# Episode 9 - GenZ Series: Ben

- Podcast: GenX Adulting Podcast
- Published: 2024-10-13T10:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/15915537-episode-9-genz-series-ben.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-9
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode9.html
- People: Ben (guest), Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host)
- Topics: GenZ

## Summary

In Episode 9 of the GenZ Series, host Ben Greenfield discusses his unique experiences as a Zillennial, sharing insights about his upbringing, friendships, and travels. He reflects on the cultural differences he encountered while living in various places, including the impact of technology on his generation and the importance of community and connection.

## Key takeaways

- Ben identifies as a Zillennial, a bridge between Gen Z and Millennials.
- He emphasizes the importance of friendships formed during college and their lasting impact.
- Ben shares his experiences of moving to San Francisco just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
- He discusses the cultural differences he observed between the East and West coasts of the U.S.
- Ben highlights the unique experiences of living and traveling in places like Costa Rica, Thailand, and Sri Lanka.
- He reflects on the importance of community and connection in different cultures.
- Ben shares insights about the lifestyle and values of the Zillennial generation.

## FAQ

### What is a Zillennial?

Zillennials are individuals born between the late 1990s and early 2000s who feel they don't fully identify with either Gen Z or Millennials, often experiencing a unique blend of both cultures.

### How did Ben's college friendships impact his life?

Ben's college friendships, particularly with his best friend Nathan, have remained strong over the years, showcasing the lasting bonds formed during that time.

### What challenges did Ben face when moving to San Francisco?

Ben moved to San Francisco just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to unexpected challenges, including a sudden shift to remote work and the need to adapt to a new living situation.

### What are some cultural differences Ben noticed while traveling?

Ben observed significant cultural differences between the East and West coasts of the U.S., as well as in countries like Costa Rica and Thailand, where community and connection are highly valued.

### What lifestyle changes did Ben experience while living abroad?

While living abroad, Ben embraced a lifestyle focused on surfing, community, and exploration, which contrasted with the corporate culture he experienced in the U.S.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doRej5ogT0)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-9-genz-series-ben/id1764838823?i=1000672879847)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2PHyMlLx8PCgUlK46b0ENN)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/15915537-episode-9-genz-series-ben)

