Hello and welcome to this episode of Tripology.

It's the only backpacking show where 2 best friends call each other up and talk all about travel.

I'm Alan and I'm here with the ever overlooked Adam.

As you may have noticed, guys, if you're watching this podcast, I'm three different backgrounds into three different episodes.

So you may well deduce from that that I am in fact on the road.

I'm travelling around in my van.

I've just got back from a three day, 65 kilometer hike.

My legs feel like they're about to explode.

And today I drove 450 kilometers in my van.

But if I can be here, so can you.

That's right here on a Tuesday.

Best day of the week these days.

Good old Tuesday.

I hope that you're accruing lots of stories, Adam, to tell on podcast in subsequent weeks.

The stories of being accrued.

Mate, I'm writing notes.

I'm writing mental notes and literal ones on a pad.

Experiences are being had.

There have been some mishaps, there have been some failures.

There have been some funny moments.

There have been some amazing achievements.

And I am only two weeks into what is going to be a 2 1/2 month, maybe even a three month trip.

So loads of stuff to talk to you about.

I do have some funny things, well I mean one of them is quite funny, the other one wasn't.

2 little stories in the Patreon section, so I'll put a link in the description to the lost and found.

One of them involves me being stopped by a very nice police officer, might I say, and the other one involves my windscreen and a rock the size of a baseball.

Baseball sized rock.

Well, I think what we'll do is let you live out your adventure and then you can give it to us like a chronicling story once you're off of the road.

Because essentially, Adam, I've been travelling pretty intensely for the last month and a half.

And the stories that I accrued whilst travelling rapidly leaving my brain and being exchanged with new ones such that we simply have to discuss them with quite a lot of immediacy so that I don't forget.

Them no, I think that's fair.

I think that's fair.

I think we should do things in order.

I think that stories are better when they're fresh, when they're current and you know on on last weeks episode you did tease that you were going to Brunei.

So it's absolutely something we all want to hear about mate.

Yeah, I finished seeing the Gingerist of Apes.

My eye was healed up and I decided that I was going to go to Brunei and I decided that the bus wasn't for me because it's ever so long, ever so many passport stamps at the same price.

Didn't want to fly.

So I looked at ways to do it and there's only one way that you can get to Brunei without flying or taking a bus.

It's the ferry.

Now the ferry only leaves on the weekends.

Oh, interesting.

And you'll be pleased to know, but my completion of Kinabatangan River and seeing the orangutan finished on the weekend, so it was perfect.

No problem at all.

Take a bus back to Kota Kinabalu and begin my journey to Brunei.

Now.

I asked people all over Borneo, have you been to Brunei?

What did you think of Brunei?

Would you recommend Brunei?

And I got the same response from almost everyone.

Can you guess what the response might have been?

I can because I'm what I'm doing really is thinking about what I would say in this situation.

Now, really what I would say is surely everywhere you can have a good time, It depends on your experience.

It's completely subjective, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But if you've met people that have actually been and have still said that it's not worth going, that's a bit of a shame.

Maybe that was it mate.

That's why I.

Heard Adam.

I heard unanimously people say Brunei is Asia's most boring country.

I heard them say there is no point in going to Brunei unless you're counting countries.

Oh, Oh my goodness.

Yeah, I know it's scathing.

How dare someone say that to you?

Counting countries?

You of all people counting countries?

I said I'm thinking about going to Brunei.

They went if you want to.

If you want to add another country, see a list then go, but there's not much to see or do there.

You said, yeah, that's why I'm in this game.

Yeah, I'm just trying to get to 197 or whatever it is.

I mean, that is a strange phenomena, isn't it?

I was listening to a podcast the other day, actually, another travel show about how the weird competitiveness of counting countries it almost, it's so it's so reductive to have to have to celebrate having been to every country if some of those have been for just a matter of hours.

Yeah, I think, I mean it's a completely different take on what we think travel is, I suppose.

Absolutely.

I, I actually know that there's some people that count countries including their stay in airports during layovers, which is so catastrophically bonkers that maybe that's why we've built this whole podcast because we've built this as a platform.

