0:01

oh my gosh james

0:04

it's been a time i have been it's been a

0:06

time it has man what happened we got three

0:10

episodes in and then life just

0:12

occurred well i mean you

0:15

you have more excuse than i do i mean

0:17

mine's just work is busy and like

0:21

but then you got stuck in cambodia [Laughter]

0:25

yeah yeah i had i had a rough time so well

0:28

this episode is kind of our

0:30

it's a short episode today but it's going to be our chance to apologize to

0:34

our listeners offer some explanation and

0:36

and also just catch up you know we're not going anywhere the podcast is back

0:40

it was just a lot of things happened

0:42

in the last month and uh

0:45

and that is what it is so

0:48

i guess well let's just go ahead and i'll start

0:51

us out and we'll just do this um

0:53

it's gonna be a short episode today maybe no adventures in the news but just

0:57

kind of us talking about what we've been up to recently and catching up on some

1:00

business so

1:03

here we go [Music]

1:19

you're listening to season 2 episode 4

1:22

of the attempt adventure podcast a

1:24

podcast all about travel finding

1:26

adventure every day and seeking out adventurous ways to make life more

1:30

interesting from bangkok thailand i am

1:32

your host michael derosiers joined as

1:35

always by my co-host james barrett

1:38

currently living in boulder colorado

1:41

well james it's been some time we've got a lot to catch up on

1:45

[Laughter] before we start before we start on that

1:48

i do have a few orders of business i think that we should we should talk

1:52

about first is the monthly challenge

1:54

so i did mine i admit i did it very last

1:57

minute i did it in cambodia

2:00

while i was there but i was able to wake

2:02

up early on the last day of march

2:04

to see the sunrise at the royal palace

2:07

area which was really nice so it was definitely worth it worth waiting for

2:11

how about you i know that you sent me your picture how was your sunrise

2:14

basically i had to be at my job

2:17

very very early in the morning and so i was i was there for the sunrise

2:21

and i was like you know what it is hard enough to wake up early and

2:24

watch it it counts and so right took a

2:27

picture and we were good to go uh well

2:30

huge thanks to all of our guests who have sent in their sunrise we've had a

2:33

lot i especially want to shout out our

2:36

big supporter neddy nettie who sent us

2:38

in a wonderful wonderful sunrise over

2:40

the coast i believe on one of his biking

2:42

adventures that he was on uh neddy has

2:45

won the challenge before so he's already received stickers from us so i thought

2:48

maybe since he's a big supporter maybe we can send him a coffee mug or

2:51

something like that maybe special for him we'll get something good

2:55

so uh neddy you're awesome as always

2:58

check your mailbox in a couple weeks we'll we'll send you something nice to

3:01

say thank you for being a big supporter

3:03

of this show it's also time to introduce the next

3:06

monthly challenge and this is actually a little bit out of order because this

3:09

next monthly challenge was suggested by a guest and it's a

3:14

guess that we're going to have on next week uh which is linda king the

3:17

smart travalista and linda is a travel