## Transcript

[Music]
Welcome to GenX Adulting.
Today we have a guest, Ben Greenfield.
We're so excited that he's with us before
he heads out on another new journey.
And since we're a generational podcast, I
think the first thing we should cover is
what your generation is,
which officially you're a Gen Z, but
you're really a
Zillennial. Did you know that?
I honestly had no idea what my
classification was, but I'm
glad to know that I'm, you know,
breaking down borders
between Gen Z and Zillennial.
Zillennial.
Okay, so what?
Did you make that up or is
that actually a real thing?
It's actually a real generation.
So Gen Z is from 1997 to 2012, if you
were born in those years.
So you're literally the oldest Gen Z, but
people who were born in 1997 do not
identify with Gen Z's at all,
but they don't identify with Millennials.
So there's like these few years in
between from like 1997 to
2002 that are Zillennials.
They don't identify with Gen Z and they
can't relate to Millennials.
And you have unique experiences like you
grew up with a technology-free childhood,
but you did end up having
a phone and social media.
So you started off, you're one of the
last generations that was able to have a
technology-free childhood,
but then you didn't halfway
through, if that makes sense.
No, absolutely.
Yeah, it's a very unique generation.
I know when we talk our son Nathan, when
I've mentioned to him, well, you know,
you're Gen Z, he gets really upset,
but he also isn't a Millennial.
So it's because you guys are Zillennials.
You're your own little group and you have
your own little unique experiences that
only that small little group have.
So I find it very interesting.
So you're our first Gen Z officially
interview, but you're
our first Zillennial.
You're representing.
I prefer Zillennial.
Yeah, Zillennial is cool.
I'm wearing that with a badge of honor.
I like that.
I like that too.
Zillennial is cool.
Yeah.
But I guess we should start with what our
connection is with you.
So you are one of our older
son Nathan's best friends.
And can you tell us first how you met
Nathan and what that experience was like?
Yeah, absolutely.
It was Florida State University 2015.
Nathan and I were pledging the same
fraternity, Kappa Sigma, back in the day.
And I actually kind of
remember it to the T.
I remember looking across the room in one
of the chapter room meetings when we were
getting the entire kind
of pledge class together.
And I was wondering who that dude with
the backwards hat on with the
shaggy hair sticking out was.
And yeah, from there, you know, I don't
think we hit it off like immediately.
It was it was such a large group of
people to begin with.
We started off with about 90.
So as they kind of started dwindling
people out of the
class, people got closer.
And then somewhere along the way,
probably about like a month or two in,
Nate and I really started hitting it off.
Our passion for music and everything kind
of kind of came together as well as just
both being in a new place, taken on
college for the first time.
So yeah, that's kind of
kind of how it happened.
And I would say from an outsider looking
in the friend group you guys have from
those days is phenomenal.
Oh, a phenomenal friend
group from what I observe.
Yeah, no, it's it's funny because so much
has changed, but so
much has stayed the same.
I mean, we still have a group message
running today with anywhere from like 15
to 20 guys from college.
And it's funny you bring it up because
probably about a week or two ago, someone
was like, when when did
this chat get started?
Like when when did this
group message kind of get going?
And Nate and I were like, I think it was
actually Pierce who said it.
But I'm like, I think Nate, Ben and I
were we're going to a music
festival back in like 2017.
And it was just three of us.
And the group chat name started as like
rail invaders because that's when we
were, you know, we were
young in our music days.
And all we wanted to do was get to the
rail at every single concert.
So yeah, it's it's it was a small kind of
core group that that's grown.
But as it's grown, everyone's stayed
incredibly close, which is which is
really great about it.
No, it's amazing. It just seems like such
a special thing every time.
I know every time Nathan talks about one
of you guys, his whole face lights up.
He's just still so close with all of you.
And I know he cherishes each of you. And
we think of all of you as family.
So and we feel very lucky that we've been
able to kind of get to watch you guys
grow up from college
freshmen to the men you are now.
That's cool. I was just about to say you
can't give Nate all the
credit for his cool friends.
I mean, when freshman year we were coming
down here to y'all's old home, actually,
and getting to hang out there and kind of
live the Boca lifestyle.
And, you know, I remember we came down
here on spring break freshman year to
kind of start off our spring break.
And it was always always so much fun
hanging out at y'all's place.
So I think I think a little bit of that
can be attributed to
everyone staying so close.
I vaguely remember that.
Really? Yeah, I kind of do.
Oh, I remember all of that.
We partied. Oh, oh, my God.
I remember when Nate and I first started
DJing together and DJing in general.
You know, we sounded awful, but we were
figuring out the board, trying to get
everything together.
And we came down to y'all's place to
record our first mix.
We were so excited about it.
We were recording for hours and just
drinking Corona's, drinking Corona's.
We totally forgot to eat dinner. And by
the time the mix was completed, it was
like 10 o'clock at night.
We're hammered. Kaya has like three
friends over. You guys
are drinking with us.
Like me, you, Nate, Brian, we started
throwing back tequila.
We were so excited. I'm sure.
And Dylan would have been this like two
year old or something
or like five year old.
Just hanging out.
Just along for the ride.
And now those were awesome days.
So when you graduated from
FSU, what was your first step?
Did you get the traditional job right
away or did you take some time off?
Like what was your
first step out of college?
Unfortunately, I didn't take time off.
It's actually, it's actually funny.
I had initially wanted to take about
three months off, go
over to Thailand and Bali.
I have no idea why those two locations I
just had heard kind of in the ether,
Thailand, Bali, Southeast Asia.
Cool place. Yeah.
And I was actually in the works of kind
of planning that trip out.
I had a job, the job had a start date.
I was moving to San Francisco and I had
actually interned at that job before in
the summer, previous to graduating.
So I knew my manager and
kind of knew everything.
And she reached out to me and was like,
hey, we have this really big event going
on in Vegas for sales kickoff.
However, it's a month
before your start date.
I really think it would be beneficial for
you and a cool experience if you kind of
came out here like a month early,
started a month earlier
than you had tended to.
And, you know, back then I was gung ho on
starting my career, you
know, whatever it might be.
And I actually decided to do a cross
country road trip moving to San Francisco
rather than go travel and take a little
bit more time for myself
to go out of the country.
So, yeah, I wanted to take some time off
and I kind of jumped in because
culturally and socially it
was the right thing to do.
You know, your manager texts
you come out to this big event.
The funniest part is, you know, a few
weeks before the event, hey, to save
money, we're actually doing a sales
kickoff just in the San Francisco office
for people in your position.
So you guys are not going to Vegas.
So it was an awesome
cross country road trip.
But that was kind of one of those first
memories of like, oh,
there's corporate fucking you over.
What year was that?
What year did you guys graduate?
So I was twenty nineteen with Nate.
But I was so I was December of twenty
nineteen because I did four and a half
semesters double major, got the extra
football season in, would never trade it
for anything in the world.
So I had I was right around February of
twenty twenty is when I started and when
I graduated, it was like
December of twenty nineteen.
So that was right when Covid hit.
So you got out of college, moving to the
Bay Area and Covid hits.
Yeah, literally moved to San Francisco
right before Covid, like right before it.
So right as your post college life is
about to start, everything shuts down.
Oh, yeah, it was the first big trip I had
planned as an adult with a career was
Okachobi Music Festival, which as you
guys know, back back then, that was like
the end all be all for our friend group.
Get everybody together,
you know, have a great time.
Our festival, we kind of been going from
the inception of it.
I literally hop on like three flights,
have to take a red eye.
I'm covered in dirt, had to leave the
festival at 4 a.m. to get back to the
office to make it back to my job.
And people are looking at me on the
planes because this is
right when Covid's happening.
I'm like sick as a dog. I just march.
Yeah, this is March twenty twenty.
And it was in full float. I want to say
it was the week of my birthday.
So it would have been
like March 8th, March 9th.
It was right before the shutdown, I
think. So I'm sick as a dog on this plane
coming back from a music
festival looking homeless.
And there's news going on about don't be
around anybody that's sick.
And I'm like in my
airplane seat, trying to get back.
And when I landed in the airport, I
called the coworker and I go, hey, like,
what's going on at work?
Like, what do I have to be ready for? And
he just goes, you came back.
And I was like, what do you mean? What do
you mean? You came back.
He's like, yeah, we just got work from
home for for a month.
And literally in the airport, I booked a
ticket back to Florida because
the office was my everything.
I was two and a half months into living
in San Francisco. Work from home wasn't
really a thing back then.
I didn't have a desk set
up in my apartment yet.
My apartment was the size of a shoebox
and I was paying way too much for that.
So that was actually it
for my San Francisco sense.
So you so that the trip across the
country, how long did that take you to
get to San Francisco?
So I did it in it took me from Atlanta,
Georgia to San Francisco.
Nine days. So you had some fun. Yeah, me
and my best friend did it together.
He came out with me. You guys
might know him, Jack Monahan.
I don't know if we've met him maybe once.
Yeah. Sounds familiar.
He kind of came around later. He was he
was an Atlantic guy.
But he's he's I mean,
he knows all the Florida state boys quite
well now. But yes, we had fun.
We stopped in New Orleans. One of my
other best friends lived there.
We stopped in Austin,
Texas for a few days. Nice.
Made it to San Diego. Went up the coast.
Did Yosemite as well.
Nice. So yeah, we had some fun with it.
So like I said, it wasn't it wasn't the
worst thing in the world,
giving up the international travel. But
but then to have to
get out to San Francisco,
get an apartment and then just to turn
around and come back to Florida.
And then how long were you
in Florida then during Covid?
Indefinitely two years. So I had a six
month lease in San Francisco.
I didn't go back to San Francisco until
my lease was done and I was
moving out of my apartment.
Wow. Went back there for one weekend,
packed up all my shit. Wow.
Put it in my car, which was
still in San Francisco. Right.
Had it shipped back to the U.S.
And then I was just bouncing back and
forth between families,
places, friends, places. And then the
second half of Covid,
I got a girlfriend
and got very fortunate.
Her family was over in the
UAE in Abu Dhabi during Covid.
Well, she was watching their their beach
house in Jacksonville Beach. OK.
I was this newly remote working guy
living in Florida with her.
So I kind of fell into a free beach house
in Jack's Beach during
Covid, which, you know,
you know how it was down here. We kind of
beat Covid like three weeks.
So I was just riding around on a beach
cruiser, going to beach
bars for like two years.
And then all my San Francisco coworkers
were hopping on Zoom calls and calling me
the devil that I was going out.
And I was like, I'm just on the beach.
I'm enjoying myself. Amazing.
Amazing. That's so Florida. Yeah. That
sums up the Florida
Covid experience, honestly.
Yeah. And people's
reaction to it. Seriously.
So then you were in Jack's Beach and then
from there, where'd you go?
I got a new job like two years after the
whole Covid debacle started.
But it was kind of in that period when
things were like slowing down again right
before they picked back up.
And I moved to Denver, Colorado. So I got
a new software job out there and was
looking at cities in the U.S.
I just kind of wanted something new. I
didn't know what I wanted
to do, where I wanted to go.
But, you know, it's kind of looking to
get back into the
office a little bit more.
This was still when I was climbing the
corporate ladder as
quickly as humanly possible.
And all I wanted to do was get
promotions, make more money, have
FaceTime with the boss man.
And it's very overrated.
Right. Yeah. Oh, my God.
I mean, you know, at least one thing that
that I loved was thinking, you know, I
moved to San Francisco with the sacrifice
of you're going to spend all your money
you made just to be in
this area where all these,
you know, people are that you need to be
around to build a career.
And then I had the opportunity to work
remote in Florida where I
had a little bit more nature.
Like I said, I was biking around a lot,
going to the beach every day. It's such a
nice area to up there. Yeah.
It's awesome. Beautiful. Especially when
it's, you know, people aren't traveling
there. So it's only local. So
it was just a local beach town.
So that's kind of when I
had that come to Jesus moment.
Like, first of all, you know, San
Francisco's weather's awful, like for
what I consider good weather to be like I
like my shirt off. I like the sun out.
It's cold. Yeah, exactly. In the middle
of the summer. Yeah. You're right.
So I was kind of like, why are all these
people paying all this money to live in
this big city? And I kind of got. Yeah.
Like you said, I kind of learned early
on, like, this might be a little bit more
of a, you know, a little bit more to it
than everybody says.
Just the end all be all best thing in the
world. The sacrifice so much to be in
this office for this corporate job.
What did you think of Denver? Loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
There's really, I mean, there's really
nothing not to like about Denver. A bunch
of young people, activities, seasonal.
The music seems phenomenal.
The music seems great, right? Yeah. Yeah.
It's phenomenal. Anything you want. You
want jam? You got it. You want, you know,
electronic? You got it.
You know, rap might be the only thing
you're not getting a ton of, but, you
know, Red Rocks is right there.
They've got all these amazing
amphitheaters up in the mountains. And
what's fun about Denver, what everyone
loves is, like I said, seasonal, you
know, and in the
winter, you're snowboarding.
In the summer, you're camping. You know,
everyone's always outside doing
activities. And it almost feels like the
next thing is kind of
on the horizon always.
Yeah. So let me ask you this. You pretty
much grew up on the East Coast, right? I
grew up on the West Coast.
So when I first came out to the East
Coast, for me, it was a cultural shift
completely. Just the way the vibe is, the
way people are. I loved it. I moved to
New Jersey. I loved it. I love New York.
I love the straight up, no shit attitude
of the East Coast. Like, you know how
people feel about you right away.
Where I found growing up on the West
Coast, it wasn't as straightforward. And
I, so my experience was very different
between the two coasts.
Did you experience that when you went out
to the West? Did you feel a different
culture out there? Good or bad? But did
you feel a difference?
Yeah, compared to out here.
I had to have been.
Yeah. It's, I mean, like you mentioned,
people on the East Coast are very
straight up. Yeah. I also think there's a
little bit more aggression.
For sure. 100 percent. 100 percent. Yes.
So does that, would you say that applies
in Atlanta as well? Because she's talking
New York, New Jersey, East Coast.
Well, in South Florida.
You know, Atlanta's southeast,
friendlier, I think.
Yeah, you get the South and the South
like edges out the East Coast personally.
I mean, I don't like Northeasterners. I
mean, I have friends from the Northeast.
Yeah. Like if I have to like pick a
demographic of people that I don't get
along with from the U.S.,
like Northeast is kind of.
I'm offended. Yeah. Yeah.
But you like Brian. It's kind of like
it's kind of like the French
internationally. I've got a lot of French
friends I met internationally.
But, you know, I tell them every time I'm
like, look, there are
holes in the breeze.
You guys have done me dirty. Like I love
you. And you're doing everything you can
to kind of bring them
back in my good graces.
But I'm a straight shooter.
You know, I let people know.
But so you probably really love the vibe
out in Denver, then just the energy of
the people and how everybody was.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was it was
just like I said, it
was a really good place.
So much energy. Everybody was, you know,
kind of just getting
out, doing their thing.
You want to come grab beers with us. Oh,
you want to go rock climb. Oh, you want
to go do this. We're
camping this weekend.
Come do this with us. And just the
activity. And one thing I like about it a
lot as well is, you know, especially with
folks my age down in South Florida,
there's a lot of like,
who are you type of culture?
Yeah. You know, you show up to a party
like, what are you
wearing? What are you doing?
Yeah. How cool are you? Like and then,
you know, Denver is just like, you know,
you want to go take some
shrooms and go on a hike.
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't really. Yeah. It
doesn't really percolate the same way of
like the people don't care
as much. It's still out there.
I think that's something that's pretty
predominant in the U.S. is kind of a who
are you type of attitude.
But I definitely think even way less than
the West West Coast, like, you know,
Southern California, San
Francisco. Right. Right.
Denver is a nice little happy medium. The
Midwest doesn't have as much of that
there. No, they're just
happy to be in the Midwest. Yes.
Very vanilla. It's very so true. They're
just happy. So in Denver, is there a
place? What was there a favorite
restaurant that you ate at that you would
for anyone listening?
You would say I was I was curious about
just to clarify, you're actually going
back there, too, right? Yeah. That's kind
of your home base. Yeah.
For I don't have a home base there. My
new girlfriend is is stationed in Denver.
So, yes, that will be my new home base.
I'm not a girlfriend in Jacksonville
Beach. No, no, no, I'm just. Yeah.
We there's a few over in Africa and South
as well from the travels. Yeah.
I know it's kind of coming full circle
and I'm saying I'm temporarily relocating
to Denver. I'm not
saying I'm moving there again.