And if right now I am communicating to someone who has ever told anyone that they've been to a number of countries and that number has been inflated by airport stays, you need to go back and do the maths because you ain't been here as many as you say you have.

And it's almost like cultural appropriation to say that you have.

The best thing about Bruno is the airport.

Did you hear anybody said that?

Yeah.

Oh, oh, you took a ferry, did you?

Well, can you count it then?

So.

Sorry I.

Had all this in my mind Adam, but I thought F it all.

I'm going to find out for myself.

I'm going to go with an open mind.

I will say that it all all that was to persuade me that I didn't need such a long time in Brunei.

I'll give myself breathing room maybe 3 full days in Brunei.

I did the old AI Google what to do in Brunei in three days.

Build me itinerary and it did say on the first day do this, on the second day, do this on the third day.

Just prepare for your outbound trip and relax.

So I thought, OK, three days probably is enough to get an overview of the country.

Go back to Malaysia early.

Yeah, nice one.

I thought on the third day ask yourself some as extension questions about why you've ended up here with an extra 24 hours.

But first I had to actually get there mate.

And a lot of people have told me that the journey is as important as the destination.

And that cannot be more true than when you're taking a ferry.

You can do the ferry to Brunei from Kota Kinabalow in one day.

You can zip to lab one in the morning and then zip to Brunei in the evening.

And then you're there one day you've ferried all the way across and and you're you're in the country of Brunei.

But I thought Lab 1 sounds interesting of his own merit.

Why not ferry to Lab one in the morning, spend 24 hours in label one nice, and then make it to Brunei the next day?

A little bit of slow travel.

OK.

Was it a hop on, hop off?

Was it a question of money?

You have to buy 2 separate tickets?

How?

How's that working?

It's going to be the same price anyway.

In it it's two separate tickets.

You got to buy them.

One to lab 11 to Brunei.

Split it up.

Now Lab 1 is interesting and famous because it's duty free and it's close to Brunei.

Brunei, of course, a country where alcohol is entirely prohibited.

Lab one just a short for a ride away and alcohol is tax free.

Nice.

Duty free, my favorite kind of duty.

So I mean, what does this mean?

Then you're having a bit of a knees up on the cards before you have to go dry.

Nope, as we know, I don't like to drink with strangers, so I didn't partake in Labuan, but I was there for historical interest.

Because Labuan was occupied by the Japanese in World War 2 between the years of 1942 and 1945.

It became the seat of Japanese occupation and also the seat of the Allied forces confronting of the Japanese during World War 2.

And it was the site of the Japanese surrender in Borneo.

So there's a lot of interesting World War 2 historical sites, including the the place where the surrender was issued.

There's a memorial there and there's also a war cemetery with over 1000 and Australian and British troops that gave their lives during World War 2 for the cause of freedom.

Adam.

My God, did you know all this going in, or was that something that ChatGPT or any other resources kind of coughed up when you did a bit of research?

No, Online you'll hear a lot about the Duty Free, less so about the World War 2 significance, but it's very apparent when you're there.

That is a place of great historical interest.

And it was of course also a site of it was, you know, it was a British colony and a lot of like a mining place and there's like a lot of interesting history in Labuan.

So I I would I don't think I'd recommend it to your average traveller, but I think if you have an historical interest there is enough to do there to justify a slower roll towards Brunei.

Yeah, yeah, if you're that way inclined.

I mean, it sounds great.

It sounds like there's so much going on there, it maybe should be what better publicized perhaps for people that are interested in that sort of thing.

Maybe.

Maybe people who are would already know, Perhaps.

Well, it's in the early stages of people kind of just trying to promote itself as a place that people should go and faces some infrastructure issues as a as a part of that because there's a problem.

And this is throughout Malaysia actually, but it really was exacerbated in lab one where often times you'll get a Grab to a location.

Grab is the local ride hailing app, right?

Like Uber or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

But usually is it usually motorbikes or almost exclusively motorbikes?

