So fast tracking the trip would allow for me to see them, which ended up happening.
We eventually arrived safe and sound in Cairns, where we all decided stay the hostel my buds were staying at. Needless to say, we got a little bit loose that night, including doing my first, and only, Australian famed Shoo-ey. Gross
After my friends left to head southward, I began searching around Cairns for Farm work. After 2 weeks of little to no success looking for work, and truthfully mostly of exploring, partying, and scuba diving than anything, I was able to contact a random Painting Company and secure a job! AND it counted towards farm days, SWEET! The catch? It wasn’t in Cairns, and it was 10 hours south in a small sailing town called Airlie Beach. Being shocked when the lady told me this, I realized that once again, I would be back on the road, but this time by Greyhound Bus.
Alex, Davide and I Eating Dinner on our roadtrip – May 2017
Reuniting With My Football Boys in Cairns, May 2017
I arrived in Airlie Beach late night and wandered over to a Hostel named Backpackers By The Bay, which ended up being the only hostel I’ve ever stayed long term at, and the hostel that I met most of my dearest friends travelling at. It was indeed that, a long term stay hostel, and many of the travelers there were working in Airlie Beach doing random jobs. After a couple days to settle in I began work as a Painter for a guy named Razz, a local guy who happened to break his arm falling through a stairwell. It was a smaller company, but had great guys to work with. While he usually required his workers to have vehicles, he just drove me around while he was injured. It was not a bad job at all. But like all things up to that point, NOTHING comes easy. Let me elaborate.
One day, me and the fellas were painting a home when Razz came marching in yelling at everyone, not unusual for him, but pretty sporadic. It seemed something was wrong, and we were nearly done the job so I went outside to go clean some materials. Razz comes outside and loses his shit on me for not taking breaks (as I wanted to make more money) and fires me. As I stand there stunned, since Razz had been hyping me up every time he would interact with someone while I was there, I asked him once I could gather some words if he would be a reference for me and refer me to other painters in the area. His face immediately went to compassion, and told me that the actual reason he was firing me was because I didn’t have a vehicle and that he found another guy who did have a vehicle, which would take some costs off of him having to pick me up and drop me off everyday. In a business sense, I understood where he was coming from, but on a personal level, I could believe the stroke of unfortune that I had encountered since being in Australia trying to find work. Another job, another situation out of my control, another time I needed to figure it out. I lasted at that job for a total of 32 days.
Jeff, Myself, And Joey at King’s Beach – Caloundra, Australia – 2017
Bert, Jeff, and Myself – Fraser Island – 2017
What was even worse was that I had just moved out of backpackers by the Bay into a condo in Cannonvale, the town just before Airlie Beach, with a guy named Sean. He was a Aussie guy from Newcastle, New South Wales who I found on the Airlie Rental page on facebook. I checked out his place and it was a very reasonable rent with my own space, so I decided to move in with him. He was a good guy, a daytime mechanic and a gym fanatic. I had told him initially I planned to stay there for at least 1 month, so I had paid him an entire month’s rent as a down deposit, even though it’s typical to pay by the week in Australia. I figured since I had the place already paid for, I might as well stay and make use of it.
After some deliberation, I decided to fly to Brisbane a couple days later to go see my friends that I went to University with while leaving most of my belongings back at Sean’s place. One of them was also on a working holiday Visa with his girlfriend (Jeff) and my other friend (Joey) had moved to Brisbane to study Physiotherapy and wound up meeting a girl, who he is now married to. I hadn’t seen either of them in over a year so I figured now would be a better time than ever.
I stayed with them for a couple weeks and met their friends, did a bunch of partying, linked with a new friend Bert (whose family owns a Pineapple and Dragon Fruit farm just outside of Brisbane) and went to Fraser Island and stayed on that Island for a few nights. It was wonderful, and much needed R&R after the shitstorm that had occurred since I arrived in Australia. Bert said I could get a job working on his farm to finish off the rest of my 88 days, which I was at 67 by this time. I considered just staying with them to finish off the final 21, but all of my belongings were back at the condo, so I ultimately had to go back and get everything before moving anyways, but at least I had an opportunity to complete my days. So I flew back to Airlie Beach with every intention on gathering my stuff and working for Bert’s family.. but like everything so far in Australia, shit doesn’t go the way I planned things.
After an unreal 2 weeks in Brisbane with my friends, I headed back to collect my stuff from Sean’s place. While I was cleaning up my stuff, I found the business cards that Razz gave me of all of the other painting guys in town. Painting paid pretty well, while farm work typically does not, so in one last ditch effort before heading to Bert’s, I decided to give them a call. I reached the voice mail box of 3 out of the 4, and the final guy I called, a man named Bryan, answered the phone.
I already had a briefing on Bryan because one of the painters I worked with (Paul) when I worked with Razz used to work for him. He said he’s a dickhead (his words not mine) but he paid well, and he had many contracts on the surrounding Islands in the area, such as Haymen Island, Daydream Island and Hamilton Island (Fun Fact: Many celebrities have homes there, such as Jennifer Anniston and Zach Efron). I was extra intrigued on working on an island painting houses, as they gave you free accommodation and food. So I wanted to convince Bryan to hire me, and worst case scenario, I go to Brisbane and pick some pineapples.
Now back to the phone call.
Backpackers By The Bay Family – Airlie Beach, 2017
Bryan and his deep, raspy, hard to understand Australian voice answers the phone. “Hello?” I respond: “Hi is this Bryan?” He replies: “Yep.” And I remember saying to him probably the most outward, cocky thing I have ever said to this day. “I heard you’re looking for good painters to work for you, my name’s Jamie.”
This is incredibly unlike me to do something like this, but I remember a lady who told me earlier in Darwin as I was handing out my Resumes (or CV’s as they call it there) that you have to show Aussies that you have a back bone and you’ll make them money. So I took her advice in this situation and the strategy worked like a charm, and Bryan asked me to meet him at his offices in the middle of town an hour after the phone call. I remember being in awe that it worked, and then quietly thanked the lady in my head before heading out to go meet Bryan.
I arrived at his office and had literally a 30 second meeting with him before he took out hiring papers for me to sign. Wow, something easy in Australia?! I couldn’t believe it. As I was signing the papers, I mentioned the guy who told me about him and commented how cool I thought it was that he had contracts working on the surrounding Islands. I continued to explain my experience about working as a painter for many years in Canada for my sister, and how we’re not even close to the ocean geographically, so the island work seemed extremely awesome. He sat for a minute and pondered, and then opened his mouth and said: “I have the perfect place for you, you’re going to Moreton Bay.” Well… that’s what I heard at least, as his accent was very thick and bogan. (Bogan is essentially people who are country/rural, but Australia’s version)
View of Airlie Beach From Honey Eater Trail – 2017
I was over the moon! Moreton Bay was close to Brisbane which meant I could be close to my friends I had recently visited. Though Brisbane is 10 hours away from Airlie Beach, I figured this guy had contracts in multiple cities, so I was extremely excited. Either way, I was stoked!
I went to the local shops, bought some new flip flops and board shorts and went shopping for new work gear. I needed to wear the typical Aussie construction wear (or as they call it High Vis), which was a florescent Orange or Yellow, steel toed boots and long work pants. So once I gathered my gear, I got a message from Bryan a couple days later to meet him at the bus terminal for Sunday morning, a couple days later. I couldn’t believe my stroke of luck.. and I guess that’s because it was too good to be true.
Sunday came and I met Bryan at the round about by Airlie Beach Hotel. I was surprised he told me to meet there, as it wasn’t at the the Port of Airlie, the bus station in town. He was waiting for me with a cardboard boxes full of supplies to bring with me. I told Bryan how excited I was to be going to work on an island, although my excitement quickly turned to confusion when he told me that I’m not going to an Island. I said: “What? I thought I was going to Moreton Bay?” He replies: “No, you’re going to Moranbah.” (Although it still sounded like Moreton Bay to me.) He then follows up by saying: “You’re going to the mines mate.”
WHAT?! The mines?! What the hell? He absolutely did NOT brief me on any of this. So I begin asking a million questions about the job and location among many other things. He essentially dismissed all of it by stating he was a busy man and had to leave and that I was to catch the bus when it gets here at 11am. As he drives away I remember looking at my watch, time being 1040am, and saying to myself: “What the fuck just happened?
So I take out my google maps and type Moranbah (spelled it wrong the first time obviously) and saw a directional path 3.5 hours inland towards nothingness. I was genuinely shell shocked, and my brand new flip flops and board shorts became immediately obsolete. However, at this point I expected this type of thing to happen, since it’s been happening consistently since I arrived in Australia.
I sat around for 10 more minutes, 10:50am. Still no bus. I then googled bus stations in Airlie Beach, and sure as shit, the only bus station was 750m away, which is the Port of Airlie. I then googled buses to Moranbah, and sure as shit, the bus left from the Port of Airlie ONLY. Paul was definitely right, Bryan was a dick head (my words this time). So with my backpack and 2 enormous cardboard boxes, I sprinted over to the bus station as I had barely any time to get there. 10:53am. 7 Minutes to get there.
So there I am, running through the Airlie Marina with 2 giant boxes looking like an absolutely idiot, but had to little time to care. One of the boxes falls off with paint brushes erupting from the box. I frantically put all of the materials back in the box and check the time, 10:57am. I was gonna miss the bus! So I kept running and running and finally I get view of the Airlie Beach bus terminal. The bus I am looking for was still there! I arrive at the bus, gasping for air and sweating profusely as I ask the bus driver if this bus was going to Moranbah. He confirms it, but says I had to go inside and buy a ticket, but he’d wait for me and put all of my stuff in the bus. THANK GOD. I had made it, despite Bryan’s peanut brain.
So I bought the ticket, returned to the bus and gave the bus driver my overly sweaty bus ticket. As he rips the bottom half off and tells me to find a seat, I ask him: “Does the bus stop at the round about by Airlie Beach Hotel?” (which is where I was told to be) and he replies: “Nope, just here.” I couldn’t help but laugh out of relief and how brain dead my new boss was. But crisis averted, I had a job to finish off my 21 days left out of my 88 days and that’s all I cared about. Time to go to the mines
Once I arrived in Moranbah, Bryan told me I was suppose to be picked up by a Brazilian guy named Marcelo. Looking around at the people waiting for passengers to arrive, I didn’t see a Brazilian guy anywhere. Typical Bryan.
As I waited for about 30 minutes, a random white pick up truck rolls up and a young, Japanese looking guy gets out and asks if I’m Jamie in a Portuguese accent. I was shocked at first, since I didn’t expect Marcelo to be Japanese Brazilian, but I confirm that I was Jamie and I hopped in the truck with him on the way to work site. He later informs me that there are actually a lot of Japanese Brazilians in his home town of Sao Paulo, which I found fascinating as I mentioned that I am Japanese Canadian. Marcelo was a quiet, soft spoken guy, but I could tell I would get along with him well.
I walk into the office, which was a pop up office similar to that of my previous camp in Kununurra, and I was greeted by the secretary to fill out some papers. After signing my life away, she explains that the workers are staying in a camp, and that Marcelo would show me around. So we drive to the camp, I get shown my room and briefed on camp rules, and I relax for the night before beginning work the next day.
The Infamous Welcome To Moranbah Bucket – Moranbah, 2017
The following day, Marcelo picks me up at 630am to head to work for our first day. As we walk into the office, there are 15 or so guys sitting in the front area, with most of them being 50 years old or older. What was most intimidating was that there were absolutely NO backpackers there. It was all Australians, excluding Marcelo. As I sat down next to Marcelo and waited for the morning meetings to start, I remember having the most extreme case of Imposture syndrome I’ve ever had. “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.” I thought to myself. Before I had any more thoughts of self doubt, an older man who clearly was the manager came in and began the meeting.
“Everyone, This is Jamie. One of Bryan’s guys coming to join our crew.” As all eyes turned to me, I felt my heart sink into my stomach, as not one guy had a smile on their face. I simply waved and said hello, as the meeting continued. The meeting went on and eventually everyone left and the older gentleman, who I hadn’t met at the time, asked me to stick around. His name was Kevin, a manager of the Hutchinson Builders crew (or as they call themselves, Hutchies). He was a stern looking man, but he was quite friendly actually. Explained that I needed to take a few safety courses and initiation courses over the next couple days and then I’d be in the field. So over the next couple of days I completed those and learned only in those courses that Hutchies was the building company for BMA (Billiton-Mitsubishi Alliance) which was a multi-billion dollar coal mining operation. Essentially, Hutchinson builders fixed up and prepared all houses and living accommodations for coal miners coming to work in Moranbah and surrounding towns. So it was actually quite a serious job.
A couple days later after my courses, I joined a guy named Robbo, an older Kiwi man who was headed back to New Zealand in a couple days who was going to introduce me to the jobs. Robbo worked for Hutchies directly, while Marcelo and another guy named Shaun were Bryan’s painters, along with myself. Robbo asked me to go get the truck and to pull it around to Painting container on site so we could go and do our job. I panicked. I had no idea I had to drive at this job, nor have I ever driven on the right side of the road (as Australian drive on the opposite side of the road than Canada). So I jump in the car, and I remember blanking. It was manual… and I didn’t know how to drive manual. “Oh my fuck.” I said to myself.
I started up the car and stalled 3 times by the time I drove 25m to the painting sea can. Thankfully Robbo didn’t see me stall, as he was getting materials in the sea can. I park the car and hop out to help him pack the truck. He then jumps in the passenger seat, and I begin to freak out inside. Holy fuck man, what is going on here. So I jump in the car and sit there for a second before Robbo asks me what the hell I’m doing. I tell him that I didn’t know how to drive standard, and he begins to freak out about how Bryan is a idiot and keeps sending guys to Moranbah who aren’t qualified for the job. Sounds like Paul and myself aren’t the only ones who thinks Bryans a fucking idiot. So we switch seats and we head to the job.
Robbo was actually a solid dude, and we begin talking and I tell him that I’m Canadian which loosens him up a bit. We stop at the paint shop to grab tinters, which I wasn’t familiar with, and we head to a random house in the town. We unload our stuff and head into the house. Rob explains to me the job and tells me to paint a wall and he will watch. I ask him where the paint for the wall is and he says that I need to make it. Umm… what?! In Canada we have paint shops tint the paint for us, and here I guess we had to do it manually, hence the tinters. He once again blows up about Bryan, and then calms down and ends up tinting the paint for me. I was waaayy over my head on this job, but Robbo saw me begin to paint and he calmed down. I had been painting on and off for 7 years at that point, so painting wasn’t the problem. It was all of the new shit, like driving manual on the right side of the road and tinting paints that got to me.
We finished the job and Robbo suggested that I figure out a way to learn how to tint colours, because it was essential to working out here, and that he would keep quiet about my lack of qualifications at this job, since he liked me. What a freaking way to start the job. I figured I needed to fake it till I made it in this situation, at least for 21 days.
That night, I youtubed how to colour match and how to drive standard and watched videos for 4 hours on the matter. I was freaking out and needed to figure out how to do these things. I ended up getting a decent grasp on colour matching, but both that and driving manual was going to be a work in progress.
Nights Out In Airlie With The BBTB Crew – Airlie, 2017
The next day, Robbo left to head back home to New Zealand and I joined Shaun and Marcelo on a job. Shaun was in his 40s and was once (or still was) a part of a biker gang called the 1%’ers and he had an enormous tattoo across his chest of that. He was actually a decent guy, although at first I thought he was a huge dick. He got me to do all the bitch work for the first few weeks, as he took Marcelo to go do the easier work. I remember painting as fast and as well as I could trying to mask my shortcomings. This was pretty much the arrangement for nearly 2 months.
On weekend, Marcelo drove back to Airlie Beach, where he and his wife Paula were based out of (thankfully), and I caught a ride with him every weekend. Work days were 10 hours a day, 5 days a week and we would leave for the 3.5 hour drive on the Friday after work and leave at 3am the morning of the Monday to arrive just in time for work. It was a brutal drive, but it was a necessary evil.
On weekends I would go back and party with my friends from the hostels, decompress on the beach, and hangout with Sean. One of my good friends Rich, an English guy from Manchester, was my partner in crime for most workouts and nights out. He was an electrician who worked in Airlie, and it was always a good time getting together with him and my other friends from the hostel to let loose after long weeks in Moranbah. This was pretty much the status quo throughout my time working out in Moranbah.
After 2 months of working in Moranbah for Hutchies, I actually really enjoyed myself. I learned how to drive manual and tint paint, although I wasn’t an expert yet, but all of the guys I worked with, despite being 20 year + tradies, were all super cool people. They were all trades: Carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, tilers, labourers, and painters. I really enjoyed working with them, and despite having my 88 days of work, I decided it was a good opportunity to make and save money. Plus my life in Airlie on the weekends was awesome, so I felt good about staying as it seemed like everything was finally beginning to stabilize for once.. until it didn’t
Niko, Myself, & Rich at the Fiji vs. USA Rugby World Cup – Townsville, 2017
One day, I get to work and Shaun wasn’t present for the morning meeting. After the morning meeting, Matt (The second in charge at Hutchies) called me into his office to speak to me. He informed me that Shaun had quit the night before to go sandblasting for more money elsewhere, and that I would be put in charge of Marcelo. LOL, another WTF moment. Nothing is ever easy in Australia. So I called Bryan, since Bryan never called me, to ask about the change. He told me that no one else was coming out there for the near future and I was in charge. Being mad at Bryan, as if it almost came out of me, I asked to be compensated for the new role. I knew Shaun was making $45 an hour while Marcelo and I were only making $32 (which don’t get me wrong, was a wage I was happy with) but the request somehow came out of me. He responded to my surprise: “You’re right mate, how about $40 an hour?”
Shocked that it actually worked, I quit negotiations right then and there and responded that would work. I hung up the phone elated. 8 dollar raise?! OH BABY! My excitement quickly turned to panic when I realized that I was now in charge of all of the painting that needed to be done for the job, and that made me extremely nervous.
For the next 2 months, I worked as hard as I possibly could so I could seem like I was fit for the job. My boss Kevin was a true professional and wanted professional guys in there, but he told me that he would give me a chance to be the lead. So I banged out as much good work as I possibly could. The month led us to multiple towns in the area, including Dysart and Blackwater, where we would paint houses for incoming higher ups in the mines. It was incredibly stressful, but I was saving up significant money while still going back to Airlie on the weekends and doing fun things as well, like Whitehaven beach tours, Rugby Games and Scuba Diving in Townsville (3 hours north of Airlie), skydiving over Proserpine, and random activities with the BBTB crew, including volleyball games/beach day on sundays. The work life balance was intense, but it was a great time in my life.
Nearing Christmas, Hutchinson Builders had a staff Christmas party in the town and we all got on the piss (getting drunk in Australian terms). We did lawn bowling, at food, but mostly drank all night. Kevin and I were on a team during Lawn Bowling, and Kevin drunkenly admitted to me: “Jamie, you’re not the best painter I’ve ever seen, but fuck mate, you give me 100% effort everyday, and I am happy to have you on our team.”
Frist Sky Dive Experience – Proserpine, 2017
Family Reunited in Melbourne – 2017
All of my anxieties and worries withered away in 1 sentence. I gave Kevin a drunken hug and admitted to him how much of a fraud I felt being out there with everyone. He reiterated that I was one of the guys and that I deserved to be out here. Still to this day, he’s one of the best Bosses I’ve ever had. It was a poetic ending to an insane year in Australia.
What made it even more sweet was that my family was coming to visit me in Australia, as my mom’s sister had been living near Melbourne for nearly 40 years at the time. We had 2 weeks off for Christmas so I flew down to Melbourne to meet my family. My mom and grandma were coming down, but my sister said she had to work. As I reunited with my family down in Melbourne, I couldn’t remember being more excited to see my family. I snapchatted my sister daily to let her know how much fun we were having to make her feel bad about not coming down for Christmas. Well, wouldn’t you know it, my sister ends up surprising the living hell out of me by showing up a couple days later, where I couldn’t help but cry out of excitement, surprise and joy. Even 6 years later, I’m shedding a tear writing about this moment right now. Just such a wonderful surprise.
We spent those 2 weeks exploring and enjoying Melbourne and Warragal, where my aunt lived. It was one of my favourite Christmas’s of my life, and genuinely so needed to see my family after over a year apart from each other. My sister Keiko came to visit me in Airlie for a couple days before I had to go to work, and that was great to spend some time together. Those 2 weeks went by in a flash, and I was back at work in no time.
Work was pretty much status quo for the proceeding 3 months until March, where my year long visa was coming to an end. I had managed to save a boat load of money for future travels while enjoying my time in Australia. Honestly, I was sad to leave my friends, my co workers and my job, but all good things come to an end eventually.
I didn’t know where I was going next, but all I knew was that I had to be in Russia by June 16th. The reason being was that on New years of 2017, I drunkenly purchased a $500 dollar ticket (I severely overpaid) to Russia to go watch Portugal vs Spain. I do not remember buying the ticket, but I did and so I needed to be there. Other than that, my plans were open. But since my visa was expiring, I needed to get out of Australia. As the song by the Oak Ridge Boys goes: “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” And off I went.
Me in My Work Gear – Moranbah, 2018
Back To Asia - Round 2
Halab Gate My Favourite Shawarma Place – Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur
I flew to Malaysia from Australia and began rummaging around there for a while to go see some friends I hadn’t seen in a year. To be completely honest, I go back for the food. Specifically this one Shawarma right next to the hostel I always stayed at, Sunshine Bedz KL, located in Bukit Bintang in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. This shawarma is god like, and some of my other favourite restaurants are in Melacca City, Pak Putra, and Penang, Kapitan Tandoori. But that shawarma is something else. I will embarassingly admit it that I ate there 5 times in one day once. But how can you not when it costs $3 Canadian. Anyways, I digress.