But yeah, it's it's all coming full
circle. So I'm kind of going back there
right now. So is there a favorite place
that you like? Like, was there a regular
place that you would
eat when you were there?
Yeah, let me I'm trying to think of. So
there's there's the local spots, which
I'm trying to think of one of really good
ones we would go to all the time.
But what was Denver known for food wise?
Would you say like I know in Portland,
growing up in Portland,
it was microbreweries.
So that's one of the things I will say
about Denver is you don't get any
specific, at least in my opinion, there
could be some local Denver folks there
are going to get pissed off at this.
But you don't get any like specific
cuisine. Like, for instance, you know,
the South, you get like
barbecue or soul food in Florida.
You get a little bit more seafood.
Southern California, you get the Mexican
influence. You know,
Denver is just Midwest America.
So like they have good food there. Don't
get me wrong. Right. Okay, actually, I
bet the Mexican food is fire. It's good
there. Yeah. And and
okay, this just reminded me.
Sushi den is a great spot and fire on the
mountain for wings. Oh, that's cool. But
dead influence there.
Yeah. We. Oh, oh, yeah.
You would you would love this place fire
on the mountain. Great. They got little
tiny wings, which sucks. But their sauce
is just next level. Cool.
And then the other thing, the reason the
seafood is actually good in Denver,
international seafood
being shipped into the U.S.
Obviously, California, you know, all
those places on the coast, they don't
really need
international seafood imported.
So Denver is actually the first stop in
the U.S. Interesting. So there's a lot of
like sushi restaurants or restaurants in
Denver that will will get that
overnighted sushi so they
can serve very fresh fish.
I never would have thought of that. I
mean, it was weird. And I was like a very
anti eating seafood
anywhere that's not by the coast.
That's totally that way. I'm only seafood
out of Florida. Yeah, exactly. And then
I, you know, started going to these sushi
places in Denver. And I'm
like, who have I become?
What's going on here? That's not the
weed, though, saying like, oh, this
sushi. So now now really good. The weed
was constant in Florida and in Denver.
We were smoking just as much. So yeah,
yeah. Culturally, we've not we've we were
in Colorado, I think last like 30 years
ago when we drove around the country.
Oh, when it was member. What's that? Have
you heard a member? No. So it's gone away
a little bit. But but like Colorado or
Denver's nickname was was member because
for a long time it was like 80 percent
dudes, 20 percent chicks.
No way. If you were like if you were a
man over Alaska, probably. Yeah. If you
were an OK looking woman with a pulse
that could have a conversation, you were
like your top of the tier.
Wow. And member. Yeah, it would have been
1993. OK, that was full on member. No
way. Yeah, correct me up. Yeah. Yeah. I
missed my chance. No, I was about to say,
Brian, you're fucking jackpot.
Yeah, I'm surprised you didn't have to
walk around beating dudes off with a
stick when you were in there as a bear in
wasteland. Never even knew that. So
sounds very like like Wyoming ish. Yeah.
We went there to South Dakota. Yeah. So
then after Denver, where did you go?
OK, so I'm living in Denver and I'm
working. I got a new new job. I was
working fully remote. This was a company
that did not even have offices. So I'm
working fully remote, living in Denver,
settled in there for like a year and a
half, two years. And I'm loving it.
I'm just kind of getting this itch, you
know, you know, when you get that itch,
that thought in the back of your head,
it's like, hey, you've been here for
about two years. You've always wanted to
kind of check out, you know,
internationally. I've always traveled
internationally, but it was like week
long vacations with my family. And they
were incredible. But, you know, you don't
get the same kind of experiences when you
travel solo or when you're younger and
you go travel or whatever it might be.
I was like, OK, come on. Like, this is
great. But, you know, I don't think you
want to be here forever. So I had the
fully remote job and I was like, OK,
maybe we'll give like the
digital nomad thing a try.
Like, you know, maybe we'll just say,
fuck it, pack up everything in the
apartment, sell off most of the
furniture, put your stuff in storage and
you're working remote like this kind of
whole counterculture.
Yeah, you know, I don't know. I didn't
have a girlfriend at the time. Jackson,
Jacksonville Beach had been she got she
got nixed. And yeah, I didn't have a
girlfriend, didn't have a mortgage,
didn't have a car payment, was working
remote and they weren't really going to
stop me from doing it.
So I was like, OK, shit, let's let's kind
of go see what's going on here. And I've
always loved the beach. My dad's from I
was born in West Palm Beach.
My dad's from southern Florida. My mom's
from Orange County in southern
California. They raised me in Atlanta,
Georgia, which I'll never understand.
I never understand. I think that's what
what kind of spurred most of my my love
for the beach is like it was in my blood
and they just kind of took it from me.
I assume what spurred it probably your
dad's job, I would assume, right, is why
they ended up in Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then, you
know, I was kind of away.
I would always go to California. Stuff
loved it. And I always wanted to be a
surfer. I tried surfing once when I was
like eight, never really lined up again.
Right. You know, we wake
boarded, wake surfed, all that.
Snowboard. Yeah. So I snowboard as well.
Wake boarded, grown up, wakes gated,
wakes surfed even. But like, I don't
know, I just always loved the beach surf
vibes, you know, hanging out at the
beach, people surf in super chill.
So one thing led to another. And I was
doing a lot of research in two places
that I kind of identified I really wanted
to go to were Costa Rica.
And then there were a few other
locations, but the other one was Salio to
Mexico, both places I picked. So I picked
Haco, Costa Rica, me not being a big
world traveler at this point at all.
Having done no solo international travel,
I had heard Haco was easy, heard it spoke
a lot of English, really good surf. You
know, just it was easy. I hadn't had a
friend, few friends who had been there.
I had heard a few things about it. So the
original plan was go to Haco, do three
months in Haco and then, yeah, go to
Salioleta afterwards in Mexico.
So you were in Costa Rica for three
months. So I went down to Costa Rica,
served every single day, worked remote,
made some amazing friends, some great
locals was was down there.
And the game plan is, you know, I'm going
back to I actually had a work conference
in Las Vegas. I was coming back for
Burning Man. I was going to Burning Man.
So I had like a month back in the U.S.
and I was going to go to Salioleta
afterwards. But I was actually at this
big surf competition down in Costa Rica.
I'd been there for like two months, was
about to leave to go do all those things.
And I'm just at this big surf comp. All
the locals are there.
All my friends are there.
Drinking beers, we're having a good time.
I'm looking around and I'm like, damn, I
I really love these people in this place.
Like these people are awesome. I've got a
great group of friends here. I love my
house. I love where I
surf. I loved everything.
So I was like, are you really going to
just pack up and go do this entire thing
again somewhere else? And for me, it was
like, no, no, no, you're not.
So it changed plans, canceled Salioleta,
Mexico and just rebooked down
in Costa Rica for more time.
So then went back home, did Burning Man
for the first time ever, got stuck in all
that mud and all that good stuff and then
came back to Costa Rica
and was was living there.
So how did you find a place to live in
Costa Rica? Like if someone wanted to do
what you did, do you plan that ahead
before you leave America or did you just
get off the plane and then start
researching for a place to live?
So I did Airbnb actually. And it's it's
almost especially if you're going to
these places where, you know, not only
Americans are traveling, but Israelis are
traveling, Europeans are traveling.
There's these kind of these hot spots
that just especially worldwide
attraction, they're worldwide attractant
attractions. Costa Rica is one of them.
It's almost too easy now.
Like everyone speaks English. You can
find everything listed online, booking
dot com, Airbnb. I almost wanted a little
bit more of a challenge.
I wanted more of like, oh, you're out
here. But no, it's it's you call an Uber
from the airport. So it's very
Americanized, I guess, in my mind.
I would say Costa Rica specifically. I
mean, they've done great. Like their
dollar is very strong now. You can use
U.S. currency there. They're
very big hotbed for tourism.
So, yeah, that's cool. So it'd be an easy
place, I guess, quote
unquote, easy place for Americans.
They're super easy. And they like
Americans. They love them. They've done a
great job with tourism. Like they they
really have killed it.
Like, yeah, they've got folks coming in
from all over the place. And it's it's
almost it's almost killed
backpacking culture there.
It's so good. They're so expensive now
because it's so expensive from all these
folks from the U.S. going.
That backpackers can't really make it
work anymore. You can get a room for five
dollars a night over in Asia and other
places in the world.
And you can get a room for 30 dollars a
night. And this isn't a shared dorm room
like when you're sleeping in a bunk bed
like a youth hostel type of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. So this is like a hostel
room. So Costa Rica
just got expensive. Wow.
I think they made the decision years ago,
maybe in the 90s or early 2000s, that
we're going to be an eco tourism country.
And they kind of got themselves wrapped
around that. So it sounds like it's
working. Yeah. I
mean, everything about it.
And that's what like really lit the fire.
There was already a spark or a fire in me
to kind of get after it a
little bit like Pia de Vida.
That's their whole their whole country's
motto is Pia de Vida is pure life. You
let you go there. You
don't know any Spanish.
If you know Pia de Vida, you'll be good.
So how long were you there for then
total? So I ended up being there from
April 2023 to November 2023.
So nice. That's cool. Eight months. Yeah.
Cool. With the burning man in between.
Yeah. With the burning man
in between the little break.
So was there a favorite place in Costa
Rica that you visited that you'd say was
your like number one place? Yeah.
I mean, so I like for surfing Estridos
was 30 minutes south me. The most
beautiful wave. You're out there.
It's actually really funny. There's the
place I would surf. There was a cow
pastures right kind of on. And that's
where they would pick. You
can get shrooms down there.
No kidding. And when it's in season,
you'll see people out there picking the
shroom. You go surfing. You're on this
completely deserted beach by
one buddy who is y'all's age.
He became one of my good friends. He was
a Florida boy originally. He shaped
surfboards down there now. We're surfing.
We're out there and he's out there.
There's not many people and he shows me
this little boat coming in and out and
he's like, oh yeah, that's the cartel.
They're delivering gas to the guys off
the off the coast a little bit.
They're the nicest guys in the world.
He's like, yeah, I'm letting my daughter
hang out with them. They watch her while
I surf and she's really young. But
they're no, they're
they're they really are nice.
But it's you're just out there. You know,
there's not much. It's you know, little
houses here and there. That's beautiful
waves. You're just on the beach out in
nature. Their nature is the most.
What is the what's the business the
cartels in there? Is it smoking drugs?
Same thing. They're in everywhere. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So would you say overall it's
safe? Yeah, it's it's really safe,
especially if you're white.
And the reason that is is because since
it's such a tourism country, they want
your money and they want your money. And
like, you know, one of the reasons the
cartel goes somewhere.
Oh, they're trying to sell drugs to
tourists. You know, like for the most
part, it's tourists coming in town that
want to buy. They get in town. They want
to party. They want to do their thing. So
that's why a lot of the
cartel traffic gets driven there.
If you have any news or your place gets
flagged as possibly harmful to tourists,
your entire not even your business, the
entire economy is taking a hit. So it's
kind of like an unspoken golden rule
there. Don't fuck with the gringos.
Right. Because if you do, then
unfortunately, like it's going to hurt
tourism, which hurts everybody. So it's
more unsafe there to be, in my opinion, a
local or someone else.
Does the does the cartel run the run the
country kind of thing? No, no, no, no.
There is a police presence. Not at all.
Yeah, they're they're really good. It's
really safe. Yeah, cool. Yeah.
Just kind of similar cartel to anywhere
else. You know, underground drug trade
because honestly, more of us, more of us
than anything. Would
you say for women, even?
Oh, women, super safe in Costa Rica,
compared to other places. I've like even
America. But yeah, Costa Rica is so safe.
Like if a couple girls want to go down
there on vacation. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Especially if you pick the right the
right place. Okay.
Especially if you pick the right.
Well, like Mexico right now is a is a
total fucking mess. Yeah, two girls were
just down there. They got their their
drinks laced with something and nearly
died. Right. Yeah. You don't hear about
any of that coming out of Costa Rica. No,
no, no, no, no. And to your point is that
yeah, that's their point. That's why they
know they don't. Yeah, you never hear
about that. And the cartel is in Costa
Rica. And it's pretty much Colombian as
well. Because did you speak mainly
English or did you pick up any Spanish
while you were down there?
Benhamin español es mal. I honestly, I
took classes before I went. I like
really, really wanted to learn Spanish. I
took classes and every fucking person you
talk to you say two sentences in Spanish
and they just go, all right. They go.
They go look man, like my English is a
shit ton better than your Spanish and I
want to practice my English. So. True.
True. Yeah. And it was funny. My my
buddy's wife, Mary, she's, uh, how
half Tika half American, which, you know,
Tiko Tika is what they call Costa Ricans.
Okay. Tiko's guy, Tika's girl. And I was
talking to her about it. And she's the
one who told me that I'm like, God, I
just want to learn Spanish. No one wants
to talk it to me. She's like, well,
everyone wants to get their English
better. And your Spanish fucking sucks.
And I'm like, honestly, you're not wrong.
So, you know, that is funny. So was there
anything about Costa Rica that surprised
you? Like, did you have certain
expectations? And then they were either
surpassed or something happened that are
you experienced that you weren't
expecting? Yeah, there were a few things.
Number one, I think that like, like I
mentioned before with the adventure a
little bit more, you know, you think of
outside of the US, you think.
Costa Rica is not third world, in my
opinion, it might be considered third
world, but you know, you think like, Oh,
you know, this is going to be tough. Am I
going to be able to find Wi Fi all the
places I need to work? Am I going to be
able to find Western food or is it just
going to be like, no, like they are.
They've got it all. They've got
everything you need. Like they've got
Uber, they've got Uber Eats, they've got
McDonald's. Yeah, they they've got
Starbucks. Yeah. And then they've got the
local stuff as well. And and like, I
mentioned, everybody speaks really good
English. You can use American money
there. So one thing that I was kind of
like, you know, you always get scared
before you make a big decision. Oh,
what's it going to be like? I'm leaving
the US and moving out of the US going
somewhere I've never gone. No, it was
like so easy. And it was so just
seamless. And then two, kind of what we
were talking about before. It's funny, I
tell this story to people as I started
getting, you know, more friends down
there, all types of friends, people
working remote, people that own
businesses, you know, locals who were
just working. They like an like an expat
community. Yeah, they've got a huge expat
community there. But I was friends with,
you know, a big group of friends I had
were Argentinian guys. Then there were
some, you know, expat Americans I was
friends with. It kind of was all the way
from like, I knew people that own
businesses. I knew people that were surf
instructors. Didn't matter what your job
title was, who you were.
I was like, I'm not sure where you were
from. Nobody gave a fuck. Like, like, I
swear to God, I was hanging out with this
group of people that I still consider
good friends to this day, I still talk to
them. And it took them a month. We, you
know, a month in, they finally look at
me, they go, by the way, do you have a
job? And like, it kind of dawns on you,
every person you talk to in the US, the
first thing they ask you, what do you do?
Yeah. And kind of what I learned from
that is it's almost like our way of
sizing someone up. Yeah.
Before you meet them, you know, you ask,
what do you do? And they give you an
answer and you immediately try to see if
this person's lower than you, higher than
you. Are they cooler than you? Do they
make less money than me? Do they make
more money than me? Should I respect this
person? And it's like, you know, that's,
it's how we judge people's worth almost.
Yeah. And over there, it was like, yeah,
over there was like, we're just asking
each other about each other's days. Like,
what do we got going on? What's the surf
look like today? And what are we getting
into tonight? Do we want to go, you know?
And it really was more about just living
at Pier de Vida. It's more about just
like, yeah, just more like, yeah, people
don't care. Who cares? Like everyone's,
everyone's a person, you know, it doesn't
matter if you have this job and this many
people think you're cool. You know, if
you, if you can show up and be in that
moment and be a good person, like, it's
pretty much all you need for most part.
And, you know, that's awesome. I do think
as you, as you go through life, you will
come across people that that's not,
not the first question. And those are the
people you start to relate with most and
those become your probably longer term
friends. Yes. Right. Those it'll happen.
Just like your college friends. You guys
did more in like where you might ask
where you're from. Yeah. It's not like,
what do you do? How much money do you
make? Those kinds of things. Yeah. It's
true. Yeah. So then, um, what would you
say the, is the, the food there? Like if
you were to say, oh, you have to try
this. If you go to Costa Rica mushrooms.
Yeah. Yeah. You gotta go to that.
Cal farm dirty, get dirty out there for a