In Malaysia, it can't be motorbikes.

It's illegal.

For it to be motorbikes in Malaysia, it has to be cars.

Oh wow.

OK, there's a little tidbit for you.

Yeah.

So you'll take a grab out to a place that you want to be and then often times there will be no grabs back from that place.

Oh, OK, interesting.

Interesting.

I didn't realize that.

So I was in the centre of Lab One.

I thought, oh, I'm going to go across the island to surrender point the place where the Japanese commander in Borneo lay over his surrender to the commander of the British Army.

That sounds interesting.

I'll go there.

Took a grab out.

My driver said to me, do you want me to wait for you?

And I thought, certainly not.

I would like to explore Surrender Point at my own leisure.

There's a beach there, there's a memorial place.

I'm going to just relax and then I'll hail another Grab.

You know, I've got a Salie E SIM in my phone so I can hail a Grab from anywhere, source, surrender Point and then try to get a ride back.

Nothing doing.

There wasn't any grabs around, no bus routes.

That's really strange because you're not even somewhere that isn't a tourist destination.

I mean, it's a it's a point of interest in lab one anyway.

I mean, I probably was the only tourist that day.

Oh, fair enough.

No, I just mean it's funny that it's on the way to Brunei anyway, just logistically things pass through it and of it's own merit.

It's actually worth seeing people I guess there's loads of people that just pass through.

But what?

What were you doing then that you just well.

So just to give you context on that, there was one other tourist on my ferry to Lab 1 and they were going to Brunei that same day.

I don't think many people stop in that one.

Right.

OK.

I mean, it sounds like a bit of a shame.

So what you're doing then you you're in surrender point.

Well, what would you do?

I I've hitchhiked in Malaysia before so I'd probably stick out a thumb, see how far I go.

Tried that.

I, I, I tried that and, and normally that is quite successful in Malaysia.

I actually have a story that I'd love to tell in the Patreon section about me hitchhiking in Malaysia.

So I tried that for a little while.

Ultimately I pretty much just had to walk halfway until I was close enough within the ground pool to to get back to my hotel.

No, which is the whole time.

You know what I used to do when we were together in Pakistan?

Just like walk backwards with a big smile.

Yeah, with the with the thumb out.

Just surely someone's going to pick me up after 45 minutes.

You're thinking this is.

There were so few cars mate, not even that worked.

God, that's a bit of a shame.

What sort of distance are we talking then?

I reckon I probably walked for an hour.

And then you were inside the catchment area.

Yeah, and I kept on putting the pin, you know, you can set your pick up destination.

I kept on putting it ahead of me and I was like I'll be there in 15 minutes.

Well, maybe that's in the ground.

Pool.

That's so funny.

There's no like small towns or anything like that in the vicinity where the surrender point is.

The whole thing is a small town mate.

Yeah, weird.

OK.

But there you go, that's Lab 1.

I think worth it was a point of interest for me to be there just from historical and cool to see like war cemeteries outside of Europe, you know, I went to the battlefields when I was a history student at college and stuff.

So it was really good to to, I wasn't good.

I suppose it was tragic.

There was 1000 dead bodies and graves that were paid for by the Commonwealth.

But it was, you know, it was of interest to see that and it gave me some perspective about the the wide reaching effects of war and conflict.

I think to often being a European, you kind of think of the World War 2 from a very Eurocentric perspective, so it was interesting.

Yeah, that's amazing.

I would have liked to been there with you because you are good with stuff like that, whether it's religion or history and that sort of stuff.

You are such a great person to to be walking around and experiencing those things with.

So I'm glad you got to do that before you went off to Brunei, where I imagine there was very little of that.

Yeah.

I mean, let's talk about Brunei.

That's next.

I got up in the next morning to get a ferry.

But first, let's engage in a little bit of capitalism.

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Yeah.

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OK, so I take the ferry to Brunei.

What a wonderful place.

And I quickly, I mean, I realise straight off the bat that this is going to be logistically a little bit of a nightmare when I'm the only tourist on the ferry.