I stayed in Malaysia for about 2 weeks before flying out to Cambodia, a place I’d never been before. Cambodia was a very memorable country, given the horrific history of the genocide. Visiting the killing fields and the Genocide Museum (S21) broke my heart into a million pieces. 3 million of 8 million people killed during the Khmer Rouge Regime, an attempt from Pol Pot to convert Cambodia to an entirely Agricultural society, left Cambodia in ruins. It was a tragedy, and it is impossible not to be impacted by sights like these places.
Cambodia as whole, however, is a magnificent country. One of the poorest countries I’ve ever been to, the people are lovely and the history is rich. I volunteered at a monastery and taught young monks English, I was then invited to have lunch at the monastery along with what is considered to be the Pope’s equivalent in Cambodia’s Buddhist culture. It was an honour and a wonderful experience. Along with exploring the underrated Cambodian cuisine and enjoying the delightful Aspara Theater/Dance, a must see if you ever go to Phnom Pehn.
I then went to Kampot and tours and sightseeing, including a motorbike tour to an abandoned casino/active money laundering operation at the top of a mountain. I mean it sincerely, it is a 5 star hotel with a casino and a fully operating staff with NO ONE inside of it. It’s wild to see.
I then travelled to Sihanoukville before heading to Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem, the popular islands in the south of Cambodia for a few days before heading up to Siam Reap to go see Angkor Wat, the original Kingdom of Cambodia.
My Cambodian Monk Students after English Class – Phnom Penh, 2018
Sunrise At The Kingdom of Angkor Wat – Siam Reap, 2018
Angkor Wat is undoubtedly one of the most impressive, awe-inspiring places I’ve ever been. Built 900 years ago, the layout of the kingdom is over 1.6 million square meters. It’s hard to believe people could construct something so large back then. Truly a wonderous feat.
I stayed in Siam Reap for a few days before flying out to Thailand to meet with my friend Pam, who was living in Bangkok. Pam is a friend from Edmonton, but she was born in Thailand and had been living in Bangkok for just under a year. I had visited Pam in Thailand before when she came with her family up to Chiang Mai while I was living with Molly in October 2018, and she invited me to celebrate Songkran with her in Bangkok. Songkran is a 3 day water festival to celebrate Thai New years in April. The whole country shuts down and has a huge water fight.
Our mutual friend Noah, who’s also from Edmonton and who I happened to see briefly during Christmas in Melbourne a few months earlier, was also staying with Pam. So we ate, drank, and shot tons of unexpecting people with Water guns as we rang in the Thai New Years.
After visiting Pam and Noah, I headed down to Koh Tao to go and get advanced open water certified for scuba diving. I stayed there for 4 days and enjoyed the tranquility of one of my favourite islands.
I had no definitive plan as to where I was going next, but it was either Japan or Philippines. My decision was made based on girl I met in Malaysia, a Mexican girl named Tayde, who I also met up with again in Siam Reap, expressed that she wanted to travel together. However, she couldn’t get into Japan due to the limitations on her passport, but she could travel to the Philippines. So off to Manila I went.
I flew to Manila and met Tayde at the airport, and we stayed in Manila for 2 days before heading out to Palawan. We explored Port Barton, a sleepy town with impeccable white sand beaches, but also the most annoying roosters on the planet, as were incessantly cockledoodle dooing at 3am, every day. We then headed up to El Nido for my birthday and spent it scuba diving, drinking and exploring Nac Pan Beach, one of my favourite beaches. We then took a ferry to Coron, where I did more scuba diving in the Coron wrecks and Barracuda lake, before we flew to Cebu and I went to Moal Boal and Tayde flew back to Mexico.
My Open Water Dive Class – Koh Tao, 2018
Canyoneering in Badian, Kawasan Falls – Moal Boal, 2018
I went to Moal Boal because there was a sick Canyoneering experience, where you traverse through a canyon and at the end you could jump off Kawasan Falls (12m high) if you wanted to. I absolutely wanted to. I also did the sardine run, which is off of the beach in Moal Boal, where you can swim into the water and see literally thousands of sardines in a giant school circling underwater. It’s pretty surreal.
After Moal Boal, I flew to the Island of Siargao, a popular surfing island with incredible beauty. I had always wanted to try surfing, so I decided to give it a go at this island. Since I can’t swim particularly well, surfing was very difficult for me, as I was absolutely gassed trying to paddle. I did manage to stand up though! However, Siargao was an incredible place. After my surf lesson, I decided to rent a bike and drive around the whole Island. I ended up playing basketball with some locals (I got absolutely schooled), meeting locals and taking pictures with them, seeing madgoponko rock pools at low tide, which are exactly that, rock pools that occur when the tide goes out. I stayed in Siargao for a week, exploring Sugba Lagoon, but mostly relaxing before flying to Cebu to head to the Island of Malapascua, where the ever elusive thresher shark is commonly seen.
I stayed there for 2 nights, before I had to fly to Japan to meet my friends from home for EDC Japan, an electronic rave festival, and I managed to actually see a thresher shark, despite them not seeing a single one for 5 consecutive days prior. I guess my luck is in Asia and not in Australia haha. For those wondering what a Thresher shark looks like, click HERE.
I then flew to Tokyo to meet my friends Sam and Chris. Japan had been a place I always wanted to visit, considering I am half Japanese myself, even though 4 generations removed. Plus, I hadn’t seen these guys in almost 2 years at this point, so it was nice to reconnect with some local faces.
Sam and Chris randomly linked up with a guy from reddit named Vince, who was also Canadian and at the festival, and all 4 of us spent 2 days ripping around the EDC grounds, listening to a ton of music, drinking out of a 3L sake bottle with random Navy Seals who were stations in Japan, and whom ever else would take a drink of almighty 3L sake bottle. It was an unreal time, except the final day was literally a monsoon type downpour. But eh, can’t win em all.
After the 2 days, the boys and I went to a Japanese Baseball game and Disney sea, before the left to head out to the South of Japan while I stayed in Tokyo for another 2 weeks or so. I had met a few locals from Tokyo at the rave who actually knew English (a rarity in Japan) and so I decided to ask them if they would show me around when they weren’t working. One of the girls I met, Steph, was a polyglot (a person who knows multiple languages) and she decided to do most of the touring. She worked as a translator, knowing Japanese, English, Spanish and Portuguese fluently, so she was able to be a great guide around the city.
Chris, Sam, Myself, and Vince at EDC Japan – Tokyo, 2018
Me, Chris, and Sam at a Tokyo Giants Game – Tokyo, 2018
I was able to eat locally, try all sorts of delicious foods we don’t typically get in Canada, such as Curry Udon, Okonomiyaki, fast food rice bowls, Omakase sushi experience, and the endless selection at 7/11’s, Lawson’s, and Family Mart. I visited most of the main areas of Tokyo, such as Shibuya and the infamous Hachiko/Shibuya crossing, Harijuku, Ueno, Sukiji Fish Market, etc. I got a very good taste of Tokyo’s attractions before heading on a Bullet train (Shinkansen) up to Sendai, where I was very keen to explore the Zao Fox Village.
Fox Village is an area where foxes are protected and where people are able to walk around and interact with the usually aloof creatures. I didn’t feel comfortable to pet any foxes, but I was able to get close enough to them to take a picture with them. Sendai also is famous for their Gyutan (Cow Tongue), which I decided to try out while I was there. I give it a solid 9/10, and probably that 1 point deduction was because I knew I was eating tongue, since it was my first time. Delicious!
I then took the Shinkansen up to Sapporo, where I wanted to explore the Northern part of Japan, famous for it’s seafood and snowboarding in the winter. Being that I went in May, I simply went for the food.
One of the locals I met in Tokyo was Natthaya, a Thai national who had been living and studying in Sapporo, decided to meet up and take me to the Town of Otaru. While we were there, we ate some Kaisen Donburi, which is a variety of Seafood on top of rice (Unbelievably good), and visited its famous Steam clock. The steam clock is particularly interesting because there were only 2 clocks of the same model in the world, here in Otaru and the other being in Vancouver (I managed to see both in the same year without trying, which is a story I will probably write about it the future.)
I finished off my time in Sapporo visiting the Sapporo brewery, eating at a Michelin Star Ebi Ramen place (Shrimp Broth, very uncommon) and mostly stuffing my face with more Seafood.
I then took the Shinkansen down to Hakodate, a unique city where you are able to see both oceans that border Japan in a single view point. I did the Hakodate View Point Hike before taking the Bullet train down to Hiroshima.
Me At Fox Village With A Friendly Fox – Sendai Japan, 2018
Me at the Floating Tori at Low Tide – Miyajima, 2018
Hiroshima, much like Phnom Pehn in Cambodia, was an area with incredible tragedy. Visiting the Atomic Bomb Site and Museum was heart wrenching, but absolutely necessary to see. While I was there, I met a man who volunteers everyday to give detailed knowledge as to exactly what happened in the bomb, since he claims that the Atomic Bomb Museum has been removing parts of the evidence in order to appease the United States. He showed me the exact location where the bomb exploded, showed me hundreds of pictures and evidence, and also explained how he was just a new born by the time of the bombing. It was very interesting. After a heavy day of intaking that man’s wisdom, visiting the Atomic Bomb Museum and the Hiroshima Peace Park, I managed to random enter a Okonomiyaki restaurant that happened to be one of the best in Hiroshima. Of course, everything comes back to food, but it was one of my all time best meals I had in Japan.
On a happier note, while I was there I took a day trip to the Island of Miyajima, which happens to be my favourite place in all of Japan. It’s an island with wild deer roaming the island, excellent hawker stalls, details pagodas and temples, and the infamous floating Tori (where you can walk out at Low Tide to see it up close but becomes inaccessible during high tide.) There also several hikes on the island, which allow you to access pretty impressive viewpoints, such as the Mount Misen Hike.
After Miyajima, I headed down to Kagoshima which is at the very southern tip of the Japanese Mainland. My reason for going here, and also my next stop Okayama, was because these were the areas my Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother were from, respectively. A large objective for me during this trip was to attempt to reconnect with my roots and see where my lineage came from, so Kagoshima was on the list. Kagoshima itself didn’t have a ton to do, but I managed to do a day trip to Sakurajima, which is a peninsula with an active Volcano, spewing ash on a daily basis. Seeing the Volcano was extremely impressive, and the island was itself really gorgeous, with tons of wild cats coming up me and visiting while I spend time in the natural foot baths. I also had a hawk come down from the sky and attempt to steal my chicken I had just bought from 7/11, with its wings hitting me in the back of the head. I wish I had that on camera.
After Sakurajima, I came back and ate the intimidating Torisashi, raw chicken sashimi. The locals ensured me that I wasn’t going to get salmonella, so I dove into that and it was actually really delicious, although I was worried for a bit after that I had made a grave mistake, but I turned out to be fine.
Atomic Bomb Site – Hiroshima, 2018
Okayama Castle – Okayama, 2018
I then took the Shinkansen up to Okayama, the place I mentioned where my Grandmother’s family is from, and explored the Famous Okayama Castle and Okayama Gardens. Not a touristy place by any stretch of the imagination, I found Okayama to have a beautiful feeling to the city. Since my family had immigrated to Canada in the late 1890’s, I didn’t have any contacts from Kagoshima or Okayama. Truthfully as well, I didn’t feel more connected to Japan while being there, I actually felt the opposite. I felt extremely Canadian, and completely different from the Japanese way of life. Even though I suppose that’s to be expected, I felt to some degree my family retained most of the Japanese ethos, such as family first, avoid conflict, keep in your lane mostly, etc. So though I was initially disappointed I didn’t ‘feel’ more connected to Japan or tap into my roots, it gave me some perspective as to what I am.
Side Bar: When you travel, you learn a lot about not only the countries you visit, but about yourself as well. I will write more about this at length in another blog post, but learning that I am primarily Canadian, even though I am proud to be part Japanese, was a weird sense of disappointment and relief simulataneously. I had decided to simply enjoy Japan for the rest of my trip instead of searching for a lost part of myself.
From Okayama I visited Osaka and Kyoto before heading back up to Tokyo for a few days. I was nearing my time to head to Russia, so my stop overs in Osaka and Kyoto were brief. I hit the famous Dotonbori area, where there’s huge replica’s outside of the stores of whatever they’re selling there, such as Crab, Takoyaki, Sushi, etc. I ate my hearts desire there, as you can expect of me from this time. In Kyoto, I visited the popular Bamboo forest, the infamous Fushimi Inari Shrine, many temples and pagodas and simply explored the city by foot. Kyoto is one of my favourite parts of the country, being formerly the Capital of Japan (Edo) it has amazing older architecture, stunning history and exceptional beauty. Definitely a memorable place for me.
As I finished off my time in Tokyo seeing my old and new friends doing various activities and mostly eating, I then flew to Bangkok for a couple days to go Visit Pam, and mostly eat more Thai food. I sincerely mean it, food in countries is a primary reason for travelling for me. You need to eat, so why not eat well. After a couple of days, I then depart from Bangkok and head to Moscow, ready for the World Cup.
I arrive in Moscow and truthfully have no idea where or how I am suppose to reach my hostel. Moscow is a massive, complex city, with 3 airports and an unbelievably busy metro system, it was difficult to know where to go, especially with no Data. I arrived at the Northern Airport, Sheremetyevo airport, and took the aeroexpress into the city center. As I exit the train station with my two backpacks on me, I marvel at the architecture. It is so beautiful, and being I had never stepped foot on European soil before (even though Russia is technically also part of Asia) I’m sure I stuck out like a sore thumb just walking around admiring everything.
Bamboo Forest – Kyoto, 2018
Fushimi Inari Gates – Kyoto, 2018
Being completely transparent, I was apprehensive as to what to expect from Russia. Being in North America, usually everything we hear about Russia has biases from the US. Doubly, I’ve had mixed interactions with Russian travelers in the past (most good however) I wasn’t sure what to expect from the locals while being there.
My first interaction came not long after I was walking around the train station where a man, probably mid 40s, with a very thick Russian accent approached me. “Hey, where you go?” I showed the man my location on the map. He continues: “Follow me.” Although I mentioned before I was apprehensive, I was a lost dog and no direction, so I obliged and follow him.
His English was limited, but we had small talk about where I was from, what I was doing there and so on as he took me down the incredibly beautiful, but complex Moscow metro system. Once he found out I was Canadian, he gushed over his love for hockey and asked me what I thought of the famous Russian hockey players, at the time Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin. This dialogue continued for the entirety of 1 hour, which is the total time this man spent walking with me and taking me to my hostel.
In all my time travelling, I had never experienced such a gracious act of someone helping me. I literally mean he took me from Point A to point B, and even helped me check into my hostel, as the lady running the place spoke no English. The man, Sergey, invited me to join him and his friends to watch a CSKA Moscow Rugby game with him, but I planned to be in St. Petersburg at that time, so I regretfully declined his offer. But we exchanged contact info as I got settled into my hostel. My time in Russia was off to a fantastic start.
St. Basils Cathedral – Moscow
The Portugal vs Spain game was in Sochi in a few days time, so I took that time to rummage around Moscow and visit Iconic landmarks such as St. Basils Cathedral and the Red Square. Russia was so incredibly beautiful, and I had done little to no research on it prior to arriving so I was pleasantly surprised by it. The buildings had incredible detail, there were amazing statues everywhere (even in residential parks), and as mentioned before, the metro system was simply incredible. I’m not typically one to be god smacked by architecture, but genuinely Russia was just so far beyond what I had seen at the time, that I was spending hours of my day exploring the streets of Moscow.
While I didn’t like Russian food for the most part, I did eat adventurously and also indulge in Georgian cuisine, which was fantastic.
Although most Russians I had interacted with didn’t speak great English (fun fact: the first 5 men I met in Russia were all named Sergey), they were still extremely nice and very curious to know about Canada. I was breaking down my pre-existing thoughts about Russia extremely quickly by meeting such genuine, lovely people.
After Moscow I flew to St. Petersburg to meet up with Brazilian work friend Marcelo and his wife Paula. We went out and explored various sites around St. Petersburg like the State Hermitage Museum, The church of Saviour of the Spilled blood, and the interesting raising bridges (Which I also stayed up till 6 to watch them rise and fall, only to miss them because I went to buy warm, mulled wine lol).
I also met some awesome people from my hostel and we all went out to drink and party. One of the guys Marav, a Canadian with Russian heritage, was able to speak Russian to the locals, which helped us meet more people. Marav and I separated from the group after a hookah bar dinner and went to find some nightlife. We ended up getting into an extremely high end bar, where everyone was in suits, dresses, formal wear, and Marav and I were in hoodies. What followed was the strangest dynamic of my entire life.
Since we literally were wearing hoodies and jeans and everyone else was dressed to the 9’s, we stuck out like a sore thumb. However, people there must have thought we were very important people, or else how would we have gotten into this club? We had many Russians buying us drinks, both men and women, asking us if we were playing in the world cup or if we owned businesses. It was incredibly hilarious, as they all spoke Russian to Marav while I just downed many cocktails. It was a twilight zone moment for me, as I had no clue what the hell was going on. Beautiful people buying us drinks and thinking we were famous/important? I wasn’t going to stop them haha.
After a while, Marav and I went to see the bridges raise (as I mentioned earlier) and after that day I flew to Sochi to watch Portugal vs Spain.
Sochi was a pretty interesting place. It had a lot of the infrastructure still in place from when the winter Olympics was held there in 2014, and it also had beaches, with literally every bit of it covered in Russian bodies. I didn’t have too much time to rummage around and explore before the game, but that was okay with me.
A few guys from my hostel were also going to see the game, so we all went to the pre drinking grounds together before the game. The fan zones were pretty awesome set ups, where beer was in abundance and cheap it they had every game from the world cup playing on the TVs. Soon enough, we went into the stadium and split, since our tickets were in different parts of the arena. Either way, my drunken purchase on New Years had brought me to this point, and I was so excited to be there.
The game was 10/10. It was a 3-3 draw with Christiano Ronaldo scoring a hatrick, with the last one coming on a free kick in the 86′ minute. It was such an electric atmosphere, that I felt like that couldn’t be the only game I went to. So, I ended up finding the schedule for games in Sochi, and I bought a ticket to the Panama vs Belgium game. Belgium was absolutely stacked in this year and it was Panamas first ever world cup birth, so the Panamanian fans didn’t sit down the entire game, even though they loss 3-0. Still an electric experience.
My Seats at the Spain vs Portugal Game – Sochi, 2018
I was pretty much hooked after 2 games, that I decided I wanted to go to a third. So I looked at remaining games online and was able to find a pretty reasonable deal to Australia vs Denmark. Seeing how I just spent an entire year in Australia and one of my favourite players at the time, Christian Eriksen, who was playing for my Tottenham Hotspurs and Denmark at the time, I thought it was a no brainer. So I purchased the ticket, only to realize that it was in a place called Samara. I had never heard of this place before, so I consulted my friend Marav from the earlier story and he said he had a friend down there who could show me around. So I booked a flight and headed to Samara to meet his friend Alina.
Alina and I met up in Samara and she showed me around the river that runs through samara, a couple old buildings, cool Russian Cafe and eateries, as there was only so much we could condense into 1 day. The next day I was off to go watch Denmark vs Australia. It was a close game, which ultimately ended in a 1-1 draw, but I was able to meet some travelling Danish and Australians after the game, which was pretty sweet.
After the game, I decided to finally head back home to Canada, as the Japanese side of my family was having our first ever Family Reunion. It also doubled as my grandma’s 88th birthday, so I figured there was no better time to return to Canada after 22 months on the road.
rETURNING TO cANADA
Returning back home for the first time since leaving 2 years ago was both exciting and terrifying. I didn’t really want to come home, other than see my family and friends that I’ve been missing. Being on the road was such an incredible time and I didn’t feel as if I was done travelling yet, but I felt the family reunion was the best time to do it.
The trek back to Canada from Samara was insane, and expensive. It costed me $1500 and 48 hours of my life. Waking up at 5am to catch a flight from Samara to Moscow, I flew into a different airport (as I mentioned previously, Moscow has 3 airports) so I needed to make my way from the South Airport to the North airport within 3 hours of landing, which was extremely stressful. I managed to catch my flight to Riga, Latvia, where I had a 13 hour lay over. The airport in Riga was one of the most minimalistic airports I’ve ever been in, with no lounge or resting areas. So I parked myself on a bench and jammed myself under the immovable arm rests and tried to sleep as much as I could, which pretty much didn’t happen.
After the incredibly boring and long layover, I caught a flight to Gatwick Airport in London, where I stayed for another 5 hours before catching my flight to Toronto, then Edmonton. Upon arriving, I was absolutely gassed and jet lagged, but people I hadn’t seen in years caught wind that I was home and so I didn’t really have time to rest and recover and got right into seeing everyone, followed by the family reunion which was a 6 hour drive south to a town called Raymond, Alberta and the followed by a 3 day party/bender with my friends at the infamous Calgary Stampede.
As much as it was amazing to see all my friends and family, I was truly running on fumes. Everyone was stoked to see me again, and I was equally as excited to see them, but I just felt like I couldn’t keep up with everything going on. Not only that, but it was some how a strange situation where I grew by leaps and bounds in my own personal life, while everything I left behind greatly remained the same. People were still doing the same things, the city was pretty much the same with a few exceptions, and my friends probably still viewed me as the version of myself before I left, which I didn’t feel was the case.
With that being said, it is natural to somewhat fall back into the role that you had before you left travelling, even though in my case I tried to resist it. I eventually moved in with my best friend Nick, who went travelling with me earlier, and picked up a job painting again for my sisters company. Nick and I had previously lived together during my last year of University, so it seemed like a great idea at the time to do it again. While it was great and all, I had developed accustomed to spending time alone, and understandably with Nick and other’s wanting to spend catch up on the time we’ve been away, I more often was spending time with people than alone, even while I was at the house.
Everything happened so fast, and I still hadn’t given myself that time to reset and digest everything that happened. I had some how gotten back into work life, friends hanging out all of the time, while not giving myself the true rest, peace, and time needed to recalibrate myself to what had transpired in the previous 2 years abroad, and how I was now back in Canada.