little bit. Oh, so, so I would say not a
specific food that I fell in love with,
but you gotta go to the sodas or the
gotta beat those, which are just like
their typical kind of like buffet style
restaurants. Okay. So those are the
places. Yeah. Those are the places that
are more like locals. And, and, you know,
I actually ended up respecting this, but
they literally give the locals cheaper
prices than the
gringos. Like I would go to the
store and I would go in there and for a
whole meal pay like six 50, but USD.
Yeah. But like, you know, then you'd hear
the little, you know, Tika woman behind
you come up and they say the equivalent
and, um, Oh my God. Am I blanking on what
currency they have in Costa Rica? Um, not
a peso. No, I'm forgetting. But anyways,
they'd say like the equivalent to like $2
USD. And I'm like, can I just order the
same shit as her? But no, no, like it's,
it's, you know, kind of the local spots
where they serve local.
It's really good. Yeah. You know, rice,
they've got like chicken with all this
sauce on it, good vegetables salad. Um,
so those, I mean that, that would be what
I recommend. Just go to kind of the
garden, beat those the sodas, the local
spots. They'll hook you up, give you so
much food. It's so good. It had to have
been hard to leave. It was, it was
unplanned. I was the plan was, um, leave,
come back home, do holidays, do some
friends weddings. And I was locked in.
On 2024 Costa Rica, going back down,
living my surfer software salesman life.
I had my friends down there that served
with me. We went out together. We had the
local squad. I, you know, I would go out
in the surf lineups. You guys, I knew,
um, go out in the town, go to
restaurants. I knew the owners and people
that work there. It was a very small
community. You know, when I would ride
around, I had a bike. I rode everywhere.
That's just what I
did. I would rent a cool
I'd rent a car sometimes on the weekend,
um, to go farther and stuff, but around
the town, I just ride my bike and by the
first month or two of me living there, I
couldn't ride the bike without like three
people screaming to me down the main
drive is I'm going from one place to the
other. So when you were doing, um, most
of your sales with, was it over like
zoom? Oh yeah. It's fully virtual. So
this is kind of the key. Like my, my
whole company was remote. There was no
office. So, you know, I'm in the same
time zone as Denver, Colorado when I'm
living there. So I'm
like, Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Same time
zone. So it's, it lines up perfectly is
mountain standard time. Wow. I didn't
know that I always picture it further
East, but you're in wraps around. Yeah.
It kind of goes like this. And then comes
back. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Did they know you
were in Costa Rica? Yeah. I, it was, it
was a, it was a good little mix of my
manager shout out Joaquin to this day.
Still my boy, um, the man. He was really
cool. Him and I had a
great relationship. We got shit
done. And, uh, the old company I was at
had a, had a really good problem of
rotating through C level leadership,
rotating through executives, VPs, never
really having a good strategy. So we got
shit done. And, and you know, we, uh, we
always hit our number. Um, we always did
good work. So we kind of were like on an
Island, um, internally at the company,
since it was more of a startup. And it
was like, look, we're performing at a
very high rate. Let's
just keep doing this.
And we can do whatever the fuck we want.
Um, like, you know, at a company. If
people don't really care about sales,
unless sales stops doing their job, we're
doing our job very well. Yeah. Uh, they
don't care. You know, my CEO was really,
really cool too. He was a really cool
guy. I like him a lot. You know, and when
I went back to that conference in Vegas,
he knew about it and he was, you know,
parading me around, showing me off,
telling customers about me and my
Brazilian yoga teacher,
girlfriend down there.
All that, all that funny. So you had a
girl, a Costa Rican girlfriend. Uh, she
was not a girlfriend. She was, uh, in the
very early stages of anything whatsoever.
But yes, for lack of a better word, we'll
refer to her. Yeah. Yeah. Very sure. How
did you get paid? Like, how does that
work? Where you, did you have an US based
address? Yeah. No. So like, as far as the
United States government knew I was
living in Denver, Colorado. And because
COVID all that shit way back, you know,
wrapping it all around, I never changed
my banking from my parents' home address
in Atlanta. So like, even when I was
working at companies, all I really would
have to do is input in the system. Like
this is my home address. So when I lived
in San Francisco, San Francisco, like
when I was living in Florida, I was still
getting taxed. Like I was living in
California and I kind of got pissed off
about it at a certain point. Yeah. And
then, you know, I was like talking to my
manager and I'm like, yeah,
I'm just kind of fucked. Like I'm only
making XYZ. I just got out of college and
you guys are taking more taxes than you
should. And then, and then she was like,
Oh, well we can discuss it. But then your
salary would be open to change because
you're no longer a California employee.
And I was like, yeah, let's just leave
it. Let's just not even talk about it.
Worry about it. That makes sense. So why
did you leave Costa Rica? Like why, why
aren't you there right now? Yeah. So like
I said, I had the whole dream lined up. I
was going back, uh, was going to the
United States for a few months to do some
stuff. Literally two weeks before I'm
leaving, I've got no rent payments left.
I'm getting ready to go back to the U S
for Thanksgiving. Uh, going along with
the theme of there was a lot of
leadership change at my company. A new VP
had started about three months prior to
this event. He did not like me. He was an
old school Boston guy, uh, getting back
to my, my disdain for the North. Yeah.
Boston dudes never left Boston in his
life. Hard ass, uh, old school. You gotta
be in the office. We're going to be team
guy. He shows up and he finds out that
his number one seller who's worked at the
company for the last two years, some long
haired dude with a beard and nose ring
surfing every day in Costa Rica. And him
and I just from the very get go, uh, did
not get along. Yeah. He was, he was a
real, you know, you
know, at the end of the day,
I gotta thank the guy cause he gave me
my, my greatest blessing of my life. I
I'd like to call it as of right now, but
him and I did not get along. Um, but
three, three or four months of him being
on board kind of come, come in. I did not
like him. Didn't think he was the right
guy. Didn't think a lot of things,
whatever. Regardless, um, him and I were
just butting heads on certain things and
I wasn't just willing to be his slave.
Um, you know, we don't have to get into
the semantics of it. Long story short,
I'm riding my bike though. I literally
told my manager, I'm like, Hey, going for
my, you know, evening surf. Uh, he's
like, all right, cool. Just you'll be
online later. No big deal. Whatever
normal stuff. Yeah. Riding my bike. And
like five minutes later, I get a message
from this VP and he's like, Hey, can you
hop on zoom real quick? And I'm like, um,
I literally just left my house. Like, can
I just give you a phone call? He's like,
yeah, yeah. So I give him a phone call
and I'm like, Hey, Sean,
what's up? He's like, Hey,
Ben, this is a Sean here with Mandy.
Mandy's the VP of HR. I'm just like, Oh,
well, what's going on guys? How can I
help you? And literally just without
saying anything, he just goes, yeah, Ben,
due to your negativity and toxicity to
the workplace culture. Um, we've decided
to part ways with you. And I just go,
Hey, Mandy, um, I've actually got in
writing from this VP on
the call, um, a promotion.
And a pay raise beginning 2024 pending, I
hit my number, which it looks like I'm
going to do. And I've never had anybody
tell me anything about my negativity and
toxicity to the workplace culture. Like,
can you shed some light on why this is
happening? And she's a great woman. Love,
love Mandy. She was always great. Uh, but
she just got super stern, super HRE with
me. And no, she said, Ben, you're an at
will employ and we're no longer willing
to employ you. So I just go,
perfect. Let's talk severance. Let's,
let's get it going. Let's figure it out.
I mean, at that point, what are you going
to do? Right? You're done. It's, you
know, I was, I was deactivated before the
phone call was done. Like you're, you're
my manager didn't know. It was just high
level, high level chess pieces moving.
Yeah. I'm not going to lie. I was being
stubborn. I was being an aggressive
fucking 26 year old. Like I wasn't making
his life the easiest it could have been
because I didn't think he was doing his
job well. But regardless, uh,
it, it was, it just happened. So I'm
sitting in Costa Rica and going back to
the U S I always thought about Southeast
Asia. There's really good surf in
Southeast Asia, by the way, I'm surfing a
lot now every single day in Costa Rica.
And I'm just sitting there and I just got
fired. And I was like, holy shit. All
right. Well, that kind of changes
everything. And yeah, it kind of turned
into, okay, I'm not going to look for
another job. Um, you're going to go back
home, do the same exact plan you had. Um,
go home for the holidays and just kind of
figure everything out. Fortunately, one
of Nate and I's best friends, Ali, as
well as Mac and Jesus, we're going to
Morocco. I wasn't able to go to Morocco
because of work. Right. Oh, look at that.
I don't have a job anymore. So kind of
how things started off as I decided to go
to Morocco and Spain with those guys went
to Morocco was absolutely incredible surf
there. So you actually surf there as
well. They've got great fucking surf in
Morocco. No kidding. Really good.
Did you have your board with you? No, I
just rented there because I was with the
guys. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we did the
whole nine yards there. We, I served, uh,
we got to see all the culture, read all
the foods, all the cities. That's
awesome. That's amazing. Yeah. And then
it wasn't that long ago, right? What? Six
months ago or less. No, that was
literally we flew out of Miami December
29th, 2023. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it was
like, so we got there pretty much new
years. We had a fucking it's
crazy because you know, Morocco has got
all these interesting Muslim laws. We had
a absolute bang in club night and, and
Marrakech. They call it the city of
Haram. Haram means when you do anything
against Islam, like religion, they call
Marrakech the Haram city. There's
parties. I have a song Marrakech. No, but
it was awesome. We were out at this club.
So we did that. And then we were, we
were, me and Mac got back from Spain. I
got back from Spain.
Like first thing February,
so where did you go in Spain? Yes. So, so
Spain, we, so you, you can see Spain from
Morocco and Morocco. What's that called
the streets of Gibraltar? Yeah. Gibraltar
is that city right down there. They've
got the rock and everything. So, so we,
Mac and I went over to Spain. So after
we, we just, we did costume. Oh my God.
Incredible. Incredible. So we did the
three big cities. We did Madrid,
Barcelona, Valencia. Did you have a
favorite? Oh, it's going to sound pretty
cliche, but I really,
really fucked with Barcelona. When Mac
and I were there the first day we walked,
I legitimately think we walked 14 or 15
miles and we just were walking. The
city's so beautiful. There's so much
stuff to do. We just couldn't stop. How
were they towards you? Cause I've heard
recently, they're not very happy with
tourists. And I, I saw a Tik TOK where
they're, they're spraying tourists with
water from spray bottles and they're very
Spanish. Yeah. In Barcelona.
Oh, there's like some issues going on.
They were great to me. I mean, that's the
one thing I've noticed is, you know, at
least me, I don't know if I get lucky,
but most of the places I go where you see
online, there's issues. You don't think
there's no issues. Yeah. Okay. The
Spanish, you got the long hair, the
beard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Disarming.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the
Spanish for the most part, they got a
great fucking culture over there. They,
you know, they got their late dinners,
their siestas. They
like to enjoy themselves.
Most of the people I met from there were
really, really nice. I think it was a
issue because so many, maybe people that
aren't Spanish are buying property and
making their B and B's. And so it's
making the rents go up. So yeah. So I
think there's something going on there,
but you didn't see any of that when you
were there in December. It was all good.
Everybody was happy. So nice. So good.
And the food, I'm sure it was amazing.
Yeah. Yeah. We did it in Valencia as
well, but the paella, you gotta get the
paella over there. It's,
it's so good. How were the
cities different that you went to? Like
what would differentiate them from each
other? So Madrid awesome as well. Really,
really love Madrid. And we had to be, you
know, Mac and I as we're bouncing around.
We're like, okay, well, if we're in
Valencia from Tuesday to Thursday, and
then we show up to Madrid on a Friday,
you know, we gotta, you gotta be fair
when you're kind of saying how much you
like places because you're somewhere on a
Tuesday, Friday. Yeah. Madrid's huge
city. A lot of really
good culture. They're really
good food, beautiful buildings. It's big,
but it's like majorly inland. It's like
in the middle of Spain. So the biggest
differentiator for me is Barcelona is
super coastal. So it's another massive
city, but Madrid's more inland. Okay.
Barcelona's more coastal, that kind of
vibe. And then Valencia is much smaller
than, than the other cities, at least
from what I experienced and kind of what
I, what I learned. Did you drive each
city? We took trains. They've got great
trains over there. Okay.
And how long was it a long time to get in
between the cities? There was like an
hour or two and a half from Madrid to
Valencia. And then like two
and a half, three from at all.
I think it's a huge, it's not a huge
country. Yeah. The trains are very good.
Actually, they're pretty high speed.
Yeah. No, the trains over there. So you
basically did like a week in Spain.
I like to two weeks too. And then how
long were you in Morocco? Two weeks.
That's amazing. Two and two. That's
amazing. You didn't hit Portugal then.
I wanted to, I wanted to, but all the
guys we were with weren't surfers. So
like, you know, I'm like, oh, let's go
here. And they're like, what are you
going to do? Surf for four hours? And I'm
like, yeah. And they're like, well, as
much as we want to drink beer and watch
you surf, we want to
go do other shit. Yeah.
So I wanted to go do Portugal because I
wanted to go like up the South, go check
out all the surfing, maybe check out
Nazare. And then, you know, Mac was like,
well, I want to go see the big cities in
Spain. And I'd never been to Spain.
So I was like, okay,
perfect. Let's, let's go do this.
So what was there one thing that you saw
in Spain that you would say you have to
see, like if you could think of one place
you went to or restaurant you ate at or
something that just, you can
remember vividly the six L2.
Okay. Yeah. So in Spain, the Museum of
Meat, I think is what it's called. It's a
shame, but they have this Iberco ham.
It's like acorn fed ham.
Wow.
Fucking delicious.
Acorn fed ham.
So they feed the pigs acorns.
What a trip.
It's so what does it taste
like? How's it different than?
It's kind of just got this like waxy
texture to it. It's
like, it's like prosciutto.
Okay.
It's very much so like prosciutto.
Okay.
It's so good.
Okay.
And then I would say specifically
something. So the most insane thing I've
ever seen in my life architecturally is
that the church, the
Basilica in Barcelona.
It really is like it's the craziest thing
I've ever, I'll never forget it.
I have a video of it.
One of our last nights we're walking
around outside of it.
It's all lit up and there's
just a guy playing the violin.
Oh my God.
And you're just outside of
it, like just looking up.
It's the most nutty thing
I've ever seen in my life.
And I know that's very like touristy.
You have to do this, but no, but there's
a reason some of these
places are 100 years old.
Yeah.
And they're still not done building it.
It's not going to be,
it's still being built.
They're still building it up.
It's not going to be done being built
till like 2037 or something.
What a trip.
But then something that Mack and I did,
which was really cool, is there's another
really well known church that
has got a huge Jesus statue.
On the side of the cliffs, kind of
overlooking Barcelona and you go up there
and you can go all the
way up to the statue.
It's like a hundred meter tall church
already on top of like a massive mountain
side and it overlooks all of Barcelona.
And it was really opposite because like
the Basilica super touristy, obviously
you're in the middle of the city.
Everybody's going, but Mack and I were
standing on top of this massive church
overlooking Barcelona by ourselves.
We just walked all the way up there, just
overlooking the city.
How did you know to go there?
Did somebody tell you?
So can you see it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, well you can see it and it's a pretty
well known like spot, I will say, but
it's a little outside of the city and
it's not the Basilica.
So it doesn't get the
same type of like hype.
I mean, it's an amazing church, but it
was really cool because, you know, we had
that experience of like, we were
literally up at the top of the church
overlooking everything and we're like,
there's nobody here.
And there's nobody telling
us what we can and can't do.
Like, that's amazing.
That is amazing.
So then same question for Morocco.
Is there something that
stands out to you from?
Yeah.
So we went to the big mosque in
Casablanca, which was sick.
The markets for the markets as well.
So Morocco's culture
is just so fucking cool.
It's like Arabic, but since it's super
far over into Africa, it's got its own
spin of Arabic with African.
And then it's so close to Europe.
So it's got a lot of European influence.
It's just melting pot
of all this amazing shit.
Um, so the markets are just the coolest
thing and getting to navigate the markets
with a local and someone who speaks
Arabic is even cooler because you can go
so deep and you just, you know, it's
different when you're, when you're going
to a foreign country by yourself, you're
probably not going to go into the local
markets and just start
wandering deep down by yourself.
But when you're there with someone who
grew up there that has family there that
you're out with, it's just a
day at the market for them.
So they speak English there.
Is it all Arabic?
It's you're, you're not getting along
well there with English.
I mean, you can, there's some people, but
they're, no, it's not nearly as well.
So Ali was like perfect artifacto
translator, but we went to the mosque,
the bath house was really cool.
Okay.
So they had a bath house under the
mosque, like OG style Arabic bath house.
Wow.