Everyone gets off the ferry.

Yeah, yeah.

It goes through security like customs, you know, they have to announce if they're bringing any alcohol for personal consumption because it's illegal to buy or sell alcohol in Brunei.

Lots of people go to the customs queue.

I'm first out because I'm like, I've got nothing to declare, baby.

And all the Brunei people, the only reason they're on that ferry was because they did have some stuff to declare.

Interesting.

What's someone from Brunei called?

An alcoholic.

I don't know what it is.

If you do know, send us a message on Instagram.

A tropology podcast.

A Bruneian is what I'm going to go with.

I think Bruneian is is nice.

Yeah.

And if it's not, that probably should be.

But I always get confused because someone from Leeds is called a Leodenzian.

That's amazing.

You know someone from Manchester?

Mancunian.

So sometimes they just break free from the constraints of what you would think it would be like a Londoner, yeah.

Yeah, it's I didn't tell you, but I was, I was a couple of weeks ago I bumped into someone who had a very similar accent to to you and and your family.

That's.

Interesting because I don't have an accent.

And, and then the the the lady that I was talking to, she asked me where I was from and I said, oh, I'm just South of London or whatever.

I said, are you from Stockport?

She went, yeah, what?

How did you know that?

I was like, oh, my best mate's from Stockport.

So kind of fine-tuned the accent.

She was like, Oh my God, that's amazing.

That's the first time anyone's ever pinned it.

I was like, oh.

That's lovely.

Well, tell her thank you from me.

Thank you from me.

That's funny.

Anyway, brutal eye.

Much more interesting.

Sorry.

So there I am.

Then everyone goes out of the ferry terminal and immediately gets in their own private cars that had been waiting for them all in the car.

Park Love it.

Rollers, Bentley's, you name it.

Now I'm in a situation because Grab ain't working in Brunei, mate.

Everyone's on a private car.

I say, oh, excuse me, ticket officer, I wouldn't, There wouldn't happen to be a boss or something that I could take into Brunei.

My host, my hostel is sort of quite central.

She's looking to take a boss.

He went no, everyone has private cars in Brunei so.

Oh dear.

I went, oh, like, how would I, how would I get to the city centre?

He said.

Oh, you'll have to hire a a private.

Car Oh yeah, wow and.

I said, OK, well you know, how do I do that?

He said we have a a app here called Darts that people use.

I said, OK, he said you can pay me to use the Wi-Fi here and then you can download Dart and then there's no cash machine here.

So you'll have to top it up with some credits, the DA app, and then use that to negotiate with the driver to take you where you need to go.

So it was a bit of a nightmare, mate.

I was in that ferry terminal for longer than I care to admit, logistically solving the problem.

For for as cheap as you possibly could.

I know you're inquisitive and that sort of stuff.

You probably were looking for other ways or or when he told you that, were you like that's categoric.

Surely that's the only way you thought.

Surely.

You're not, you're not joking, mate.

I got on that Dart app.

I was messaging drivers.

One of them said, oh, you're quite far.

And I said, well, why don't you pick up some other people and then pay me some cash back.

And I negotiated with the driver for me to pay her all the money on the Dart app ecosystem.

But then she picked up other people and gave me some of the cash that they gave her to get the thing.

I was in the front with her like Wheeling and dealing some Brunei dollars under the dashboard.

It was great mate.

That's brilliant.

That's cool.

And the IT is the Brunei dollar is the currency, is it?

Yeah, and it's pegged to the Singaporean dollar.

Oh, OK, OK.

Which may be even higher at the moment, stronger than the British pound.

It's not, is it not?

No, no.

But it's high.

Yeah, it is high, but it's not stronger.

It's like, I think it's.

Like maybe I'm getting confused with the Kuwaiti dinar.

Maybe you are mate.

It's a common thing.

Oftentimes people have come on stuck in Brunei because they've tried to pay for something.

They've thought, oh that's a bit expensive and they go, I'm thinking of the Kuwaiti dinar fuck.

If I've got that wrong then I'll.