I found myself to be very down and sad, probably due to withdrawals from travelling, but also because I was burnt out. Those fumes I was running on turned dry, yet I was still churning along. I’m not a depressive person in the slightest, I’d actually consider myself predominantly to be quite positive and upbeat, but that was probably the closest I felt to being defeated and depressed. I didn’t really let anyone know that at the time, but all I knew is that I knew that this was the case. I needed to get that rest one way or another, and that opportunity came from my friend Rich, who was my British friend from Australia, asked to come up and see me since he had gotten a job working in the US as a sea doo instructor.
I agreed to meet him and organized for the whole month of September to do a 15 day road trip with him from Edmonton to Vancouver, hitting a spots along the way and showing him the Alberta Rockies and beautiful BC, dropping him off in Vancouver so he could head back to Manchester, and then do a 15 day road trip by myself on the way back, having that time to recover, recharge and recalibrate. Even though it was after a few months of living and working, it was much needed.
Rich arrived at YEG airport and I toured him around the city. I showed him the famous West Edmonton Mall, one of the largest malls in the world native to my city, showed him downtown quarters, and other places that I enjoy about Edmonton. He met my family and stayed at my mom’s place before heading out to Jasper National Park.
We were going to camp the entire time, so my 2004 Madza 6 was packed to the brim with necessary camping and survival gear. We stayed at a near by campsite in Jasper National Park and stayed there a couple of days. Since it was Rich’s first time in Canada, I wanted to do it full on. All of the nature and all of the experiences that western Canada has to offer.
During our 2 day stint in Jasper, we did a hike up Sulphur Mountain and reached the summit. We also ventured around the local town, trying a bunch of food, and mostly enjoying the nature and the abundance of elk running around in the wild.
We then headed out to Banff, where we would link up with my friend Tess, who I went to University with. We drove down the famous Ice field Parkway Highway, highway 93 north, and took our sweet time. It is to this day my favorite highway in the world. 3 hours between Jasper and Banff is packed full of mountain ranges, scenic lakes, random hikes, and a receding glacier. I drove the entire time to let Rich take in the views, but I couldn’t help but pull over every few kilometers to take in the sights. We stopped at the glacier and let Rich see his first ever glacier. We were able to walk out on it and see it first hand, rather than from a distance.
We arrived in Banff and got a camping spot at the Tunnel Mountain camp ground, where Tess met up with us later in the day. We cracked a couple drinks before resting for the night, and the next morning we decided to go do a hike.
The initial hike we wanted to do was at Lake Louise, the famous blue lake that is a travel staple for anyone who visits the Alberta Rockies, but it was so packed that we decided to go do a different hike. Tess is probably the closest person that I know that resembles a mountaineer, so she took us to a less crowded hike called Castle Mountain. What Tess failed to inform us was that this hike would take over 10 hours in and out. It was probably the hardest hike I’ve ever done, and I could barely walk after finishing it, but the views were incredible. Plus, it was good to do the hike with some good friends.
Tess and Rich are insanely good at cardiovascular exercises, I was not however at the time. So Tess thought it was a good idea to rent bikes the next day and bike to Canmore then back to Banff the following day. Rich was stoked on the idea, so I obliged, even though I had trouble standing without my legs giving out under me from the previous days hike. So we went Mountain biking through the forest which after 30k ended up with us in Canmore. We went around Canmore for another 2 hours or so, getting some food, checking out some cafes, before heading back towards Banff along the biking path next to the highway. I repeatedly had to pull over and stop because my legs were cramping so bad, but somehow I pulled it through. Glad I did however, because the views were spectacular.
After that day, Rich and I said goodbye to Tess and headed to Vernon to go see my Aunty on my dad’s side of the family, Aunty Kim. I hadn’t seen my Aunt, my Uncle or any of those cousins in 5 years, so it was well past overdue. My Uncle Roger was recently retired engineer and bought a nice house overlooking Okanagan Lake. He also had a boat and a yacht, that he used during his much deserved retirement life. We stayed there for 3 days, catching up, relaxing, water skiing, and enjoying family time. My Uncle Roger is originally from the UK, so him and Rich had plenty to banter about.
After our brief stop there, we headed out towards Whistler, and took the scenic route through Pemberton. We camped out one night before arriving to Whistler, where we rented mountain bikes again and hit the famous Whistler Bike park for an afternoon. A few of my friends from high school who moved out to Vancouver were also in Whistler while we were there, so we linked up with them and had a full send one of the nights. It was cool to see my travel life and my Canadian life fuse over this trip, and specifically during our time in Whistler. We hung out in whistler for a couple nights before heading to Vancouver for a few days, linking up with some old friends and eventually saying goodbye to Richard after a really great 2 weeks together.
I had been posting random stuff from that road trip on my instagram, and a few of my friends living in Vancouver caught wind of it, so I linked up with them, which included my friend Marav that I met in Russia, and Kingston, another guy who I met in Russia who I didn’t mention earlier. During those meet ups, my old friend Kirsten asked me to meet up, as we went to high school and University together. I hadn’t seen her in ages, so I figured why not. We met up in Gas Town and had some Korean food, before I walked her to the gas town metro station. The reason I bring this up, was because during that walk to the Metro station, I saw a crowd of people around a clock. So as we approached it, I realized that it was the OTHER clock that I saw in Otaru months earlier. So without trying, I ended up seeing BOTH clocks without intent in the same calendar year… for me this is still one of those instances I look back on and find it incredibly ironic that this happened. A cool little tidbit I’d thought I would add in there.
Shortly after Kirsten and I had lunch, I headed back out on the road back to Edmonton, the second leg of the trip without Richard where I would finally have that solitude and rest that I had been so desperately needed since being home.
I took my time getting home, as I drove back through Pemberton area and headed towards my Aunt’s house again in Vernon. I stopped in Kamloops for a night before getting to my Aunt’s house. My younger cousin Morgan, Grandson of my Aunt and Uncle, and my cousin Sarah (his mother) had actually lived with my family for nearly a year earlier in life. Morgan was only 4 at the time, so I was essentially his older brother for a good part of a year. I hadn’t really kept up with him during that time, but he had been getting into trouble and I felt needed to have some cousin on cousin time with me. So while I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle, I suggested that I should take him camping with me for a night, since I had all of the gear in my car already. They thought it would be a great idea, so Morgan and I headed out to a local campground in the area.
Morgan was a good kid, but he didn’t have a strong male role model growing up so he was a bit misled and misunderstood. I wanted to catch up and see how he was, as he was nearly 20 at this time. We had many heart to hearts and had some man talk about life, and it turned out Morgan actually had a kid, who was 2 and a half years old at the time. So Morgan was a dad, and he was only a kid himself, so it turns out that having a camping trip with him was really great.
Without airing out his dirty laundry, essentially he was at a point in his life where he didn’t know what he wanted to do and he didn’t really have much perceptive self worth. I knew that if he were to accomplish something difficult, that it would probably be very good for him. So I decided he needed to come hiking with me, something that he’d never done before. I searched up a hike in the area and we headed out the next morning
As Morgan and I set out on this hike, the conditions were very bad. It was raining the entire night, so the trail was muddy and slippery, but I insisted that we had to do it. During the ascent, Morgan began getting light headed and tiring out. I shoved a cliff bar down his throat and made him drink water from my camel back and insisted we keep going. He desperately wanted to go back down, and was complaining about his legs hurting. I know exactly how this felt, since I had experienced only a week or so before this hike with Rich and Tess. But I told him that he would regret quitting and we needed to keep going, even if we stopped frequently. Morgan toughed it out and eventually we got above the cloud line. Him seeing the peak in distance gave him energy, and we powered our way through until we summited the mountain.
The top of the mountain was beautiful, where the cloud sat lower than our view from the top. Morgan was amazed at what he saw, and he was super proud of himself for summiting his first hike. I gave him endless praise and congratulations as we sat on the edge and admired our view that we earned through our hike. I entered big brother mode and tried to tell him that this was the way. Even though it was hard, it was worth it, and now he had this under his belt anytime he felt like quitting. Quitting will make you feel worse for longer than toughing something hard out and accomplishing it. Though he was ghost white from being absolutely gassed, he agreed and we sat there for a while longer before heading out back to our campground.
I tell you this story because since then, Morgan has been on the upswing in his life. He’s got a fulltime job as a cook in a restaurant, he’s a very involved dad in his son’s life, and he’s told me that this moment with him being encouraged to do something difficult and having support while getting through it was a pivotal point in my life. I hardly take the credit for this, considering he was desperate to experience something like this from listening to him, but I am so happy to have been able to help him along his way in life. This little story here also is a reason I want to build this website, since being able to assist him in bettering his life or for him to get new experiences was so fulfilling to me, that maybe I can do the same with this website. Either way, it was a special moment for both of us that I am glad we got to experience together.
After that night, we headed back to my Aunt’s house where I stayed another night. It was great to see them, and I haven’t seen them since that time, which reminds me that I should go see them again some time soon.
I headed out the next day, but during that time my car blew it’s alternator and I had to pitstop in Revelstoke for the night. I went to the mechanic shop and they said it was going to take a day to get the part and it was going to take another full day to install. So while I dropped my car off, I decided to hike up Revelstoke Mountain, which was about 20km in and out. The hike was a bit soupy, as it had rained the night before, but I did it anyways. I didn’t see a single person coming up or down the mountain during the entire day trip, and I encountered SEVERAL fresh bear poops, which made me worried that bears were around. Thankfully, I didn’t encounter any as I reached the Summit.
I headed back down to retrieve my car, and once I picked it up I headed out to Golden for the night. I then decided that I wanted to go and see Yoho National Park, a typically less touristy National Park in comparison to Banff, but equally as beautiful. I visited Wapta falls and Takkawak Falls before retiring for the night in a local camp ground. The next day I headed to Emerald Lake, which is also a serious tourist attraction in the rockies, and found myself alone on the lake… until 5 charter busses filled with Tourists came and ruined my tranquility.
As the tourists came out and started rummaging around the entrance area of Emerald Lake, I decided to avoid them entirely and Hike the Emerald Lake Triangle, which was about 18km loop hike around the mountains of Emerald lake. So I went on my way and did that.
Once again, the weather wasn’t good. It was sporadically raining during the hike and once I started to elevate into the mountains, it began to snow. Doubly, the hiking path was poorly marked, so I literally had no idea if I was going in the right direction or not. When I was about half way according to my maps, the snow was up to my shins, and when I was about to turn the corner to finish the second half of my hike, I saw fresh bear prints in the snow. It was fresh, because it was snowing, and I could easily Identify that it was a bear.
I was scared shitless. Revelstoke I was on edge from the scat on the ground, but this was different. I figured there must be a bear around the corner, as those prints couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes old. As I grabbed my bear spray, I decided to proceed forward. I considered going back, but I was literally half way, so I figured to just go forward and hopefully not see the bear or for the bear to be far away. As I rounded the corner, I saw nothing. Nothing except an entirely white mountain with a bird’s eye view of Emerald Lake. I proceeded carefully, hoping to not see the bear, but I ended up being fine.
The 3 km stretch along the face of the mountain was not marked at all by hiking signals, so I just walked in the snow hoping that I was going the right direction. It was actually really cold up there, and I was only wearing a hoodie, so I was definitely unprepared for the hike overall. I walked the entire face of the mountain and ended up entering a different forest and found myself thankfully on the path down to Emerald lake loop, which is the walking path going around the perimeter of the lake.
I ended up making it down safely, hung out by the lake since the tourists were gone at this point. I couldn’t help but laugh that I decided to proceed forward despite seeing fresh paw prints, but I guess my travels had me a bit more fearless than before.
I ended up camping another night at a camp site in Yoho National Park, before heading out to Canmore. Canmore for me is my favorite town in Alberta, as it’s surrounded by beautiful mountains and has a nice, easy going vibe to it compared to Banff. I tried to find camping space/a hostel bed but everything was booked up. So when it was dark out, I drove my car up the mountain and slept in my car on the side of the mountain. During that night, I had decided to do some internal digging to see what was going on. Since I was alone in my car and had no plans for the evening, I thought it was the best time to actually accomplish my goal of figuring myself out.
I came to the realization that I wasn’t done travelling. I also discovered that I felt like I outgrew my role that I played within my friend group and my family. I was always the chill guy, who was down for whatever. But after spending time with myself during my 22 months away, I realized that I am much deeper than that. I had asserted boundaries for myself while I was away, and those same boundaries I wanted to implement in my daily life now, but wasn’t doing at the time. I also realized that I felt like I wasn’t living with purpose, as I slated into a painting job I had before, but really didn’t want to do. Of course you need resources and money to live and survive, but since I had no plan or direction at the time, I just felt like I was existing. I didn’t want that anymore.
So during that night in my car, I ultimately mind mapped all of my ideas that I wanted to do. Since I had earned a second year in Australia through my work, I decided I wanted to go back there. I was netting 6k a month in savings, which helped me dramatically with all of my other travels. I had spent a large majority of that during my 3 months after Australia during my Asia and Russia trip, and also during this month road trip to Vancouver. I also made plans to travel through South America and New Zealand, although those things would be in the future. I knew I wanted to head back to Australia, so I decided that was my new focus to make that happen.
I ended up driving home the next day and returning to my mom’s house where I visited with her, told her about my trip, and laid out my new plan of action. She thought it was a good idea, and encouraged me to do whatever it was that would fulfill me personally. I took that as a green light and began plotting my way back to Australia.
I contacted Kevin, my Hutchinson boss, directly to see if I could get hired on with him again. My other boss Bryan I rarely saw, and he was essentially a middle man, so I hit him up via email to see if he could get me on. He responded and told me that he could, although I needed to be a subcontractor and get a Australian Business License in order to do that, but I had my in. It was wonderful… until my old Boss Bryan caught wind of it.
I got a message from Bryan the next day telling me to call him. I decided that I might as well, just to see. So I called him and he immediately started reaming me out for going behind his back and what not and cutting him out. I told him that I had already completed 6 months of work with him, and wasn’t legally allowed to work for him anymore (Which is true, on a WHV you’re only allowed to work for 1 employer for a max of 6 months). He told me that he had a new company and that he could pay me on it. I really didn’t want to, but after doing the math calculations on how much I’d make being a subcontractor versus how much I’d make working for Bryan, I actually would come out on top working for Bryan, since I had to pay much more taxes upfront as a business owner vs getting a tax break for the first $40000 I’d make as an employee. So I ultimately got Bryan to agree to my previous wage and to send me out to Moranbah again, and he agreed and told me he’d hire me when I get there.
So it was done, I was going back to Australia. Now I needed to get a new visa.
The first visa to Australia took me legitimately 15 minutes to get. But for the second year, I needed to have a full physical test done and a Tuberculosis X-ray done, by their recommended professionals. This was incredibly annoying, since their doctors were in Calgary, a 3 hour drive from Edmonton, but I took the day off work to go and get it done. The entire process of both the physical and the X-ray took a total of 15 minutes combined. A total money grab. So i got it done, got my results back and submitted my application for the 2nd year. It was granted to me 4 days later.
Australia - Working Holiday Visa Year 2
I arrived in Sydney, Australia but I was basically there for only a day before flying back up to Airlie Beach. I didn’t do a whole lot in Sydney at that time, but I managed to go see the famous Sydney Opera house and whatever was around that area. The Opera house was massive, and it was a pretty cool landmark to see.
The next day I flew to Proserpine/Airlie Beach airport and went to go and stay at the old faithful, backpackers by the bay. My friend Joanna, who I became friends with on the previous working visa, was still there working at the hostel, but nearly everyone I knew from before had left, except for a guy named Totof and Axel. Other than that, everyone was new. It was cool to meet all of these new people, but I didn’t click with them as much as I did with the group before. But that was fine by me, since I would be away most of the time in Moranbah.. or so I thought.
A couple days later I went to meet Bryan, and for 2 weeks he had me work with a few other painters in Airlie itself. Since this wasn’t what Bryan and I agreed upon, I pulled him aside and told him that exact thing. He told me they didn’t need anymore painters up in Moranbah at the moment, even though Kevin told me they did. So I told Bryan sternly, that if I wasn’t there by Monday next week that I’d go work with Kevin directly, since he broke his promise. I mean, I flew 10000 km to Australia to come work, at least keep your promise. But Bryan was an overall shitty guy, and it was brutal working for him while I was in Airlie. Another major reason I needed out. But, he ended up sending me to Moranbah on Monday as I said, and I went to the CORRECT bus station this time on my own and headed out to go be with my old workmates.
When I arrive in Moranbah, things are pretty much the same as they were when I left. Nearly the whole crew is the same, they brought on a couple of other guys, but the core group was still intact. They hired their own painter, a guy named Wayne, and his son, Heath. They actually were hired on near the end of my last year, but I didn’t really get to know him. Marcelo was still there, but he was only going to be there briefly as Bryan needed another guy back, as he had to send me out there.
Instead of living in camps this time around, they got us our own house to live in the town of Moranbah. I was rooming with one of the carpenters, Kingy, whose actual name is Stephen King (no, he’s not the famous author, I’d be terrified if he was). Kingy was nearly 60 years old and was probably the biggest joker out of our whole crew. He was good vibes, I was happy that he was my roomate.
The work was pretty much status quo, but instead of going back to Airlie Beach on the weekends, I had to stay in the town of Moranbah, since I didn’t have a vehicle. Ever so often I’d get together with the work guys and have a few drinks, but at this point in my life I wasn’t a big drinker anymore, so I spent most of my time going to the gym, playing poker at the pub on thursday nights or hanging around another carpenter named Hilly, who was the guy closest to my age. He had met a girl and was planning to get married and start a family with her, so they were definitely more mellow and more my speed.
Honestly, there wasn’t much to write about during the 6 months I went back to work in Australia. It was pretty much work, do the odd thing with the fellas from work, do a bunch of writing, and occasionally head back to Airlie Beach when it made sense to. I did get a good experience more in the second year understanding the outback lifestyle. It reminds me of small towns in Alberta, where most guys are there to work and the only other thing that they do is drink. I guess maybe that’s the case in all Commonwealth countries, who knows!
But my time was good there, I managed to save up a lot of money, and I was invited to 4 weddings in the upcoming summer, so it made sense to put my head down and grind, make some money, then fly back home to go to those weddings.
Overall, my time in Moranbah on the whole was great. The guys I worked with were unreal guys, and they made everyday fun. Plus, it was cool being able to work and learn along side guys who’ve been doing it for 20 years plus. I learned a bit of everything, probably be able to tile my own bathroom, do some carpentry, and what not. So my time out there was really great, and I still miss those guys a lot. Maybe I’ll be back to see them one day. But as my time came to an end, I had spent a full calendar year of my life in that tiny coal mining town of Moranbah. A completely crazy experience considering I thought I was heading to Morton Bay haha. That still makes me laugh to this day. But I was done working for crazy Bryan and the Hutchies boys, and I was back off to go dance my butt off at some weddings.
Return to CANADA - sUMMER OF 2019
I flew straight home to Canada so I could hit another family reunion, which also doubled as my Grandma’s 89th birthday. So just like last time, I was able to return back home just in time for family festivities.
The summer was extremely fun, and I didn’t work at all, considering I had just made some good money working the past 6 months in Australia. Unlike last time, I was super excited to be back home, and I was ready to enjoy it to the fullest, instead of worrying about my next move.
The first wedding of year was my sister’s best friend Leanne, who I consider like a second sister, was marrying her boyfriend of 8 years Blake in Edmonton. It pretty much happened immediately as I returned home, and so it was a good jump start to the summer. The wedding was awesome, and it was great to see her and Blake on their special day. And yes, I tore up that dance floor all night long.
The second wedding of the year was my friend Dan from University, and he was having his wedding in White Horse, Yukon. I’d never been to the Yukon before, so I was pretty excited to head up there. The Yukon is a territory in the north west of Canada, and has a tiny population of 45000 people for the whole Territory, with over half of that population in the main city of White Horse. A bunch of my University buddies where heading up there, so it was going to be somewhat of a University reunion for us, which would be awesome.
We got there a couple days before the wedding, so my buddy Tyler, his girlfriend Stef and I went hiking around the areas. White Horse is extremely untouched, and there was scenery everywhere you looked. Tons of mountains, rivers, and wild animals. It was a really great couple days.
The wedding itself was really nice, and his wife Kelsey, who I had met only the day of the wedding, was born and raised in White Horse. Her family owned a bunch of green houses that essentially fed the entire city of White Horse, so they’re pretty integrated into the city. The dance floor was indeed ripped up again, and I was extremely hungover for the Brunch the next day.
After the wedding, Dan and Kelsey invited a select few of us to head to their place in Haynes, Alaska. I’d never been to Alaska before, but supposedly in this area there was unreal salmon fishing and right by a Cruise ship port. So Tyler, Stef and I drove up together and all of us stayed in a massive house together for a few days. We went fishing, sight seeing, we hiked Mount Rapinski and got a panoramic view of Haynes Alaska. It was a dope trip. Plus, all of the people staying at the house went to University with me, so it was great to catch up with all of them. I even caught myself a salmon! It was awesome.
The third wedding of the summer was my cousin Taylor, who was getting married to his high school sweet heart Sierra. It was down in Spokane, Washington, so my whole family headed down there for a few days to hangout with the family and attend Taylor’s wedding. Basically 2 family reunions in 1 year. How great!
The wedding itself was epic, the food was incredible, the venue was unreal, except they made the wedding shut down at 10pm due to noise restrictions. A bit disappointed by that, but overall a great wedding.
The fourth, and final wedding of the summer was my friend Tyler (different Tyler, who we called Little T) who was marrying his wife Talia, down in Nanton, Southern Alberta. Once again, Tyler (Big T), Stef and I went down together. Little T went to University with me as well, so I saw a bunch of the guys I had just seen at Dan’s wedding a couple months earlier.