And we did that, which was like centuries
old type bath houses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just super, super cool.
Wow.
That is really cool.
And I assume the food is phenomenal.
Oh, so good.
Yeah.
And his aunt is a chef.
Wow.
You know, they, every single night, every
single morning we're whipping us up.
Peace.
Oh my God.
Maybe that's where Ali
gets his cooking from.
Oh yeah.
From what I remember.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They don't fuck around.
His family, his mother was thrilled.
You guys were there.
She doesn't even speak English.
Yeah.
Oh really?
It was, we, we became really close with
her, but that's the, like, she speaks a
little bit of English,
a little bit of Spanish.
So we were like, you know, doing what we
could to kind of make it work.
That's so awesome.
You guys did that.
What a treat for his family.
They got to not only see him, but meet
some of his friends.
Yeah, they loved it.
They were the most, most hospitable
people you could ever
imagine on the planet.
The culture there too is like you, you
don't, you know how here and the group in
the South, like we talked about, like,
Oh, let me clear my plate.
Right.
Let me, they're like, you better fucking
sit down and drink your tea and enjoy
everything while I do it for you.
Right.
You don't even like, it's disrespectful
to try to help them.
They just, all they want to
do is give and give and give.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then after the Morocco
Morocco and Spain, is it safe?
Did you feel safe
cruising around at night or?
Yeah, I felt super safe, but that was
like, obviously with Ali
and I don't think it's bad.
I mean, I think they're pretty, I even
say to this day, like watch Morocco the
next 10 years, that country is on the
come up, like from a lot of, a lot of
different things from, I think they're
the largest export in Africa right now.
Like they've, they've got a lot of shit
going on there that it's really, a lot
more people are working remote there from
Europe because it's so close to Europe.
They've got a lot of
stuff kind of coming.
So it's, they've got their shady parts,
but you know, again, we were with locals.
So it was kind of like, you don't, you
just get a different experience when
you're there with a local, you know, it's
like going out in Chicago.
Is it dangerous?
Yes.
If you go out with people who are from
there and you know how to get around and
you know what you're doing, it's a
totally different kind of experience.
What about, how do
they feel about Americans?
I think they loved
Americans to be honest.
Yeah, I think they liked us.
They really welcomed people coming to,
yeah, they want to share their culture.
Yeah.
They really want people to see it.
They're really proud of it.
I bet I would have funded that market.
Oh, the market is the craziest.
I mean, I, I, they've got
anything and everything.
They've got spices,
they've got fake shoes.
They've, because they,
there's a lot of knockoffs.
Obviously.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I bought a $17 pair of Nikes, uh,
that are still with me to this day.
I traveled all over Southeast Asia with
them and they work out great.
I bet the markets smell good.
Oh, it's got to be full of sense.
The food too.
Oh yeah.
Also Morocco eat snails.
The snails were really good.
Like escargot type.
It's totally different than the French.
They'll get really, they
don't like the French and Morocco.
No one likes the French.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
It's a universal thing.
Disclaimer again, I'll like anybody, but
I'll let the French know before I meet
them that I'm not the biggest fan.
So if you're French and you're pissed off
about this, come have a beer with me
and we'll figure it out.
But that's hilarious.
Okay.
So after you're Moroccan and you were in
Morocco and you were in Spain, then
where did you go quick trip back to the U
S for two, uh, good friends weddings.
And then after those weddings, I flew to
California, was there for a few weeks,
staying with some family
in Southern California.
Um, and this was really the big kickoff
to the Southeast Asia trip.
Okay.
So I was in Southern California early
February and that's when I flew out.
So I was just surfing
there for a few weeks.
And then I flew over to Australia.
Were you in San Diego?
Uh, Orange County, so an hour north.
So like right in between LA and San
Diego, staying in San Clemente.
Okay.
Yeah.
For my aunts from, and
then, and then where did you go?
I'm sorry from there.
Where did you fly out to?
I flew from LAX to
Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
Okay.
15 hours.
Yeah.
That's a long flight.
Very, very, very long flight.
So why Sydney?
Oh, God.
Uh, so I actually had a, uh,
a girl out there at the time.
Uh, yeah, I did.
Uh, and it's, we're going to get comments
from all these ladies.
I was looking at, you know, how am I
going to start the Asia trip?
And a girl that I was very close with
from, from Denver actually was
Australian and had moved back to Sydney.
Um, so I was like, Hey, we had a really
great time with each other.
When we lived in Denver with each other,
I'm thinking about coming to Asia.
Do you want me to come to Sydney first?
Or if I do come to Sydney first, we'll,
you know, we hang out at all or whatever.
Yeah.
So it worked, it worked out great.
And then, you know, it kind of went there
and went all the way up from, I did
like the Sydney did obviously like
Sydney, Sydney, the major city, and then
the closest beaches, which are like Bondi
beach, um, right there.
So surf there, hung out there, ate some
good food, kind of explored around.
And then we went up to the Northern
beaches of Sydney for a little while,
which is like manly, it kind of starts,
um, kind of where the bay is and where
the offer house is like
South is like Bondi and all that.
And then a little bit North, you can take
a ferry or you go over the,
the bridge, you've got like
manly is the first beach town.
Then it's almost like South Florida for,
for like, you know, 45 minutes, totally
different vibe, but like, you know, you
just got beach town
after beach town after beach
town.
And the surfing there is insane, right?
Really, really good.
Better than Costa Rica.
It's so big.
It's you got to pick the spot.
You know what I mean?
I think Costa Rica overall,
um, Australia is really good.
I mean, it's hard to,
hard to pick for sure.
Yeah, it definitely gets bigger in
Australia though, at certain areas and
certain times.
Did you have to worry about sharks?
That's what I always
hear about over there.
I mean, I personally
decided not to worry about it.
Yeah.
That was fine.
It's kind of Florida is
known for being really sharky.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So is it different?
Like when we're here, we don't, we don't
think about it when we're here.
Is it kind of like that there?
Yeah.
I mean, out of sight, out of mind.
I mean, like I'll put it this way.
This is a kind of the way I,
I, I justify it to everyone.
And you get in the car to
drive to the grocery store.
Do you think, Oh my God, I
might die in a car crash.
Right.
Like you're just going for a surf.
You're just going for a drive.
Like, you know, it's kind of one of those
things where, yeah, like statistically
speaking, it's
probably kind of dangerous.
Well, driving is way more dangerous than
surfing if you look at it, but like,
yeah, shark wise, it's probably
statistically more dangerous there.
Yeah.
Like, are you going to stop surfing
because there are sharks in the ocean?
No, no.
Yeah.
So then how long were you in Sydney?
All in all, I was in Sydney
for like a week and a half.
Nice.
And then we road tripped up to Byron Bay,
which, so we kind of stopped at a bunch
of spots, new castle, um, stopped at this
one spot called Crescent head.
I learned a new word there.
Bogan.
What is the
Australian version of redneck?
Oh, how funny.
It was awesome.
It was like this sick little surf town,
nothing going on there.
Camping little camp spot.
And then this sick little surf spot, like
the latest place open in this
fucking town was like eight o'clock.
It was the pizza shop.
Wow.
So if you didn't get food
by eight, you're fucked.
Wow.
So we got lucky.
We got like a pizza to go, got some beer
and then stayed there.
It's any good or does it pretty good?
It's pretty good.
And there's Bogan motherfuckers.
I know how to make the redneck.
That's hilarious.
Yeah.
And are they friendly to Americans?
Yeah.
I mean, the Aussies are fucking awesome
in general, like the way I describe it.
And I know, uh, we're
Florida folk over here.
So I, I luckily split Florida, California
cause family, they're
like California without the bullshit.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's the way I describe them.
Like they're just,
they're just fucking awesome.
They're pretty
straightforward, honest people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're, they're just good.
They drink a lot.
Yeah.
They like to have fun.
Yeah.
They like to have fun.
They, you know, they're cool.
No, that's awesome.
So you did Sydney,
you pretty much served.
Oh, what was the food like?
Was there something?
Food was really good there.
Uh, a lot of seafood, you
know, they've got, yeah.
Yeah.
So just a lot of seafood, uh, nothing
like too insane there.
Uh, expensive there.
No, no, no, no.
You get good pricing there.
Really good pricing.
So like 75, 80% of the U S whatever you'd
pay here, like the 75, 80%.
Okay.
That's not bad at all.
Yeah.
So then you're asking about the food.
I'm curious about the weed.
Are they tied over the upside?
Or so I, you know, me being a experienced
traveler, I came over with dab pins from
California, so, um, I had weed with me,
so I did not get to indulge in the local.
But is it part of the scene there?
Like, you know, Denver, California, I
know it's not legal, but I know they're
pretty strict.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But they, they smoke.
Yeah.
Okay.
So did you fly from, uh, Oh, you would
have, where'd you go after Sydney?
So road trip to Byron Bay.
Yeah.
Uh, Byron Bay, incredible, super fucking
cool hippie town, but also like, I mean,
it's a rich town.
It's, it's like, it's like a surf town
with hippies in it, but also celebrities.
And yeah, it's just so fucking cool.
Cool.
Um, you know, there's people that there's
a huge van culture there.
Oh, a good buddy of mine.
I actually met later on in these travels.
He's was living in a van
in Byron Bay for two years.
Wow.
Um, he took that van around
Australia during COVID twice.
Wow.
All the way around Australia.
A good surfer buddy of mine.
I met that is amazing.
Yeah.
He was a Swiss guy.
He was a Swiss guy had been living in
Australia and yeah, but there's
a huge van life scene there.
Super hippie town.
Really fun.
But yeah, then I flew
from Australia, Sydney.
We went back down to
Sydney and I left there.
Um, nothing transpired
with the lady friend.
Obviously it was a very fun time, but,
uh, I was onto the next location
and I flew to Singapore.
So that was my first
Asia stop was Singapore.
The strictest of all, I
think I flew there with weed.
Yeah.
You're crazy.
Yeah.
No, that's what I got told.
So I had the dab pins.
We can talk about that
in a minute, but yeah.
Yeah.
That was.
Yeah.
That's lashing material.
Yeah.
That's like killing me in the streets and
then throw me in a sewer or something.
I assume you got through customs fine.
I'm here.
Yeah.
I wouldn't be, I want to be here.
You think that they, their x-rays just
didn't pick it up or,
I mean, here's the thing.
Everybody in the
world nowadays is vaping.
Um, there's really no way to distinguish,
uh, weed vape from a normal vape.
Especially now that there's like the
disposable weed
vapes, which is what I had.
Unless they literally pull it over and go
test it, it's not detectable.
Um, so they're not stopping you for it
really at any point.
Yeah.
So like, unless you get caught, caught
with it, that's when it's an issue
because the dogs can't smell it.
It's like, you know, a gram of, you know,
I had a few of them,
so it was a few grams
of oil, they can't really pick up on it.
Still not smart.
Uh, you know, mom, mom, dad.
Really?
Sorry for doing something that could have
got me internationally fucked.
No, no, you can leave that in.
You survived.
I'm unedited.
I'm unedited.
I don't care.
So why did you pick Singapore?
So one it's expensive as fuck.
And this was the beginning of my trip.
Okay.
So I figured, okay.
Um, I I've heard nothing
but incredible things I had.
My dad's been there for business.
My best friend growing up as a kid, his
dad, um, lived there for a year for work.
I've just heard
really, really cool things.
So I'm like, okay, I got to check it out.
Only went there for
like three or four days.
Okay.
Same thing.
It's literally just a city.
Imagine a big ass city.
Yeah.
Singapore.
Did you say like in a hotel Airbnb?
I kind of got like a little hotel like
studio kind of room thing.
Yeah.
Um, I mean that was even
like 80, 90 USD a night.
So like it was not cheap,
but, and you were alone, right?
You just doing things.
Yeah.
I did Singapore alone.
First day I was there.
I walked 20 miles.
Wow.
So more than Barcelona 20
miles the first day in Singapore.
And was it safe?
Did you feel Singapore is
the safest place on there?
It's supposed to be the
safest and cleanest city.
It's the safest and cleanest.
Like you, it is.
Cause they don't fuck her up.
They don't, they don't like
literally they, yeah, it is.
You commit a crime.
You're fucked.
It's like utopia, but then there's like,
you know, if you get caught trying to
smoke weed, the
vaping's even illegal there.
Wow.
Which I learned about afterwards because
I met some, uh, like English
teachers who were foreigners.
I was getting beer.
They started yelling at me.
So I walk over to the table, started
having some beers with
them and I hit the vape.
And then I offered it to them.
You guys want anything?
They're like, no, I'm good.
They're like, what is it?
I'm like, it's weed.
And they looked at me like, they're like,
are you fucking serious?
And I'm like, yeah, they're like, dude,
one, you should not have that too.
They're like, you should not be fucking
hitting that in public.
And I'm like, really?
They're like, well,
vaping's illegal here.
So like the weed is mega illegal, but the
vaping is also illegal.
So like, yeah, that's crazy.
It's clean.
It's beautiful.
It's well run, but the
rules are super, super strict.
Can you smoke cigarettes?
Maybe I think so.
It's Asia.
They, they love their
cigarettes over there.
I assume you have to dispose of them.
You can't just put them on the street.
Like Americans do that.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Littering over there.
You get beaten with a cane.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Capital punishment, you
know, really does, does wonders.
We have friends who moved there at the
ponds moved there for a while.
Yeah.
But I never spoke with them about it.
So I didn't, I didn't know.
You don't fuck around over there.
Wow.
No, no, no, no, no.
Wow.
The government's even open about it.
They're like, we know, we
know our laws are strict.
Yeah.
Like we don't fucking care.
That's why we do it.
We come here and conform.
Yeah.
It's basically it.
I think that's kind of how it goes there.
So did they like, like, did you get the
feeling they like Americans?
They like, um, tourists.
I think they love Americans over there.
Like they really, they
really love it over there.
And what about, did you
speak English pretty much?
Oh yeah.
It's, it's English is the main language.
Oh, okay.
That's their main language.
Wow.
Actually is English.
Wow.
And then what about, um, in those 20
miles or those three or
four days you were there,
uh, what did you mainly do?
Were you mainly in the city or were you
venturing out a little bit?
So there is no other
thing besides the city.
It's just the city.
I'm pretty sure it's like 50
square miles is the country.
So it's kind of like going to Manhattan.
Yeah.
And it's a very nice, very clean city.
I mean, I'm sure
there's pretty modern, right?
Oh, so modern.
Yeah.
So I was just exploring
around, checking some things out.
Um, and then you mentioned
food, chili crab, chili crab.
You got to get the chili
crab and go to the hawkers.
It's like their big cafeterias with all
their different
restaurants there, but the
chili crab, especially the black, the
black pepper as well.
So there's the chili crab and the black
pepper crab, the black pepper crab too.
Like did the crabs
there are expensive as shit.
I think I paid like 45 bucks for one, but
it is so fucking good.
It's like, it's hilarious.
Yeah.
That sounds so good.
But I was Singapore it out
after three or four days.
It's kind of like going to Vegas.
Like you do it and you leave.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was on a surf trip trying to
explore Southeast Asia and I show up in
this completely modern.
Did you have your board with you?
Or yeah.
I had my surfboards everywhere.
I went with me leaving
California this whole trip.
That was a fucking experience.
I cannot imagine doing that.
We travel with like lacrosse poles and
that's a pain in the ass.
And that's in America.
It was, it was crazy.
I came across any and every possible
obstacle to get surfboards around there.
Did they just, uh, was it an issue as far
as people didn't want to deal with your
surfboards, like as
far as in Ubers or on?
No.
I mean, I had a six foot
six board and a five foot 10.
So you traveled with two.
Yeah.
With two.
So think about, you know, you call it
Uber, you need an XL.
They don't have Uber in
some of these countries.
You need a massive taxi.
So a lot of problem
solving along the way.
So, and so you just kind of ventured
around the city for a few days.
And then where did you go?
So it was three days really.
It was in and out.
So flew from Singapore
to then Phuket, Thailand.
Nice.
Was that just beautiful?
Oh my God.
Incredible.
Uh, Phuket was
amazing, but here's the thing.
I love Phuket a little bit too touristy,
not too touristy for me, but just like,
uh, yeah, touristy.
It's very touristy.
It's very beautiful.
The islands.
So the islands I went to, uh, kind of, I
think it's not the, might be the bay of
Thailand.
I'm not entire the Gulf of Thailand.
I'm not sure.
But if the islands right next to Phuket,
like Coppi Colanta,
you take fairies there.
That's like the next level beautiful shit
where you're doing snorkeling, all that
stuff.
Yeah.
Are most of the
people there in the cities?
So there, those
outside the city, it's Jill.
No, they're everywhere, man.
They're still overpopulated.
They're everywhere.
Like it's, I mean, like they, yeah, it's
that country specifically as well
has got so much going on.
It's absolutely crazy.
Yeah.
So with Thailand, um, did you just say in
one area or did you
travel around Thailand?
Yeah.
So I was, um, specifically in Thailand,
there's no surf there really.
Um, so Singapore, obviously no surf as
well, just from the location.
So was surfing a lot in California,
surfing a lot in Australia, three days in
Singapore, no surf.
And then Thailand, I was there for like
three weeks, three and
a half weeks to start.
Wow.
So it was more bouncing around more.
Really there just to
see Thailand, not to surf.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I knew that I needed to go to Thailand.
