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May 25, 2025 β€’ 26 mins

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Niall (00:03):
And then we just stumbled across this.

Adrie (00:07):
I knew we were coming here.

Niall (00:09):
Did you, this is the number one spot I've been most
excited to go to.
It led to the richest man in theworld, Elon Musk, calling the
guy who was trying to help themost, calling him a.

(00:32):
Oh my.

(00:53):
It's uh, first foodie in Shanghai and our last foodie in
Thailand and.
We are on our way to somethingthat I didn't know we were gonna
do, and it's so exciting.
I can't wait to tell you aboutit, but we'll tell you about
that in a minute.
'cause right now we are, we'reabout an hour out of Kangri and
then we just stumbled acrossthis.

Adrie (01:13):
I knew we were coming here.

Niall (01:14):
Did you?
Okay, so we didn't stumble.
We came here exactly on time to.
To, uh, this stupa and this oldwall.
What wall, what isn't no sense.
It's a stupor.
What's the difference between astupor and a what?

Adrie (01:35):
Oh, well what's a temple?

Niall (01:37):
Ah, see, I gotta write this time, but this is really
cool.
So on the outside of this,there's five gates and there's
an old wall that.
It is like with cool brick work,kinda similar to this, and it
was built 15th century ad.
That's a long time ago.

(01:58):
Wait, 15th century ad?
It is

Adrie (02:00):
a 16th ad.
Oh, major re restoration wasconducted.
Thank

Niall (02:05):
twice in two minutes.

Adrie (02:08):
Except for the massive time you were wrong.

Niall (02:12):
It is this culture that sets Thailand apart from Vietnam
is a big point of difference inculture.
They like know there's misongand outside Ang, but there's not
much else.
Not like this.
So it's called wa fra.

(03:06):
So this says that apparentlythere's evidence reviews, two
construction episodes.
There was a hu consisting of astaircase, a platform, a
terrace, a brick floor, andsingle tiered ceramic tile roof.
Uh, I'm no archeologist, as youwould know.
Why the hell do you know thatfrom this?
That is incredible.

(03:26):
Then it says it was rebuilt toits original size and form,
except that the floor wasslightly raised.
The rear, the rear wall was enallowed to support the roof
weight.
There's no roof.
How would they know the weightof the roof and the new base of
the principle Buddha image isbuilt?
I don't know how we know thesethings as human beings.
It's mental, but it looks cooland it's old.

(05:11):
Oh my dog.

Adrie (05:20):
This a lunar New Year thing.
Oh my God.
You get that on camera?
Yes.

Niall (05:26):
Explain what's been happening today.

Adrie (05:29):
We just keep hearing firecrackers out of nowhere, all
over the place.

Niall (05:32):
Like I the last

Adrie (05:33):
couple days where we, this morning at breakfast, we
heard the loudest ones forconsiderable amount of time,
like in the middle of the streetand now at some random little
temple.
Fuck sake.

Niall (05:45):
I remember at first you were like, why someone letting
off fireworks?
I think it's definitely somecultural or religious thing that
they're letting off.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Really loud firecrackers.

Adrie (05:56):
Let's go play.
That was

Niall (05:57):
terrifying in this nice, peaceful, quiet watch.
And then someone's just lettingoff.
And that is, oh, we were overthere.
That is a temple over there.
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
We are here now at the GoldenTriangle, not in India.
There's a golden triangle inIndia, right?

Adrie (06:14):
Well, we're in Thailand, so No, we're not in India right
now.
Yeah.
We didn't

Niall (06:17):
go to India.
Just very quickly.
So we're in Thailand.
We're at the Golden triangle.
What is the golden triangle?

Adrie (06:22):
It's where Thailand lass and Myanmar meet.

Niall (06:26):
That's pretty cool.

Adrie (06:26):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Niall (06:27):
And we were just in Lao a few months ago.
On

Adrie (06:30):
the other side.

Niall (06:31):
On the other side of this is the Mekong River as well,
right?

Adrie (06:33):
Yeah.
But like we are further down

Niall (06:35):
still crazy.
We in

Adrie (06:36):
the tn, this is not

Niall (06:38):
the, this is the Mekong River that flows all the way
from, I think, does it start inChina?
The Ong

Adrie (06:43):
somewhere.

Niall (06:43):
And then goes all the way out to the Ong Delta in Canada.
In Canada.
I dunno where that came from inVietnam.

Adrie (06:52):
You come?
Yeah.

(07:44):
So we're just under the Buddhistbutt and we are here where you
can see all three countries to,we're currently standing in
Thailand and just over thewater, that little point is
Myanmar.
Um, on the map you can see it'sreally just a bit of a, an
insula almost.
It's tiny bit.
And then across the river, thatwhole side is glass.

(08:06):
It looks like.
There's casinos and stuff overthere, so maybe it's total
speculation, but heavilydeveloped by China would be my
guess.

Niall (08:14):
Yeah.
I did see on the map it did seea casino.
Yeah.
So we are at the literal
golden
triangle
to be, this must be the closestpart.
There you go.

(08:36):
So we got Myanmar over there.
Now over there in Thailand,right below us, we are at the
Great Opium Hall.
Not to be confused with theGreat Opium House, so much opium
around here that there's twomuseums about opium and the
Golden Triangle is a famousplace, like a famously known
area.

(08:57):
Of the three countries wherelots of drugs goes through.
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Adrie (08:59):
Well, it's got, it's, yeah, got a lot of history,
which we're about to learn,which we're going to learn
about,

Niall (09:04):
which maybe is why they called it the golden triangle.
That little bit, but it's veryconfusing because that is mostly
associated with drugs and that'swhy the opium den, no, it's not
an OPM den the great a hall ofop, hall of opium.
So let's go around that landabout some drugs and I think you
get some free opium once youleave.

(09:31):
So we haven't had any signs yet.
So I assume this was like thetunnels that they used.
A recreation of the terms.
These all look like faces.
Oh, they are faces.
Oh my God.
That is terrifying.
I thought I was just seeingthings in the patterns.
I like, oh, that looks likefaces.
It is actual faces.

(09:58):
Going up this tunnel with allthese scary faces and things on
the wall, and there's not beenone setting to tell you what
this is or what it represents
or
anything about it.
Questionnaire, yeah.
There was a QR code for aquestionnaire to fill in
something you haven't done yet.
So we do said this was doublethe cost of the Opium House.

(10:22):
This is the Opium Hall.
We've yet to find out why it'sdouble the price, but we hope
it's gonna be good.
It's.

Adrie (10:35):
Represen that the souls destroyed by opening up.

Niall (10:39):
It's open to your interpretation.

Adrie (10:42):
This is put on by the International Narcotics College.
I assume it's going to be anti,and

Niall (10:50):
this is real golden trying.
Meanwhile, Thailand, Lao, southof, and China and northwest of
Vietnam.
I loved the drug productioncomes from.

(11:11):
Well, family's really bad.
Is that a real person?
Oh my God.
I thought that was a real childsitting there at first.
Yeah.
Opium.
Was and is super addictive.
So in China there was lots andlots of people getting addicted.

(11:33):
They wanted to make it illegalto help the country, the East
India company wanting to tradeit.
'cause you make a lot of money.
Enter the fucking bridge.
Yeah.
Then the Brits come in, they mail it Right now we're
gonna keep selling.
All this tea was involvedSomehow.
I kind of missed how that wasinvolved, but they sold a lot of
Tea.
Britain I think got addicted totea more than opium.

(11:54):
It sounded like.

Adrie (11:55):
They were trading opium.

Niall (12:19):
Opium is way worse than I thought it was.
The Brits wanting to import it.
Make lots of money.
And even governments like inThailand we're like, yeah, we
can make a lot of money fromdrugs, bring it in.
But eventually Thailand did sayno, and they stopped.
They tried to stop opiumaddiction and the drugs coming
into the country and ly they'vedone a really good job of

(12:42):
cutting down all the trees andthe opium plants, and they've
massively, massively reduced theamount of opium that is produced
in Thailand, which now that Iknow how addictive it is and how
bad it is, that's definitely agood thing.
This is the number one spot I'vebeen most excited to go to.
I never once in my life thoughtI would ever be here.

(13:03):
We only found out yesterday wewere coming.

Adrie (13:05):
Yeah.

Niall (13:06):
And this place is one that attracted worldwide
attention.
Everyone was obsessed with itfor weeks, months.

Adrie (13:16):
Yeah.

Niall (13:16):
Yeah.
Months.
Months

Adrie (13:18):
wait weeks.
But.
Yeah, sure.

Niall (13:22):
Everyone was obsessed with it.
It was all over the news, allover the media.
It led to the richest man in theworld, Elon Musk, calling the
guy who was trying to help themost, calling him a pedo,
leading to court cases.
And it was also the place wherea tie football team, but stuck
in a cave and had to be rescued.

Adrie (13:41):
Yeah, I mean, that's the most important thing, not the
Elon Musk thing.

Niall (13:44):
I'd never thought in a million years that we would be
here, so we are at.
Tam Luang, k Ong National Parkin Shanghai, Thailand.
And we're gonna go up and seethe cave, uh, which is the site
of one of the most dramaticstories of the modern era, I
think.
Yeah.
How obsessed were you with it?
'cause you were very, veryobsessed.
I watched

Adrie (14:04):
like the news every day and I was just in awe the whole
time, like terrified for thesepoor little boys.

Niall (14:11):
So if you don't remember, you don't want talking about, I
don't know where you've been,but I think it was 14 boys.
It was a Tide football team thatgot taken into a cave by their
coach, and then the water levelsrose suddenly and they got
trapped way deep in the cave andcouldn't get out.
Everyone pretty much thoughtthey wouldn't be able to
survive.
They had no food, minimal water,and complete darkness.

(14:33):
So we got a new friend we'vebeen tuned to get on this truck
and 20,
yeah, okay.
Okay.
To put money in the tip box, but nobody tells us how
much to put in.
The tip box comes out, it's 20.
That's quite easy.
Do, and now we're gonna getdriven up to the cave, I
presume.
So these kids were stuck in acave, couldn't get out.

(14:54):
It was pretty dire.
It didn't seem like they weregonna be able to get out.
I listened to a podcast about itrecently and it was the way the
cave, like they had to go underrocks and be brought out one at
a time through water.
No caving, no diving experience,no caving experience.
And eventually they decided thebest thing to do was sedate

(15:14):
them, which is dangerous initself.
So they had to send in an anes.
Theologist, that's how you saythat.
At, sedate them one at a timeand then have an expert caver
take them out through thesenarrow passageways filled with
water and get them all out.
And I mean, I remember at thetime we really didn't think they
would survive.
How could they survive?

(15:35):
But therefore, so long and everysingle one of them got out and
survived to an incredible story.
I mean, even we heard it fromVietnam.
This is like remote ruralThailand.
Never thought once in a millionyears that we would.
Actually be visiting this place.
So it's pretty cool and it'sobviously really cool because it
had a happy ending.

(15:58):
I think because of all theattention, it's been a bit.
Done up in a good way.

(16:32):
13 boys, one coach, and theywent over two kilometers deep
into the cave.
So we are here.
They went all the way alongthere.
They're here 2,315 meals fromthe cave engines.

(16:56):
Is this what they brought theout in?

(18:11):
Did you ever think you wouldcome here?
No.
How many elbows do you think youspent in total watching this on
the TV as it was unfolding?
Oh, my hundred I remember.
Yeah.

Adrie (18:22):
Watched stuff.
We that it Good?
Yeah.
Met a lot.

Niall (18:28):
So 13 boys were rescued, one coach and they went 2.3
kilometers deep into the cave.
We were allowed to go.
How far?
500 meters maybe.
Yeah.
If that.
There's no fun, but it'sstunning nonetheless, and pretty
awesome that all those boys aredied.

(18:49):
So I was wrong.
There was one person whounfortunately did pass away
because of this rescue missionand was this soldier here from
the Thai army, right?
He passed away delivering theoxygen tanks so they could get
these 13 little bulls, as theycalled them.
What legend

Adrie (19:12):
the next day.

Niall (19:24):
No microphones.
If you hear any quality in thedifference right now, it's
because microphone's coming fromthe camera.
We have to take our microphone,but we could still film private
art exhibit, and it's one of themost visually stunning art
exhibits, temples in all thetime.
And it predicted, not evenfinish it.

(19:46):
So what's that one?
The champion,

Adrie (19:50):
the one in Barcelona that.
What's it called again?
We normally just finished, Ican't remember the name

Niall (19:56):
right now.
Oh my goodness.
But you know the one we'retalking about in Barcelona.
Well, this is predicted to befinished in 20, once they come
back for the finishing 14 Ideal.
We see how that is, but this isamazing.

(20:56):
Repetitive actually Makes sense.
Pretty good.
Yeah, maybe.
And then of course we.

Adrie (21:42):
That's why I.

Niall (22:24):
So this one doesn't have any minerals on it.
So I think this one isunfinished and it's gonna look
like that eventually.
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