Episode 0000270: Valerie St-Onge

In this week's episode. I chat with Valerie St-Onge. Her and her family don't travel to your normal boring destinations when they go on vacation, they've leveled up! Find out where, how, and why, and probably more when you listen to our conversation. This is Valerie's story!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nobodies are Somebodies.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's me Chad Weiss, and I'm recording this on a
blue yetti microphone on the Nobody's Are Somebody's podcast, although
the microphone itself is not blue, it's gray g r
aa double y gray. But still, this is the equipment

(00:27):
that I have. I always like to give you a
piece of background, give you a snapshot of where I
am and what I'm doing when I do these intros
here on the Nobody's or Somebody's podcast. So welcome. If
it's your first time, please please please don't let it
be your last time. Really appreciate you listening and coming

(00:48):
by here, checking out the show and subscribing if you do,
listening to it on all the podcast platforms like Spotify,
like Apple Music, like Deezer, like Weezer, like Old Geezer,
everywhere you can find your favorite podcast. That's where I'm at.
I'm sitting here in the beautiful province of New Brunswick.

(01:10):
I came out here to visit one of my many children,
this one being Alexei Alex and I'm out here for
the week with him, hanging out and it's something that
I do at least twice a year. And maybe more
now that I have a new to me car. If
you've seen my post on Instagram or Facebook, the brand new,

(01:31):
the beautiful, the lovely blue mystique replacing my beautiful beloved
Chevrolet Bruise. If you've been with me for a long time,
you're a longtime listener, you know all about the Chevrolet Bruce,
my car for so many years. That has been such
a part of my life, such a part of this podcast,
and the radio station, Nobody's radio station, Heavy Rock Radio

(01:51):
Paaravice City, everything I do, She's always been there and
if I had more time in this intro, I should.
Actually I'd love to docum there's a you know, just
the journey of my first drive out here from Ontario,
Canada to New Brunswick, Canada, the whole trip, the fascinating
the first time I've done such a long road trip

(02:12):
by vehicle, and then just being out here, and of
course the car itself changing over the whole A lot's
been going on this summer of twenty twenty five, and
I'd love to share that with you all. I'm not
always a fan of, I guess doing a full podcast
of just me talking to myself or talking to you,
the listener, but I think I might do this. There's

(02:32):
a lot, there's a lot I like to share. It's
too much for the intro of this podcast to get
all into, but I want to just say a lot
of great things, a lot of great changes coming up,
a lot of positivities in the life of Chadvice and
in the life of this podcast too. So I'm looking
forward to sharing all those details with you coming up
real soon. But in the meantime, I'm going to share

(02:55):
with you this conversation I had with Valerie Saint a
Saint Ounge. My French pronunciation is not the best. I'm
sorry val for mispronouncing your name. What I won't mispronounce
is amazing conversation. I almost did, but it's uh, it's
She's had some amazing journeys that are documented here in

(03:19):
this podcast, some travel adventures, and I think this is
a fun story and I want to have her share
it with you right now. So, without further ado, check
this out. Check out Nobody's or Somebody's podcast, give it
a like and a follow on Facebook, follow me on
Instagram at SEBCAMCO S E B C A, m c

(03:41):
O Rock and Talk interviews over on mixcloud that's mixcloud
dot com. Search Nobody's radio station mixcloud dot com Search
Nobody's radio station. Or SEBCAMCO dot com. That's s E.
B C A m CEO dot com. You can get

(04:03):
all the goings on of the podcast and more. We
will get into my conversation right now with Valerie here
on the podcast. Where did she go? Where does she
like to travel to? The answer will surprise you. She's
no ordinary traveler. You're gonna find out all about that
here on the show, right right right, right now, now, now, now, now, now,

(04:27):
right now now. Okay, it's now all right, Valerie. It's
good to have your conversation here on the podcast. And
I got to say something. Most people when they leave Canada,
the coldness that go away to Florida, Mexico, all the
standard normal, boring places, but not you. You got to

(04:50):
be different and your family like to go other places.
Unique people. H Yeah, tell me a bit about yourself.
Who is Valerie?