Yeah.
Um, that was another, uh,
excursion with surfboard.
So I fly into Phuket, Phuket still
mainland, but it's, you
know, almost like a little
peninsula like thing at the bottom of
Thailand that is all on the coast on both
sides, beautiful, lots of party, lots of
good culture there, you know, the
surf there.
No.
Okay.
No, no, no.
I mean, you might be able to once every
blue moon, if there's a storm, but now
it's very flat.
Yeah.
Um, so yeah.
So going down Phuket, having a lot of fun
saying that all these hostels partying
with all these, you know, people from all
over the world, Germans, Australians,
Argentinians, Russians, a
lot, lot of Russians in Phuket.
Really?
Phuket is one of the areas that all the
Russians are relocating to now that it's
awful to live in Russia.
Um, and they love to travel to Thailand,
Russia, all the Garks are the normal
people, normal people, regular folks.
So normal people, I got not far.
It's it's, it's much easier for Europeans
to get to Asia than it is for us.
Yeah.
But from, so for rest, the Russians, I
would imagine it's like, I don't know how
long the flight is, but it's, it's, I
mean, when you're in
Asia, it's not that far.
Yeah.
You look at the risk board.
Yeah.
There's your geography.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's true.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not bad.
It's not bad.
Um, so you get a lot, a
lot of them over there.
I actually met some great, some of the
best, the best Russians I've ever met.
I met at this, uh, beach club in Thailand
and a little, it was a nicer hospital.
I was staying at, but it's still a
hostel, but it's like
a luxury resort hostel.
Yeah.
So the beach club was open to the public.
There were these
Russians partying next to me.
I don't know what happened, but I ended
up smoking like three fucking
packs of cigarettes and drinking more
vodka than I've drank in so long.
Cigarette smoke.
I'm not a cigarette smoker.
Okay.
Internationally, you know, I was a
cigarette smoker and not proud of it.
Kicked the habit, but yeah, it's funny.
Internationally, those
motherfuckers got a different view.
Everyone smokes.
Yeah.
Um, ended up going out with these
Russians till like 5 am.
Um, you know, I'm, I'm getting in this
car with all these Russians
leaving my hostel and Phuket.
That's amazing.
I'm like, all right, let's
see where the night goes.
But no, they're awesome guys.
I, they're really fun.
Um, but yes, then I, that was actually
one of my last nights in Phuket.
And then like I mentioned, that's when I
went to the islands.
Right.
And the islands are where
you want to be in Thailand.
If you're going to be like at the beach,
like that's the coolest vibe.
You take these ferries from the mainland.
They got this insanely well run ferry
system that just goes island to
island, island to mainland.
You get them on them every day.
They take all your luggage.
I mean, they are,
they're just really well run.
Wow.
It's beautiful.
You just like a European train.
Yeah, probably.
You just hop on these ferries and they
just take you where you need to go.
So, um, there's this one island called
Copp, which is incredibly, uh, famous
for a lot of different
reasons, but one, it's like.
This smaller island that has all of these
hostels, all of these crazy parties, all
of these crazy bars, and
there's no cars on the island.
So it's all walking.
Yeah.
And it's all just like
right on top of each other.
So like the first day I
thought I'd found heaven on earth.
I was up till 6 AM partying.
Second day went on this booze cruise.
Absolutely incredible.
Decided to extend another night.
So I was supposed to be my last night.
Third day I woke up so fucking hungover
and I'm just surrounded by like 20
year olds, 21 year olds that are all.
Backpacking like getting
fucked up on this island.
And there's just no escape.
Like there's no AC in this hostel.
It's like the hostel that's like the most
centrally located around all of the
partying, which goes on
till 6 AM every morning.
I was just in the middle of it.
Where are most of the backpackers from?
Like Europe or I'm
sure Australia, Europe.
Yeah.
You get a lot of Europe, Europeans, and
then you get, you get a mixed bag,
really, but mostly, I mean,
I would say mostly Europeans.
You were probably the one of just maybe
one or two Americans.
Yeah.
Not a lot of Americans out there.
Not a lot at all.
Yeah.
Um, it's very far away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you get, you get a lot of Europeans,
but yeah, I was ready to get the fuck off
that Island.
Like I was hungover.
I was partied out.
I obviously not older,
but I'm like not 21 anymore.
And I had worked a job and I had saved
enough money where like, I didn't need
to be staying in dorm rooms or staying in
dorm rooms to save money.
Yeah.
After that Island, I never stayed in
another dorm room again.
Just travel.
I was like, no, I'm
like, I'm fucking done.
I'm like, I'm going to spend the eight
extra dollars a night or whatever it is.
So get my own private because fuck that.
Yeah.
But then I went to, um, another Island
called Colanta, which did totally, the
reason I went, I didn't know where I was
going to be going, but the reason I went,
yeah, I heard it was more nature, bigger
Island party, but not as much party.
And I, I show up and I never written, uh,
a moped before a scooter and you can
rent these things anywhere and
everywhere, like so easily.
So the first day I got
no training, got nothing.
I went to this Island with a few people I
was traveling around a Phuket with that
actually came to CoPP with me.
We came, we went to
Colanto with each other as well.
So we rent scooters.
I had never driven one.
One of the girls is like, Oh yeah, I
don't want to rent one.
Can I ride on the back one of y'all's?
And I'm like, yeah, you know what?
Why not?
So I've never written a scooter before.
Don't know how to operate it.
Don't really know how to drive it.
This is how he picks up
women internationally.
A girl is, is coming on with me too.
So I've got cargo on the back and I ended
up driving like 35 miles around the
Island that first day,
but I ever drove a scooter.
Oh my gosh.
Cool.
I'm pretty sure I was shirtless as well.
So, um, totally different rules over
there, which is incredible.
You don't have to sign.
I mean, you give them your
passport when you rent a scooter.
So they had my passport and they know
you're not stealing it.
But yeah, it was a beautiful Island.
That's cool.
You see like all this,
all this beautiful nature.
We were just exploring eating the best
food, but what was fucking sick about
Colanta and I got super, super lucky is I
was there for like five days and the
yearly festival that the Island has
called Lanta Lanta
festival, which is like
their massive yearly cultural festival,
street vendors with food.
Families go with their kids.
Everybody on the fucking
Island is going to this thing.
They have concerts there.
They, they love, uh, reggae
and like rock over in Thailand.
Yeah.
So they've got like all
these cool reggae bands.
They've got live music for
free, like big performances.
It's a three day long festival.
And I just so happened to show up and I
met all these cool people.
It's also interesting.
Uh, you'll find like pockets of certain
cultural and ethnic groups
around the entire Island or not the
Island, like internationally, you'll go
travel somewhere and it'll be like, why
are there just a bunch of Swiss people
here and Colanta specifically was Swiss
people like eight, like they had a whole
elementary school with like 108 Swiss
kids on this one Island in Thailand.
Like live there.
Yeah.
So I met some Swiss folks that I was
really cool with and we were hanging out
and they lived on the Island and they
were like, did you plan this?
What do you mean?
To come during the festival.
And I'm like, no, they're like, this is
like by far the best fucking thing
that happens on this Island every year.
What is true?
Um, so I did that every single day, just
explored nature, rode my scooter around.
Did you get to the bottom of why there's
this Swiss population in that area?
Like what, what was
the draw or it's, it's.
Yeah, it's the same thing.
You see it when you travel, it's just,
it's, it happens with these Israelis too.
You know, the Israelis are all over a
different Island in Thailand that I went
to later when I traveled, you know,
there's just, it's just the way it works.
You know, you attract your own kind.
So when, you know, people, they're living
there, they're like citizens.
They live there and they vacation there.
So the, uh, Hollywood, Florida has a huge
Russian population, both
oligarchs and regular folks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a trip.
They just like to be around their people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, you know, like they, yes.
Some cousin goes there first and then
they just, hey, this place is fucking
awesome and they tell family friends
about it and then
they move there and then
people go and yeah.
So, um, is it expensive?
No, no.
So cheap, so cheap.
Uh, like you wouldn't even believe how
cheap it's, it's crazy.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, it's everything's so cheap.
They take dollars too, right?
I know.
No, I mean, you can get dollars easily.
Yeah.
Um, but they are bought.
So Thailand have bought.
So I think about, I think a thousand
bought is like 25, 30 bucks.
Okay.
I think I'm pretty sure.
Um, so you go drop a
thousand bought on dinner.
Oh, way less, way less than that.
You go drop like 200 bought on dinner.
That's good.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So to live there
would be very inexpensive.
Oh yeah.
No, it's, it's a totally other.
It's all relative, right?
I mean, if you're a local,
do they think it's cheap too?
Or no.
Well, that's why it's, we're
going there with the US dollar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like, I show up and I'm like,
you're telling me it costs $3 to have a
fucking meal and big ass dinner.
And we're used to like, we got a Chipotle
now and it's $18 to get a Chipotle bowl.
So it's like, you know, we go over there
and it's like, this is amazing.
But for the locals, that's just life.
They don't get paid shit.
Yeah.
But like for the Swiss
people that go there.
Yeah.
Wait, I mean, that's one of the biggest
draws, you know, internationally is if
you have the Euro, the power of the Euro
going somewhere else where they don't,
you know, spend as
much money, you know, the,
all these things.
So, so yeah, it was incredible.
Um, was it clean?
Ooh.
Uh, I mean, no, like look, look, they're,
they're definition of clean and are like
Americans are, are, I mean, we're like,
look like, yeah, I didn't wear shoes when
I was over there for like four months.
Like, like, you know what I mean?
Like it's, it's by our definitions.
No, it's not clear.
Right.
Right.
Is it safe?
Oh, the safest place in the world.
Really?
The Thai people are so fucking nice.
So just incredibly good people.
Um, the one thing I've learned too, about
a lot of these foreign cultures is like
here, the reason that poor people are
more dangerous is because like we kind of
teach people that it's bad to be poor.
So they want, they want something.
They want to steal your watch.
They want to get more money so they can
do something, you know, they, they want
to have more money.
It's not really taught over there that
being like in the culture, it's not bad
to be poor, no one cares.
Yeah.
No, but it, but even relatively compared
to like rich Thai people to not rich Thai
people, like it's not in their culture to
be like, you're a, you're, you should be
ashamed of not being rich.
So like the poor people are the nicest
people on the fucking planet.
Like they're, they're so nice.
They just want to give, they actually
want to give you, they want to make sure
you're having a great time.
Wow.
Um, that's amazing.
So yeah, it's really, really safe.
Like, I have no, no point.
I, you actually, you feel
more safe there in my opinion.
Like I would like, I mean, Thailand, I
wasn't surfing, but some of these other
places like Indonesia and stuff, like
you'll leave your wallet and phone on a
counter while you're going to surf and
you'll, you'll know it's going to be back
there when you go.
That's amazing.
Um, I can't even, I cannot even imagine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's been two months.
Yeah.
So, and even for a
woman, it would be safe there.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Uh, the next place I went to, I would not
fully disclaim that Sri Lanka.
I was going to say they
have some challenges there.
Yeah.
Well, they're, I mean, they're, first of
all, some of the Sri
Lankans I met were
the most amazing people.
I still like my hostel owner.
Um, I've got really
good connections with him.
I still talk to him.
Wow.
Other really good Sri Lankan guys.
They're great people, but they're, uh,
they're more of an Indian culture
because they're so close to it.
Is there a ward too?
Aren't they?
Or isn't there?
No, they're good now.
They are good.
Okay.
Had, they had something going on.
Yeah.
Um, so when I left Thailand, Sri Lanka
has got really good surf.
And at this time it was like around this
time it was around March.
So was that, um, after the festival?
Did you leave?
Yes.
It was Lanta Lanta festival.
And then I pretty much just had to get
back to Phuket to fly to Sri Lanka.
Okay.
So that's when I flew to Sri Lanka.
And you're bringing your surfboards as
you're doing all these things.
Yes.
I love it.
You've got both a shorty and a longboard.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Most people choose one, but you're like,
I'm going for all conditions.
Yeah.
You need all conditions.
You need all conditions.
Did you have any locals take a picture of
you just because you were, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm sure you were novelty.
International novelty
rolling in the town.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's, it's not, it's not as much for
being like the white man.
Cause it's so international now.
They get a lot of white men.
It's more like the, who's this dude that
looks like Aquaman running around right
now.
You got the beard,
the hair, the nice tan.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, then I flew to Sri Lanka.
And that's where it, so at this point I
was fucking sick and tired of bouncing
around, I had not only on my surfboard
switch, wait, the bag probably weighed
45 pounds.
Yeah.
I had a rolling, uh, duffel, which
weighed 45 pounds as well.
Wow.
And my backpack.
So I've been bouncing around going on
fairies, carrying surfboards, holding,
holding surfboards on top of
tuk tucks, traveling around.
I was like, I am ready to be in one spot
for a little bit of time here.
And Sri Lanka was my
next big surf location.
Really good waves in Sri
Lanka, good surf towns, great vibe.
So I had heard, I'd actually gotten
recommended Sri Lanka by a German
friend of mine who was in Costa Rica.
He had lived there and
worked there as a surf instructor.
So when I was leaving Costa Rica,
whenever all this happened, I was one of
my last nights, I'm out getting beers
with him and a few other buddies.
And they were like, you've got to fucking
go to, she's like, you
gotta go to Sri Lanka.
You gotta go.
You gotta go.
You gotta go for the surf.
Yeah.
It's just for everything.
He's like, you'll love it there.
So I, you know, I'm
going to Sri Lanka now.
Um, so I show up, I'm
there for a month and a half.
I get there and I rent my own little
apartment, pretty much a studio through,
um, through the owner of a hostel that I
stayed at the first few days.
And then I was like, I had a private room
in the hostel, but then he helped me.
Look, it was a hundred feet
down the road from the hostel.
So I had the best of both worlds.
I had the hostel during the day because
the people there were incredible.
I met the best people ever in Sri Lanka.
Just everybody, every day
we're all on our scooters.
We have surf board racks on our scooters
where we surf in a day, where we go.
And what are we doing?
So you weren't working at this point.
You're living off of what you, I hadn't
been working since Costa Rica.
Yeah.
Cool.
And that, when that happened, um, and Sri
Lanka is similar, super cheap.
Very, very cheap.
Very cheap.
It's actually gone up very a ton, a ton
in the last few, few years,
but still very cheap relatively.
So yeah.
So you made friends with the people in
the hostel pretty quickly.
A lot of people and locals,
like, like not locals, locals.
But like you get a lot of people that are
like me or foreigners that are,
have been living there for six months.
You know, they might've
fully relocated there.
You get these traveler folks who are
there for longer periods of time too.
So when you're there for a month and a
half, you start running into the same
people that are doing what you're doing.
So I met these
amazing people, huge group.
Um, and we're just running around every
day, surfing, partying.
What town were you in?
I was in a Honga.
Okay.
It's a, so Welly Gama is
the more well-known town.
It's on the South,
Southwest coast of the island.
Um, and I was in a Honga, which is a
little bit north of Welly Gama, which
is like a very
well-known surf backpacker.
What's the body of water there?
So you're, you're the Indian ocean.
The Indian ocean.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, every fucking day
when I surfed, it's reef there.
It's all reef there too.
I mean, I saw sea turtles.
I saw sea turtles every day when I'm
surfing, just swimming right next to me.
You know, what's funny is when Nathan
told me you were
there, I got on Google maps.
I was driving around the country.
Yeah.
It was really cool.
It was, it's, it's beautiful.
Um, so yeah, just hanging out there.
That's where I posted up for a little
while surfing every day, partying a shit
time, a ton of Israelis in Sri Lanka.
Israelis love Sri Lanka.
So yeah, it was just
like, are they treated okay?
Yeah.
I mean, they've got a
huge community there.
Yeah.
So again, it's like, you know, Israeli
specifically, they travel the same
pockets, they travel the same places, a
lot of Russians in
Sri Lanka again as well.
Yeah.
Um, what would you say the food?
Oh, it's like Indian food.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's curry, curry, um,
popadox, uh, very similar culture.
Right.
To India.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They get along.
I don't remember.
I think, I think they do.
I don't think the Sri Lankans like like
to be considered similar to Indians
cause they're Sri Lankans.
Like a fancy probably,
but yeah, yeah, yeah.
But they, they get along quite well.
So stay in that little area.
Yeah.
So like I said, I was fucking done.
Yeah.
I finally got to a place where the waves
were good every single day.
I rented a scooter for a week and a half.
So I, I, the farthest I went was I drove
the scooter one day.
We went to a surf competition like an
hour and a half north.
Um, so we went up and
down the coast a little bit.
Other people were doing other stuff like
going inland to the mountains to like
Ella, but I was in my
little surf town again.
I had my fucking scooter.
I had my good waves.
I had the party there.
Yeah.
I had the food there.