Nanton is a stunning area, surrounded by mountains and pretty much unknown to most Northern Albertans. They got married in a field with a mountain backdrop, and it was a seriously picturesque wedding. It was awesome.
They had a reception at the Nanton hall later that evening, and this party lasted all night long. Little T’s family is Ukrainian, so the food was unreal. I probably ate my weight in perogies, but burned those calories shredding the dance floor.
It was a hell of a summer.
After the summer, I was figuring out my next move. I had just read The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, and it had me thinking to go and work remotely somewhere. The plan was actually to build this website over in Thailand or Indonesia, and begin making youtube videos. However, I still had 2 months or so remaining on my Australian Working Holiday Visa, and for the most part I didn’t do much ‘holidaying’ at all. I worked for the majority of the time I was in Australia, and wanted to actually see some stuff. So I decided to head to Brisbane to go see my friend Joey and his gf Stef, who I saw before when I was fired from my painting job in Airlie. They were now full on Physiotherapists on Bribie Island, where they were living. So I figured never a better time to head down there and figure it out. So that’s what I did.
aUSTRALIA pART 3 - tRAVELLING
I arrived in Brisbane with Joey picking me up from the Airport. It was great to see him, since I didn’t see him when I was working in Moranbah the second time around. He took me to his place where he and Stef were living, and we hung out there for a week or so. I met his friend group, consisting of his work friends and his roommates, and we ended up going for a ‘boys’ weekend, consisting of beach days and a Halloween party. This weekend included Stef, since she’s essentially one of the boys.
We dressed up as Rugby players for the Halloween Party, and I got amongst it a bit too hard and don’t really remember the latter half of the night. Either way, we had a great time. Plus, I got to have some real catch up with Joey, which was great. That whole weekend was a great start.
After that week, Joey had to go back to work, so I decided to head on a train up to Noosa Heads, where I stayed there and explored that costal area of Eastern Australia. I went on a day hike by myself, exploring many different beaches and sights. It was pretty amazing. During that time, I was in contact with a friend named Sandra, who I had met in Airlie Beach at some point during my first year. She had expressed to me that she wanted to visit the West Coast of Australia and explore it by Van, which was exactly what I wanted to do. So we decided to make a plan to meet in Perth, Western Australia (WA), rent a Van and head from South to North together. This trip was the #1 thing I wanted to do in Australia, so I was extremely stoked that it was happening.
I returned back from Noosa heads to go see Joey and Stef again, where Stef’s dad took us out on his boat together and went fishing. It was a great last hoorah with all of us, before I caught a flight to Perth the very next day.
I ended up getting to Perth earlier than Sandra, so I stayed at a hostel and explored the city. I met a couple of great Irish guys who were absolute beauties, and they were heading to Melbourne and asked me to join. If I hadn’t made plans prior with Sandra, I absolutely would have. They were heading to go watch the Australian PGA Championship, where Tiger Woods was going to be playing. It was a hard one to shut down, but I had plans.
After those fellas left, I went and picked up the Van from a rental shop and went to go pick up Sandra from the airport. I hadn’t seen Sandra in nearly a year, so I didn’t know what to expect. Plus, living the van life is a total change of pace from living in Airlie Beach, so uncertainty laid ahead for us.
As I helped Sandra load her bags in the van, we came up with a game plan. She hadn’t done much research at all, but I was all over it. There was this one out of the way destination I really wanted to see called Wave Rock. It was essentially that, a enormous Rock that was shaped like a surfing wave. It was a solid 4 hour drive, but I figured we had to go see it. So we packed up our stuff and headed 4 hours into the outback to go see our first destination.
Wave rock was absolutely breathtaking. It was actually so cool to see a formation like that. Over countless years of erosion, what was left was this massive wave like rock. They even had surf boards near the rock to pretend like you were riding it (of course, I took full advantage of this). It was also a park, with other cool attractions such as a rock that looked like the mouth of a hippopotamus. It was definitely worth the drive. We camped out there for the night before we set on Margaret River as our next location.
Margaret River is located at the most south western point of Australia, and is famous for having some of the best Vineyards and Wine that Australia has to offer. It also is surrounded by the ocean, lush beaches and also is a hot spot for surfers. Naturally, we came to Margaret River for all of the above.
It was my first time ever going to wineries and Vineyards and I can honestly say that I was supremely impressed. Not only by the wine, but by the overall set ups. They had old style buildings, massive gardens with native Australian fauna, and obviously a ton of vineyards. Sandra and I did some Vineyard hopping, hitting 3 in a day. We tasted some excellent wines, were educated about wine, and also bought a bottle or 2 from each winery for later in the trip. We also found a random nook overlooking the ocean for sunset, which was pretty awesome.
We didn’t stay in Margaret River for a long time, but it felt like a place I could stay for a while. Simple themed city, chill ambiance, and great overall mix of scenery and civilization, it was a great stop. So after a 2 nights of staying there and exploring the near by attractions, we headed North to Lancelin, about an hour north of Perth.
While Lancelin was a last minute add, I read online about there was sand boarding and desert quading. I had done neither before, so I was interested in heading there. Unlike the winery region of Margaret River, Lancelin was a literal desert, although it was also located on the ocean. So Sandra and I stopped for a day there and did all of the aforementioned.
Sandboarding was super fun, although similar to actual snowboarding, you didn’t have a cozy chairlift to take you back up the hill… and let me tell you, after a few runs down and climbing back up to the top in 38 degree heat will gas even the most fit people. Nonetheless, it was fun. Quading in the desert on the other hand, was one of the funnest things I’ve ever done in my life.
The quading area was super vast, and you could go kilometers in any direction and find new things. It was pretty wicked heading up and down sand dunes like they were regular terrain, and the speed of the quad made for a nice breeze to counteract the insane heat. Plus, quading in a desert and being able to see the ocean in the background was a pretty miraculous experience. 10/10 would recommend.
Since we were only in Lancelin for the day, we headed up to the town of Cervantes, a Spanish themed town where all of the streets were in Spanish, and was home to the famous Lobster Shack. Unfortunately for us, the Shack was closed by the time we got there, but we only stayed there for the night as a pit stop before heading to Nambung National Park, located near the town of Cervantes.
With Namburg National park being a touristy destination, we decided to head there early to beat the line so we could get access to their famous Pinacles, which are ancient limestone formations protruding from the ground that were formed from wind erosion over the years. There were literally thousands of them, and it was cool to experience something so unusual. Rather than the limestone formations in Asia, which are dozens of meters tall, most limestones there were not much bigger than myself, with some even smaller than I was. Just the history of it made it all that much better. There were also Emu’s running amuck all over the place, which I hadn’t seen much of during my time in Australia. So that was pretty cool as well.
After the national park, we headed to go see the Thetis Stramatolites, which are supposedly some of the most ancient and original life forms on the entire planet. They weren’t eyepopping gorgeous like Nambung was, but they were very interesting none the less. After that, we went back to Cervantes for the remainder of the day and stayed there over night, also noting that we finally got to try the Lobster Shack. Fantastic lobster. Cervantes is incredibly small, but it was awesome, especially since both Sandra and I were into Spanish music and culture.
The trip had been going well so far, and Sandra and I had ample time to talk and catch up about our experiences in Australia, as they were very different, and also learn about each others cultures. Sandra’s from Gothemberg in Sweden and me being from Canada, we had many questions about life before travelling and also comparing our times in Australia and such, she was a good travel companion, and we seemed to have settled into the van life quite well overall.
The next morning, we headed up to Jurian Bay, a town about 20 minutes North of Cervantes, to go on a Sea Lion charter where you they charter you out to a near by Island to go see, and potentially swim with, wild Sea Lions. I’m a big animal guy, so this was a must see for me.
The Sea Lion experience in Jurian Bay was unreal. There were nearly 100 Sea Lions on the Island, where most of them are posted up catching some sun on the beach, while other curious sea lions came and approached the boat. I got off the boat and swam around in the water, hoping to see some close up. Well, I certainly did. I ended up having a full minute long chase with a Sea Lion swimming around me, near me, flipping out of the water, all which I caught on video. One of my favorite captured moments ever from travelling. It was awesome to seem them in nature and be close to them, and I truly didn’t expect them to be so playful. Amazing creatures.
The tour ended before noon, so I suggested to Sandra that we B line it for Pink Lake. Pink Lake is exactly that, a pink lake. Located about 3 hours North of Jurian Bay near Port Gregory, it was one of the destinations I was most excited for. I couldn’t believe a lake could be pink, so I had to see it in person. I read some things online that the lake at times could be brown, depending on the season, but I could take my chance to go see it. And sure enough, it was extremely Pink.
The pink hue of the lake actually comes from the pink salt deposits that the lake sits on. So naturally, the pink Salt has shown through enough and gives the lake a Pink hue. It was really cool to see, and definitely worth the drive.
As sun down was approaching, we found a random camping spot along the main Highway 1 that loops around Australia and settled for the night. In the morning, we were headed out to go see Nature’s Window, located in Kalbarri National Park, which is a natural rock formation that creates a unique natural window view point over a large canyon.
The weather forecast for the day was going to be 45C degrees at high noon, so we decided to wake up very early and get to see natures window at a decent time so we could avoid as much heat as possible. We got to nature’s window at around 8am, and it was still 32C degrees outside, absolutely mental the weather out in Western Australia.
Nature’s window was very cool, and it made for a great picture and a spot to enjoy the nature. There were plenty of large birds flying in the sky at the time, so it was a pretty cool spectacle to watch while we were hiking around and checking out the area. The area got pretty busy, so we decided to leave. Plus, it was 43C degree’s at 10am, so it was time to get the hell out of there haha.
We decided to head to the actual town of Kalbarri, located on the coast about 40 min/50 km east of the nature’s window, to go and take a look at the unique coast line. We visited Eagle Gorge Lookout, which is a popular view point of Eagle Gorge as well as the Indian Ocean. It was pretty amazing. We wanted to do a bit more, but it was just so fricken hot that we decided we needed to have the AC flowing from the car, as we both hadn’t experienced such intense heat before. However, we soon realised that the weather was going to be this hot or hotter for the rest of our time in WA. But we decided to hit the road and make our way up Monkey Mia Conservation Park, where there are dolphins which approach the shores and other protected wildlife being patrolled by the park.
The area where Monkey Mia is located is peninsula split between the area of Nanga and Francois Peron National Park. We needed 4×4 to hit the National Park, which is too bad because it’s host to beautiful red rocks and beautiful beaches. Nanga area however, has beautiful scenery and attractions in it’s own right.
On the way to Monkey Mia, we hit a beach where the sand is made completely out of shells. Unironically, the name is Shell Beach. Our air conditioning crapped out on us about an hour out from the park, so we were in need to cool down and take a swim. So we posted up there for about and hour, took in the unique shell sand, and then made our way to Monkey Mia.
Shell Beach – Nanga, Western Australia – 2019
Pelicans Sleeping On The Beach – Monkey Mia, Western Australia – 2019
Dolphin In Monkey Mia – WA, 2019
The tours for the Dolphins only took place in the morning time, so Sandra and I went around town checking out the beaches and took some nice RnR at the campervan resort we were staying in for the night. It was well needed, as we were basically flat out since we’ve started the roadtrip.
The next morning, we got up to go see the Dolphins swim around. You couldn’t directly swim with them, but there was an area about 20 meters away that you could go in and swim. I figured, maybe the dolphins will come to that area and take a swim with us. Well, they did. It was awesome. We had about 3 or 4 dolphins rip around the swimming area for a good half hour after the tour was done, where they were flipping out of the water and putting in overtime showing us what amazing creatures they were.
On the beach as well, a family of 10 or so Emu, along with baby Emu’s, decided to come and pay us a visit. I’d never been so close to them before, and they were not scared of human interactions, so they came up to us to see what was going on. It was a pretty cool moment. There were also enormous pelicans on the beach, some sleeping and some just chilling. If you’ve never seen a Pelican sleep before, well here you go.
We liked our campervan resort so much we decided to post up there for one more night, before making the long 6 hour drive up to Coral Bay the following day.
The drive up the following day would have been so brutal with no A/C, but magically the A/C began working the next day, which was fantastic. We saw a ton of wild life on the way up, many kangaroo families (Some that got a bit too close to the road for my liking), beautiful flocks of colorful birds, a couple brown snakes on the road and also a Wedge Tail Eagle, which eating a dead kangaroo on the road when we approached it and flew away. It’s wingspan was nearly the size of the kangaroo it was eating on the road, so that was insane to see.
Overall, the whole west coast of Australia is fantastic. I can say it’s off the beaten path of most travelers who visit Australia, as most go to the east coast and Melbourne, but WA is the best part of Australia I’ve visited in my opinion. The total population of WA is 1.5 million out of the total 24 million of Australia, and you certainly felt that way. There would be spurts of not seeing another car in either direction while driving for an hour or more. It’s so untouched and undeveloped for the most part, that it really is a good sense of Australia and it’s nature. Thought I’d input this little tid bit before continuing on.
Nearing Coral Bay, I reached peak anticipation for this part of WA. The Ningaloo Reef area at the most North Western point of Australia was my biggest anticipation. Coral Bay and Exmouth to be specific. I had become quite the underwater enthusiast since I began scuba diving, and in this area you can see Manta Rays and Whale Sharks, depending on the season. Thankfully, we were in season for Manta’s in Coral Bay.
I told Sandra that I wanted to prolong this part of the trip for a few days in Coral Bay and Exmouth because it was essentially the main reason I wanted to travel the West coast, which was fine by her. Right near the campervan park we were staying at was the bay, within 2 minutes of walking. Right along side of one of the beaches there were baby nurse sharks in the water, which you could see swimming around in abundance. It was also extremely peaceful in Coral Bay, with people kite surfing in the distance and amazing sunsets, which almost everyone went to the beach to watch. It was definitely the vibes I was looking for.
The following day Sandra and I went on a tour to go and see the Manta Rays. We got on a boat in tandem with a spotter plane and we would end up chasing Manta Rays for a solid 4 hours. Manta Rays are my favorite underwater creature, and I had yet to see one at this point, so I was beyond stoked. We ended up seeing a 4m manta ray gliding through the water and we got to jump in and swim with it. It was far enough below us so we didn’t disturb its feeding, but close enough to see the magnificent giant. It was definitely one of my all time highlights from travelling.
4m Manta Ray – Coral Bay, WA – 2019
Sunset on Mauritius Beach – Exmouth, WA – 2019
we ended up meeting some other travelers on our tour, and we hung out with them for a couple days. They also were going to Exmouth, so we decided to tandem drive up there so we could go explore that area together.
Exmouth is about an hour north of Coral Bay, and is part of the Cape Range National park, which is the most North Western Tip of Australia. Exmouth was home to many natural things, including Cape Range National Park, amazing scuba diving, and at certain points of the year turtle nesting hot spot.
Exmouth itself is a small city sort of away from the action, so we decided to head into Cape Range National Park and find a place to camp there. With our new friends, 4 girls from Scandinavia, we went and visited a few places in the National Park, such as Turquoise Bay, Shothole Canyon, Dunes Beach, Vlaming Head Light House, Mauritius Bay, and Yardie Creek Trail. These excursions took place over a few days, and it was truly amazing to see it all. Random gorges to swim in, pristine beaches with turquoise water, unbelievable sunsets, it had it all. It was amazing.
However, in my case, I came here to scuba dive at one of the top 10 dive sites in the world, Exmouth Navy Pier dive. Sandra didn’t have her scuba, so I went solo to the active navy pier dock which doubles as an intensely dense marine ecosystem, including the likes of 1000lb Groupers, Potato cods, octopuses, White tip, Black tip, and Nurse sharks, to name a few. So there was no chance I was missing this opportunity to hit this dive.
In order to go to the dive, we all needed to have some sort of background check on us, as we were entering the navy base. All of us surrendered our passports upon entering and signed waivers to not use any photography during the ride to the dive site, it was pretty intense as far as diving goes. But, all procedures to be taken I suppose.
The navy pier dive was legitimately at one of the piers that the Australian Navy uses. We had to scale down stairs in order to jump into the ocean, and the dive site was incredibly small. Most dive sites you can head out and explore and a boat will pick you up wherever you are, but this site you had to stay within 10 m of the Pillars of the pier. It seemed odd, but when you got down there, you really didn’t want to go anywhere.
Long Exposure Photo of Vlaming Head Light House – Exmouth, WA – 2019
Upon entering, you were immediately surrounded by hundreds of fish of all different sizes. Our guide took us around the whole area, but honestly there was so much going on that I didn’t know what to look at. Schools of fish everywhere, potato cods the size of my torso, reef sharks swimming around near the floor, octopuses changing color to camouflage from us. It was insane. I love macro life, so this was my diving heaven. Best dive I’ve ever done, and I’ve done about 100 in my life up to this point.
My instructor who took us on the dive was a local from Exmouth. She informed me that Turtle nesting was in season, and that if we go to Jims Beach or Mauritius Beach, we could be lucky enough to see turtles emerge from the water and watch the entire egg laying process. I was 100 percent going to do this, so after the dive I got Sandra and the girls together to go and see exactly that.
As we hung out on the beaches for a few hours after sunset, we ended up seeing a couple turtles make their way to the beach to lay eggs. The whole process took about an hour and a half, but to witness it live was outstanding. Truly one of the most special moments ever in my life.
Exmouth is what I think about when I think back on Western Australia. The amazing wildlife, both below water and on land, the zero light pollution, the multitude of different things to do and see, the diving, the turtles on the beach, it was pure magic for me. At the time, I truly didn’t want to leave. I was actually extremely close to staying, but Sandra was flying back to Sweden from Broome, our final destination, so I had to take her there. But I was driving the van back down to Perth to return it, so I was for sure going to hit Exmouth again on the way back.
But we had one final destination to hit before we made it to Broome, Karijini National Park, full of gorges and hikeable canyons to be explored. So we left my beloved Exmouth and our new Scandinavian friends behind and headed inland to Karijini National Park.
Turtles Laying Eggs At Night – Exmouth, WA – 2019
The drive to Karijini was our longest straight drive on the trip. It was nearly 8 hours of driving from Exmouth, and we did it in one day. It would have been more manageable if Sandra could drive, but I did literally all of the driving while Sandra manned the music. It was a good set up we had going, but that drive was brutal. Kangaroos were everywhere driving in land to Karijini. Live ones bouncing unpredictably on the side of the road and also many dead ones on either side of the road (I like to believe they’re sleeping, makes me feel better haha). But we managed to get to Karijini just after night fall and found a Nook on the side of the road where we posted up for the night.
Over the next few days, we hit a lot of different things in Kirijini. Notables include Dales Gorge, Joffre Falls, Hammersly Gorge, Hancock Gorge and Kermits Pool, Kalamina Gorge and Knox Gorge. We basically hit everything we could within reason.
The weather was insane while we were there, on average about 45C degrees. Thankfully, many of these gorges also had natural pools that you could swim in and cool down, but the hikes there and back were certainly challenging in the heat. We met a random hiker along our trail to Hancock Gorge and Kermits pool named Aaron, who is still to this day one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He was in the midst of biking around the entire Perimeter of Australia. He started in Sydney and went North, down into Alice Springs through the center of Australia, and then some how made it to Kirijini National Park. I asked him to hang out with Sandra and I nearly the entire time we were there.
It was nice to have Aaron around, and I’m sure he was happy to hangout with us as well. He literally had 1 pair of clothes, a 10L aluminum bag of water and a couple water bottles, dehydrated food, a pop up tent with a mattress and some bike repair gear. So naturally, I fed him well, since he probably didn’t have a good vegetable based meal in a while. He was appreciative as you can imagine.
Karijini was amazing overall. The hikes were steep down into the gorges, and we were pretty much the only people in the area when we went. The red rocks contrasted with the chilled water was mesmerizing. You could see years of carbon dating in the rocks as well, which shot my imagination off into many directions about Karijini’s history. It was a great time overall.
Aaron was heading towards Coral Bay and Exmouth Area, and I figured when I dropped Sandra off, I might catch him there by chance. Either way, he departed westward, and Sandra and I were off to our final destination, Broome.
Broome was another 10 hours away from where we were, so we actually stayed in Port Headland (about half way to Broome) for a night. It was a huge port town with no much to do, so we just ate some good food and explored the town before we found a place along the highway to camp for the night.
The following day we made it to Broome, and Broome had for sure been the largest city we’ve been to since Perth. But that’s not saying a whole lot, since Broome is only a population around 15000 people. Still, it had infrastructure, and that was nice.
Broome was a pretty cool spot. It reminded me of Margaret River vibes, but without the winery and the greenery. Instead, Broome had incredible red rocks and a lot of coast with awesome beaches, most notably Cable Beach. Our caravan park we were staying at was pretty close to Cable Beach, so Sandra and I went down there every night to watch the sun go down.
Cable Beach is also known for Camel riding during sunset, which I didn’t partake in because I’m not a fan of riding animals, but it was my first time seeing camels in Australia, since I guess there is tons of them there. Either way, watching people ride during sunset was pretty to see.
The one thing I really wanted to do was witness the staircase to the moon, which is a phenomenon at a certain time of the month where the moonlight reflects on the water a certain way where it creates a staircase like illusion leading to the moon. We weren’t sticking around for that long unfortunately, and soon after arriving in Broome, I said my goodbye to Sandra.
Sandra and I became good friends on the trip, and so it was bitter sweet to see her leave. She hadn’t been home to Sweden in 2 years, so I was excited for her to return. Although, I was pretty excited to hit the road back to Exmouth, since I was planning on going diving again there. So as I saw my travel buddy head into Broome Departures, I was ready to set sail back to Exmouth.
Remembering what happened in Darwin, when Alex and Davide picked me up to split gas, I thought that wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if someone needed a ride on facebook. I got into contact with a girl from Hungary named Andrea, who wanted to head to Perth from Broome. She was willing to split gas and what not, so I figured that it would be good to have someone along for the ride.