3:20

writer and she actually suggested doing

3:23

a monthly challenge about travel writing

3:26

write 100 words describing your hometown

3:29

or describing where you are living so

3:31

this is a little bit different we've done a lot of photography challenges in

3:34

the past this one is using the written word so write into us tell us in 100

3:39

words approximately tell us about where

3:42

you live describe it as vibrantly as you

3:44

can i think it's going to be fun james and i are going to do it too

3:48

yeah it'll be fun you got to write about boulder i'll write about bangkok

3:52

it's going to be great so and i think that

3:55

because this one requires a little bit of effort because we're a little bit

3:58

behind i think let's give it two weeks two months

4:01

i think let's give it two months ago

4:03

so that would be at the end of

4:06

june when we will catch up again so this

4:08

one will be done in june this is our

4:11

monthly challenge or our bi-monthly challenge so it's going to be fun 100

4:15

words describing where you live and try

4:17

to paint a picture with your words man

4:20

james it has been forever like i don't

4:22

even know what you're doing what's going on buddy oh buddy it's been

4:27

uh exhausting honestly i made it through

4:30

the end of ski season for listeners that

4:33

don't know i work at a ski resort basically it came down to my last day

4:37

was really kind of supposed to be

4:40

april 17th yeah that was supposed to be

4:42

my last day but

4:44

the rest of the hr team that i work on

4:47

is leaving and so my boss was basically like can

4:51

you please stay through may right and so

4:54

i've kind of been scrambling and it's been it's just been crazy busy

4:58

you know that got sick for about a week or two it's it's just been

5:02

it's just been a rough time honestly and

5:04

just trying to get life back in order

5:07

my wife and i are moving at the end of this lease and so it's just been it's

5:12

been stressful every time it seems like

5:14

every time that we set aside time to

5:16

record something happens you have

5:18

something i have something there was one day i just fell asleep and i forgot

5:25

yeah you text me like hey man i'm stuck at work or like i text you and like my

5:28

power's out that happened one time the power was out and that was weird it's

5:32

like it's just been like it's just like

5:34

everything that the universe is like no

5:36

yeah yeah but we made it work universe i woke up

5:40

that one time at 4 30 a.m i was like

5:42

we're gonna get this in we're gonna get this in while james has time i woke up

5:45

at 4 30 and the power was out which one

5:47

the internet was down so

5:50

i was able to text you on my nothing you can really do about it but yeah

5:55

so i mean that's really what i've been up to mine is just sort of

5:58

adult life kicking my butt

6:01

which is really annoying everyone said it would be great it's not it's annoying

6:05

um being able to kind of do whatever is

6:08

nice but you have to have money to do

6:10

that true but anyway so

6:14

i also i know a little bit about what

6:16

you've been up to yeah but not too much so why don't we

6:20

get into that for a minute because yours is much more interesting than mine so so

