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All your travel questions, answered every Thursday.
We're back. We're back.
Well, that was off pitch.
Well, it's got to go.
It's got to go back, guys.
And yeah, it's been a while.
It's been a minute.
It's been a while.
Hey, newsflash, did you guys know that we make videos in seasons?
Did you guys did you guys know that?
I feel like we haven't done all that good of a job of communicating it.
But we just wrapped up our last video of season two of our three days
and X movies that we're making, and we're about to start filming season three.
And I feel like as I'm saying this, you're probably out there going like,
what? What are they?
What are they like? All of a sudden, one day on our channel,
just a banner appeared.
Yeah. Season two. Season two.
We didn't even know that seasons were a thing.
Here it is.
But that's what we're talking about today.
We're going to like kind of wrap up our season two and talk about
what were some of the highs, some of the lows and what's coming up for season three.
Yeah. And hopefully season three will be a lot more clear
in expectations of when things are starting and when things are ending.
But yeah, season two is.
It was a long one.
So season two. Maybe the longest season in all of seasons.
Yeah, we just kind of arbitrarily decided when the boundaries were.
But for us, it was when we took the trip that started in Sydney
and then we went to Australia and then it was everything from October
twenty twenty three until this Disney video that we just put out.
Well, that whole stretch of time was season two.
That's like ten months.
So so what we're going to do a better job at is making it clear
when these videos are going to come out and have them come out a lot more regularly.
And we're going to talk more in the later part of the episode of like why we even
decided to do seasons in the first place and why it's important for us
to release things in that way instead of just trying to do a gajillion videos.
Or like the way that we've been doing in the last three years is just release
the video whenever we can. Yeah. But season two, season two done.
Season two wrapped up.
We finished it with this four days in Disney World video.
But let's like, yeah, off the top of your head.
What are like the top things that come to mind when you think of season two?
Yes. And we should also talk about like the worst.
Yeah. The not so good times.
Well, we'll start with positive stuff.
So top of mind for me is definitely Vietnam.
And and when I think of like the highs and the lows of the season,
I'm not just talking about videos because I do think while I like to
separate how well a video does on YouTube, I also like to think about the actual experience.
And I don't think it's a surprise that we had a really, really good time in Vietnam.
And luckily, gratefully, our video also happened to do really, really well on YouTube.
It was our most successful video we've ever put out, period. Like, yeah.
And it was our most fun. I mean, Vietnam, that journey, you had been there before,
but it was my first time visiting and honestly hadn't known too much about the country,
except for its history.
But as a tourist, I didn't really know what to expect.
And it was one of those places that felt like from the beginning to end was totally fun,
adventurous, spontaneous, but also like well traveled in a way that made it easy for us to get around.
So, like, my favorite experience probably in Vietnam is the Kha Ba adventures that we took
that visited part of Hà Long Bay, but the part that's not as well known or seen.
For sure. For sure.
And it felt like the infrastructure, the tourist infrastructure in Vietnam was at this really
interesting point while we were there.
This like transitionary period from kind of niche travel destination,
kind of backpackers only travel destination into like a full blown tourism powerhouse,
which is I think where they're heading.
And I think we were there right at this like delineation between those two things.
And it was so interesting to see like everything was under construction.
The entire country was under construction.
And I think a lot of people when you think about tourism in Vietnam,
you kind of immediately go to like hopping on the back of a motorbike for like eight hours a day.
That's like the traditional way to do Vietnam, an amazing way to do it.
Or really, really long train journeys.
Like I used to think of Vietnam as a place that like you go when you've visited
all the well trodden paths and you're like you're like a well-seasoned traveler.
It definitely felt like a place that felt exclusive for some people.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like it would very rarely be a person's first like out of their country experience.
You know, they'd be like their 10th after they've gone and seen Japan and Thailand or whatever.
And I think that's the way it used to be.
But now with the infrastructure that they're in, just how easy it was,
how cost effective it was to get around, just they have so much to offer as far as food.
Yeah. Oh my gosh.
And cultural experiences and connection to the people are so cool.
And they're just like, it's a perfect travel destination in so many ways.
And I really feel like it's just going to be blowing up in the next couple of years.
Yeah. I really wasn't expecting that.
Like, I didn't think that, I mean, that intro that we had, which was, you know,
we honestly weren't planning to make this video.
When we first set out to go to Hanoi, we said, OK, we're going to make a three days here
and then a three days in Saigon, the capital city of Vietnam.
And then we just started looking and we're like, why would we do that?
There's this incredible country and this incredible path and all these places to visit along the way.
And it was such a welcome and pleasant surprise that other people are also doing it too.
I mean, right after Kut Ba, the friends that we made there, we saw them in Ninh Ben
and that led to our karaoke bus nights.
Also, can we talk about the food again?
Because, I mean, we, I just, I dream about it.
We came home and we worked on our video, which took weeks to finish.
But at the end of it, we decided we would celebrate by having some pho.
And it was decent, but it was not at all close, not at all close to like what we were having in Vietnam.
For sure. Yeah.
I think the next thing is this chunk of the Philippines.
So we started out in Puerto Princesa and that was OK.
And then we went up to Sabang and we found this super cool hotel that we stayed at.
Pretty bougie, but a really good deal of points.
And boy, that entire town, the vibe there was so good.
It was so beautiful.
You kind of felt like you were out in the middle of nowhere,
except for you had this amazing national park just right next to you.
And then there after that, taking the chicken bus all the way up to El Nido.
And then El Nido being so beautiful and so kind of bougie.
Perfectly showed this like Philippines dichotomy where the travel is just a nightmare.
But once you get to a place, it's like, oh, my God, like this is amazing.
How come there aren't more people here because it's really hard to get there?
But once you're there, once you actually make it, oh, my God, the Philippines.
Yeah, I do feel like I don't like to compare countries.
But like, you know, thinking about the Philippines after having visited Vietnam,
I was thinking like, oh, what's the travel going to be like here?
And as challenging and frustrating as the travel in Philippines sometimes was,
like trying to navigate and figure out the whole system,
part of what I loved so much about our Philippines trip was exactly that.
I think sometimes we get so caught up in the travel has to be convenient and easy
and efficient going to the Philippines and like taking the jeepney
when we were expecting to take a minivan from Porto Princesa to Sabang
was exactly the adventure and the fun that we had.
And we met so many cool people along the way
and we would have never gotten the chance to experience those things
or meet those people had we planned all of those things to a tee.
So I loved the Philippines for that.
Manila also was a surprising, really surprising, fun place for us
after people told us, don't come, don't come.
This is my favorite place the whole time I would go back there any time.
It was such a blast hanging out.
There's so many farmers market was so good.
The nightlife was just incredible.
We met some friends who took us out spontaneously to the night markets.
It was just such a cool place.
The Philippines has a special place in our hearts,
I think especially because of all the really cool people that we met there.
Yeah, I think this list would not be complete without talking about New Zealand.
Because I think there were some highs and lows, both of the New Zealand trip.
But my favorite day of our entire New Zealand trip
was probably my favorite day I've had traveling in a long time
where we left the Mount Cook campsite.
Right, right, looking up at Orochi was so cool.
So beautiful.
Drive out of there in that morning.
We stopped at a place where we could get salmon.
Smoke salmon.
Smoke salmon just like right there,
eating in front of just one of the most breathtaking vistas of all time.
Continued on, got some fish and chips at this weird pass over a month.
Yeah.
In the middle of nowhere and then finished the day
in a campsite in Wanaka,
eating like with a bunch of backpackers.
And it just felt so, it reminded me of all the travels that I had had
on like my first trip around the world.
It felt like one of those days.
It felt like one of those days where just you're going from awesome thing to awesome thing.
The whole world just feels open.
The whole world feels like just filled with exciting, amazing stuff.
And it's not that expensive and everybody can do it.
And everyone else out there is having a blast.
Just felt it was a perfect travel day.
And I think like we were there at a really good time.
I mean, we did get some crappy weather at some points,
but honestly, I think having the freedom to just drive and find campsites
and navigate all of that made for a really, really cool journey.
So freeing and beautiful.
That being said, we did have some season two low moments.
And I gotta admit,
I mean, behind the scenes and maybe not so behind the scenes,
New Zealand was also a tough time, I don't know, for me personally.
Like, even though this like van journey was kind of like for us,
like this redemption for van life almost,
it there's something about being in a van for three weeks in the rain
when it's gross and you're just like, you don't shower that often.
Yeah, it just there's something psychologically like taxing about the experience.
Plus filming every day from literally the moment that we woke up,
we set up the camera and get our like, here's our shot of us waking up.
And then our actual last shot of the day was like as we were going to bed,
closing the door and sun up to sundown.
We're talking like 12 to 14 hour days of filming every single day.
And I think that that added to our discomfort quite a bit.
Yeah, it was the first time to in our seasons
that we were filming basically every day for three weeks straight.
Yeah. And and there were a couple of moments specifically in that New Zealand trip
where I was like, oh, I don't know how much I can keep going.
For sure. And that we'll get to a little bit more
when we talk about our seasons, season three and why we're doing things
and seasons more now. But I do remember feeling that was the first time
in a really long time that I felt like, I don't know if I could keep doing this.
Yeah. Yeah, just like the YouTube thing in general felt like it was such a far reach.
Yeah, we were exhausted every day.
But I think the video turned out incredibly well.
The end product at the end of it.
And there were so many super fun moments that kind of like way outnumbered
the really bad ones. But I think had we just done that campervan trip
without making a YouTube video about the whole thing,
it would have been probably mostly a blast.
Well, and I actually think one of the reasons why why this video
and this experience is still top of our list is exactly that.
Like no trip is perfect.
YouTube or not, right?
Like no trip is ever going to be 100% the way that you dreamed it
and the way that you want it.
And that was, I think, part of the reality of this trip
and what made the quest and the journey so much more fun.
We showed bits and pieces of the sadness and the hard parts.
But I think like at the end of the day, we still enjoy a good challenge
and we still enjoy travel even when they're especially when they're
aloes because in the highs feel really high.
Yeah, yeah, it's just all part of the experience.
Speaking of something that was a different experience
than what we were expecting, I think we have to talk about Dubai.
Oh, yeah.
You know, like I know this, I don't know if this will be controversial.
I don't know.
But Dubai was hard for us in a lot of ways.
And I don't I'm not in a rush to go back.
We were there during Ramadan, which was awesome.
And the fasting part of it and getting to immerse ourselves
in that culture and getting to talk to people who are actively
fasting at the time to sort of be our Sherpas throughout the process.
That was so great.
It was so great.
But it's just all malls, man.
It's just we were searching for depth and we just could not find it.
I mean, the argument could be made that, like, we should have known.
And honestly, we had this thought that maybe we did know.
But Dubai was always one of those places that we were just like,
I'd love to see it in real life someday.
Even if even if it doesn't resonate with me, I just would love to see it.
It's like that shiny object, like that big, that big gold carrot ring
that is bigger than a bathtub.
Like there's no there's no purpose for I will never own it.
I would never even like, you know, want to own it, maybe.
But but it's just one of those things you just have to see in real life.
And, you know, and this is this is the honest truth.
There have been a lot of places that we've traveled to in life where we're not, like,
in love with it.
We don't we don't feel connected to it for a lot of reasons.
People travel for so many different reasons.
When the place doesn't connect to us, I almost always find that the the thing
that connects us to the place is actually the people.
Yeah, and that truly was what Dubai was for us.
I mean, we didn't show a ton of that on camera.
We never really do because I don't like putting, you know, recording people
and they don't know for sure.
But we met a real we met a lot of really kind, welcoming, good people
in Dubai and learning their stories, learning about where they came from
because the vast majority of people in Dubai are not from Dubai are not from the UAE.
So just learning about the history and the people there and how hard they work
to live there and send money back home to their families.
That that was the thing that like opened my eyes the most.
Yeah, and it's also I mean, it's impossible to ignore the really pretty poor conditions
that a lot of the workers have to deal with there for a very, very comically small amount of money
that they're being paid as they get imported in from basically every country surrounding Dubai.
As far as the Philippines, I mean, pretty far reaching to be able to do
basically everything to run the society in there and to see that up close.
This is one of those things that I wish we had like talked about more in our video
because we both felt it and both witnessed it.
I didn't know how to like talk about it. Yeah, I just feel like I didn't I didn't have enough context
to be able to say something definitive about the way it felt to be there.
But it just there were lots of things that felt super weird and there were lots of people
that we interacted with that gave us the impression that they were kind of stuck there.
We kept trying to like say, no, this is our jobs.
Our jobs are to, you know, tell people what to expect when they're traveling to a destination.
How to do it on a budget. Yeah.
What to do while you're there so you don't go broke, right? That's our thing.
We like to share heart and we we like to share realities.
We like to share stories as part of it, but there's something that feels inherently like
discomforting about talking negatively about a place.
One, that you're visiting as a tourist and you don't know the full story.
And two, to speak for other people. Yeah.
I don't know. It just feels sometimes like you can't be completely honest about your
thought sometimes when you travel to a new place.
For sure. I mean, especially on, I don't know, especially in travel YouTube,
I kind of feel like nobody really wants to see like a sad or frustrated person traveling.
Even if that's the truth of what it happens.
I think most people come to these videos and most people are excited about watching these videos
because it's supposed to show you something happy and beautiful and amazing about the world.
I think sometimes we get a little self-conscious about like speaking our mind.
I think after we made the video and released it, we felt that.
And I think we decided, OK, now we know going forward,
we just need to be more cognizant and respectful of our own feelings about a place
and our own initial judgments.
And I think for those of you that, you know, read our newsletter,
that was something that we talked about afterwards.
I don't know how to describe it.
It honestly just feels like we don't have that place.
We don't have that ability.
And I don't know.
We're not journalists, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, we're not journalists.
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe we will go down that road at some time in the future,
but I do think I often feel and I definitely felt after the end of this Dubai video,
I kind of had this like thing in my stomach.
I'm like, ah, we should have said something.
Should we have made that video?
Yeah, should we have even gone there in the first place?
It seems like most people who watch our videos were not overly interested
in what was going on in Dubai in the first place.
So maybe that was our first mistake was choosing something that wasn't interesting to you guys.
And for us was like, we were a bit hesitant to go to in the first place.
We were excited to see if it was possible on a budget, which it was.
It's a great budget travel destination.
It's just, it's hard to explain.
It's hard to explain and we don't have enough context,
but we had some really beautiful moments while we were there in Dubai specifically around the food.
The food was absolutely amazing.
And then every night to see the iftar cannon go off,
fasting over and everyone just gets to like, yeah, we're free.
We get to eat and like, oh, that that moment, that moment every single day,
just seeing this like hungry, super thirsty populace all of a sudden be able to like celebrate.
Celebrate all together.
Yeah.
Just like so excited.
Oh man.
Yeah.
There were some cool times in Dubai.
I don't know as far as our season two videos.
I think that's like, that's my least favorite of the ones that we've made.
For sure.
But we don't want to end this like high low moment on a bummer.
So I want to bring it back because there is one glaring best moment of season two that I think we forgot to mention.
And that is filming our Disney video.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The actual making of it.
The Disney video was so much fun.
Start to finish.
It's so silly.
It's so redunctious.
And honestly, this reminded me of it when you just said sometimes we have to heed what our audience,
like what you guys want to watch.
Disney, we have to be honest, was one of those things that was kind of for us.
Yeah.
We're not ashamed of it.
Yeah.
It was so fun.
We had this idea of like, okay, what if we did like an Ocean's Eleven heist movie, but
about getting an entire trip to Disney World for free.
That was the idea behind the video.
And that means that in the first part, we're kind of doing like almost scripted content.
Yeah.
And that part was really new for us and kind of like stretching our creative legs a little
bit, I guess.
And that was really fun to make as we were recreating events that had happened months
before.
Yeah.
That whole process of making the video in that way and being able to like really control
the scene for the first time where we're not wandering around a foreign country where
we have no idea what's going to happen at any point in time.
We were able to like craft a story from start to finish.
That was really fun to do.
It was so new.
Yeah.
It was so silly.
Just freeing.
Yeah.
There was something really nice about I remember when we first started filming it and we'll
go into depth in another maybe later podcast about like the behind the scenes of this video.
But I remember when we first started, I was like, man, this is going to be great.
I don't have to film in public at all until we get to Disneyland until we get to Disney
World.
It took a lot longer than I thought it was going to be, but it was so, so much fun.
And it felt even though it's like catered to a very specific audience, right?
Mostly U.S. citizens because those are, you know, unfortunately credit cards as we're
learning are mostly that game is for U.S. citizens.
And then people who are into Disney or have been to Disney before, but gosh, that whole
experience from start to finish did make me feel like a kid again.
Yeah.
And then Disney World was super fun.
Being able to just run from ride to ride and try to like recreate that experience and video
form of what we were actually doing that day, which was just sprinting as fast as we could
from ride to ride to ride, having a blast doing it, oh, Disney World was so fun.
Not to mention it was actually one of our hardest, most challenging travel destinations,
I would say.
Without a doubt, the most complex travel destination we've ever gone to.
Without a doubt, there's so many ways to do it wrong.
And we're definitely not the experts.
No, not even close.
We figured out some things, but I don't know.
How to get there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The video did not do particularly well, or at least as of us recording this, the video
did not do all that well.
I don't really care though, if it did well or not.
We had a blast making it.
It's useful.
It's entertaining.
It's fun.
It shows how to do a really expensive thing for $0, I'm proud of it.
The one episode in every season, in every good TV show, there's always one episode of
the season that's just a little bit different.
Whether it's a musical, a black and white show.
This one was our weird, fun, scripted, silly episode of the season.
Yeah.
It was a good one.
Speaking of seasons, I think it's worth talking about why did we start doing seasons in the
first place?
Yeah.
How did we get here to the season format?
Why are we now making shows like they do on CSI instead of like those?
Yeah.
When can we expect these seasons to start and end?
Yes.
Well, I mean, how did we get here, I think, is a really important question, right?
For sure.
Why we started seasons to begin with was mostly because we, after, I would say, it was after
the Camino, the second Camino in Portugal, when we were filming every single day.
We kind of had this moment of clarity where we realized, no, I think we don't want to
be making daily vlogs anymore.
Yeah.
The seasonality of being able to give ourselves time when we're just focusing on filming,
and then also time when we're back here and just editing, and then also some time which
we had never opened up anything for, just time for us to live life.
You know?
Work out sometimes.
For us to do anything else that isn't YouTube, being able to set aside specific time for
that into this nice little rhythm that we've settled down into has changed everything about
our mental states and our physical states as well.
I think we both feel the most healthy we've felt in a long time.
We've gone to the most doctor appointments, I think, in the last two, three months that
we have in our entire lives, and I'm here for it.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's just, man, when we started this thing, I don't think we had any idea how all-encompassing
YouTube would become, how fully just life-consuming this job is.
We spend 80 to 90 hours a week just doing this, just doing YouTube.
Oh, man, and we had honestly forgotten what hobbies were.
We had forgotten what we liked doing outside of YouTube.
We looked at each other.
Josh plays volleyball.
Did you know that?
Yeah, I loved playing volleyball.
It's like my favorite thing, and I hadn't played for like six years, basically, since
we started this.
We get to wait-lift and with our friends, and yeah.
So that's thrift shop.
And hopefully, I know the sound of these things to you guys is probably a little trite, right?
You guys see us just traveling around the world, and you're like, that looks awesome.
And it is awesome in a lot of ways, but also, it has a lot of costs.
And I think for us to continue to do this in the style that we're doing in these really
big, really long videos that are complete packages, they're movies, or documentaries,
or whatever, from start to finish, to make them in the way that makes us happy, we also
have to set aside time for ourselves to live life in the middle of all of it.
This is still the best job that we've ever had, and this life is like the best life that
we could have ever asked for.
It's one of those things where constantly we wake up and we think, how do we get to
call this our lives?
So it's not something that we take for granted.
We know, and I think the key here is really that we want to keep at it, and we want to
keep fine tuning it so we know how we can keep this up, how we can keep living this
life joyfully for ourselves, and authentically for ourselves, but also for other people,
and for this business.
There were moments in season two where physically, I felt, and mentally, the most unhealthy I'd
ever felt in my life.
I think we just realized that it could not continue down this path at all.
This month, these last couple of months is the healthiest I've ever felt, and part of
it was because we had to say no to a lot of things and say, we need to start taking care
of ourselves.
The season format, I think, is good in every way for both us and for you guys out there.
We're going to make better stuff, we're going to have predictable times when this stuff is
going to come out.
You're going to know what to look forward to for the next couple of videos, you're going
to know what.
And also, your guys' input are going to help craft each of our seasons so you guys can
tell us what awesome stuff you want to see.
I think the biggest thing of all of this is that with this season format, the quality
of the stuff that we're putting out can continue to increase over time, and we just want to
make stuff that we're proud of, and we want to make stuff that you love, and that's all
that we care about.
And as long as we're doing that, as long as we're doing that, everything's going to
be good, and I feel like this is the best way that we've figured out so far to be able
to do that because it's just the two of us.
You're looking at the whole company right here, it's just us, it's all...
We're hoping that'll change over time.
Yes, but for now it's just us doing 100% of the things.
We're just at a point, I feel lucky enough in life now, that we're at a point where we
get to say, we have found the thing that we really enjoy making, and we found the way
that we enjoy traveling, and we found the way that we get to still also do the things
that we love outside of travel, and see the people that we love outside of traveling.
Yes, because we love, it would make me so happy if a season 10 of this existed, a season
12, and to be able to make it down the road that far means that we needed to find a way
to pace ourselves while still keeping the quality up, so yeah.
So going forward, season three, our plan is, so today it's early August, and we are planning
to go out and start filming season three starting next week.
We leave next Thursday.
And we're going to be out for maybe what, like one and a half, two months of filming.
Six to eight weeks, I think.
And after that's done, we're going to start putting out those videos, so hopefully, and
this is us trying to set our expectations, set our manageable, please be flexible with
us schedules, is hopefully our first video will come out end of September, maybe early
October.
Yeah, yeah, that's when season three will start, and then they're just going to come
out consistently one right after each other during that time, right?
Yes, she looked at me terrified when I said that, yes.
These things have gotten really, really hard to edit, and they take a really long time
to edit.
So season three, all right, coming soon, we're going to announce in a podcast very soon what
we're planning on filming because we don't 100% know yet, but we know for sure we're
going to be climbing Mount Fuji.
That's what we're doing in a week from now.
And we also might be in advance and we're cold.
Yeah, yeah, both of those things seem really likely.
All right, more on that, I feel like we've gone long winded enough on this particular
topic.
This one's going to be a challenging one to title.
Yes, next podcast coming real soon to you every week, every two weeks, we're not sure
yet.
It'll come frequently.
Seasons for podcasts too, so we're really good at setting expectations.
Thanks guys so much for listening and watching.
If you're listening, you can watch this on YouTube.
If you're watching this on YouTube, you can also listen on a podcast platform near you.
Yes.
Okay.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.