She seemed pretty chill over our messages, and to be sure I met up with her at the hostel she was staying at to see how she was. She spoke decent English and was pretty chipper when we met, so I agreed for her to tag along… However, after a short while with her in the van, that turned out to be a mistake.
Andrea was a nice enough girl, but she was a big downer as a person. She had recently broke up with her boyfriend from Germany and kept complaining the entire time we were driving to Exmouth how shitty men were, how she didn’t like the music I was listening to, and other random things that was definitely not chill. I got Catfished van life style, and it was definitely suboptimal in every which way.
To try and cheer her up, we went back to Karijini National Park, to show her some cool landscapes that I had just seen. That… didn’t go well either. She kept complaining about the heat, how she’s seen better rocks in other National Parks, wasn’t willing to go in the water. It was a fucking nightmare, so I decided to head to Exmouth after a day in order to get to my happy place.
During that drive, our van ran out of gas along the highway, 10km out from the nearest gas station. This van was pretty shitty, and didn’t even have a low gas light, which I thought it would have. It was 45C degrees outside, and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. Not superstitious, but the vibes from her definitely brought this upon us haha.
After about 10 minutes, a semi (road train as they call it in Australia) came by and asked us if we were alright. I said we were out of gas and he offered to get in with him to drive us down the road. I emptied a 10L water from my van and we jumped in with him. This guy was a nice enough guy, but not a spot on his body below his jaw wasn’t covered by tattoos. I couldn’t see any of that from the ground looking up, but I trust the average person enough to not judge a book by their cover. He was a great guy, and after some short chit chat we arrived at the gas station. He was heading westward so he couldn’t drive us back, but that was fine.
After about 30 minutes of waiting, a random Miner bus came into the station to take a rest. I approached the man and asked if he was heading eastward, and he said he was. So I asked if we could come along and for him to drop us off back at our van. He said it was against his company policy to do something like that, but he could sense we were in desperate need to get back, so he made an exception and let us come with. Soon enough we were back at our car, and had enough gas to get to that gas station to fill up.
I was pretty stoked on the whole experience, because that’s unique as hell and we somehow figured our way out of a terrible situation. Andrea however, did not find it fun. As we got back on the road, she criticized me for not having good gas management, which is probably true, but as I said the gas light didn’t work, which I hadn’t known until that moment. Either way she was even more sour than before, and I ultimately made the decision that I didn’t want to drive with him human being anymore. She was toxic and simply unenjoyable to be around, so when we got into Exmouth I told her that she should find someone else to take her down to Perth, since I was staying around this area for a little while. She wasn’t stoked on this idea, but eh, she shouldn’t have been so shitty to be around. Either way, I dropped Andrea off at hostel in Exmouth, left her with some food (I’m not a complete asshole) and then went on my way back to Cape Range National Park to chill for the night.
As I’m driving to my camp site, I see a biker on the road. Sure enough, It’s Aaron, giving er down the Cape Range highway. I pull up next to him and slow my car down, as he looks weary at first as to why someone is stopping, he see’s that it’s me and we pull over to have a nice embrace. I tell him all about Andrea and what not and how I needed to get away, and we hangout for a while, I fed him another meal, and he came to my campsite with me for the night.
He was off to Coral Bay, but wanted to take the off road area to see more of the coast, so after that night he was on his way. I told him I’d meet him in Coral Bay and we could chill there for a bit a have a beer. He obliged and we parted ways. I went to the dive shop and booked 2 days of scuba, 1 at the ship wreck I had recently done and another at the Muiron Islands, which were a set of Island of the coast of Exmouth that were known for their amazing Coral, but not much Macro Life. I was stoked to be back, and the same instructor I had before took me on both dives.
The Muiron Islands were stunning, and she was right, there wasn’t much aquatic life going on there. But the Corals were in pristine condition, what you would probably expect the Great Barrier Reef to look like. Except the GBR is certainly dying, with white coral (dead coral) everywhere. The Muiron island were a great expedition, but to visit the Navy Pier dive again was what I wanted to do the most.
The second time around at the Navy Pier was even better than the first. The conditions were perfect, while the first dive is was flight cloudy so the visibility wasn’t great, but the second dive we ended up seeing many, many sharks, huge potato cods, schools of barracuda, 10 types of nudibrancs (Which are usually favorite since they’re so small, hard to notice, and come in many different shapes and colours) among many other species. It still delivered as good as the first time, and I truly love that dive site more than any other one I’ve ever done.
After the dive, I got the shops information and wanted to see if I could do a diving apprenticeship there, where I would work in exchange for diving certifications. They said it was possible, but to try again in March after their current apprentices would be done. So I happily took that information to call them at a later date.
I went back to Mauritius Beach to see if I could catch more turtles laying eggs, and I actually ended up seeing about 5 different turtles come up from the water that night and do the same egg laying ritual. Since I was alone this time, I really got to appreciate it without interruption, and it was just as special as the first time. I fricken love Exmouth, and I am smiling while I write this. Just such a magical place, and all the BS that I encountered on the way here from Broome via Andrea had melted away into gratification for being here and watching the spectacle of life happen in front of my eyes. Truly the best.
The following day I headed out to Coral Bay, and chilled out there for a couple days as I waited for Aaron to catch up. Eventually, I saw him pedaling away along the entry road into Coral Bay, and greeted him with a couple cold beers.
We went to a local pub and had a couple more, bought him his dinner, since he needed all the money to fund the rest of his trip, and we went back to my campsite to chill for the rest of the night. Talking to him about his biking expeditions and his wisdom on life was pretty shocking. This guy turns out had also done the entire east coast of China via bike, From Mexico to Canada via bike, and a European trip as well. This guy wasn’t doing it for clout or instagram likes or anything, he did it for himself. I asked him how he managed to do all of this, and he simply replied: “You just do it.”
Since I was expecting a grandiose expelling of knowledge from him, but his advice was so simple and straight forward, those simple words hit harder than any complicated wisdom share. It was simply that, just do it.
I think about that a lot while I write this blog now, as I just have to add to it day after day and soon enough I’ll have something. Just like him, set a goal to ride around Australia, and just go on the journey, day after day, pedal rotation and pedal rotation. Truly, as I mentioned before, he was one of the most inspirational people I’ve met travelling, but he was probably the most pragmatic. Just do it. What a guy.
After I left Aaron in Coral Bay, I basically wanted to get the car back to Perth ASAP. I drove as much as I could most days to get back, since the van was being charged day by day, and I had made plans to head to Thailand to go live there and try and build Wisdom From The Trail. I was going to head to Chiang Mai, since I knew it already and it was affordable to be there. Plus, it doubled as a digital nomad hub, so I could meet other people doing the same thing to network and grow WFTT.
When I returned to Perth, the rental company tried to charge me additional fees (like $1500 worth) since the car was dirty, even though I was returning the van 5 days early. I essentially axed that idea quickly and complained about the A/C being busted, the gas light not working, among other things that were poor about the car. I also tried to get my money back. After it all, they accepted the Van as is, but didn’t give me my money back for the unused days, and that was that.
It had been 2 years on and off in Australia, and it was truly amazing. The West Coast was truly special to me, and I am so ridiculous stoked I was able to see it all. It was better than I thought it would be. But after 2 years, I was ready to head off to Asia again to have a longer stint away. So this was goodbye to Australia for the final time on a working visa, bitter sweet indeed.
OFF TO ASIA, AGAIN - dIGITAL nOMAD style
As I was looking into flights to Thailand, It was actually cheaper to fly to Bali and then to Thailand. I had never been to Indonesia, so I figured why not do a mini trip there.
After I booked my flight to Bali, I called my mom to catch her up on my Western Australia trip and my new plans. She informed me that our good family friends were actually in Bali at the time, and for me to meet up with them. I thought that would be an awesome idea.
As I was waiting to board my plane to Bali, I looked at Nusa Penida, an Island close to Bali, as a place I wanted to spend most of my time. They had diving known for Mola Mola, Manta Rays and Thresher sharks. That sold me instantly, and I booked a recommended dive shop for 5 days/5 nights of diving on Nusa Penida. I didn’t know a whole lot about Nusa Penida, but as I said, the diving was suppose to be epic, so I booked it in the airport.
I arrived in the hectic atmosphere of Bali and headed to my hostel. Being in WA for the past 45 days, it was absolute chaotic comparatively. So many people, so much traffic, and so much going on. It was a slight culture shock all over again, but truthfully, I love the chaos.
I settled into my hostel and headed out to see Ron and Peggy, my family friends, for dinner and to catch up. Their daughter was living on a remote island in Indonesia (not sure where) where her husband was going an engineering project, which is why they were in Bali. I had caught them at the right time, as we caught up after years of not seeing each other, and had a wonderful night.
The following day I was off to Nusa Penida, where I would be staying at and diving with Scuba Junkies. My friend Tess, the mountaineer girl I mentioned before, had dove here previously and gave glowing reviews, so I followed her footsteps and stayed here. It was a pretty chill atmosphere there, where only 2 other divers were diving and staying there. An older German guy and a Singaporean woman. They would accompany me on all 10 dives I did over the proceeding 5 days.
I had just missed peak season for Mola Mola and Thresher Sharks, and most likely Manta Rays, but I still wanted to dive and see what it was all about. The dives were beautiful, excellent visibility on almost all the dives. We did site diving, wall diving, tunnel diving, the lot. We saw many turtles, a super rare leafy seadragon, a few underwater snakes, and other cool creatures. Unfortuantely, no Mantas, Mola Mola’s or Thresher Sharks. Either way, it was fantastic the dives, and I would happily go back there during high season to go see those underwater behemoths.
What surprised me about Nusa Penida was how much there was to see on the Island. Near the ports, the Island was flush with the beach, but around the Island there were 100m+ cliffs with extraordinary views. We had most of the afternoon off each day after diving, so I rented a bike and went to notable attractions such as Kelingking Beach, Diamond Beach, Broken Beach, Angels Billabong, The blow Hole, Tembeling Beach, Pandan Beach, and The Blow hole. All of it was incredible, and watching the strong waves crash against the towering cliffs was powerful. Seeing nature in such a raw manner while simultaneously admiring such incredible views was unbelievable. Nusa Penida was significantly more than I had bargained for, and to this day it is my favourite Island I have ever visited.
After the 5 days, I headed back to Bali to catch my flight to Bangkok. Although I definitely could have stayed in Indonesia longer, I was ready to head to Thailand and begin working on WFTT. A nice short, but sweet trip to end of travelling and to begin the work Cycle.
I arrived in Bangkok to catch up with some of my friends that I had met previous. My friend Dragon, who I had originally done my Open water diving course with, was going to take me to China Town in Bangkok during some sort of festival they were having. Dragon’s girlfriend at the time had a friend who was becoming a popular Thai food vlogger, and he came around with us as he was constantly filming me and everything I ate. I didn’t know it, but the guy based his whole episode on taking me around and having me try a bunch of different foods.
We ate tons of Dumplings, a random assortment of Thai Street food, Oyster Omelets, Coconut Ice cream, to name a few things. It was a pretty cool experience, except the guy Vlogging knew limited English and I know limited Thai, so the Dragon had to do most of the translating. Either way, it was good to see Dragon and company before heading up to Chiang Mai. If you want to watch the video, you can click HERE.
After leaving Dragon behind in Bangkok, I landed in Chiang Mai and planned to stay at a hostel called Potae’s House until I was able to get a condo of my own. Potae is the lady who runs the hostel, and she was an unreal host. I stayed there for about a week and met some cool people while I was there, most notably an Englishman named Sam. Sam and I did our fair share of partying and exploring while we were up in Chiang Mai, and I took him around to some of my favourite places to eat, since I had already spent a prolonged period of time there. It was a good time.
During my stay at Potae’s House, Potae and I became friends and she helped me figured out how to get in contact with Housing Agents to find me a place. I ended up going with a company called Perfect Homes Chiang Mai, and I was able to showings of a couple of houses pretty quickly. I was shown 3 homes, and the third one she showed me was perfect. It was in the nomadic area of Nimman, and there was only a 3 month rental length. Most rental units require a year or at least 6 months of commitment, but I figured since Thailand’s Visa is only 1 month and I would either have to fly out and fly back in or do border runs, 3 months would be safest just in case they became suspicious of me coming and going from Thailand so frequently. The apartment had a king bed, a view of Doi Suh Tep (A Temple on a mountain near Chiang Mai) and was spacious and within distance from basically everything I needed. Plus, rent was literally $250 CAD a month, so it was a perfect match for me. I signed the lease and had a place to live.
I moved in a few days before New Years 2020, and I didn’t know many people at the time while I was there. Sam left to go travelling elsewhere, so I basically had tons of time to work and get situated. I actually messaged my ex Molly to ask her for help in finding a place earlier, and she let me know that her friend Cameron, who I had known from my first stint living in Chiang Mai with Molly, had recently moved back to teach and that I should reach out to her since she didn’t know anyone either. I was hesitant, as Cameron and I didn’t really get along when I first met her, but I figured there was no harm in messaging her to see what her new years plans were. She responded back saying that she and her friends were going out for new years if I wanted to tag along, so I agreed.
We met up for the first time in 4 years and had a some what awkward interaction, since I said again it was weird, but I apologized for our previous stint and wished to start a new, which she thought was a good idea. So her and I and her friends went out to Old Town Chiang Mai for new years to celebrate the Lantern festival, where you can buy lanterns and light them from beneath where they fly in the sky away. It was a pretty terrific new years, and I was happy that I didn’t have to spend it alone.
After the hangover from new years wore off, I joined a gym about 10 minutes away from my house and began to work on some stuff. I truthfully had a difficult time starting, and at this moment in my life I kind of felt a sense of imposture syndrome for writing and creating. My identity for nearly my entire life had been one of an athlete or a jock, and not much of creating. In fact, I had trouble writing and articulating myself growing up, which I had my cousin tutor me back in the day. A lot of that crept into my head while I was trying to create this website, and I didn’t feel confident or comfortable doing much. In an defensive act of diversion, I kept myself busy by wasting time at the gym, watching youtube videos and learning how to edit videos. None, which directly impact WFTT.
I eventually started to watch videos on youtube about the NFL and thought that these guys had poor takes, so I decided I wanted to begin making youtube videos about the NFL Draft, a huge hobby of mine. My computer at the time was slow and unfit for creating and editing videos, but I did it anyways. I got into a routine of going to the gym, then coming home and working a bit on WFTT, but mostly working on videos about Football and wasting time. It was my first time being accountable on my own, and I had a very slow start to learning to be productive and accountable. After the first month of work, I had created an outline for a video about Working Holiday Visa in Australia, and created 2 youtube videos. Not much to bat an eye at.
My visa for Thailand expired so I flew to Malaysia and stayed at the hostel I always stay at, right next to the Shawarma shop. I stayed there for 3 days, partied a decent amount, saw a friend I had met in Australia from Brasil, and then returned back home for my second month.
Upon reflection, I needed to create a better structure for myself to be more productive. I was exercising daily, but I was too distracted by entertainment and I wanted to change that. So I refocused myself by locking in on something tangible I could do, which ended up being making videos, and I wanted to learn along that path everyday for the majority of the day.
So I watched a lot of youtube videos on photoshop, after effects, tinkered with the Adobe suite, and was able to churn out another 4 videos, including a working holiday visa on Australia for those who are eligible under a 417 visa. If you are reading this and wondering what that’s all about, click HERE. It’s my first video on the subject, and I was nervous as hell so I have zero personality, but the information is correct nonetheless.
The proceeding month was more productive than the first, but I still wanted to keep learning and growing. Some days I spent the entire day learning adobe photoshop to help with my NFL Draft videos, so I didn’t end up producing much, but I was still on track none the less.
My friend Richard, who visited me in Canada in 2018, was planning to come to Thailand for a bit and was passing through Chiang Mai. So he and I met up and decided to ride scooters to Pai. I had been to Pai before with Molly, but we took a shuttle bus up there.. which was terrible. The road to Pai has 762 turns from Chiang Mai to Pai, so being in a van for that was horrible. During the shuttle ride, some poor Chinese ladies were eating food before the trip in the van, and at the half way point they were stuck to a toilet when we stopped for lunch. Certainly not for the faint of heart, and also why we decided to scooter.
We had a great time up there, and the drive was significantly better on a bike than in a bus. We stayed up there for a few days, and Rich had met a Brazilian girl and was planning to spend time with her, so I bailed after 3 days to get back to work. It was nice seeing Rich, but I was very adamant on working.
After my second visa, I decided to do a visa run via a bus. Essentially, you get on a bus and head to Myanmar (Burma), walk over the boarder, and walk back. It’s quite common and they have an entire process and businesses around this concept, so I decided to try it out. Plus, it was more affordable.
For the land visa run, you can only do it so many times before you get flagged, so I figured I was going to switch between flying and land runs after my 30 day visa was coming to an end. The ride was long, and it took all day to go there and get back to Chiang Mai. It was essentially we left Chiang Mai at 6am, arrived at Mae Sai – Tachilek boarder at Myanmar, approximately 6 hour drive there with stops, less than an hour to do visa stuff, then another 6 hours back. The drive itself wasn’t overly scenic, so it was pretty boring, but necessary. I was ready for month 3.
Month 3 was my best month yet, I had pumped out 5 videos and was beginning to become comfortable with the editing process. I was still hitting the gym hard, and was getting in pretty good shape. My month was monotonous with not a lot of things happen, except on the working front, which was great.
Nearing the end of my 3rd month, I negotiated with my landlord to go on a month to month basis. I didn’t really know how long I could continually come in and out of Thailand, so I was preparing for them to say it was my last month at any time. Although, I genuinely enjoyed my time in Chiang Mai this time, and wanted to stay as long as possible. So I was able to secure this deal with my landlord, and I headed out to Malaysia to go and get a Tourist Visa, which I had to pay for unlike the 30 days, but it would secure me a 60 day visa, which would be awesome to grind and focus instead of having to leave every time.
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur and naturally, I went to the same hostel I always go to near the shawarma place. However, this time was much, much different.
By this time I was in Malaysia, it was March 2020… The start of covid. There had been rumblings about Covid in Thailand, but nothing was happening at the time. However, in Kuala Lumpur, all of the grocery shops were empty, people were told to stay in the house, restaurants closed, etc. What is a busy area in Bukit Bintang, I would go out to grab a shawarma and the street was basically empty. It was insane to see a huge city with no people around. It felt real, and obviously writing this now, the pandemic turned out to be a global thing.
I had returned to the embassy to grab my passport, and I had been approved for the tourist visa. Honestly, my stroke of luck was unbelievable in this situation because while I was gone, Thailand had just changed their rules that no tourist could enter Thailand unless they had a tourist visa. Since I had literally all of my stuff in Chiang Mai, I was lucky as hell.
It wasn’t easy though, my flight to Chiang Mai was cancelled, and the only flight into Thailand from Kuala Lumpur was to Phuket. I quickly scrambled to purchase a flight to Phuket leaving in a couple hours, and booked nearly the last flight from Phuket to Chiang Mai. I was very lucky, and I arrived with no issues.
When I got back to Thailand, my mom called me asking about Covid and how it was over in Thailand. She informed me that Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister, was closing the boarders to Canada in 2 days. She asked me to come home because she didn’t know what would happen with Flights and boarders. Plus, the severity of covid was unknown at the time, and since Thailand was closer to China than Canada, she felt it would be safer.
I understood where she was coming from, but I REALLY didn’t want to go. I had a good thing going here in Thailand, and my moms soft nature allowed me to stay.. however, my sister gave me a call soon there after, and did not approach the conversation with as much understanding. My sister is a type A personality, and she basically told me I was being selfish by not coming home, which after some deliberation I agreed with her on. So I ended up booking a 35 hour flight home Chiang Mai –> Bangkok –> Taipei –> Seattle –> Edmonton. It was going to be a trek, but I was leaving the next day. So first the first time in my life, my life had literally been flipped upside down, and I had to get my shit and go.
I contacted my landlord and explained the situation, and let her keep the money I had prepaid for the month in advance. I contacted all of my friends I’d made there, said my goodbyes, and was headed to Bangkok on a red eye flight. Just like that, I was going home.
cOVID 2020 - rETURNING TO Canada
Returning back home to Canada was brutal. There was no food open due to covid in the airports, and I was stuck in Seattle for a night as my flight to Edmonton was cancelled. I ended up coming home, but all people returning from foreign countries had to do a mandatory Isolation for 14 days, so my mom set up a whole set up in the basement where I would be living for the next 2 weeks.
During this time, I had spent A LOT of time on my electronics, and I ultimately decided I needed to detox. So I made a goal that for the entire 14 days in quarantine, I wouldn’t use any electronics, including TV, Computers, Phone, or anything. All I had was puzzles, books, writing materials and my basement. It was going to be hard and boring, but I needed that reset.
I will write about this experience further in a future blog post, but my god I was productive. At the beginning of the quarantine, I could barely read 10 pages of a non-fiction book without becoming tired, distracted, etc. However, that changed dramatically. After I escaped the electronic coma that we all exist in this day and age, I became the most focused and productive I’ve ever been. During 14 days, I read 7 books, wrote 100 hand written pages of notes, and completed 3 puzzles. It was astonishing, I thought I had ADD at some points in my life because I was distracted and had trouble focusing, when really it was because I trained myself to be that way through ingestion of social media and other high dopamine activities. I couldn’t believe my results. I will write about this in detail later.
After the 2 weeks was up, I came upstairs for the first time and embraced my family. Canada at the time had some pretty stringent rules on what you could and could not do. One of the things that you could do was golf, since it was considered social distancing. 6m, was the rule you needed to stay away from other people at the time, and golf seemed to bypass this category. All gyms, restaurants, activities indoors, were all closed.
At the time I wasn’t a great golfer, but I decided to take it up since there was nothing else to do. I ended up falling in love with the game, and wanting to play as much as possible. One of the rounds I went out with my friend Jeff, who I had stayed with briefly in Australia when I was laid off of my painting gig. He asked me what I was doing for work, and I said I wasn’t working. So he offered me a job at his restaurant he was managing, Earls, as a server. I had worked in restaurants before, however almost exclusively in back of house. But, I needed money as my money was low from the flight home, so I agreed to come in.
Earls had revamped the restaurant with spaced tables, limited seating, and plexiglass between tables to adhere to the new covid rules. So Earls was in operation, while most restaurants weren’t. So, I decided to work there, and I had a great time over the next 6 months.
Basically from April till November, all I did was work and golf. Restaurant life was chill, fun and engaging. I moved up to a bartender and a shift leader pretty fast, and was enjoying my work. There wasn’t much to note during these months, since literally covid prevent any large gatherings from occurring. I still wanted to travel, but there wasn’t many countries that were open to go travelling. So I stuck with my bartending/serving job until November.
During the month of October, I decided I wanted to head out to the mountains by myself for a few days. I headed to Canmore to go do some hikes, and then take the Ice Field pass road that Rich and I had done, and then I was going to meet my sister in Jasper to do some hikes. While I was in Canmore, I received an instagram message from a girl I met travelling all the way back in 2016 while I was in Hanoi, and that message once again shifted my life in a completely different direction.
For Context: This girls name was Vanessa, and I had met her in my hostel one night. She had a boyfriend at the time, Ryan, and they had just done a year in Australia together. I was having some drinks with him downstairs in the hostel bar when my phone died, so I ran upstairs to charge it. In the room, I met Vanessa, and asked her some typical traveling questions. “Where did you come from?” “How long are you staying?” etc. However, when she answered me, I could see some pain in her eyes, so I asked if she was okay. She ended up confiding in me about the difficulties of travelling, homesickness, and a myriad of other issues she had been holding in for a long time. I am very empathetic in nature, so I decided she needed an ear to speak on. So her and I began talking through her situations, and our conversations ended up lasting nearly 6 hours.
She was on the verge of returning home to New York, where she’s from, but she had a couple more countries her and Ryan planned to visit, but she was thinking of leaving early. I convinced her to stay on the trip, since being in South East Asia is not an every day thing for us North Americans, and ultimately at the end of our conversations she was feeling better and decided to stay. From her pictures, it looked like she had a blast.
So fast forward back to Canmore, I had received a message along the line of. “I’m in Croatia, I had met some awesome people for a short amount of time, but the short time still created strong bonds. It made me think about you and when we met in Hanoi, and I wanted to reach out to you and say thank you, because without you I wouldn’t have experienced South East Asia, and I hope you’re doing well.” Truthfully, I never get messages of that kind, so I messaged her back explaining that she was most welcome and that it was definitely needed to vent and let those things out, and I’m proud of her that she did it. Subsequent messages turned into paragraphs, and so ultimately we decided to Facetime to properly catch up.
So after a hike one day, I gave her a call. She was living in Hvar Croatia for a couple months, and we caught up on life, travels, and pretty much everything under the sun. Our conversation ended up lasting 3 hours, and it was very late her time, but she wanted to get another call in. So we did, the following day, and that conversation lasted 5 hours. We still had lots to talk about, so we face timed again, which lasted a long time as well. Soon enough, she invited me to come travelling with her in Portugal. I was in need of a travel, so I looked into it and at the time Portugal was open for Canadians to visit during covid restrictions. Over the proceeding 2 weeks, after the mountain trip, and after talking for a significant amount of time, I decided to ultimately pull the trigger and I booked a flight to go see her in 2 weeks time. I went to my work, put in my 2 week notice, and the count down was on. I was heading to Portugal.
After 2 weeks, I was set to leave to Portugal. I arrived to the airport, ready to board my flight. Only then to realize that 2 days before I was set to leave, Portugal required covid test results and a visa in order to enter, which I didn’t have because they were new restrictions. I was denied boarding on my plane. I rebooked my flight for a few days later, when I got a text message from my friend Tyler. He tested positive for covid. Why was this significant? Well, Tyler had his birthday get together a couple days before I was set to leave, and 15 of us were in direct contact with him. So I basically had to isolate for 14 days because I was in close quarters with him. My flight to Portugal was axed, and so was my travelling plans with Vanessa.
I called Vanessa and told her this, and she was already on her way to Portugal at the time. Obviously she was bummed out, but she really wanted to still see me and travel. So we made a plan after I was done quarantining where we could meet, and the only country in the entire world that was open with no restrictions was Mexico. So, she decided to buy a flight home to New York and spend American thanksgiving with her family, and then meet me in Mexico after my quarantine was done. I couldn’t believe it, what a whirlwind it had been. I was very appreciative of such a crazy gesture, to come home and meet me in Mexico, especially considering I hadn’t seen her in 4 years. But, that’s life. And after my 2 weeks were done, we were both headed to Cancun, where we would finally see each other again after 4 years.
Viva mEXICO! - pARADISE DURING A pANDEMIC
I was on my flight to Cancun, Mexico when I was taking it all in. I had covid and lost $1000 trying to get to Portugal, but I ended up going to Mexico, which I had never been before. Usually, Canadians head to Mexico to escape the cold for 1-2 weeks at an all inclusive resort with family or friends, but I had never done that, nor was I interested in that.
Now, I was going down for a completely different reason, to meet up with Vanessa. It kind of all hit me at once, and Canada was getting really bad for covid by the time I left, so I was fortunate to get out when I did because Canada banned all international flights soon after I left the country.
I arrived in Cancun and Vanessa was already there, but at a different terminal. So I jumped on the transfer bus and headed to go see her. There had been a lot of anticipation when we met up, and it was crazy to see her after so long. We embraced and soon after we headed towards the bus to downtown Cancun. We were headed off to the island of Isla Mujeres for 10 days, just to sink into the life in Mexico, before we planned to travel around.
Isla Mujeres was awesome. The north part was extremely touristy, filled with people from Cancun who came on a day trip, so we decided to rent an Air BnB in the south part of the island, in a local village. There were hardly any tourists down that way, so that was much more ideal for us.
Over the next 10 days, we did a lot of relaxing, trying out many local restaurants, taking bikes around the island and exploring it from head to toe, and just enjoying the beautiful weather of Mexico. Isla Mujeres had incredible Ceviche and street food, and I was estatic to finally be in my first Latin country.
When I was in Australia at the hostel in Airlie Beach, there were a lot of Chileans and other Latin Americans. A few of them I couldn’t speak to, and that bothered me. I knew French and English, but I hardly used French on my trip. While Spanish would have been significantly more useful. Plus, a lot of the world speaks Spanish, and so the combination of usefulness and not being able to communicate with some of those Latin Americans, I was on the crash course to learn Spanish.
I had begun listening to spanish music, using duo lingo, and downloaded an audio book by Paul Noble on Spanish Basics. The audiobook was for sure the best method I used, but I never had the chance to practice it. So being in Mexico, I tried everyday to speak Spanish with local people, even though I was terrible and I made many mistakes. I figured complete immersion is the best way to learn, and to sink or swim by only speaking Spanish as much as possible and to learn on the go. This was the tone I was setting for Mexico, and now I am quite capable in Spanish now, so it was a great decision.
Immersing myself and trying to speak Spanish led to some great experiences. Whether it was going to a random Loncheria and having Al Pastor tacos every night by our place, or seeing locals faces light up when you tried your hardest to respect their country and learn they’re language, it was worth it completely. Plus, we were able to actually speak with some locals, and learn about their lives on the Island, and in Mexico in general. It was just so worth it.
After Isla Mujeres, we decided we wanted to go travelling for a bit. So we headed inland to the town of Valladolid, an old colonial town mainly used as a jumping off point for the infamous Chichen Itza and also stunning Cenotes (natural pits/sinkholes) in the area.
Valladolid is a beautiful town, with amazing street food around every corner, fresh fruits being sold in the streets, and charming elements to the town, such as a small market in the middle of the town, old churches and shops, and friendly locals scattered everywhere. We stayed there for a couple days, hit cenote Zaci, which is actually in the town of Valladolid, ate at many restaurants, and did a day trip to Chichen Itza.
Chichen Itza was practically empty when we went. Since covid was happening, tourism was significantly down, and so we were some of the only people in the Temple grounds when it opened, which is absolutely rare. We were even able to get photos of the main pyramid without any people in the background, it was absolutely wonderful.
We then headed to the Yucatan Capital of Merida for a few days, where we walked around, explored the city, and of course, ate as much amazing Mexican cuisine as we could. After Merida, we headed to Rio Lagartos, as Vanessa was in need of a beach. However, Rio Largartos had no beach, and was just a fishing town. Although, there were some very cool natural areas, including mangroves and a small nature park with one crocodile in it. Pretty cute little guy.
We had made plans to stay in Holbox Island for Christmas and New Years, as this was a popular tourist destination due to it’s crystal blue waters, hammocks in the ocean, and paradise like views. However, we were probably a week away from having this, and Vanessa really wanted to go to a beach. So we looked on our maps to see what was between Rio Lagartos and Holbox, and there was only one place, called El Cuyo. Vanessa and I had never heard of this place, but since we were seeking beach life, we ultimately decided to go there. Well, let me tell you, this little unknown town to us was MUCH more than we bargained for.
We took a bus to a town called Tizimin, then another bus from Tizimin to El Cuyo. It was somewhat of an indirect trip, but we managed to get in the town in the afternoon. Every place we had been so far required face masks to be worn in public, natural covid protocols, but when we got into El Cuyo, no one was wearing masks. This was a relief, because masks were hard to breathe in the hot weather of Mexico.
We were dropped off at the town, and it was really nice. There was a light house, a soccer/basketball court in the middle of the town, the ocean a couple minutes walk straight away, and people on the streets just looking… happy. It was a great vibe. We also had no accomodation for El Cuyo, so we walked with all our backpacks and headed down a road, where on the map said there was a lot of houses and hotels.
We ended up talking to a few locals on the road, inquiring about prices. A lot of them were unreasonable prices for the room, so we kept our options open and walked further along the adjacent road. We eventually came to a humongous house with a bunch of kids and adults in the front yard. We ended up talking to one of the guys there, and he called his friend to see if he had room at his place. Soon enough, a short, stocky man rode up on a quad and introduced himself. His name was Reyes, and he had a couple places in town for us to stay. His house was just around the corner from where we were, so he guided us to this 2 story house just a few meters away from where we were.
The house was unique and very beach like, and the interior had 2 beds, full kitchen, a sand front area with beach chairs, and had AC. We asked how much to stay there, and it was like $30 CAD a night. Compared to the other $100 places, it was a slam dunk. We booked it for 5 nights. So we dropped our stuff off at the place, got changed, and headed to the beach.
There was a cut away to the beach close to the house, about 2 minute walk from our place, so we headed through that to a completely beautiful, and empty beach. I mean it when I say it was empty. This beach also went for miles, far as the eye can see in both directions, left towards town you could see the jetty but to the right was endless beach. We were literally the only people on the beach, and the water was crystal blue. Vanessa and I both looked at each other, being like: “What the hell is this place?!” We had hit paradise without even knowing it.
Over the proceeding few days, we had an absolute blast. The beach was still pretty much empty, like maybe 20 people on it max and they weren’t by us, except for a couple days where there were many kite surfers on the water. It was the most picturesque sights ever. It was like we had our own beach to ourselves basically, and we enjoyed it immensely.
We walked into town every night to check out the restaurants, and wow, does El Cuyo ever have good restaurants. They have an excellent pizza place ran by Argentinians, local Loncherias with excellent food, seafood restaurants, a top notch breakfast and lunch place, and a super insanely random 9 course tasting menu place ran by a former michelin star restaurant worker and his girlfriend from England. We were astonished. This place had a population with less than 2000 people, and it was top notch in every category. Food, Beaches, tranquility, vibes. El Cuyo felt amazing, and it was a shame we had to leave it to go to Holbox, but we were also excited to go there.
After El Cuyo, we were riding the high of being there. It was such an incredible surprise for us to not know about this absolute gem of a place, and to have such a great 5 days. We took a bus back to Tizimin, then another one eastward to Chiquila, the port for Holbox, then took a ferry to Holbox and got settled in our Hotel.
Holbox was really beautiful, but honestly some what of a let down considering what we had just found in El Cuyo. The beaches had tons of black seaweed on the shores from the storm, it was extremely crowded with tourists for the holidays, the roads were nearly flooded, and on the beaches you could barely find a spot to lay down and relax. The food and vibes on Holbox were good though overall, but the tourism plagued it for sure.
We were staying at a hotel where the owners were Mexican and Italian, and they cooked food for their guests every night at the base of the hotel. The lady made excellent food, all from Scratch. On Christmas, we had a mini party with other guests down stairs, and it was a lovely time. However, the lady ended up putting peanuts in her pasta (which I never would have guessed) and I had an allergic reaction which knocked me out for the night. Which was unfortunate. But it was a beautiful place and we enjoyed our time there.
We decided we wanted to do some camping at a near by camping lot for new years and we booked a week there. However, camping in Mexican weather was a huge mistake. It was a sauna in our tent, and neither of us could get good sleeps for the first 2 nights we were there. During the third night, Vanessa and I were talking about our time so far, and we both agreed that this tent idea was terrible. We both looked at each other and almost at the exact same time said: “I want to go back to El Cuyo.” Both of us somewhat being shocked at the coincidence, we actually contemplated going back. We both loved El Cuyo more than Holbox, so why wouldn’t we? We decided the next day we had enough of Holbox, and we headed back to El Cuyo.
I messaged Reyes while we were on our way back to see if he had rooms available, and he did, but at a different house located on the other side of town. It really didn’t matter though. We were so excited to be going back to El Cuyo that we would take whatever he had. So we caught the ferry and the 2 buses back to El Cuyo and landed in our piece of paradise a couple days before New Years. It was amazing to be back.
New Years was great. People were partying and shooting fireworks off in the streets, people were celebrating, and we took part in all of it and then went to the beach to Stargaze. Holbox Island was only 30 minute by boat, so you could see the fireworks off in the distance. But New Years was very tranquil for the most part, as we basically sat on the empty beach and listened to the waves roll in. Definitely not the typical Mexico New Years celebration for most, but it was great for us.
Covid ended up becoming a real thing in most parts of the Yucatan, so travelling was honestly pretty limited. There wasn’t much we could do, as most of the Mayan ruins were closed down, most tours were halted, so we decided to actually stay and live in El Cuyo for a month. There was no other option really, as all other countries near by were in lock down, and most of the Yucantan was as well to some degree, with the exception of El Cuyo, where things were pretty much status quo. So we moved back to El Triton and rented the top suite for a month, as another guy named Marco from Chihuahua moved in beneath us.
Essentially our lives were go to the beach, make and eat delicious food, explore town, and relax. It was pretty great. This was 2021, when the Cryptocurrency markets were going wild, and everything I read and saw online was about it. So I ultimately decided to look into it, and it fascinated me. So that became a huge consumer of my time over the next month.
Eating wise in El Cuyo, we pretty much ate out at 5 restaurants religiously. Naia, Loncheria Willy’s, Casa Cuyo, La Casa Palma, and El Chile Gordo. I bring it up because the food in this little town is exceptional, and I mean that in regards to any city, and not simply for a sub 2000 person town.
For breakfast, we went to the best cafe in town, Naia, nearly everyday. On the rare day we didn’t go, we made heuvos rancheros at home, but we both loved Naia so it was more often than not. They had excellent coffees and drinks, healthy, fresh food, and was just overall excellent place to be. Food was excellent, atmosphere was great, and the employees who worked there were lovely. We went there so often we became friends with the manager, and they ended up selling us beetroot hummus and extra pesto that they had from their inventory trips to Merida.
The second place we would go was Willy’s Loncheria, if we wanted to get some Mexican food, such as tacos, tortas, salbutes, gringos, sopes, etc. Typical loncheria food. It was very delicious and affordable, which is definitely what you want.
The third place, Casa Cuyo, was ran by an Argentinian couple who ran the hotel and the kitchen there. They had more American style/Italian food, with excellent pastas, pizzas, and pretty good breakfast. This was also relatively close to our place in comparison to the others. Marco was a sweet guy, and he also ended up fixing my computer for me when it broke, so he was a jack of all trades kind of guy.
The 4th place, La Casa Palma, was our most frequented restaurant for dinner. Ran by another Argentinian couple, La Casa Palma was Argentinian/Italian cuisine with stone fire pizzas, hand made Argentinian Empandas, hand made pastas and desserts. It was extremely delicious, and we got to know the owners, Ricky and Eri, quite well since we were probably their best customers. Casa Palma was essentially a food truck plotted on a backyard of a house, where the ground was sand and tables were scattered around the area. It was the ultimate beach vibe, and you could hear the waves crash in the background. I love Casa Palma.
The 5th and final restaurant was El Chile Gordo, and this enigma of a restaurant is by far the most impressive. Oscar and Kathy were a couple hailing from Mexico and England respectfully. Oscar was once a Michelin star cook who wanted to open a pastry shop in Isla Mujeres. That changed when he met Kathy, and they fell in love and wanted to move to a more remote part of the Yucatan, when they found El Cuyo. When they found El Cuyo, it was basically undeveloped with no implanted expats, and they bought a piece of land, build a house, and built a front restaurant at the beginning of their land. They started with selling Burros (Similar to a burrito) but Oscar is a true Chef, and was more interested in the finer aspects of food. So they ended up transforming their Burro restaurant into a 9 courses tasting menu, where nearly every time we went was a different experience. There was only 1 table in the restaurant, and service happened twice a night, so reservations were absolutely necessary. We found it sort of by mistake, and we decided to book the nearest time at the beginning of our month stay. Legit probably the most elegant food I’ve ever had in my life.
Oscar is a genius with food and Kathy has the personality to keep any table talking, whether it be in English or Spanish. The combo of them is deadly, and they make an excellent team. From Home made Salsa’s, chips and Mezcal Margarita to start, followed by 8 other insane dishes, which were different every time (now it’s more of a set menu), it was incredible. Some notable dishes were: Mango aguachile over lobster, Caldo de Piedra (a molton hot rock cooking soup instantly in front of you), Salbut pibil (cochinita pibil on a salbute patty, which is famous to the yucantan region), Mayan salso, hand crafted tacos, mole rojo, etc. All of his dishes were uniquely his way, but also encompassed different regions of Mexico. He understood Mexico has a vast range of foods, and he show cased them in his cooking.
While it’s a long reservation time and also not feasible to eat 9 course tasting menu every day, we ate the more than a couple times, and became friends with Oscar and Kathy. We even ended up doing a Air BnB video with them to advertise for their cooking class experiences. Either way, it was tremendous.
After a month, restrictions only tightened in the area. We ended up moving to a new house managed by a guy named Jorge, who was had a rastafarian vibe to him, and we moved in there for another month. Essentially, all was the same. We went to the beach lots, ate at our favourite restaurants, walked around town, learned about Crypto, and pretty much everything else. There wasn’t a whole lot to do, but being in Mexico instead of locked in my house was a far better option. So even though we wanted to travel around and see stuff, it just wasn’t feasible at the time. So we basically did this routine for another month.
After that month, we decided we wanted to extend for another month, and then another month, and ultimately we extended all the way until the beginning of May. During this time, I had learned a ton about Crypto, began running on the beach as it was hard enough to run on, and started doing a marathon program. As you can imagine, eating pizza, pastas, tacos, etc for every meal, ya boy was getting heavy, so I needed to do some physical activity, so running on the beach while the sun was setting was also very good.
Kite boarding is a huge activity in El Cuyo, and after a few months of watching people doing it, I ultimately decided to do some lessons. I took 5 lessons and was able to somewhat go out and control the kite. It’s an extremely difficult sport, and it requires you to be able to ride both ways with either foot in front. I snowboard right food forward, so having my left foot forward was extremely unnatural and I didn’t practice enough times to get it down, but it was a good experience.
Either way, living in El Cuyo was completely unexpected, but extremely awesome. I ended up meeting other locals there, began playing beach volleyball every tuesday, and having good quality conversations with the owners of the restaurants every time we went there. Plus, I visited many stores and vegetables shops on a regular basis, so I began to know most of the town on a first name basis, something that had never happened to me before because I had never really lived in such a small town before. It was a wonderful experience, and I am very grateful that we were able to spend 6 months in Mexico instead of being locked up in a frozen tundra of Canada.
Eventually, Vanessa and I had to leave as our visas were coming to an end. Vanessa went back to Long Island to go see her family and I went home to Canada, where we were planning to reconvene in August where I was going to fly into New York, meet her family before we headed out to Europe. First, I needed to go home and see my family and make some more money, and so our beautiful time in El Cuyo came to an end, which was definitely more bitter than sweet, but we had a journey soon enough on the horizon.
Canada summer of 2021
Upon arriving home, Canada had implemented some seriously stupid rules where all returning travelers had to quarantine in a hotel in Calgary for 3 days, before returning home to do their final 2 weeks of quarantine at their place. It was just a money grab implemented by the government, and it was ridiculous. Nothing was followed properly, and the cost of a hotel was 3x as much as normal with barely any difference. It was stupid as hell.
3 days and $900 Dollars later, I was on my way back home with my mom from Calgary. Domestic airports were severely restricted, and only those on business could travel. Canada was just making it up as they went, but regardless, we had to adhere to the rules and so my family made the 3 hour drive to come get me.
I spent another 2 weeks in the basement, even though I was covid free, and then I eventually got a job working for my sister’s company as a painter, again. During this time, Vanessa was growing distant. Something seemed off with her and between us. We never got into any fights while we were in Mexico, and so something seemed off.
Every time we spoke on facetime, she would be around her family, which was fine, but her sisters and family members seemed more interested in talking to me than her. I’m pretty good at seeing subtle changes in people and dynamics, so I knew something was off. I tried to talk to her one on one, but she was aloof and didn’t want to. It was very concerning, and I grew to be very anxious about the whole situation. Eventually, we had a one on one conversation and essentially Vanessa broke things off with me and didn’t give me a single reason why, which I pleaded for her to tell me the reason. Yet, she simply said she needed to go to Europe alone and live a similar experience to the book/movie “Eat, Pray, Love”. I am a logical person, so if her and I were fighting constantly or if there was a main moment in our relationship that caused irreparable damage, I could understand it. But literally, there was no logical reason to break up. She even said the same, but said she wasn’t sure what was going on. It blindsided me completely, since there wasn’t any distinct differences within our relationship when we were travelling. Everything was good, and as I said we didn’t fight or argue. But, she made her decision, and after some waterworks and what not, that would be the last time I would ever speak to her.
In all honesty, the break up felt like a death. It came so suddenly and for no apparent reason, which made it harder to stomach. However, I know myself well and was able to take the necessary steps in order to not avoid my feelings and to exist in them, figure out what was happening, find ways to make it make sense for myself through endless journaling, talking to people about it, and even writing a note to her telling her how I felt, even though I never sent it to her. I was able to truly get over her in an expedited fashion, 3 weeks. I will write about this at some point, because it was the most effective method I have ever found to getting over something of this manner.
I ended up working for my sister until the November, where the rest of the summer was good. I made money, I golfed, restrictions of covid let up so I was able to see my friends more than the previous year, and overall I had a great summer. Being back home and having Europe fall through was for sure a disappointment, and I only really had desire to go to Europe because Vanessa was much more adamant on going there than I was. My destination of choice was South America, as I was enamored with the Spanish language and also the wild west feel of being down there.
So I ultimately made a decision I wanted to go down there. However, flights were pretty expensive, and the cheapest flight out of the country was back to Cancun in Mexico. I figured since I didn’t really travel that much in Mexico, I wanted to go back and do all the things I wanted to do there when I couldn’t because of Covid. So in November of 2021, I went back to Mexico on my own before I was planning to go to Colombia afterwards, which was the only South American country without covid restictions at the time.
Mexico part 2 - estoy libre
Here I was, back in Cancun Mexico ready to explore. I decided to go to Isla Mujeres and revisit all of my favorite eating places for a day, and then to come back and stay in Cancun. After my short Isla Mujeres trip, I got in contact with my tattoo artist named Sone. Sone, a local from Cancun, is an extremely detailed and good tattoo artist who I got a tattoo from previously when I was with Vanessa. I had gotten a skull, a clock, a scroll and a quill done on the front of my right thigh, and decided I wanted him to complete my upper leg. So I had messaged him to add a few old style books, a compass, a telescope. and out line my thigh with a map of Canada. He came up with a design and I went to his house in rural Cancun, and got my leg tattoo’d for 7 hours. It looked great, but I also wanted to finish it with a fill in design in my inner thigh, but I would have to wait until my leg was healthy.
In the mean time, I decided to head to Cozumel to recover, and Island across from Playa Del Carmen. I rented an Air BnB in the more local neighborhood so I could heal, and I essentially just walked around, biked around the island, and planned some diving trips after in about a weeks time. I had met a 19 year old kid named Miguel, a local from Cozumel, while I was running around the local track by my Air Bnb. He was a really nice guy who was working hard on speaking English. He loved the idea of Canada, so we hung out for a few days. He was interested in studying engineering or computer sciences, a smart kid who had a good drive. I took him out for lunch/breakfast a couple of times, as it was nice to have company and also learn from each other. I gave him some advice on applying to Canadian Universities and such, and he gave me some good options to go visit in the area as well. Plus, he was a great kid, so it was nice to chat with him and help him develop his English.
After a week, my leg was healed enough to go scuba diving. I went with the Bare Foot Dive shop in Cozumel, ran by a couple of Israeli’s, and booked a 10 dive package. Which included 6 dives in Cozumel and 4 cenote dives on the mainland. Scuba diving was prohibited when I was here last due to covid, but this time it was open and back in business. So I was super excited to go diving again, since the last time I had dove was in late 2020 in Indonesia. The diving was awesome, and quite different from Oceania region. Cozumel is in the Caribbean ocean, so the water is crystal blue. Plus, there was more turtles, lobsters, and rays in Cozumel rather than big macro life such as manta rays and Goliath groupers and such. It was very lovely though.
After my Cozumel dives, I went to Playa Del Carmen and did my Cenote dives out of there. I had never dove in Cenote’s before, but it was something that was always on my bucket list. I did El Pit (30m dive into a pit of darkness, have to use flashlights to see down there), Dos Ojos (Meaning 2 eyes in Spanish, a shallower underwater swim through), Chac Mool (another shallower swim through dive) and Kukulkan (a third shallower swim through dive). Cenote diving was incredible, and the formations underneath are truly stunning. Diving in Cenotes are totally different from ocean diving, but totally unique experience and you can only experience it in this part of Mexico, which makes it all the more special.
I decided to do 2 more dives, this time in Playa Del Carmen with a Brazilian instructor I met on my dive boat in Cozumel. They took me bull shark diving, and then to another random reef dive later. Bull sharks are pretty intimidating, especially since most of the sharks we saw were pregnant. However, sharks are usually vilified as aggressive creatures towards humans, which isn’t the case typically. It mostly depends on what type of shark, and more often than not the types aren’t aggressive towards humans. However, Bull can be one of the shark species that does attack humans. But knowing that it’s quite rare anyways, it made me feel slightly better, although I was on edge. Gotta be aware haha.
The dive was really cool, we got pretty close to the sharks which is what I love most about diving. The next dive was quite shallow, and we had a guy in our group who was crushing his oxygen, so we didn’t dive that long. It was still fun though.
I didn’t spent too much more time in Playa Del Carmen as I wanted to head down to Bacalar and go see the Lagoon of 7 colors. So I hopped on the 4 hour bus down to Bacalar. I ended up staying at the Black Jaguar Hostel, as it was the cheapest place available, and I wanted to stay in Bacalar for 5 days. I wanted to relax and chill, and also do some exercise as well. I knew that the lagoon was awesome to Kayak on, and that it’s quite a special place in terms of Mayan History and Colonial History, so I wanted to check it out. I made some pretty good friendships here, as I met 2 Danish girls, Fie and Camilla, who I spent a lot of time with exploring the town and also eating Mr Taco, a legendary restaurant in the middle of Bacalar where I have eaten a probably a dozen times in my life. Best, Cheap Mexican food in all of Bacalar, a must go if you are ever down there.
But being down in Bacalar was amazing. The lagoon of seven colors is incredible, and it’s some of the most interesting water I have ever seen. It really does have multiple colors of blue, and is just a joy to be around. I really enjoyed my time in Bacalar. Kayaking on the water was really great. A younger Spanish guy from the hostel and I took a collectivo (Shuttle Bus) down the road to Sac Ha, which was a more secluded area of the Lagoon. We were essentially the only ones there, probably because it was so hard to get to. But it was worth it. We kayaked up some rapids, Los Rapidos de Bacalar, which took us to a calmer area and also the restaurant ‘Club de Playa Manantial’ where a lot of influencers were getting their influencing on. I hate that kind of stuff so I paddled onwards to enjoy some tranquility instead of the influencer paradise. It was really great. We couldn’t get too far away, since we had only rented the Kayaks for 2 hours, so we had to be back at a certain time. Let me tell you, going down los Rapidos is MUCH better than going up it haha. But Bacalar was fantastic.
After Bacalar, I headed back up to Cancun to get my 3rd and final tattoo session done with Sone. I was also going to head right to Colombia from Mexico, but my Grandma is 91 and her years are running out, so heading back home for Christmas is a better option. I sent a picture of the 3 sisters mountain from Canmore, Alberta to Sone, and got him to sketch out a piece for my inner thigh. I also got him to touch up my other tattoo on my back, since it needed some TLC. Once again, Sone did incredible work and my leg piece was finally done. I was super happy with it. Now, it was time to head back to Canada for Christmas before heading out to Colombia.
Covid Christmas OF DESTINY - 2021
While it would be simple to just say that I came home for Christmas, got Covid, then went to Colombia after I was healed, it would down play the importance of returning home for Christmas. Originally, I wasn’t going to come home and I was going to head to Medellin, Colombia to begin living there for a while. However, my Grandma is getting older and I want to spend as many Christmas’s as possible with her before her time is up, so it made sense for me to come home.
I came home and spent Christmas with my family, and I planned to get some snowboarding in after Christmas. My friend Tess, who I’ve mentioned before, was back home in Edmonton over the break, and I asked her if she could take me down to go Snowboarding in the mountains for a couple days. It so happened that I would be able to catch a ride home with my sister in a couple days time, so it would have worked out perfectly for me. Tess, as I mentioned, is a huge outdoors and mountaineer like person, so she was happy to have me. So I rode down with her to Calgary where we were planning to head to Lake Louise or Sunshine to go snowboarding the next day. However, when we arrived in Calgary, it was -40C degrees and all of the mountains were closed due to extreme temperatures. So, Tess and I couldn’t go boarding, which sucked but we decided to go rock climbing instead at an indoor place near her house.
While we were rock climbing, Tess started to cough. It wasn’t much, but it reminded me a bit of when I had Covid. As time progressed, she started coughing more and more. Pretty soon, it was evident she was sick. I told her to get herself tested, which she ended up doing. She was positive for covid, which meant I was more than likely positive for covid, again. Our snowboarding trip turned to shit and we just sat around and couldn’t do anything. I had to switch my flight to Medellin for after new years, as I was planning to go down before new years to ring in the New Year in Colombia. But, didn’t work. So my mom drove 3 hours to bring me her car, then she hopped in with Keiko on the way home, and I drove back home in my mom’s car from Tess’s house and then Isolated myself in the basement for a week. So shitty.
While I was isolating in the basement, I was talking to a girl I had met on Bumble the previous week. She was a super cute, super engaging girl who I wanted to meet up with before I left to Colombia (I was transparent about my plans with her). I had been trying to set up a coffee date with her before I was about to leave, but being in quarantine put a wrench into things. One of the days I was in the basement, Kara sent me a message saying she didn’t think we could see each other before I left to Colombia because she just contracted covid. I messaged her back saying I had also gotten covid last week, so it really didn’t matter than she had it. So I suggested when I was out of Quarantine, if I could bring her some Coffee’s and Sushi and we can just get to know each other that way. She obliged, and that’s what happened.
I went to TnT supermarket, picked up some sushi and then went to starbucks and picked up some coffees before heading to her family’s Air BnB, where she was staying for the duration of her quarantine. I rang the doorbell and Kara yelled for me to open the door, probably because she didn’t want to come too close due to her quarantine, which made sense. So I opened the door and came in and met Kara for the first time. As we got into conversation and what not, we some how managed to go very deep and very personal right off the bat. I’d say within 10-15 minutes, we were talking on a level that’s reserved usually for extremely close people. It was super shocking, and also for me extremely refreshing.
I am used to talking to people about deep and real matters, it’s kind of just how I am. I don’t spend much time on superficial things and enjoy talking about deeper material. However, it’s odd that Kara was just at that level with me right off the bat. My ex, Vanessa, was extremely emotionally unavailable and she had a difficult time letting me in. She had a lot of past issues and trauma that she hadn’t dealt with at that time, and letting someone in to that is very challenging, so it’s easier to keep things out and not share herself with me which would make her let me in more. After the breakup, I realized how important it was to me to have an emotional available person. It was so frustrating being with someone like Vanessa, that I promised myself that the next girl I take interest in MUST be emotionally available and open. Well, Kara was the embodiment of that.
We sat on the couch for hours talking about incredibly deep, personal topics, sipping coffee and mashing sushi into our faces. A perfect first date for me. Before we knew it, 6 hours had gone by. Kara was getting tired, but she asked if I wanted to come over tomorrow and hangout again, and go in the hot tub. I gave her an resounding yes, and told her I’d be over in the evening tomorrow. I couldn’t help myself, and I gave her a big hug before I left, even though I was trying to respect the covid thing, but I couldn’t help myself. We had bonded, and it was so amazing for me to meet someone like her. I even accidently gave her a koala hug, where one of my legs came off the ground and wrapped around her lower back. I apologized awkwardly and left her house.
On the way home I went over the meet up in my head. It was so wild. I couldn’t believe how well we clicked. Then I began to think how bad of timing this was. I was leaving to Medellin on the 14th, and it was the 10th! Literally couldn’t be worse timing. However, I thought about everything critically on the way home.
During my break up with Vanessa, I had a lot of stuff to render and figure out. I came to the conclusion that I needed to re-evaluate my criteria for what I wanted for in a partner. As I mentioned, emotional availability was one. A short list included: Wanted kids, family orientated, non narcissistic, friendly, growth mindset, etc. From working through my emotional turmoil, I was able to create a crystal clear picture of what I wanted in a woman. I promised myself to live my life until I found something that represented those ideals I had for myself.
Kara had checked a lot of these boxes. She was emotionally available, accepting of herself and myself, wanted kids, loved her family, doesn’t post thotty pictures on instagram, works on her self, wants to be better. It was clear as day to me that Kara had potential. While I know that you cannot tell right away with someone and it takes time to get to know someone, her character was clear as day to me. I knew what I was looking for, and after meeting Kara, I didn’t have any doubts that she could potentially be a person I could date for the long term. It was kind of crazy to meet right before leaving to Colombia, but this type of stuff happens a lot actually. Inopportune timing is pretty frequent for the average traveler. But either way, I had 4 more days in Canada and I was seeing her tomorrow. I made it important to take it a day at a time and to not get ahead of myself. Just see it for what it is.
I arrive at her place the next day and we head into the hot tub. Kara and I sit probably as far away from each other as possible that the hot tub would allow. Why? I’m not sure. We start having great conversations again, but I was having an extremely difficult time determining if Kara was into me or not. It was confusing. We were having epic conversations, yet the body language didn’t sync up. Oh well, I was happy to be there. We were on the topic of doing things that are uncomfortable to help you grow, and Kara says: “Do you want to go jump in the snow?” I respond: “Oh Hell yeah!” So we get out of the hot tub in the -30C degree weather and jumped into the snow. It was awesome. When Kara got up, I threw her back into the snow and then raced towards the hot tub to warm back up. With the pins and needles sensation coursing up and down my body from where I jumped into the snow, we both felt alive from that experience. Now we were sitting beside each other, and I pulled Kara’s toque up from her head and kissed her. GREAT kisser.
Almost immediately after we decided to head inside and get some food. I headed to the bathroom to go change into dry clothing, and then headed out to the family room. After we kissed, it felt like everything was open book. I don’t know why, but I felt instantly 100% comfortable with Kara. No worries at all, no judgements, nothing. It was quite surreal. I took off my hoodie and made her wear it, I picked her up and ran with her around the house over my shoulder. I kissed her some more, continued to talk about deeper things. It was pretty insane, considering it was my second time meeting her. I just felt at ease around her, and I could tell she felt the same. It was fucking awesome being around her, and I was sad I was leaving.
During a moment of passion, I told her that she should visit me in Colombia. Kara had always wanted to travel but never did, and now she felt that she was becoming stagnant. I told her travelling would be the best thing ever for her, and that she should come down to Colombia with me for a bit. She loved the idea, but told me she didn’t have a passport. I told her to get one then come down. The reason I invited her was simple. I could tell that she wanted to have a travelling experience, but it had always evaded her. I could tell that she was curious and wanted to do it. I could see her rigidity from her life slowly breaking away when we talked about travelling, alternative living that I’ve done, and about her dreams and goals. I could see there was spark within her, and I knew if she made herself uncomfortable by travelling, it would set her on an exponential upswing in every which way. I knew it that it would work, so I made the invite. Plus, she was super dope, and I was enjoying every minute of meeting her. So as I left that evening, I reiterated that idea of her coming to visit in Colombia a few more times, before making my way home for the night.
The next day, I figured I had another night before I left Canada. So I asked Kara if she wanted to come over and see me before I left. By this time, Kara’s covid qurantine was finished, so she came down and hung out with me in my basement before I left. Every time we saw each other, it got better and better. The conversations were better, the chemistry was better, the comfort, the vibe, everything. Everything was immaculate. I asked Kara to seriously come down to Colombia, and to my surprise she said she would and that she’s going to apply for her passport. I could see how happy that made her, and I told her I was keeping her to her word. We had a great last night, and the next morning I was off to Medellin, Colombia for brand new trip.
Before I continue on with the next section, I want state something critically important. While it will probably seem irrelevant to the travel, I want to bring it up. While Kara and I hung out, I made a giant point of emphasis that I wouldn’t sleep with her or try to sleep with her. Why is this important? I will write about this in more depth in the future, but the simple version is I wanted to make sure I actually liked Kara for who she is and what she is, and not how she can make me (And little me) feel. Sex skews things, I wanted to have clarity on her and our situation. We were going to get to know each other better of the next 2 months, and I wanted as much clarity as possible. I also believe that she has girlfriend/wife potential. Sleeping with someone you actually believe has potential too early is a death sentence. Delaying the sexual process creates a deeper bond and a more genuine courting process, and it’s better for clarity and keeping things more real. Just thought I’d put it out there so you know that about this situation, and to simply know that in general.
Now, off to Medellin I go!
Que Chimba! Medellin, Colombia - 3 months
I left Edmonton on the 105am red eye to Toronto, then after 5 hour layover I went to Panama, then after another 4 hour lay over I finally made it to Medellin, Colombia around 8pm. It was a very long travel day, and I was excited to get to my hostel.
I won’t lie to you, but Colombia was easily the most nervous I’ve ever been going to a country for the first time. I had wanted to visit South America the most out of any region/continent in the world, and it was finally happening. I hadn’t done a lot of research about things to do per say, but more so about what city was the most livable for expats on a medium to long term basis. And Medelling was on the top of that list.
I was staying in Poblado, which is the main tourist area of Medellin, followed closely by Laureles/Estadio, Belen and Envigado. I didn’t realize the airport was not in Medellin and was in Rio Negro, which was about 1 hour drive to Poblado. So I sat in the car with my taxi driver, asking him questions in Spanish about Colombia. To my surprise, it was somewhat challenging to speak to him. Only then did I realize that Colombian Spanish is different from Mexican Spanish. For instance, in Mexico the stop signs say ‘Alto’, in Colombia they say ‘Pare’ as a quick example, and this threw me for a loop.
The drive down into Medellin was stunning. The sun was down, but what was left was incredible lights from houses and streets permeating into the distance as far as the eye could see. The houses are built on/into the mountain ranges, so the lights cascaded upwards was unbelievable to see. The drive was long, but enjoyable. I had quite a bit of adrenaline to be honest, as I had no idea what to expect. Was it super dangerous? What was Colombia like? I really didn’t do much research so I was essentially blind going into this trip, which actually was extremely liberating.
I arrived at my hostel, paid my taxi driver, and made my way to my hostel room. There was no one in my hostel room when I got there, so I unpacked and laid down for a bit to gather myself. I was in Colombia… Finally. An Asian guy comes into my room and he begins talking to me. His name’s Cory and he’s from New York. I explain I had just arrived and was starving. He said he would come with me to a near by restaurant for a drink while I ate.
Cory, 38, had supposedly been coming to Medellin on and off for 10 years or so. After we got seated at a nearby Cafe and ordered some food, he gave me the run down of the city, where to go, what to do, and also where not to go and what not to do. I asked him about places to live, places to eat, tactics for thriving in Medellin. He recommended I stay in Poblado and the other 3 areas I mentioned previously, and told me that Spanish was absolutely necessary here in Colombia. It was rare to find people outside of the tourist areas who spoke English. So I guess it was on me to get my Spanish back into gear.
The first week in Colombia was interesting. I spent a lot of time walking around the undulated streets of Poblado, eating at random Cafe’s and local restaurants, and drinking a lot of Coffee and planning my work. One of the main reasons I wanted to go to Colombia was that I wanted to continue the work I was doing when I was in Chiang Mai, which was learning video editing and working on this website. I felt as if I was on a good roll in Thailand before Covid hit, and I wanted to get back into it. Plus, I also wanted to focus on learning a Martial Art, so it was a good combination to work on my own projects and learn a new skill.
After a week, I got an month long Air BnB rental in an area called Tesoro. It’s a 5 minute drive from Poblado, and still considered a safe neighborhood. The streets getting to my Air BnB were so incredibly steep that some vehicles would refuse to go up there. The whole block was owned by one family, and they rented out one of the houses on Air Bnb for some additional income. I didn’t know this at the time, but Air BnB is technically illegal in Colombia, as is Uber, In Driver, and all of the those service platforms. Yet, they are still operating in secret. This information is important to know for later.
The place I moved into was divided into 4 rooms, 2 on the main floor where the kitchen was, and 2 rooms downstairs leading to the backyard area. I had one room closest to the front entrance and a Iranian/Canadian guy named Jay was in the other room. He was living there for a month already, and he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. We hung out a lot over the next month.
The basement rooms were in constant flux. While Jay and I occupied long term stays on the main floor, a whole myriad of people circulated through the basement. There was probably 14 different people that stayed there over the month we were there, including a lovely couple from Bogota, and absolute coked out degenerates from Miami/Dominican Republic.
Overall, my first month there was really great. I spent a lot of time going through writings. I joined a boxing/Brazilian Jui Jitsu gym that was walking distance from my place, and was enjoying it thoroughly. The teacher’s there were high level in their respective sports, and they trained us really well. The people who went there as well were also really kind and made the experience really great. I made a good friend in a girl named Maria, a Mexican American girl from Washington, and we trained at the same time ever day together. She just so happened to join the gym at the same time as me, and she also began living in Medellin, as she was taking a break from being a construction manager with Tesla. So we trained a lot, and also would go have food and what not. Since we weren’t staying in hostels and traditional tourist areas (even though Tesoro was super nice) it was harder to meet people. So it was pretty easy to become friends since I saw Maria daily at training. In the evenings I would talk to Kara every day, getting to know her and keep growing what we had started to create just before I left. She was working on getting her passport, and had sent in the necessary information to get it. At this time, Canada passport offices were swamped, so it was taking longer than expected. But, it was set in motion. But yeah, things were amazing with Kara and I, and she was definitely planning to come see me, which I couldn’t wait for. It was going to be fantastic.
Medellin on the whole was incredible. It is referred to as the land of eternal spring, since it has fair weather of 25C degrees year round, or at least in that range. The whole city is perfectly integrated within the mountain ranges, and there are views of the city pretty much everywhere. Also, the city is so incredibly green. It is so lush and has amazing fauna and trees. It really is nothing like I expected it to be. Also, the people of Colombia were incredible. Genuinely, some of the nicest and most polite people I’ve ever met. It was true what Cory said, they don’t speak English. So it was nice to be able to talk to people in Spanish and get to know them. The people of Colombia have been through absolute hell and turmoil over the past 50 so odd years. From the cartel wars, drug trades, corruption, bombings, the people of Colombia have had it rough. However, they are some of the most strong, happy people I’ve ever come across. Genuinely. It’s amazing to see. The food was really good too. I wasn’t familiar with Colombian cuisine, but I really enjoyed it. Being meat, bean, arepa and avocado based, it was definitely delicious trying all of the interesting dishes of Colombia. Everything was amazing within the first month, except one incident.
I mentioned previously that there were some coked out Domincans from Miami who stayed in the basement rooms of the Air BnB, well, that situation actually turned out to be the most dangerous situation I’ve ever been.
Essentially, the Degens had no regards for anything. They took out Jay’s and my food and left in out of the fridge to cool down their sodas. They took up the whole fridge, even though they were only there for 2 nights. Then, they proceeded to play music extremely loud until 5am. I didn’t hear the music, but Jay’s room was near the stairwell and so he heard all of it. Then, Jay asked them to turn it down. The coked up male came up stairs and was knocking on Jay’s door trying to lure him out. Jay smartly didn’t go out. The following day Jay briefs me on what happened. Then, the coked up guy comes upstairs looking rough as hell and asks to talk to Jay out front of the house, which Jay obliges. I then think critically about this situation, and realize that if the guy was going to apologize to Jay, he could have done it in front of me. So I head out front where this guy is yelling at Jay and getting in his face, the exact thing I thought was going to happen. Jay runs into the house and I try and get between the coked up Dominican and Jay trying to deescalate the situation. I could tell that this dude was drugged up big time, and that nothing but rage was registering. I could see him ready to attack Jay, and so I was prepared for it. He violently shoves Jay against the wall (Jay is like 145lbs and 6’2, so his skinny ass went flying) and I immediately grabbed the coked up dude and distanced him from Jay. While I was backing him up, the dude whips out a kitchen knife from his belt line and starts talking crazy shit to Jay, saying he was going to stab him to death for looking at his girl. (Jay had a fiancee in Iran who he was waiting in Colombia for, so this was nonsense, plus this dude’s girl was like a serious 2/10, but either way, Jay nearly got stabbed). This dude was super hot, and I told the guy to drop the knife and that we were literally guests on Air Bnb. Either way, this coked out dude was not right, so I got Jay and myself out of there and we ran to our hosts down the street, explaining frantically that the guest had a knife and was trying to stab Jay.
The whole family and street came out from the commotion as eventually this guy and his girl left the house. This guy was still talking shit to Jay, saying death threats to him. I looked at the Air Bnb host and asked her to call the Police. However, as much as she wanted to, it was illegal what she was doing with Air Bnb, so she couldn’t or else she would snitch on herself. I learned then about Air BnB, Uber, etc. being illegal. It was so fucked. That guest had all of their shit still in the house, and according to my host they were leaving back home to Miami. So we had to get out of the house while the hosts gathered all of their shit and got them out of there. So Jay and I literally went to the near by Tesoro Mall and got some food, being shellshocked about what happened.
This guy had no vengence against me, but I am so happy he didn’t stab Jay. This dude was so unhinged, and Jay was in a terrible situation. Plus, he’s a solid dude. It obviously allowed for us to somewhat bond over a crazy situation. In truth, I was worried about Colombia being dangerous, yet the only dangerous situation I had been in was Dominican Americans haha. Weird as hell.
I stayed at that Air bnb for another 2 weeks and then I was switching areas for the next month. I contacted another host, Gian Carlo, who owned a bunch of places around Colombia. I was moving into the area of Belen, which was much flatter and much more local. Belen isn’t typically a touristy area, but it was safe and provided a nice change of scenery. Plus, I wanted to have a nice private place of my own for when Kara was arriving, which was happening about 2 weeks after getting into Gian Carlo’s place.
My last 2 weeks at the Air Bnb was actually great. Training was going well, I was losing weight from training and eating whole foods, Jay and I were chilling a lot, the basement was being rented out for 3 months by 2 French girls who were doing an exchange program at a local University. They were a significant upgrade over the Dominicans, and it was cool to meet them and become friends with them. A couple other of their classmates were taking my and Jay’s rooms when we were leaving, as Jay was heading to Mexico to be with his fiance and I was going to Belen, and they were also super dope. I was kind of sad to be leaving there, as it was nice to meet some people roughly my age and my vibe, but I was excited for Kara to come down.
Kara and my relationship, or whatever you can call it, was blooming and evolving into something terrific. I looked forward to talking to her every night, we were asking each other real deep questions about life and each other, and everything seem to be working and going super smoothly. It was great, and it was even better that she received her passport and booked flights down to come see me for 2 weeks. I wanted her to come longer, but she didn’t want to quit her job and 2 weeks was the longest trip she had ever gone on, so I understood. Plus, if things didn’t work out between us, there was an out. But either way I was so fricken excited for her to come down.
During my time in Belen, I explored the area, joined a new Jui Jitsu gym in the area, and resumed my routines. Working in the day, eating out at great restaurants, training in the evening, followed by talking to Kara. It was a good routine I had gotten myself in.
Eventually, the time had come for Kara to come down and see me. I wanted to meet her at the airport and take her from Airport to apartment myself, because it was quite confusing. So I ordered an Uber and headed to the airport. I told the guy that if he would wait for us, that I’d pay him the same amount off the app to take us back to where he picked us up. He obliged. I saw Kara waiting outside of the arrival gate, and we embraced. I was so happy to have her there. I helped her with her bags, put it in the trunk, and we sat in the back of the car.
However, this actually turned out to be a bad idea. The police know that Uber’s and other services happen, but they need hard evidence to fine people. The fine is hefty as well, like 3 months wage for some of these people. Supposedly, the thing they look for is on the way back to the airport, if there are people in the back seat and not the front seat. This was the case for us, and as we are exiting the tunnel headed down to Medellin, a policeman pulls the driver over and we are forced to exit the car and talk to the police officer. The police officer starts talking to the local driver, who is maybe 25 years old, and then talks to me and asks if he’s an Uber Driver. I respond yes, since I didn’t want to lie to the police. The police issues this guy an enormous fine of 1.5 million pesos ($520 CAD) and holds us there for 30 minutes. I explained as best as I could to the Police officers in Spanish that I was completely unaware of Uber’s illegality in Colombia, and insisted that since the apps work fine that I had no reason to assume it was illegal. The policeman understood, and let us go. We gathered Kara’s stuff, I gave the poor Uber driver 300000 pesos ($100) which was all the money I had to help pay off his fine, as that’s like receiving a $7000-$10000 CAD fine in our money. It sucked, but Kara and I were off home. Truthfully, what a terrible introduction to Colombia and travelling in general for Kara, but she didn’t seem phased by it and we made it home safely to our place in Belen. She had just experienced the long flight here like I had previously, so we just embraced and had a low key evening. It was great to have Kara here, and I had a lot planned for us.
I had delayed doing anything touristic in Colombia until she got here. I figured since I was here for mostly work and training, I can afford to do the touristic things when she arrived. So, Kara and I embarked on our sightseeing adventures for a week in Medellin. We did Communa 13, which was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods (barrio’s) in Colombia during the height of the Cartel glory days and was now an artistic, beautiful area where people still live. It has beautiful art work on the walls, people selling random foods and merchandise, and also beautiful views of the cascading houses. We also did a city walking tour, where a guy takes you around to parts of the city and shows you customs, traditions, and history of the city of Medellin. These things include history of Colombian Trades, Cartel bombings, famous Colombian artists, random history facts about Colombia and Medellin. It was really a great way to get bearings on the city and what the country has been through. We also went to a soccer game between DIM (Deportivo Independiente Medellin) and Nacional, which is a match called ‘El Clasico’ where the 2 teams from Medellin play each other. It was possibly the best sporting experience I have ever been to. Non stop cheering, singing, throwing of streamers all over the field. We supported DIM, while 70% of Medellin supported Nacional. The atmosphere was electric, and was an amazing experience to go to.
After a week in Medellin, Kara and I decided to take a flight to Santa Marta, where we would go visit the jungle town of Minca, the fishing town of Taganga, and also head to the Coastal National Park of Tayrona. I hadn’t been anywhere outside of Medellin by this point, so this was an extremely exciting moment for me as well.
We started off in Taganga, which is about 20 minutes away from Santa Marta. Taganga is a quiet fishing village most notably known as one of the cheapest places in the world to learn diving. I hadn’t seen a beach in 4 months since Mexico, so I was pretty keen to be by the ocean. We rented a simple room in a hotel right by the main beach, as we basically hung out and enjoyed the ocean and the sun for a couple of days. The beach itself wasn’t anything too special, however it was extremely relaxing and had an excellent vibe to the town. It was well needed. We didn’t end up diving because Kara wasn’t dive certified, but that’s okay. It was so nice that I’m sure I’d be back at some point within my trip.
After a couple days in Taganga, we headed out to Tayrona National Park for 2 days. Tayrona National Park is an incredibly beautiful protected coastal area that’s known for excellent reefs, beautiful beaches, monkeys, unique carribean fauna and a multitude of interesting view points and scenery. You can even sleep in the National Park on a first come, first serve basis for random hammocks there, but it was so insanely hot that we needed to have a cozy place to sleep, so Kara and I rented a hotel room minutes away from the park Entrance. The park itself was beautiful, and was an excellent spend of a day. Lots of walking and hiking through the jungle, time admiring view points and scenery, laying down on white sand next to huge boulders. Tayrona was phenomenal, and the beaches were stunning. Visiting Tayrona with Kara was a blissful experience, and it totally satisfied my beach meter.
After Tayrona, I was super burnt and needed to get out of the sun. Luckily, we had decided to head to Minca for the day, which was much more in land and more know for it’s rainforest like vibes than beach vibes. So we took a bus back into Santa Marta and caught a Collectivo to Minca.
Minca is about 1 hour away from Santa Marta, and is known for it’s hippie/relaxing feels and waterfalls. It’s very nature based, as there are bird watching tours, coffee tours, yoga retreats, relaxation spa’s around. It was extremely relaxing being in Minca. I had felt as if my skin was going to rip off, and I wanted to head to some waterfalls. So Kara and I jumped on the back of a couple of locals motorbikes, where they took us to a waterfall that was about 30 minutes away. Kara and I hiked down to the waterfall and dove on in. So refreshing. We hung out there for a couple hours before heading back to town to grab a bite to eat. We were leaving back to Medellin the next morning, so we didn’t end up staying in Minca and we instead headed back to Santa Marta for the night. On the collectivo back to Santa Marta, a random reggae looking dude begins chatting up Kara, and he ends up being a semi famous Colombia Reggae artist named Alkaman. He spoke good English, so we had a good chat with him. Even though he thought he was playing it cool, he was definitely trying to pick up Kara and didn’t want to make it obvious. I Don’t blame him though, and Kara was definitely disagreed with me about it. Until after we added him on instagram, he only accepted Kara’s instagram and then Dm’d her saying she was Cute LOL. Fricken Alkaman.
Either way, our time in Santa Marta and surrounding areas was amazing. We had such a great time relaxing and exploring different parts of Colombia. Kara and I got along famously, like I knew we would, and when we got back to our apartment in Belen, I asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend, officially. Kara was leaving back to Edmonton to go back to work, however she had decided that travelling was the best and she was going home to quit her job and come back in a month, and meanwhile I was heading out of Colombia a couple days after her to my buddy Tyler’s Bachelor party in Phoenix, Arizona. So, we were going to reconvene back in Medellin in about a month’s time, but Kara was such a special person and we liked each other so much that it only made sense to know that I was serious about her, just like she was serious about coming down to see me in Colombia… twice. So it only made sense. Best decision on my part ever, as we are still together till this day and as happy as I ever have been. GREAT SUCCESS! (Borat’s Voice)
While I could technically call going to Tyler’s bachelor party a trip, it was simply a booze fest. I had never been to Arizona before, but I was keen to see the surrounding areas outside of Phoenix. Tyler’s brother, Connor, has done extensive travelling like me. And similar to me, he’d never been to Arizona. We decided to meet a couple days before the official bachelor party was planned to begin and we rented a car and airbnb and headed to Sedona. Sedona is a mystical place, known for super natural activity, incredible red rocks, spiritual mecca of Arizona, and also an incredible place to hike. We came for the later. I had been following a couple influencers who were based out of Sedona, and the hikes there looked incredible. So Connor and I planned to do a hike or 2 in Sedona, get a round of golf in, and rent a trailer air bnb in the middle of the desert. It was fricken awesome.
Sedona’s hikes were awesome. We went to the famous subway cave, which is a cave that is split down the middle on either side and creates a natural image of a subway platform. It was super cool. The hike wasn’t too hard so Connor and I decided to hike uphbill off the beaten path, to get some vantage point views. There was no trail to follow, but up is up, so up we went. We ended up getting to the top of the rocks where it was red rocks and green forests as far as the eye could see. I had actually just bought a drone and have never flown it, and so Connor took my drone for a spin and we got some pretty awesome footage of the surrounding areas. It was fantastic. We ended up deciding to get a round of golf in that day, before we were going to head back to Phoenix to meet the rest of the guys the next day. We ended up some how finding a spot at Sedona Golf Resort for very cheap, and we played 18 holes and beat the sun down. Amazing course with even better views.
Post round, we headed into town to look for something to eat. Literally every restaurant was packed to the brim, so we found a couple food trucks outside and order tacos. It wasn’t much, but it was all we could get. Afterwards, we headed to our air BnB which was right in the middle of the desert and honestly quite difficult to find, especially with no street lights or anything. The light pollution at night in the desert is basically zero, so it wasn’t helpful for driving, but it was simply the best for star gazing. The sky was completely clear, and we must have seen at least a dozen shooting stars every hour. We could see the milky way in its entirety that night, and it was probably some of the best clarity I’ve had looking at the stars, especially in North America. Either way, Sedona was super sick, and it was a great start to the trip.
The bachelor party was great. It was nice to see my friends after a few months of absence, and some of them for a couple years. It was typical bachelor party stuff, lots of drinking, golf, going out, celebrating and hanging out together. It was a great time and awesome to see my friends again.
I was planning to head back to Colombia early, as Kara still had another 10 days or so before she was planned to come back to Medellin, but my friend Ashish, who I met up with in Nepal and Japan, invited me to come visit him in San Francisco, where he had recently moved to work as an architect. A flight was very cheap, and so on a whim I went up to SF to go see him.
When you travel, you trim a lot of fat in your life. People and things fall out of your life and usually you’re left with fewer people and things, but you know that those things are meant to be in your life. Friends like Ashish embody that. He and I went to high school together, then he moved away to the states for schooling, yet we managed to stay in touch and make concerted efforts to see each other whenever possible, which is one of the most important variables to have in a friendship. So going to see him was a no brainer, and we had a lot of fun.
He had to work during the week, but I took that time to roam around SF and check out some shops and the wharf. In the evenings, we would meet up with his friends that he made there and go out for food and some night life. On the weekend after he was done his work, we rented a car and took a road trip down to Big Sur. The drive took all day, but wow, the coastline of California was incredible. We took the scenic route down to Big Sur, which included stops at the surfing town of Pacific and the world war 2 bunker near there, random stops along the roads between there and Santa Cruz, where we went to the famous Santa Cruz boardwalk amusement park. From there we stopped off right before Bixby bridge and flew my drone around to take in the view, I’m not usually a big bridge guy, but the views over the bridge were unreal. From there, we went to Point Sur state historic park, which is as far as we went due to the thick fog that rolled in.
That drive down to Big Sur was unreal, so beautiful. If you ever have the desire to travel the west coastline of California, I would 100 percent recommend it. It’s a must.
After our Big Sur trip, we decided to do a biking trip to Sausalito from San Francisco. Ashish and I went with a couple of his friends, Mark and Paul. We biked over the golden gate bridge and hiked down to a beach called Kirby’s Cove. I flew my drone around getting some nice pictures of the golden gate bridge (guess I’m a bridge guy now) and chasing shipping vessels until the wind nearly knocked my drone in the water. We then took the low road to Sausalito and hung out there for a few hours, getting some ice cream and flying my drone around before heading back to San Francisco.
Soon enough, it was time for me to leave Ashish again and head back to Colombia. Kara was heading down from Edmonton and I needed to meet her down there. I had a great time in America seeing all my friends again, and an unexpected trip to see Ashish was the cherry on top. So nice to see my friends, but now, time to head back to Colombia.
After about 12 or so hours, Kara and I were finally back together in Bogota, where we were catching another flight back to Medellin. By this time, I asked Kara to be my girlfriend, and she had shown good commitment to us by wanting to come travelling full time. It’s not easy to date me, simply on the fact I do head out of the country for long periods of time, but Kara’s about that life, so here we were back in Colombia again.
Kara and I rented an apartment in the area of Tesoro, similar to where my first air bnb was where I almost got stabbed. Thankfully, Kara and I were staying in our own place, rented out by the same guy Gian Carlo, who rented me my other apartment in Belen.
While we were here, we settled into a pretty good routine. We got a gym membership at the Tesoro Mall, which has EASILY the best view from a mall I have ever seen, we wanted to eat healthy, do some work towards content creation, and also explore the beautiful city that is Medellin. This was pretty much our status quo for the next 6 weeks or so.
Although we fell into a routine, we did some epic stuff while we were getting in shape and enjoying the city. We did a day trip to Guatape, one of the largest rocks in the whole world located in one of the most colorful towns in the world. We did the ecological park, parque Arvi, which you need to take a gondola up into and over the mountains to reach. We went to more soccer games, went to International Language meet ups, where locals practice their English and Foreigners their Spanish. We visited some local attractions, went on food tours, and built a stronger relationship together. Everything was going great.
For Canadians, we are only allowed to stay in Colombia 3 months at a time, and a total of 6 months out of any calendar year. Which meant, we had 6 weeks left, and we could either do more of the same, or go and explore outside of Medellin, which neither I or Kara had done. So, we opted for the latter, and made an itinerary to go and see the beauty of Colombia.
We decided we wanted to do a bit of everything that Colombia has to offer, such as the coffee region, the desert region in the north, surrounding areas of Bogota, the adventure Capital of Colombia in San Gil, and also go and visit the northern Caribbean area of Cartagena. However, since we were already in Medellin, we decided to make our way down to the Eje Cafetero, or the Colombian Coffee Triangle region that exports some of the finest coffee in the world.
To begin our trip we took a bus to the town of Jerico, which many locals have told me is an extremely underrated place that not many people visits. Jerico is a colonial town that is filled with colorful churches, beautiful nature and gardens, and overall beautiful old school style architecture. The town also boasts excellent food and cafes, a bustling yet calm center of the town and even it’s own Jesus Christ over looking the town. It is quite a beautiful town, and such a nice spot to begin our trip down towards Eje Cafetero.
After 2 days in Jerico, we took a Chiva (Which is something like a huge colorful Jeep mixed with a bus) to the town of Jardin. The ride to Jardin was extremely slow and insanely bumpy. We probably did not go faster than 30km at top speed at any time because the roads we took to Jardin were all off road and not paved. Random locals were hopping on and off the Chiva, and giving us friendly smiles as it was probably unusual to see backpackers on the bus. The bus itself actually took us to Andes, a small town on the way to Jardin, and we were forced to find random buses to Jardin. Nothing that I had seen online on how to get to Jardin told me this would happen, but luckily at this point my Spanish was pretty good, so I was able to get directions to a bus that was passing into Jardin. That bus was normal speed, as we were now on paved roads, and we arrived to Jardin in the evening, where we would be spending the next 4 days.
Jardin is an interesting city both because it’s beautiful and by amazing nature. Jardin also also boasts an super aesthetic and detailed church smacked right in the middle of town, which town square is bustling with cafes and markets through different times of the day and week. We were lucky enough to catch a whole festival where there was many reggaetone artists playing at night and awesome food stalls found everywhere.
We stayed in Jardin for 4 days and did A LOT. We took a day trip to one of the most unique waterfalls I’ve ever been to in my life, Cueva del Esplendor. It is heavy flow waterfall that comes from the top of the mountain and falls through a rock hole into a natural swimming pool area that is completely formed by nature. The water comes down so hard, and comes down so concentrated that it can only be assumed that the pressure from the water eventually created a hole in the rock for the water to flow through. Simply amazing stuff. We also hiked around the outskirts of town, looked for the local bird Cock of the Rock (Yes, that’s it’s real name), hung out with locals in mesh nettings over looking the rain forests of Jardin, visited the Garrucha Cable Car that’s famous to Jardin, visited a few waterfalls along the walking path. Really a lot of things to do in Jardin.
We also decided to do some paragliding over Jardin. Kara has been on the more reserved side of life, but I’ve been trying to get her to do things that push her boundaries and try new things that she’s scared of, and so I convinced her to do it. She loved it, and I loved it. It was unreal gliding so close to the jungle covered mountains, flying a few dozen meters over the churches and other buildings, and landing in the middle of a field that appeared out of no where. Pretty special stuff.
Jardin was amazing, and it was a great place for us to do some