I had the restaurants.
I knew we were going and doing ice baths
and sauna every day.
Surfing every day.
So you can do an ice bath over in Asia
for like three bucks.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wait till I tell you when I got to got
the Bali or in
Thailand too, like how long
do you think, or how much do you think a
90 minute massage in Thailand is one of
the best massages
you'll ever get in your life?
I couldn't even guess
because I know how much I pay here.
So it's got to be like
20 bucks, $10, $5, $7.
Oh my gosh.
When I was in Asia, I got a
massage once every three days.
I would too, if it was that once.
And it's better than these, you know,
they've got like the Thai women.
I've never had some,
someone beat the fuck out of me.
I've had during the massage.
They get on the table.
They're on your back.
Yeah.
No, they're serious about it.
Like they actually
know what they're doing.
Yeah.
And that I would just go
over there and just do that.
They probably have their own technique.
Oh, for sure.
They got a Thai technique.
Yeah.
Like a Swedish massage.
That's the Thai massage.
Yeah.
The massage, the ice bath and the sauna,
that's an ideal vacation for me.
I wouldn't need to do anything else.
So this was my first kind of taste of it.
Once I was in Sri Lanka, like there's a
lot of these surf locations that
internationally, that's the vibe, right?
The surf season comes.
Everybody internationally that's a surfer
comes in travelers like me, people
who do it year after year and have houses
there, whatever it's just the surf comes.
It's really good.
How big are the waves?
Do you like 10 footers, 20s?
It's like the normal waves in Sri Lanka
were like anywhere
from three foot to like
six to eight foot.
So nothing, not crazy, but good.
Yeah.
And then the big, big days that we
surfed, like the biggest
waves that we were there
while we were there were like 12 footers.
Wow.
Okay.
Which was a big swell.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That'll hurt you.
Yeah.
It was fine.
It was really fine.
But yes, I mean, it's this whole like
holistic idea, you
know, that's how it is.
It's so great.
You just ride around on your surfboard or
your, your, your scooter going to all the
different beaches with your surfboard.
You find, look, how's
the break look today?
Okay.
Let's go check out the other one.
Let's go check out the other one.
Okay.
Hop in the water, surf for a few hours,
you know, go grab some
breakfast, go surf again.
Yeah.
Do they have yoga?
Oh yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, um, they've got
yoga everywhere you go.
You go to yoga, you don't do whatever.
So you were just Zen and out.
Yeah.
I actually, uh, I'm a
certified yoga teacher now.
Are you really?
I went back to Thailand at the end of my
travels and became a
certified yoga teacher.
You have to tell Kaya.
Yeah.
She's gotten really into yoga.
I'm, I'm yeah.
And Nathan told me about that.
You really got into it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was more into it in Denver actually.
Okay.
But I loved, I've always loved it.
It's always been great for
me, but did you hot yoga?
Uh, no.
That's actually more
of an American thing.
Is it really?
Yeah.
I told you.
I love it.
I love the way I feel.
No, it is.
It is.
It's a little, uh, it's very like us
disrespecting what
yoga is supposed to be.
I've done hot yoga for it.
I liked it a lot.
Yoga is supposed to be
about relaxing, right?
Becoming one, not having stress.
Yeah.
So yoga, yoga is actually
the Sanskrit word for union.
And it's supposed to be like the union of
the mind, body and spirit.
So like it's interesting
because yoga isn't a workout.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like yoga isn't a workout.
It's like almost a,
it's almost a religion.
It is for me.
It is.
But that's the thing is, you know, you
know how we are in America.
Let's take this commercialize it.
It's a workout.
Go go to your yoga workout.
You're so right.
Um, but no, so it was interesting.
One of my French friends, shout out
Helen, the French homie, the best.
She's actually, she's way more
interesting than me.
She's on her way back from Southeast Asia
right now, but she's going all the way
back to France without
taking a fucking plane.
So she's taking like boats and train.
She's going through China and
Russia to get back to France.
And then she signed up in
Turkey for a sailing team.
That's going to take her through the
Mediterranean degree.
Like she is a little bad ass, but alone.
She's doing all this alone.
She's been traveling alone.
She actually got yoga certified in India.
Um, and I was talking to
her a lot in Sri Lanka.
So this is kind of where like a crazy
great friend group started forming in Sri
Lanka, a lot of people that we all were
serving with each other every day, guys,
girls, doing yoga, going
to ice baths, partying.
It was all just kind of coming together
and we're, we're there.
And the next big spot
is Bali and Indonesia.
So we start kind of finding out as we're
all getting closer, all doing our thing.
Oh, about six of us are going straight to
Bali from here and about five others are
playing on going to Bali in
the months following that.
Hey, you five change your travel plans.
Let's all go to Bali with each other.
And we actually just rented villas, like
10 to 12 person massive villas for like
our budget because we had a very wide
range of individuals.
I mean, some of these people were 20 year
old Germans who had just finished high
school and they were
traveling before uni.
Some of these people were like me.
Some of these people were, you know, it
was all across the board.
One of them was an
Irish dude I'm friends with.
He's fucking 19 years old.
Like he started, I met him in Sri Lanka.
He came to Bali, but we got this group of
amazing people who
were all doing the same
thing. We're all just traveling where,
you know, there was a
Norwegian guy, a UK guy,
an Irish guy, a few Germans, me.
And we then, you know, we leave Sri Lanka
and we go all to Bali with each other.
Yeah.
And we start renting out
villas with each other in Bali.
That's cool.
So instead of staying in hostels, yeah,
we just look at these
massive fucking villas
with like six or seven bedrooms and
massive pools and we're
getting them for like 15,
20 dollars a night.
Wow. Each obviously.
Yeah. Yeah. But still.
So geez, you guys all got along.
No, no weird shit.
No weird shit.
It was really, really good.
Drama free.
Yeah. I mean, there was a little bit of
bullshit, but you know how it is when you
get a bit of people, we're
all just razzing each other.
And, you know, it got to the point where
like, you know, we figured out that, you
know, nobody was nobody was hooking up
with each other at this point.
We're all like friends.
So you know how it gets when there's a
bunch of guys hanging out with a bunch of
girls and they're not hooking up.
The guys start treating the girls like
sisters and giving them so much shit.
They're like, fuck you guys.
We don't even want to hang out with you.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
It literally got it literally
got to that point where, yeah.
You know, we'd been doing the villas for
like a month at this point.
Um, and some of the girls were like,
we're going to go back
to hostels for like a
week or two, just to get away from you.
And we're all like, we're
all like, what the fuck?
We've got the best thing in
the world going on right now.
And the girls were
like, no, fuck you guys.
Like we're over your shit.
They're like, they're like, all the other
guys are way nicer to us.
And we're like, yeah, cause
they're trying to fuck you.
It's like, it's like,
we're, we're being real with you.
Like we're giving you shit.
We're fucking around you.
We're like, Oh, you're, you're the guys
that you met at the hostel for one night
or for being nicer to you than we are.
We're like, Oh my God, there's no way.
Like there's no way they are.
That's hilarious.
But yeah, it was, that's so funny.
That was really like, and Bali was my
favorite place by far.
It's, I want to move back there.
It's fucking
I heard it's beautiful.
Is it absolutely as beautiful as everyone
says, the waves are
the best in the world.
Indonesian people, best
culture, the island itself.
So amazing.
It's the perfect amount of Western
influenced culture with, with.
There's a Muslim population to the,
they're mainly Muslim.
Yeah.
So how's that?
How's that working for them?
Sounds like it's working fine.
Like, honestly, you kind of find out a
lot of these Asian countries are Muslim.
Yeah, that's yeah.
That's what I mean.
Yeah. Cause I mean, cause Buddhism, they've got
a lot of Buddhism there as well.
Um, which I love the
Buddhism and all of that.
But the thing with Buddhism is you can be
Buddhist and also have a religion, you
know, and Buddhism is a little bit more
relaxed where if you look at all of the
major religions of the world, they're
kind of the ones that tell you, like
Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they're
telling you like, this is what you have
to believe, right?
So especially with Buddhism, they've got
a lot of Buddhism there, but you
know, um, Muslim Islam is kind of, uh,
taken over most of the Asian countries.
Yeah, even in Thailand, most of the, most
of the people there are Islamic as well.
But no, it was, I mean, that's kind of
when it hit that sweet spot.
And also where the girlfriend comes into
play full circle, one of those weddings
in America, Bailey and Pierce is wedding.
You guys know Pierce.
Yeah.
A girl that I hit it off with at one of
those weddings, I was like, Hey, you
should come visit me in Asia.
So she actually had the
balls to come fly out to Bali.
Wow.
So in the middle of me doing my world
travels and meeting all of these
fucking people, cause she was planning to
come to Bali before I knew I was with all
of these people traveling from Sri Lanka,
surfing with them every day, living the
dream, we're all
hanging out with each other.
Yeah.
She now is coming to Bali to hang out
with me, a guy who
she had one big weekend
with, um, and then now there's this whole
group of people as well.
Right.
And she came in and she
was amazing, super seamless.
Everyone loved her.
It was so much fun.
All this amazing stuff.
Um, so she was there the first two weeks,
um, and then left, but that's awesome.
That is really awesome.
Yeah.
So it was, but that was like, this was
the literally when we were in Bali and
after we left Sri Lanka, this group, what
we did so many people just kind of like,
like for me, I was planning the rest of
my travel and everybody was kind of like,
we're not going to eat this.
We're like, this is
just so good right now.
We're like, we're staying in villas in
Bali with a group of people that
we're all getting along so well.
Yeah.
We're just fucking surfing every day.
Like I had a full routine.
I was going to the gym every day with one
of my Irish buddies.
We'd wake up, we'd go
surf, we'd get breakfast.
We maybe surf again.
We'd go to the gym.
Then we go out at
night to these amazing bar.
Like it was just, and everything's so
cheap and, um, and the rules and laws are
different.
So like I'm riding around on my scooter
everywhere with no shoes and no helmet
and no shirt everywhere I go.
And that's totally fine.
No one cares.
Fuck.
Yeah.
That's good.
Like the rules over there is as long as
you're not fucking with someone else or
doing something really
wrong, you'll be fine.
Like they're bygones,
let bygones be bygones.
Like, is it safe?
Yes.
Well, like, I mean, is it safe to ride a
scooter with no helmet and no shirt?
No shoes.
You know what I mean?
No, don't do not do that.
But yeah, it's safe.
It's so safe.
I feel so safe there.
And for women too.
Yeah.
Women as well.
Sri Lanka was a little, uh, I had a.
I had an incident in Sri Lanka where I
got surrounded by 10 men and a jungle
party while I was on some psychedelics
and some stimulants and got threatened
to get my ass beat, um, because again,
uh, cultural
differences, which this is real.
This is true.
Uh, they're, they're, they're not bad
people because their
culture is different.
Women in India are not treated with the
same level of respect that women
in the United States are male dominated.
Yeah.
So women in Sri Lanka, you won't even
really see Sri Lankan women out.
Um, you won't see them
out at the bars or anything.
They're not like
really allowed to go out.
And then now we have all these beautiful
Western women running around in skimpy
bikinis around there, like, so these Sri
Lankan guys are, you know, trying to go
for them, um, and it's, it's just being
done in a non-traditional
way for the Western girls.
So I had a few girls who honestly, they
did no, in no way help themselves, put
themselves in some awkward situation with
Sri Lankan guys,
asked me to help bail them
out of it, kind of be the male shield.
That happens a few times.
Sri Lankan guys see you, see you being
the guy that's helping
stop those situations.
And these Sri Lankan guys see you being
the guy who's, you know, they're dancing
with a girl and all of a sudden the girl
comes and grabs you and tries to get you
to, and then it happens
again and then it happens again.
And all of a sudden you're surrounded by
10 Sri Lankan guys in
a jungle party in the
middle of fucking Sri Lanka,
where you don't know anybody.
And they're calling you big man saying
you think you're big man.
Like you need to respect us.
You need to respect our culture.
And I'm like on some
acid and some other stuff.
And I'm just like, please
just let's let, I respect you.
Trust me, you are respected.
I'm like, oh yeah, it was totally fine.
I mean, it was, it was very, it was one
of those sobering
moments where you, I kind
of got pissed off at a lot of the girls.
Cause I was like, look, well, they set
you up a little fucked up.
Well, were the girls pretty much though,
acting on acting the way they would hear.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, they were, did they maybe
understand the severity of the situation?
They did after I explained it to them.
But before that, they, before that, they
were doing what they
would normally do here.
They thought, you know, you ask once and
it was multiple women not knowing the
string of events were correlated.
Right.
So the one thing that was correlated were
all these dudes that were trying to dance
and get with these girls and even were
dancing and making out with some of these
girls, but then when it reached a point
where the girls wanted it to stop, I was
being used as the scapegoat
to stop it and be like, okay.
Yeah.
And then all of a
sudden I get singled out.
Yeah.
And I'm just like, look fellas, I just
want to fucking dance in the woods in
Sri Lanka right now.
I want nothing to do, but I mean, that
was the only thing is, um, you know, you
just gotta be smart.
And that's what I had to tell a lot of
these younger girls I was traveling
with that were like 1920.
Yeah.
So I'm like, look, we're
living the dream right now.
It's incredible.
You're at this hostel meeting all these
cool people and every single night
there's a different party and you go to
it and you're having
the fun and blah, blah,
blah, but then boom, all of a sudden.
You're you realize that you're a thousand
miles away from home and you're in a
different culture where like you've got
to realize what you're doing.
Like you can't just like, like that
doesn't fly certain places.
Right.
You know, women aren't necessarily
allowed to normally just be like, Oh, not
say no, but you know, like it's different
and you're not necessarily an equal here.
You're not an equal, right?
They're not respected.
You're not respected the same way that
you would be respected in, you know,
Europe or, you know, the United States,
like you're not, and it's just, that was
the big thing we talked about because we
love so many of the Sri Lankan guys.
It was really more about just like,
they're all so, um, such amazing people.
It's just about the education aspect of
it, because how do you, how do you
expect, you know, if that's their culture
and that's the way
things have been forever.
Like, you know, let's be real here.
Like, you know, me too.
And respecting women
kind of just happened here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just all of a sudden be like, Oh, we
changed it four years ago.
You guys have got to be right.
Yeah.
So it's very, yeah.
I mean, I think, but probably a lot of it
goes along with, um, their culture and
also their religion, I
would assume too, right?
I mean, it all, it all, you know, like,
you know, so going there as a woman, you
really should educate yourself as much as
possible on the customs, if you're going
somewhere, you know, yeah, look, look, as
anybody male or female, right?
Look, but women have a different
experience than men, wherever they go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll put it this way.
You know, here we have freedom of speech.
If you go to fucking China, right.
And you want to go
exercise your freedom of speech.
Yeah.
Be prepared to maybe get
detained by the Chinese government.
Yeah.
Like it's not the same rule book.
You're not playing by the same rule book.
Learn the rule book of
where you're going to play.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like I respect and love
women more than anybody.
Like I think they're my equals.
I'm all of that.
But like if we're in fucking Sri Lanka,
don't get mad at me that Sri
Lanka is a different rule
book than where you're from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now that's important to know, especially
like that's really on them to
educate themselves before they go.
So they were lucky to have
you and that you were there.
It was, it was, it was all there.
I don't think anything would
have gone wrong at any point.
Like I said, they're mostly good guys.
They just don't know that they're being
too aggressive, but yeah, no, so that was
good, but Indonesia, Thailand, there's
more Asian, more back towards Asia.
Not as much India influence.
Like that was like, literally I'm not
joking anywhere I was at no matter what
the situation I felt safer
than when I was in the U S.
Yeah, that's cool.
That's cool.
And Bali, what would you say if you're in
Bali, you were in that one area or did
you venture out at all?
So Bali is a very large island, but I did
stay in the same area
for like two months.
I went and did some other stuff.
Yeah.
But Bali for me, again, like I just
wanted to surf every single day.
Yeah.
And I was in Uluwatu, which was like the
best area for surfing.
So it was just like non-stop every day.
We're going surfing.
And then we had the spas
and we had the going out.
Right.
And it was just like, I
literally got so familiar.
I would, I would, didn't need my GPS.
Like after a month, I was just riding
around within anywhere within like 45
minutes I could get to without GPS.
So with Bali, it's, it seems like it was
more about the experience than
going and seeing things.
It was more about experiencing Bali and
being there and
present, completely present.
Like I was like meeting, like, I mean, I
was like fully local and towards the end.
Like I knew it was, it was
not mainly Indonesian people.
It was morally Western folks who had
transported there, but like we're
living the same lifestyle
and we're fully living in Bali.