But anyway.

So you're already setting up businesses in Brunei?

Love to hear it.

Yes, I've got a little taxi business.

I go to the hostel, which is the most unusual hostel I've ever stayed in in my life.

It's completely self checking and instead of a series of dorm beds, each room has its own little glass.

Box which you can unlock using a key that's been placed for you if you've pre booked and then you open up your glass box and inside is just a single bed and you get inside and switch a fan on, you're sort of ensconced in this glass coffin.

Yeah, it sounds impersonal.

And is it a little bit voyeuristic?

Can you kind of have a little cheeky peek at other people?

Or wasn't, no.

Thankfully they have curtains that wrap around the glass box although.

Like a David Blaine trick or something was.

Yeah, I like to think.

Fucking David Blaine, magic trick and Bruno.

Nobody.

Exactly, man.

I like to think, you know, sometimes hostels culture changes depending on the guests staying there.

Yeah, yeah.

I like to think sometimes there's been enough people that they've gone, let's all just take our curtains down and just have a real sexy time with our boxes or naked.

Let's fill these with water and present to be fish.

Yeah, all that sort of thing make going on.

But when I was there, it was very above board, apart from the fact that consistently people struggled with the check in process.

So it wouldn't become uncommon for Chinese tourists to come in and like, knock on all the glass boxes inquiring as to how they might check in.

And I became sort of a de facto check in officer in that hostel.

And I would like relay.

I've learned quite a lot of Mandarin.

And I'd be like, Shasha, let me check you in, baby NI Hao.

Give you, are we charging money for that as well?

I mean, how does that sort of work?

You know your time costs something, right?

Yeah, I was laundering the money that I made through the taxi business illegally funnelling that through the Chinese tourists and making a pretty penny.

But let me just give you a quick rundown to Brunei, mate, because let me tell you that I disagree with the opinion that Brunei isn't interesting.

I think Brunei is incredibly interesting.

People said there's nothing to do, there is some stuff to do, but I do agree there ain't that much to do.

But I don't think the interesting thing about travel is doing things all the time.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

So from a a touristic sort of attraction, monuments and all this kind of stuff.

You're going to go to the Omar Ali Moss, which is a really beautiful Moss.

You're going to go to the Royal Regalia Museum and you're going to pay a boat driver to take you down this floating village and into the mangroves where you can see proboscis monkeys, you can see crocodiles.

The village itself is 1000 years old and like all the houses are on stilts.

And it's really quite interesting to see that.

But once you've done those three things, you're probably about spent on things to do in Brunei.

You're back on chat GPC.

So Brunei for me in my head with absolutely no knowledge of the place, is it predominantly when people are talking about Brunei, they're predominantly talking about the city itself and how big, how big is the country?

Or is there loads of suburbia suburban areas around that sort of sprawling other cities that we don't really hear about?

I just feel like it's it is one of those almost in my head, correct me if I'm wrong.

Dubai esque places.

Yeah, I mean the whole country you can get from end to end in like 2 hour drive and people very much stay within the one city.

Sure.

I even spoke to one of my taxi drivers and he said that his family live like an hour away and he sees them maybe once a year because there's like no reason to leave the city.

I think what defines Brunei is that the quality of life for the people that live there seems to be exceptionally high.

You know, when you ask people, you know, sometimes taxi drivers are really good barometer for how our country's is and what it's like because.

Like the Big Mac Index?

It's a bit like the Big Mac index.

Yeah, exactly.

Often I say to taxi drivers, what's your opinion of the country?

This taxi driver said.

Everything's cheap, the wages are good, we get free healthcare and free education and gifts from the Sultan, financial gifts from the Sultan.

Life is incredibly easy here, he said.

OK.

All right.

So yeah, that sounds like a high quality of life.

So if everyone is living a good life, I mean for taxi drivers in possibly almost every other country, it must be quite difficult.

Yeah, that's why they're a good barometer, I think, because taxi drivers are like people that are working all the time, have their ear to the pulse of like what the Brunei people or whatever countries people are feeling.

They're like working men, aren't they?

And I think it was interesting to hear him say life is really easy in Brunei.

Is it quite aside from your conversation with the taxi driver, is it quite obvious to see that in the streets?

It's absolutely Chris where?

Was the last place you said was pristine, was it Baku?

Did you go somewhere in Azerbaijan that was like super clean or something like that?

Yeah, but even Baku, right?

Like in Baku, there's pedestrians walking around and it's sort of like very Dubai esque.

In Brunei, everyone is in private vehicles, everyone's driving safely.

There's like incredible order.

There's just people aren't out because it's very, very hot.

People go from air conditioned building to building, but that's juxtaposed with like really cool nature.

There's lots of botanical gardens and parks.

The river itself is cleaned religiously by a Bangladeshi team.

So it's like perfectly clean river and the whole place just is very ordered and structured in the way that that I suppose happens.

If you essentially take Malaysian culture, adding a sprinkling of its own history of monarchy and Sultan ship and all that stuff.

You give them unlimited money through the mechanism of oil and natural gas and then ban extramarital sex and alcohol.

What you end up with is something like, yeah, Brunei.

Did it feel a little bit surreal?

Yeah.

Did it feel everything?

Sort of what I'm imagining is almost Las Vegas esque, like, you know, huge marble columns.

Everything's super shiny, well manicured, well kept like.

Yeah, but again, it's Las Vegas.

If bringing drugs into the country meant the death penalty and you weren't allowed to have sex with anyone before marrying them and you weren't allowed to drink alcohol.

So it's actually really different from last.

And also, gambling's illegal.

So actually, Adam, it's almost nothing like Las Vegas in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

I mean, you have been to Las Vegas underage as well, so you're a great person to ask, yeah.

Do you have any food?

What's what's going on in Brunei?

Is it just Malaysian fair?

So this was my favorite thing about Brunei, mate, was the Gadong night market where you go suddenly and when you're walking.

It's a strange thing as a traveller to be walking down the street at night and think.

I actually think it's more likely that I'll freak out and rob someone, that it is, that I'll be robbed.

Like you're getting one of those, Oh, oh, maybe you know the name.

I don't know the name, but there's when you're in a high pressure situation, possibly someone, you know, I, I don't want to tell the example that I usually use of air.

But anyway, there there was like a sales director I used to work for and I used to have this weird thought like, I hope I don't, I hope I don't fuck anything up in in this conversation.

But even though I wouldn't, but it's like this weird anxious thought that you give space to and it spirals, you know, like if you're standing at a balcony and you think, Oh, I hope I don't jump off the balcony.

Like why?

Why would you?

But you mean like, I hope I don't just fucking rob someone now.

But it's more likely the French call it.

Lapel de vide the call to the void and yeah, you're like walking down the street in Brunei and everyone's so safe and and nice and lovely.

So you just think like, oh, in a rare turn of events, I'm the most dangerous person here.

You get to the night market and there's like, that's where everyone is.

Suddenly everyone's out of the cars.

You're in a hot, smoky night market with the best saute and, and food out of all different shapes and sizes and drinks and bubble teas and, and fried lamb and rice and all sorts of beautiful things.

I went in the night market with the strategy of I'm just going to eat what everyone else is eating.

Like I'm going to choose the most popular stand and and just queue for whatever the Brunei people are choosing to have.

Yeah, decent strategy now.

I think it's a good strategy.

I walked past some of the most interesting things on the market.

You know, they were like local Brunei, like fish, sort of fried fish, crackery things.

There was aforementioned all sorts of like grilled meats and fish and all that sort of stuff.

I've went to the longest queue I could find, queued for like it was much longer than any other queue.

I thought this has got to be the fucking best thing Brunei has to offer.

Everything else was almost immediate.

You could go and get it.

This was a a 10 minute queue.

It was for fried chicken.

Oh.

Just like in in a batter.

Yeah, just your bog standard.

No brand or anything.

It was hopefully it was still like a an uncle frying it up in some oil, was it?