6:24

some backstory is that

6:26

in 2020 when the kovid pandemic started

6:28

thailand closed their borders and they

6:31

started offering these emergency visa

6:34

extensions due to kovid

6:36

and i've been living on that because i was here when the pandemic started i've

6:39

been on that visa for the past several

6:41

years but as thailand is opening their

6:44

borders in fact the borders opened in full yesterday that program is ending

6:49

and so i was no longer able to get my my

6:51

emergency extension which meant it was time for a visa run which is

6:55

you know as i think as i mentioned before i was secretly excited about it

6:59

you know i do like traveling i've missed the chance to travel and i'm quite fond

7:03

of cambodia i go there a lot for visas

7:06

so i was excited for the chance to get away

7:08

the only problem is that it's it's just still a little bit tricky to travel

7:12

right now you know in a normal year i could have flown out to cambodia on a

7:15

monday you know stayed there like three days to get my visa and then just come

7:18

back that same you know three days later

7:21

but right now it's it's just a little bit slower um you know everyone that was

7:25

on the emergency extension

7:27

is needing a visa at the same time because those emergencies are expiring

7:32

so that happened also they happened to

7:34

expire like right around the songkran holiday which is the three-day

7:37

traditional thai new year which meant the embassy was closed and they weren't

7:40

processing documents during that time either

7:42

just bad timing uh on top of that i had

7:45

to get another document to re-enter the country because thailand

7:49

was on this like one-day quarantine

7:51

program where you have to just quarantine one night and then if you

7:54

test negative for covid you're you're

7:56

free but to do that you still have to make

7:58

sure that you have you know your coveted insurance and your hotel booking and

8:02

your pcr test booking and all of that

8:04

you have to submit all of that to the embassy after you have your visa and

8:08

they'll give you the entry permit for thailand um all that's canceled now but

8:12

a couple weeks ago last month that was still what was going on and so

8:16

yeah i was expecting to be in cambodia

8:18

for maybe a week i ended up being there for

8:20

15 days um just because things took a little bit

8:24

longer than i thought so i just ended up

8:26

living in a hotel in phnom penh just

8:28

actually was a great area i was i think i sent you some pictures i

8:31

was right in front of the national museum just down the road from

8:34

the royal palace i didn't do a lot while i was there uh

8:39

normally i would have wanted to travel but of course i didn't have my passport

8:41

with me because the embassy had it so i couldn't really

8:44

go anywhere or buy a bus ticket or anything

8:48

but i did i did go to the museums um

8:50

you know i went around i went to a place called silk island where they make you

8:54

know it's kind of like a silkworm farm where they raise the silkworms

8:58

and uh you get to learn about the process of silk making

9:01

phnom penh is an interesting city it's

9:03

it's quite a small city it's also quite a sad city cambodia is

9:08

super cool like if you're an anchor walked if you're in siem reap it's all

9:11

about like the khmer empire and the ancient ruins and stuff like that and

9:14

that's super fun but when you're in phnom penh

9:17

all the museums and stuff are like about

9:20

the khmer rouge and about pol pot and

9:22

that's just not fun like it's important

9:24

and like i went to the killing fields one day and like it's important to see i

9:28

think that if people go to cambodia they really

9:31

owe it you know to the people that died

9:33

to see this and to learn about it but

9:35

it's man it's so depressing you know 25

9:38

percent of the population was just murdered by pol pot yeah 25 it's

9:42

incredible kind of like going to you know the death

9:46

railway or you know that sort of thing where you're like

9:49

auschwitz you know going to a concentration camp yeah you know it's

9:52

it's interesting and it's important but

9:55

it's not something that i would call fun

9:57

no but you you have to i mean it's it's

10:00

the right you need to do it you have to

10:02

learn about it but yeah

10:04

it's like the guide uh the man who gave

10:06

me a tour around the the killing fields he was a kid when

10:09

it happened but his entire family was killed

10:12

he was able to escape to vietnam i mean

10:14

the crazy thing man this happened in the

10:16

span of four years pull pot was only in

10:18

power for a couple years when i was there it rained really heavily one day

10:22

the day before i went to the killing fields and

10:25

when i was there as we were walking around the man was pointing out on the

10:28

ground because it had rain he said every time it rains we find more

10:31

more remnants i mean there were just

10:33

human teeth on the ground that had kind of been unearthed by the rain and i mean

10:36

they have excavated this place like crazy and they're still finding new

10:40

remains i mean there's a there's a monument a tower that has skulls in it

10:45

and it's like that's just a you know that's just a fraction and they're still

10:48

discovering you know new stuff i mean man i mean

10:51

there were just teeth on the ground it was really i don't even know horrific uh

10:55

terrible but so it wasn't

10:58

fun but but i was glad to have seen it

11:00

so uh other than that cambodia's is nice

11:03

they have they have cheap beer that was good good food i just hang out in the

11:06

hotel i really just worked mostly it wasn't a very exciting trip i'll be

11:10

honest um and i was stressed just

11:12

because i just didn't expect to be there that long you know

11:15

yeah anytime that happens is

11:18

is very stressful i think again it was

11:21

not a trip that you planned on going to

11:24

you know have fun with right it wasn't a vacation i just needed

11:28

to get my documents that was that was that so

11:32

it turned into a forced vacation

11:35

kind of yeah and

11:37

those are those never work as well true

11:39

true and then of course once i got there

11:42

like two days after i got there my wife

11:44

tested positive for covid and i was like

11:46

oh my gosh i've like obviously seen her

11:49

within the past 14 days [Laughter]