Like I had my friend group that was like
living there, you know, I was like fully
immersed and I, it was
just the greatest lifestyle.
That feels like your theme though.
It's not like you just
roll in as a tourist.
You're immersing yourself in.
No, I like to.
I like to, Singapore maybe, right?
Yeah.
I like to immerse.
I like to.
You get behind the scenes.
You see what's going on.
What's going on.
It was like the same.
That's, that's what I
liked about Costa Rica.
You know, you're, you're there long
enough to start going to the same spots.
You start seeing this, like you start
seeing the same people when you surf, you
get out of the water, you go up a beer.
Oh, I see that.
I've seen that group of people here for
the last three weeks.
Maybe they live here.
Maybe they're not just travelers.
You start talking to each other.
Yeah.
Oh, where are you from?
So it's just, I like
it more because you get.
You, you, there is that like touristy
bounce in, bounce out group, which
I've been a part of before, but you don't
get into the local group.
You just stay in that like, Hey, you're a
tourist go party with tourists.
Like we don't want to party with you guys
because this is where we're
living for three months or
this is where we live full time.
Like we've got our friend
group here and our routine here.
Yeah.
Um, one thing, um, we
haven't talked about his music.
I know you're a big music.
Yeah.
How was the music scene as
you were traveling around?
Yeah.
I mean, look like everywhere that I went
with partying now, like from
electronic standpoint, you're going to
get that like party house
music, techno music.
Yep.
So, but like from a live music
perspective, yeah,
you, it goes pretty dry.
Like, I mean, you, I saw, so like
Thailand has some really
good live music and they
really like recreating like American
style, like rock and roll.
And they're good too.
So I saw some live music in Thailand, but
yeah, it, it, and you
saw the music festival.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's, it's more
like live music out of bar.
You're not going to
concerts as much as much.
So, um, but then again, like Bali, like
you, you get some,
some really big concerts
there because it's
one of the bigger spots.
Wow.
That's interesting.
So the language there, is it English?
So they have, uh, so
they speak a lot of English.
Um, but in English is like predominantly
kind of all these places.
Okay.
It's what everybody like lands on.
It's like, okay.
You know, all the Europeans, they kind of
speak English pretty well.
Most people internationally
speak English pretty well.
Yeah.
So like, that's kind of what gets.
Spoke.
So it seems like you're only spoken.
Yeah.
It seems like your only real maybe loss
in translation
moments could have happened
in Morocco, but you had Ali with you.
But other than that, you
could get by on English.
Yeah.
And you could even, I mean, especially
with the translators
on the phone nowadays.
That's true.
That's true.
Um, yeah.
And you can always find somebody that
speaks English in these places.
Maybe like Helen, like I was talking
about, she has some not
worries, but like there
are going to be some places like in
Russia and China where
like not a single fucking
person will speak a like an English and
like that's just the way it goes.
And then that's where she'll use the
translator, basically.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh no, she just kind of won't
speak to anybody to be fair.
Like they won't even get it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then what about the food in Bali?
Oh, so good.
It's the perfect mix.
Like I said, they've got, uh, so like the
local food is like, you know, they've got
me go to rain me, qua, which is like
noodles and chicken,
you know, like kind of
like a sea, like, you know, they've got
seafood, like soup, like very, what you
would think of kind
of like Asian cuisine.
Um, but then they've got so much good
Western food over there because it's so
Bali's Westernized in the sense where
like it's got the most
besides Thailand's got
a lot of it, but Bali's got like, you
feel like you can be
very, I don't want to
say be Western, but like, Oh,
let's go to a breakfast cafe.
That's like, right?
Like eggs Benedict that
like, you can get a burger.
Oh, burgers, Italian food, Mexican food.
Like they've got it all.
Yeah.
So really, really good food there.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
It seems like everywhere you went.
I mean, there aren't any negatives.
No, it's absolutely.
I love Asia.
And you just had such a positive
experience everywhere you went.
Was that your last stop?
No.
So I capped it off with, uh, I went back
to Thailand to an
island coping gone and I
went to a month long
yoga teacher training.
That's what Nathan was telling me about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This was like a total switch up because I
went fully, uh, this is when I quit
nicotine.
I was very much smoking cigarettes,
vaping, doing all of that the whole time.
Uh, so when I went to the yoga retreat,
first of all, it was all vegan food,
vegan buffet.
What, what made you do this?
What was your motivation?
I just personally like yoga and, uh, one,
you can get a much more
authentic experience over there.
Two, it's incredibly cheap.
So for 2000 euros, I got like to go to
this retreat for a month, which
included my housing and
three meals a day at a buffet.
So for two and the certification.
So unlimited food, housing for a month
and the yoga teacher
training for 2000 euros
in Thailand, where
it's very like authentic.
Wow.
Um, so yeah, like I just
kind of had a month left.
I had been doing the surf
thing for like four months.
Still.
And I was kind of just like, look, you're
either going to just keep surfing.
I was looking at like Philippines and
going to the Shigao.
Yeah.
Um, I was like, you, you like switch it
up a little bit, you know, like go change
the vibe.
This is something you really want to do.
You'll always be super happy.
You did it.
You'll have the certification.
You'll get the knowledge.
It was just great last
month before I came home.
I really did.
Like I, I didn't have a phone.
Look, Oh my God.
Yeah.
My phone kept fucking
breaking over there too.
I had to get, I didn't have a phone in
Sri Lanka for 18 days.
Wow.
It was the greatest days of my life.
It was incredible on my scooter.
No phone, no nothing.
I bet.
But anyways, so I, I, you know, I get
back, I go there and
it's just a total switch,
switch up vegan, gave up coffee, gave up
alcohol, didn't throw up weed.
So like, I just did a cleanse.
Yeah.
And I, you know, was at the yoga teacher
training and then it was pretty much did
that.
It was absolutely incredible.
What's recommended to everybody.
It was like a reset.
Yeah.
Flew back from Thailand all the way to
Southern California.
Wow.
And you have family there.
You said, yep.
And I was staying with my aunt, my
girlfriend came out.
She wasn't my girlfriend yet.
She flew back out there, made her my
girlfriend in California.
She met the family.
Now we're back in the States and to make
it all full circle, I leave in another
week to go to burning
man again for two weeks.
Oh, nice.
So, so you have to tell us, okay.
So how long was that trip?
So I left Costa Rica in November.
Of 23 of 23.
Yeah.
And I returned to the U S in July.
Wow.
So you really just got back.
I just got back.
Yeah, cool.
A month ago.
So how was the acclimation
to being back in America?
Like the reinsertion.
Yeah.
It's been interesting.
The first two weeks were, I mean, easy.
I was staying in my aunt's beach house in
Southern California while she was in
Hawaii with my girlfriend who I hadn't
seen in two and a half months.
Yeah.
Not working still just surfing every day.
Um, I'd say now is when it's gotten a
little bit more weird.
I mean, I've got burning man coming up,
but I don't want to go back to corporate.
Um, I just, I kind of despise corporate a
little bit right now.
Um, I just, I, I think, uh, I I'm, I'm
very, I like being a genuine person.
I think that there's some things in life
that you just, you know, live by.
And I think corporate's almost like a
veil for people to act
like pieces of shit and
have kind of like a,
it's for the business.
No, I know.
Oh, it's just business.
Yeah.
I just, I just treated that person like
dog shit and lied to them, but it's just
business and I'm like,
um, it's kind of fucked up.
Is that like, is that where we're just,
we're just going with that?
Like we're just going to treat each other
like shit, work ourselves to death and
just say it's just business.
I'm like, so I don't know.
I'm not looking to hop back into
corporate, but getting back to the point,
it's like, it's a little interesting
coming back now, you
know, with the girlfriend.
Well, did you go from California to here?
I went from California to
Denver to Atlanta to here.
Okay.
Uh, that's been like the last month you
basically, yes, California two weeks,
Denver, like three or four days, Atlanta,
three days back here for like a week.
And then now I'm taking the train to
Tampa and then burning
man, and then back to
Denver to be permanently in Denver for
the time being, while I figure everything
else out, what it's looking like right
now is it's going to
be a full ski season in
Denver.
I'm honestly at this point just stoked to
like be in the same
location for two weeks
and not have to, to move very
fortunately, but
unfortunately my mom's 60th next month.
So they just planned a 60th at the
breakers in September.
So then right after fucking burning, man,
I've got to hop on another flight.
And I'm literally just like, all I want
to do is sit on my girlfriend's couch and
watch fucking house of dragons.
I haven't seen it yet.
I won't try anything.
Is she based in Denver?
Yeah.
So that's where
you're going to be staying.
She's got a house in Denver.
Bad little, little, excuse me, baby.
Bitch, she's bad.
Bitch.
She's got her house.
That's awesome.
She works at Deloitte.
So she's, she's great.
And she's got a place.
So works out really well for me.
And I'm looking at some
opportunities right now.
Um, selling land in
Costa Rica as one of them.
Um, there was, I really ultimately like
life goal after that whole trip, open up
a place on the beach, it's got a
restaurant, um, co-working
kind of vibe, but also like
yoga studio with ice bath sauna.
You kind of saw a lot of these places
internationally and I
want to do this in Bali.
That makes sense.
There's a market.
It's a huge market.
You've seen it in different countries.
And cool.
Yeah.
You want to do that in Bali?
I would love to do that in Bali.
Um, over Costa Rica, Costa Rica is
logistically easier.
Yeah.
Four hours flight.
Yeah.
Always tough.
Yeah.
But so are you, do you have the travel
itch out of your system right now?
Are you ready to settle a little bit?
I'm ready to settle
right now with the travel.
It's just never gone.
Yeah.
You just can't, once you see the world
like that and you see
how easy, not easy, but
like, it's so doable, right?
So doable, you know?
Yeah.
Um, you know, I, I'm, I'm looking forward
to the next thing,
but I'm going to settle
for a little bit.
Would you ever consider
taking time and traveling America?
I've done a lot of America.
I mean, I feel like
you've covered it pretty much.
I mean, I haven't covered it all, but
I've driven cross
country like three times.
Okay.
Yeah.
So you, yeah, I love it, but fuck the, if
you're going to take the time, in my
opinion, with the exchange rate, you
know, like once you get over to Asia.
That dollar's pretty good right now.
Like I could, I mean, in Bali, like I
went back right now.
I could probably, everything included
housing, partying, food.
I could live a very comfortable, happy
life for a thousand to $1,500 a month.
Wow.
So like you take $10,000, you can go have
yourself a year in Bali.
If you're living like me, you know, I'm
27 and you know, I'm not, I'm not my
own, so they're probably going to be
doing a little bit nicer stuff than I am.
But like, if you're living like Nate and
I want to live, like you kind of just.
Yeah, no, it sounds amazing.
So real quick, give us a
little synopsis of Burning Man.
Like what is that experience?
Oh, Lord.
That is the craziest experience ever.
And I think the most interesting thing is
it gets correlated to music a lot, which
it is, it is a music, but
it's so much more than that.
Just like from the art to the
community to the experience.
It really is just a, it's, I forget
exactly how they
describe it, but it's like a
community that comes together for two
weeks and like it's an operating city,
essentially like it's, it really is.
Will you be there the full two weeks?
Yeah, I'm going in early to help set up.
Oh, wow.
So you're going to, you're
kind of on staff and why not?
No, it's for my camp.
So there's no, we could really go down
the rabbit hole here, but we'll save that
for another time, but yeah, it's, it's
the coolest event I've ever been to in my
life and it's just out in the desert
music going on 24
seven, but there's no lineup.
So you don't know who you're seeing.
You don't know who you're watching this.
Right.
No, it's not a surprise because there's
no event like, uh,
there's, so you know how
at a normal event, the
stages are put on by the event.
The stages are put on by the attendees.
Oh, okay.
So like everything at the event is
attendee run and organized.
So you could show up at the stage, set it
up and get up there and play music.
That's gotta be some hierarchy.
There's a very, there is a large
overarching Burning Man organization that
handles a lot of the licensing with the
like government
licensing with the police,
the infrastructure, et cetera.
But the event, like the event itself, all
of the things
occurring inside of the event.
That's all attendees bringing shit in,
doing their own shit, setting up their
own stages, having their own art cars,
doing all of their own stuff.
You can't buy food once you're there.
So you bring everything
and you make it there.
Can you barter food?
Food?
Well, it's a gifting type culture.
So everybody's giving,
everybody's giving shit out.
Um, you know, your, your, our camp, for
instance, has a
dinner every night for our
camp, but besides that, like I was riding
a bike around the desert one night, uh,
late night out deep in the desert.
And there was like a light off in the
distance and I like ride up to my buddy,
John, we get there and it's a fucking
wood fire pizza oven three miles out in
the middle of the desert
at 2 AM in the morning.
And there's just like a line of eight
people with their bikes parked there.
And people are just
serving pizza for free.
Oh my gosh.
All free.
Yeah.
Once you're inside.
Wow.
So it's, it's just such a unique
experience that you
probably can't really even
describe unless you go to it.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, the whole first night I went
there and I've been to a lot of music
festivals and large
events and things like that.
I was literally just scratching my head
going, how the fuck is any of this
legal and how the fuck are we allowed to
do this stuff right now?
Is it held in the same place every year?
Yeah, it's actually its own city.
So burning man got the area
in Nevada created as a city.
And a lot of the people that go to
burning man actually
are on the city board.
So there's a whole
like, do people live there?
No, no, it's only a city for two, two.
It's a, it's a literally just desert.
Wow.
It's, it's very, it's very high.
I, how it's run is beyond me.
I don't know how they do it, but it's
very like very smart, intelligent people.
Very deep pocketed.
Yeah.
Deep pocketed.
Very well connected have been putting
this on logistically for a while.
So you're going to Tampa and
flying out of Tampa to Nevada.
Yep.
For burning man.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
And then from there,
you're going to Denver.
That's it.
So you won't be here for base nectar.
New Year's Eve.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I'll make us a prize.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll see.
Keep that in mind.
It even happens.
Yeah.
Well, if that
happens, I think we're going.
Oh, well, okay.
Well, then maybe I'll have to do that.
So I don't know.
Billy strings is playing in New Orleans.
Heard you've been big on Billy strings.
We just were up in Penn State University.
Yeah.
You know, they love him in Denver.
I'm sure.
Huge.
You got to check them out.
That was one of my notes just to tell
you, check out Billy and
check out a Sam Gershman project.
Nice.
Yeah.
And Gershman, they
were out until you ride.
I don't know.
Some whenever.
Yeah.
Fucking crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They go.
They go.
I mean, literally the, the red rocks,
Billy string shows people go fucking
nuts more now we were looking at that.
Yeah.
We were looking to go to Tulsa.
Yeah.
Memphis.
But we just have scheduling.
Well, we can't do Memphis.
We could maybe do Tulsa, but Memphis, so
lacrosse, but, um, Brian
has definitely gotten the bug.
I love it.
The Billy strings.
Yeah.
But if I, I want to go to a base sector
in New Year's Eve show, I've
never been to one.
I know you guys have done it.
Yeah, we've, we've done it.
Yeah.
One more question that I'll let you go.
How does your family handle all your
traveling or feel about it?
They, they're, they love it.
I think they instilled at me from a young
age, kind of travel, go, go,
do your thing.
And yeah, I don't think they ever thought
it would reach this, but you know,
they're, they're a whole thing.
As long as I'm not like an idiot and I'm
not like running on zero or running
on E and then coming back and being like,
mom, dad, you know, I need help.
As long as I'm self
sustaining, they don't give a shit.
That's awesome.
They're like, do their thing.
That's awesome.
That's been good.
Listen, we can't thank you enough for
giving so much of your time to
tell us about your experiences.
Cause it's so fascinating.
Yeah.
It's awesome to hear, you know, from
someone your age, having these
experiences and your perspective on them
and your world as you're going
through it all.
So,
yeah, I heard, uh, I heard Matthew
McConaughey say, uh, a while ago, you
know, he wanted to look back on his life
and really enjoy the picture he painted.
So, um, uh, I had to take a step away
from corporate for a little bit and
say, fuck it, right.
Want to look back and be
able to kind of say, I did it.
I did all this fun shit.
So if you can do it, a guy who's been in
corporate for 30 years,
don't fucking go corporate.
Figure a way out to, to not do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the advice to all kids, Nathan and
Kaya as well as don't do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You may have to, you have to dabble at
times, but hop in and hop back out.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you're definitely
painting your own masterpiece.
So thank you.
Listen, if you, in another year, I'd love
to have you back in here, hear about
this year, every time you come back to
book, if you've hit five or 10 cities in
between, we want to hear about it.
It can't be one or two.
That's way too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Don't worry.
You have to top this.
Don't worry.
It'll be a series.
Good.
All right, guys.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening.