From Australia to Sakhalin: My Unexpected Russian Adventure

Your Host, Laban Ditchburn shares a personal and insightful solo episode reflecting on his recent travels to Russia, where he navigates the complexities of visiting a country under travel advisories from his home nations. He discusses the cultural nuances he's encountered, particularly the reserved nature of the Russian people and how earning their smiles differs from the more immediate friendliness found in other countries. Laban recounts the challenges faced during his journey, including unexpected visa issues and interactions with local authorities that turned out to be more about curiosity than concern. He emphasizes the importance of adapting to new environments and the lessons learned from immersing himself in a culture he's long wished to explore. Through his experiences, he encourages listeners to embrace challenges and seek deeper connections with people from diverse backgrounds.

As Laban shares his reflections on the past year and the future of his podcast, he emphasizes the significance of authenticity and the desire to provide meaningful content.

He acknowledges the challenges faced in producing episodes while traveling, especially during a time of significant global changes. The episode serves as a platform for not only recounting his personal experiences but also for encouraging listeners to find their own voices and stories amidst life’s chaos. Laban expresses gratitude towards his audience for their continued support and invites them to engage with him as he navigates this transitional phase. He hints at exciting developments for the podcast in 2025, intending to explore deeper conversations that challenge listeners intellectually and emotionally. Through his journey in Russia, Laban exemplifies the spirit of resilience and curiosity that he hopes to inspire in his audience, urging them to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and connection.

The podcast delves into themes of cultural adaptation and personal growth as Laban embraces the cold Russian winter. He recounts his unique approach to connecting with locals—running outdoors in freezing temperatures, which not only serves as a conversation starter but also challenges societal norms around comfort and resilience.

Throughout his journey, Laban emphasizes the importance of stepping outside one’s comfort zone, both physically and metaphorically. He reflects on the deeper lessons learned from his experiences, particularly in understanding the nuances of Russian culture, which often requires time and genuine connection to uncover the warmth beneath a stoic exterior.

A key takeaway is Laban's insight into the importance of authenticity in relationships, contrasting the superficial smiles of many Western cultures with the genuine connections he is forming in Russia. This personal exploration serves as an encouragement for listeners to seek their own adventures and confront their preconceived notions about other cultures.

Takeaways:

• Laban Ditchburn shares his experiences traveling to Russia during a politically charged time.
• The cultural differences between Russia and other countries are explored through personal anecdotes.
• Ditchburn emphasizes the importance of connection and understanding in unfamiliar environments.
• Running in cold weather becomes a unique way for Ditchburn to engage with locals.
• He discusses the challenges of traveling with various government travel advisories in effect.
• The episode reflects on the evolution of the podcast and future plans for its direction.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Visa
• MasterCard
• PayPal
• Stripe
• McDonald's
• Starbucks
• Coca Cola

Find everything else you need to at https://labanditchburn.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You may not know me, but letme tell you one thing.
I don't care what you think.
G'day.
There is Laban Ditchburn, yourhost of the become your own superhero
podcast.
And today a very special solo episode.
And I'll start by apologizingin advance on not having more episodes

(00:24):
in 2024.
And I can get into some of thereasons why that happened in a minute.
But firstly, I just wanted tosay for those that have been enjoying
or forcing yourselves tolisten over the last what will be
our fifth year in May 2025,thank you very much from the bottom

(00:48):
of my little boy heart.
And whenever you came alongand started listening to the show,
I hope you've benefited fromsome of the information that's been
shared here.
And if you haven't, if youcontinue to listen, I'm sure it'll
only be a matter of timebefore something twigs.
So anyway, this is beingrecorded from the kitchen of my beautiful

(01:14):
mother in law, Olia, in theisland of Sakhalin in Russia in January
2025.
And if you can hear anyresidual noises in the background,
it's my beautiful wife who'scutting up some cabbage to make a
traditional Russian dishthat'll involve some, I think we've

(01:35):
got some veal mint, maybe somepork mints as well.
But I thought, you know what,let's just see it, make it feel a
bit more homely and make it apart of the experience.
And you can join me in thispart of the world, which is a fascinating
part of the world, especiallyin this moment in time in 2025.

(01:57):
And it's a couple of days froman inauguration of a certain president
in a certain country.
And we've got a trip to Moscowin about a week and we'll be there
in St.
Petersburg and getting a lotcloser to the, the action you would
caught.

(02:18):
And I'm not saying thatlightly, but we came here about a
month ago and Anna and I areboth Australian citizens.
She's also a Russian citizenand I hold a New Zealand passport
or New Zealand citizen.
And both of my countriesAustralian country said do not travel.

(02:44):
America said it, says it,England says it.
And the, you know, part of thereason we come, we came here was
to visit one of Anna's ailing grandmothers.
And she's getting on and wedon't know how much longer she's
got, might be another year,might be 10 years, but depending

(03:08):
on a few things in the future,we may not be able to get here as
easily.
So it's very interestingArriving in a country where your
government has said do nottravel and I'm not here to make this
political anyway, that's notwhat the show is all about, but the

(03:30):
experience when I arrived herebecause we had to go through China,
you can't fly here directly.
There's a number of sanctionsand embargoes.
And to give you an example,Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Stripe,
the Swift banking system,McDonald's, Starbucks, Coca Cola,

(03:52):
all banned in various ways,some more than others.
And you know, that's a, that'sa challenging experience when all
of your debit cards don't workin, in the country.
And thanks to some ingenuityfrom Anna and some, some of her friends

(04:13):
in the Russian community wereable to make things work in that
capacity.
But when we arrived, we flewfrom, we went through Japan, had
a situation there where myvisa, which has to be hand stamped
and hand inserted into mypassport took a month longer than
it was supposed to.

(04:35):
And so we booked our flightand by the time my passport came
back with my visa we hadalready left the country, left Australia,
came the next day.
And so we had to rely on mydarling brother to ship it out to
some place in Osaka hotel wewere staying at.
We had a couple of weeks inJapan, came down with some God awful

(04:56):
flu man made thing in a lab somewhere.
It was pretty brutal.
And then as we're getting overthat, you know, still very unwell,
flying to a Russian winterfrom the tropical paradise of the
sunshine coast of Queenslandwhere we now reside and with a drop
of about 50 degrees centigradeand we come into Vladivostok and

(05:20):
I go with Anna to the passportcontrol and get politely asked if
I could escort them into a room.
And for about 10 or 15 minutesthey were asking me some questions
about what I was doing thereand took some details from my, my
phone, took my, the serialnumber on my phone and I was on my
way and I thought that was abit of fun, that was a bit exciting.

(05:43):
And you know, some people bemortified by that.
It's just me.
And then we had a domesticflight from, from Vladivostok to
Suckalin island and we arrivedthere and I got hauled into another
room by the federal police,which is, if you think about James
Bond movies, you'll, you knowwhen the Russians are being targeted

(06:09):
in, in those movies like therewere a lot it was the kgb and KGB
is no longer, but this is theFederal police equivalent.
And I got grilled for an hour,an hour.
It was the fifth airport I'dbeen in 24 hours.
I was absolutely exhausted, asyou might imagine, and still reeling

(06:32):
from this illness.
And they asked me questionsthat I had not been asked in 30 years.
And the funny, the thing aboutit, and it's always funny in hindsight,
is that as it turns out, the,the main reason that they wanted
to hold me for so long wasbecause the gentleman had not met

(06:53):
anyone from New Zealand orAustralia before and wanted to practice,
practice his English.
And maybe if he just asked menicely, I would have conversed with
them.
But, you know, under the, thepressure of the interrogation, I,
I missed the anniversary ofmy, my wedding.

(07:15):
I said it was in, in May whenit was actually in April, and we
only got married a coupleyears ago.
So men get a tattoo somewhereof your, your wedding anniversary
and, and have it somewhere youcan see it during interrogation because
it doesn't look great.
It doesn't look great.

(07:36):
But so that then, then wearrived and man, what a culture shock.
It's a country that I'vewanted to come and see and check
out for probably more than 30 years.
It's been one of thosecountries I thought about for a very
long time.
44 now and long before I metmy wife, Anna.
And then I finally got hereand it took a week to, to really

(07:57):
get acclimatized.
You know, the weather, the,the culture, you know, with, with
everything that's going on andyears and years and years of conditioning
to undo as well.
What I mean by that is thatduring times of rest and relax, relaxation,
Anna and I will often havewatched movies and quite often they'll

(08:21):
be, you know, I can, I canshow her a movie that was a massive
hit 20, you know, 30 yearsago, back when movies were more movies.
And without exception, almostthe Russians are the bad guys.
She's sitting there next to meor lying next to me in bed, often

(08:41):
saying, I don't understand whyall this beef with Russia.
And so you're dealing with alot of that.
But I mean, I have read anddone a lot of research and gotten
below the surface level of alot of stuff and come to have a much
better understanding of what Iused to, of Russia and the Russian
people and the culture andwhat I will say in the time that

(09:04):
I've been here and theopportunities that I've had to connect
with my in laws, aunties anduncles, a father in law, virtually,
I have been welcomed in withboth arms once I'm in the inner circle.
And one of the fascinatingthings about the Russian culture

(09:27):
is that they don't give awaytheir smiles easily.
And it's not because they areunhappy people, far from it.
It's because you have to earn that.
Whereas, you know, I've livedin, this will be my eighth country
now, and I've been to about 30 countries.

(09:50):
I think most countries thatI've been to will very easily flash
a smile at you.
And, you know, that's nice.
You go to Thailand and they'reespecially smiley, you know, time
in India.
They, you know, they'll stareat you initially and then when you

(10:10):
smile, they'll smile bigsmile, big beaming smile back at
you.
Go to America.
Hey, oh my God, how are youlike that?
And they don't even know you.
And a lot of it is superficialand vacuous in some cases or has
an ulterior motive built in.
And you don't get that in myexperience here.

(10:32):
And.
But one thing I have noticedafter getting a bit down in the dumps
with that, by the way, becauseI'm a confidence guy, I love, you
know, creating small talk andengaging with people and that.
And that's not what they do here.
Plus, I don't speak thelanguage very well, so I'm relying
on my darling translator wife,you know, to help me out.

(10:56):
And now I'm.
Now I get it.
Now I'm starting to reallyunderstand it.
So what I have been doing toconnect with the Russian people is
it's very cold over here atthe moment.
It is getting down to as lowas about minus 20 Celsius, which
is about just below zero onthe Fahrenheit scale.

(11:18):
And I've been running and beenrunning outside and I'm pretty well
covered up top, but I've beenrunning in my running shorts and
my legs are exposed.
And it's one of those thingswhere I've never actually felt the
cold that much on my legs.
Don't get me wrong, it's coldon my legs, but it's not, it's not

(11:40):
that bad.
It's, it's very, verycomfortable compared to other things.
And that's a great way toconnect with the Russian people because
that creates a lot of smilesin this, in the streets when they
have 19 layers of seal andlamb and beer all over their bodies

(12:01):
and, you know, rugged up headto toe.
And here I come running alongwith my, with my running shorts and.
And you know, I went for a runtoday and it was, I think it was
minus 16 with the wind chill.
And, you know, you get a fewpeople beeping horns and giving you
the thumbs up I've had onehigh five and plenty of smiles from

(12:21):
the babushkas, which is thegrandmas here.
And that's my way to, toconnect with people and they can
see someone who's getting outthere, getting it done.
And, you know, for those thathave known me or heard, heard me
talk about this in the pastwhen we lived in Melbourne, I used
to run almost every day foryears with no shirt on, rain, hail

(12:44):
or snow.
And it was a really great wayto build up conditioning.
You know, I never used to feelthe hot or the cold in those extremes
because of that.
And there's a lot of sciencethat is coming out around the development
of brown fat in the body.
And that's the, that's the,it's a really good fat that you want
to have and it helps withregulating all kinds of good stuff.

(13:08):
So maybe that'll help becausein two days we have the baptism ceremony,
which is a tradition in Russiaall across the country every January.
And I'm going to be dunking myhead under the water three times

(13:32):
in a hole cut out of a frozen lake.
And the water temperature isaround about 2 or 3 degrees centigrade,
which I think officially iscolder than a mother in law's kiss.
So now I've verbalized it andput it out there into the ether,

(13:52):
I have to follow through.
And how well would the world'sbest courage coach conduct himself?
Folks?
You have to be an integrityalignment with that statement when
you go around calling yourselfthe world's best courage coach.
So as part of this soloseries, I will be releasing a few

(14:13):
more of them.
We're not going to be back inAustralia until the end of February.
And the direction that we'regoing to take with the podcast in
2025, we have a good idea.
But that will all be reallyconfirmed over the coming month or

(14:34):
so.
And that was a part of thereason why we came to Russia was
to get away from the normalityand put ourselves in some challenging
situations and spend some timereally thinking about what's important
to the listener base, what's,what's the greatest way to create

(14:56):
the most amount of valuebecause the, there's some really
brilliant content out thereand, and people have their own style.
And I don't want to go downthe route of trying to become someone
that I'm not.
And you know, 2024, though wedidn't do too many podcasts, we really

(15:19):
ramped up the, the style of guest.
And if you had a listen, wehad some politicians on for the first
time Senator Pauline Hanson'sSenator Malcolm Roberts, both from
Australia and, and, you know,had an opportunity to go and interview
Senator Hansen in her office.

(15:41):
And she'd never been on anypodcast with the exception of one
audio one with Sam Newman, butshe had been on 60 Minutes about
four times.
And I was able to spend sometime with her in her office and we
had a lot of fun and I wasable to dust off some pretty preconceived
notions I had about her.

(16:02):
And that's really the wholepoint of getting to know some of
these people, not to give badpeople an audience.
I don't think you need toworry about that.
They sort of sort themselvesout and some people reveal themselves
to be not who they say theyare later on down the line.
And that's just the risk youtake with some of these guests.
But the show was created togive great speakers an opportunity

(16:28):
and a platform to share in amanner that will allow people to
take action for themselves andbecome their own superheroes.
So that's a bit of anexplanation for why we didn't do
as many interviews andreleased them last year, apart from
the fact we got back toAustralia in April 2024 after two

(16:53):
and a half years of being onthe road.
And being on the roadcertainly makes it a little bit more
challenging to record videoand audio podcast, but at least with
these audio ones, they're abit more manageable.
And if you enjoy these, I'dlove to hear from you.
You can find me on labanditchburn.com and through that website

(17:16):
you have all the links to yourfavorite social media account.
I think you might even be ableto send me an email there if you
want to pass on any feedbacks.
Feedback good, bad or indifferent.
Have a great day if you're nothaving one.
And if you are, well, keep upthe good work.
Would.