But.

Yeah, it was an uncle frying it up in some oil.

But I mean, it was just, it's difficult to make that feel special, if I'm honest.

And from then on, I realised that if I was looking for quality food in Brunei, the Internet was going to be more discerning than the locals.

And it was the last time I trusted those locals with my dinner because it was just fried chicken, mate.

So I decided Gadong night market every single night.

Really cool and then what you doing like YouTube video best food Brunei that's a sort of go to of mine I.

Ended up having a little bit of everything mate, going around having all sorts of things.

There was one thing that I particularly wanted to to try in Brunei and it's kind of the one national dish of Brunei and it was very, very difficult to find.

And the only place I could find that did it did it as a set menu for two.

So I had to gorge myself in order to try this thing.

Very don't.

You couldn't like share it with someone at the back of the queue for the fried chicken.

Like mate, you're going to be for a long time and trust me, you're going to be disappointed when you get to the front.

You better go half with me on this.

Yeah I know.

Unfortunately because Brunei is so not a tourist destination, I didn't meet any other travelers to share the experience with.

But the item you'd find it really interesting mate is called Amber yet and it's the inside of a sago palm tree scooped out and mixed with hot water to make this.

Really loopy starch.

Yeah, cool.

And.

Then they use this two pronged bamboo utensil called a chandas and they're like loop it up on the stick and then dip it in different sauces and, and, and just eat the the starch.

It's a bit like tapioca starch, kind of.

It was, oh wow, really amazing.

Does it own?

Does it just taste of whatever it's dipped in?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's just like a kind of gloopy, starchy, palmy mass.

Or can it be savoury and sweet as well?

You could dip it in some sugar if you're a psychopath, yeah.

That's really cool mate.

I, I have got a question which, which maybe you're even waiting for, but do you think that your experience in Brunei was so surprisingly positive because of what people have said before?

It's very difficult for you to just go in there objectively because when you're loaded with so much negative information, people saying, you know, I really wouldn't bother.

I mean, if you, if you got literally nothing else to do in this area, you might as well.

So that's that element of surprise.

I did go in with the bias that I wanted it to be better than people said.

Yeah, definitely.

And I, but I did genuinely find that, Oh no, it definitely, it definitely isn't uninteresting for a bunch of cultural, historical reasons.

It is interesting the idea there was a country that was protectorate of the British, not colonized by the British because they understood the oil potential, The fact there's always been this monarchy, but the, the, the discovery of oil there has meant that that Sultan is now worth $50 billion and upwards.

And it's just, it's like, I think the country is culturally very, very interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

That's really cool.

So I'm going to start a new movement mate, and far from saying it's just accounting countries, I'm going to say if you haven't been to Brunei, have you really travelled?

Yeah, I like it, mate.

I like it, mate.

You got to have something about you to tell someone not to go somewhere.

And with that, that was a rough review of my time in Brunei, my journey there via Lab One.

But we have got to hear from another traveller.

Listeners of the show can go to our website, there's a link in the description and submit their own best travel story.

We'll have it for three minutes.

Here's what a listener had to say right now.

Hey guys, how's it going?

So my story happened back in 2014.

It was featured in one of my older videos but I'm going to be adding a bit more to it in this story now.

So basically me and my buddy Chris did a three-week trip.

We went to China and then went into Tibet and then we were going to see the Tibetan Everest base camp and then head into the pool and finishing Kathmandu.

That was the plan.

But after a few days in Tibet, my mate Chris got severe altitude sickness.

He ended up in hospital.

He was in a really bad way, like his blood oxygen level, which was supposed to be in the 90s, was like at 50.

So he had to have a couple of nights in hospital sort of being pumped full of oxygen and steroids and all this stuff.

But the ultimately the only way to cure altitude sickness is to get to lower altitude.

So we had to leave the tour.

So we got an ambulance back to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and whilst we're driving in the ambulance, so Chris was like oh Carl, I'm so sorry I've messed up the whole trip.

I'm like mate, don't apologize.

This is making fantastic video.

So it's all good.

But I remember like the ambulance driver, despite Chris having a problem breathing, well, he was just smoking away, like having cigarettes whilst driving an ambulance and also on his phone as well.

But we got to Lhasa, we got on the plane and you know, leaving Tibet was quite nerve wracking in the airport because the only way you can go to Tibet is on a tour.

So trying to get out the country by leaving a tour, there's all this military checks and asking why we're leaving.

And it kind of felt like that movie Argo at the end when they're trying to get out the country.

It was very nerve wracking.

But fortunately we got through, got on the plane, made it to Nepal, Chris was OK.

And then because we missed out on Everest, 18 months later, we went back to Nepal and did the Everest Space Camp track and we both made it to base camp.

It was amazing.

It was beautiful.

We completed our quest for Everest and it was all great.

I thought that was the end of the story.

But two years after that, my wife Jamie, who I haven't met yet, I don't know exists yet, she books on to do to do the Everest Space Camp track.

I did her research, finds my video, and off the back of that, three years later, she books onto my Iceland tour, which is where we first met.

So if Chris had never gotten I'll, we would have never have gone back and done the Everest Base camp trek, which means Jamie would have never have seen the video and we would never have met.

So when Jamie and I got married, we had Chris perform the ceremony for us.

And then when we're doing a thank you speeches later on in the day, I I sort of told an abbreviated version of that story and said, look, none of us would be here today if it wasn't for Chris's weak ass lungs.

So there you go.

Anyway, all the best guys and speak soon.

Chris, you altitudinous matchmaking dreamboat.

They're putting together a wonderful matchmaking situation for Carl Watson.

Carl Watson you can.

There's a link in the description to Carl's videos because he's AI mean, an exceptional traveller and videographer and a brilliant storyteller, as we've just heard.

So thank you, Carl, for sending in your tale of a trip.

Yeah, what a story.

I mean, I find it difficult to relate to that sort of thing.

I mean, you have been to the areas that they're talking about, but it's it's amazing.

I guess the take away is to when you kind of look at all the bread crumbs going backwards and using hindsight and stuff, travel and life in general and all the the network and the connections that you make, it is such a wonderful thing.

So you just even out of incredibly bad, bad tragic situations can further down the line come magical ones.

Yeah, there's a place called Namche Bazaar, which is the sort of the first hub you get to if you're starting the Everest region trek.

And there's three types of people travelling through Namche Bazaar.

You've got people going up, you got people coming back down, and you've got people who for whatever reason, had to return due to altitude sickness, and they're usually SAT sort of a bit dejected in the corner of the guest house with a cup of tea.

It's a really common thing in the Everest region to have to go back because of altitude sickness.

So perhaps Chris's lungs weren't so weak after all.

Perhaps Carl's lungs were just fairly exceptional.

Yeah, I mean, you know that I'm worried about attitude sickness, you know that I've got Nepal and of course, Tibet to explore.

So that's kind of filled me with a bit of confidence that if if in doubt, just hang around, maybe go down, don't worry about it too much, and then you can always attempt it later on.

You may even get a marriage out of it.

It's cool to see a silver lining, isn't it, that Jamie saw those videos and she was like what an interesting the guy telling this story.

He's quite good looking Any perhaps I'll get in touch and see if I can't marry him.

Yeah, really, really cool.

Thanks ever so much for the for the voice note.

Carl, we love talking to you.

We're a huge fan of your videos.

Of course Carl has an amazing way of capturing backpacking and and group travel that I don't think any other YouTube does, so go and check out his stuff.

He's certainly one of my favourites, mate, But if you the listening audience, if one of you has a story that you think rivals Carl's, or you've had your own altitudinous mishap, perhaps, why not send it in?

There's a link to Tales of a Trip Down in the description as well.

You could be on the next episode of Topology telling us about how you vomited all the way down a mountain or something similar.

Now, though, we've got to go to the Lost and Found section just for the Patriones, where Adam's got some special little stories to tell.

We'll see you all there.

We'll see you there.

Bye.