11:53

it's like i've i've kissed her so

11:56

that's not good because

11:59

i've probably been exposed to covid now

12:01

and if i test positive for kovid i won't

12:03

be able to re-enter thailand so then i

12:06

was freaking out i had a bunch of atk tests that i carried with me and then i

12:10

mean of course you can just buy them like anywhere if the 7-eleven or

12:13

whatever for just a couple dollars so i just ended up taking an atk test

12:17

like every other day and miraculously i

12:19

just never got it i never tested positive and i was able to come back to

12:22

the country but i was really paranoid about that as well

12:26

because i thought wow well if i test positive

12:29

then i'm stuck in cambodia until my

12:32

antibodies return negative which could be another two or three weeks or worst

12:36

case scenario i get back into thailand

12:39

and then i test positive in my quarantine my one night quarantine and

12:42

then that turns into a two-week

12:44

quarantine isolated in thailand

12:47

i don't know i mean because you've you've never had it

12:50

no no and it's really funny because

12:53

like people around me have gotten it my

12:55

wife got it her sister who lives with us has had it and like i should have been

12:59

the first person to get it james i'm like always touching stuff like putting

13:03

stuff in my mouth i'm like touching my face uh my wife's always holding me

13:06

she's like don't touch that like when we're in public like if i'm like messing

13:10

with the thing in the subway the the handrail somehow i haven't gotten and

13:13

she's super cautious about it i'm sure she got it at work i mean she interacts

13:17

with way more people than i do because i

13:19

just work from home um but i should have

13:21

gotten it but i should have gotten it i have no

13:24

idea how i didn't i don't know touching

13:26

touching those subway things builds your immune system i'm certain of it yeah

13:31

it's like that episode of the office where dwight was getting everyone to

13:33

sneeze on him

13:35

yeah because i it's one of those things where

13:38

it's like i think i probably had it but

13:41

i never tested positive for it or the time there

13:45

was one day i was really sick and had a fever and like all normal all the

13:48

symptoms yeah yeah but i didn't get

13:50

tested for it and it only lasted like a day so it's like i probably had it but

13:55

i've never had a positive test so i'm going with i've never had it yeah i mean

13:59

if i ever had it i would have had it maybe months ago or years ago it was

14:03

asymptomatic because i don't have any antibodies for

14:06

it we're all going to get it eventually

14:08

my wife was sicker than i thought she'd be you know she's triple vaxxed two two

14:12

pfizers and one modern and she had i mean it wasn't like severely ill but she

14:15

had a pretty high fever and she was real sick it was like a flu for like three

14:19

days but i mean luckily one of her

14:21

colleagues also at work tested positive on the same day

14:25

so they were able to isolate together so they weren't just like super

14:28

lonely alone well that's cool well

14:31

because like my wife's grandmother lives with us so we're really trying to keep

14:33

her safe oh for sure oh so otherwise my wife is

14:36

gonna have to go to like a hotel and self-isolate but because this girl at

14:39

her work also tested positive she just

14:41

went to her apartment and they just hung

14:44

out at her apartment for a couple days until they were negative

14:47

i mean that's that's the best way to do it yeah have a

14:51

covered buddy yeah i mean that's

14:54

so yeah long story short for both of us

14:56

it's just been it's been nuts yeah yeah i know you've

15:00

been stressed i've been stressed

15:02

extremely yeah and i i really got to apologize like i have received a bunch

15:06

of emails from listeners and like people

15:08

that want to be on the show and potential gifts and i love it and i just

15:11

haven't had the capacity

15:14

to get back to all of them yet so if you're listening i really i'm going to

15:17

email you back i'm going to have you guys on the show i really appreciate you

15:20

guys writing in i just haven't had the time or the headspace or the energy to

15:24

uh to deal with it but we're working on the show's coming back we're back on

15:28

track and i will get back to you

15:30

very very soon i promise and you know i

15:32

think that's another thing that i i think people don't think about and i

15:36

know i don't because i know like

15:38

with the podcast that i listen to if the

15:41

hosts have a time where they're like

15:43

guys it's crazy we can't there's no episode this week

15:46

part of you gets like a frustrated you're like well come on

15:49

that's that's your job but for a lot of

15:52

these guys it's not for us it's not for

15:54

us it's definitely if it was our job it would be different i mean we would have

15:57

a producer to keep us on track we would have an editor and we would just really

16:00

need to get together to plan the episodes and record them

16:04

but we have to do everything and i know

16:06

which is a lot yeah and and we also both

16:09

work full-time jobs yeah i mean

16:13

and i think it's important to just sort of

16:17

because it's like we didn't do enough episodes for it to be burn out no it was

16:21

just life crazy

16:24

yeah we we could we could post our

16:28

our message thread to show that we have

16:30

been trying yeah right for

16:34

i don't even know how long now

16:36

being like okay this time this date and

16:38

then we get like right up to it and then one of us is like crap

16:42

i mean honestly we i would love a producer someone that could just handle

16:45

the emails schedule interviews help us like not

16:49

even editing but just like help us write the show notes

16:52

help us promote um we just can't pay

16:54

anyone to do that and yeah so if anyone

16:56

is willing to do that for free yeah i

16:59

mean you'll get a producer credit we will credit you

17:03

if it matters so yeah and when we make money

17:06

we'll throw some we'll throw some your way yeah

17:09

so applications right now this is still

17:12

costing your resume so

17:14

send your resume to hello at attemptedventure.com

17:18

please send us a heartfelt video

17:21

explaining why you should get the position

17:23

[Laughter]

17:25

oh man remember it is unpaid we are not even

17:30

a licensed business

17:32

not are we it no yes

17:37

but uh we have merch we don't even we don't

17:40

even own the name true

17:44

we sort of own the art

17:46

we we don't have an exclusive license do

17:49

we no not for the not for art we have an

17:53

exclusive license for the day drinking

17:55

monkey that's which we don't even use we

17:57

haven't used for years what a waste of

18:01

money we do own that outright

18:05

so if anyone wants it

18:08

drinking michael and james monkey suddenly our logo is just like a

18:11

screaming tie off [Laughter]

18:15

why because we own it yeah let's see we

18:18

own our music

18:20

we do you own our music

18:23

but anyway i digress

18:26

well this isn't a real episode this is just a ketchup so i don't know james

18:30

what else is going on oh what's going on

18:32

it's finally spring yeah it's spring

18:34

sprung absolutely beautiful which is probably

18:37

why you got sick for two weeks um

18:40

changing seasons um yeah that always gets me

18:43

overall it's been nice and sunny and warm and it's it's just been wonderful i

18:47

like the cold i like the snow

18:49

it's been a long winter and you know

18:52

it'd be one thing if i didn't have to go anywhere when it snowed but i still have

18:56

to like get up and drive 40 minutes into

18:58

the mountains so here's the thing it's different from

19:01

like when you're growing up in texas when it snows and everything stops and

19:05

you stay home and your mom makes you hot

19:07

chocolate and you play and you make a snow angel and the next day it's gone

19:11

and you go back to school it's just like a fun nice day off but when you live in

19:15

colorado or somewhere else like that it's not a

19:18

day off my parents lived in chicago that's where i was born and they said

19:22

you know it would snow and then the snow would just stay there for the next

19:26

several months and after about a week it

19:28

just turns gray and uh it's just dirty and gross

19:34

colorado is dry enough that the snow

19:36

melts in between okay yeah yeah so you

19:39

still have most of the time there's no snow on the ground like down here

19:43

up in the mountains it's a little different like there you i'm because in

19:46

my mind it's like oh it's snowed a foot

19:48

yeah that's it's crazy and they're like

19:51

all right go to work and i'm just like wait a minute

19:54

i shouldn't have to do that

19:57

and working at a ski resort it's more important that i go to work because it's

20:00

busier but anyway well i'm still hoping

20:03

to get up that way soon hopefully i mean no definite plans

20:07

yet but uh hopefully by the end of the year maybe early next year we'll see how

20:10

things go of course you can come to thailand now thailand is now

20:14

well and fully open like totally open my

20:17

last day at work is the 20th so

20:21

this is like that time that you were like what are you doing and i'm just

20:23

like just hanging out you're like okay let me check tickets you just showed up

20:27

like two weeks later i'll tell that story for a second so the

20:31

first time i visited michael in thailand

20:34

i was sitting in my car at my university waiting for

20:38

my class to kind of get closer to go

20:40

inside me to pass the time i think and

20:43

we were just talking yeah and i was like

20:45

man i really want to visit you and you were like i really want you to visit me

20:47

too no one visits me except my parents

20:51

and i was like hold on let me check

20:54

tickets and i checked him and i was yeah like 10 minutes later i was like all

20:57

right bought a ticket i'll be there like

20:59

the day after christmas

21:02

that was great i don't think you really

21:04

expected me to buy a ticket i was glad you did i had nothing else yeah dude

21:09

and then it became a tradition for three

21:12

years where you go to thailand that was

21:14

great yeah

21:16

anyway ladies and gentlemen thank you

21:18

for listening to our rants and us sort of

21:21

trying to get back into the swing of things we are back and we will be

21:25

recording more content very very soon

21:28

totally i mean i have two interviews already recorded that are coming out in

21:31

the next couple of weeks so

21:33

definitely stay tuned we've got some really good stuff coming out guys uh we

21:37

apologize that it's been a bit chaotic guys thanks for your patience and your

21:40

understanding don't forget the brand new monthly challenge travel writing 100

21:44

words to describe where you live make it

21:46

sound exciting if you enjoyed our show

21:49

please don't forget to subscribe give us a review although this is not the best

21:52

episode i know because this is just us

21:54

kind of chatting with you guys but it does really help us out and so uh we

21:58

look forward to that guys but uh yeah thanks for sticking with us we will be

22:02

back well ladies and gentlemen thanks as

22:04

always for listening and until next time

22:07

keep adventuring

22:11

[Music]

22:30

you