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Okay? Well, I was raised in the little village of
leaf Ive, Ontario. It's really small Canada, Canada. Yeah, yeah,
born on the Quebec side, but ended up growing up
in Ontario. And yeah, that was me.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Pretty did you get to travel a lot when you
were growing up? Did you get to see No, Yeah,
that's the thing. Yeah, been here in Canada or just
here pretty much.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
In your own life. I've yeah, I've never preten I've
never been a big traveler ever. I started actually not
too long ago. Like when when we started. I had
been to Florida once with my dad when I was younger, Florida.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
At the standard place, Yeah, said me, I haven't been
there yet. I'll make that right.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
I think I was ten or twelve the first time
I went. And yeah, besides that, I think change. We
went once and that was about it. Yeah, but never
I guess I was like stuck in the mind frame
of just you know, doing your thing, working, growing, building

(06:18):
a family, getting married, that that kind of stuff, you know,
meeting someone and step by step and the normal I
don't want to say normal, but the typical steps that
a certain type of person does in the normal. So
I never envisioned yeah, no, And I guess if I

(06:40):
were to think of going on a trip, I was thinking,
like everybody else, you know, the where everybody goes.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
On the Florida the Mexico all inclusive. Yeah, did you
you never long to travel, like, oh, I want to
see the world. I want to go to Europe. I
want to go to Australia.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
When I was younger, I kept telling my back then
we had nuns uh teaching us, like for kindergarten and
uh which.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Was school or with nuns? Well there was one I've
heard of that back years before, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, so she actual nuns. Yeah, I told her. I
don't know if it was to please her or whatever,
but I told her that I wanted to go heal
the world pretty much.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Like people volunteer to donate, volunteer.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, it's good. A lot of people don't think about
that too. But that's another big thing too.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
I want to go to Africa.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
I want to help.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, that's what I wanted to do. So yeah, So
it's always been in the back of my mind, but
never I've never thought about it to actually do it,
you know. So yeah, And the first time time we
went on a trip was in Costa Rica about two
years ago.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
It was after you met your husband started a family.
This is when you started to travel to Costa Rica
as this before.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, well, we went out in high school for a
very brief time, and then life took us on our
own separate ways. And then eighteen plus years after we
met again, I had a French request on Facebook around

(08:32):
that two thousand and seven, I.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Think that's on Facebook kind of first started too.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
It's yeah, I had a French request from him, and
at first I didn't know who he was. Yeah, well
that's exactly what I said, because he had changed his
name to H. D. John's son Finka because back then
he was living in the Costa Rica. So I thought, wow,
this is this is and wants to be well totally

(09:00):
out of the box kind of thing. And then he said, yeah,
it's Jonathan, how are you blah blah blah, and I'm like, wow, okay,
you're in Costa Rica. He's like, yeah, we're building something.
But then everything fell apart her for him and his
partner back then. So life events brought him back to

(09:22):
Canada and then I said like, why don't you, Why
don't you come over for like a coffee or whatever.
We could meet up and catch.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Up and catch up. We'll see yeah years.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, yeah, we'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
And then it's like pre plenty of fish, pre dating sites.
Facebook was originally dating.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Site, exactly exactly. Yeah, so you're gonna.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Talk, You're gonna have to get on the microphone, raise
Maurice am my unpaid promoter. Marie is here of course,
or else would she be. But if you want to
say something, you gotta get on the mind.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
So yeah, in twenty eleven, he was supposed to come
back to Canada. So that's when I invited him over.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
I'm like, oh see, guys were talking for three years,
just back and forth on online, on Facebook, just back
and forth.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Like yeah, he was platonic. He's a guy I knew
from high school. And I go, yeah, we went back
and forth, Hey, how are you like casual?

Speaker 2 (10:13):
And I went from there like obviously conversation. Everyone knows
how conversation works. It developed, and then he decided to
come back here to.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, he's like, hey, coming back to Canada. I'm like,
oh cool, we should meet up and have coffee or something.
And he's like, okay, let's set so far coffee.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, let's.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Set a date. So I'm like, okay, well this is
going to sound odd, but the only date that I
have free is like Christmas Eve and he's like, oh
I'm free that day. I'm like, okay, then let's do it. Yeah.
And then yeah, then did you.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Ever ask him to come over before that, or make
suggestions like, oh, if you were here, we could hang out,
or he just one day said hey, I'm going to
come back to Canada and have a coffee.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah. Well yeah, when when he said that he was
coming back to Canada, that's when I just like through
the idea out there. All we could catch up, grab
a drink or coffee or whatever, and then chat. But
I didn't think further than that. I didn't think like
that we were gonna just hit it off when.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Sorry, I take you he did right away the first
time he was here. You felt like there's a connection there.
When he first came over, Yeah, when you had that coffee,
yeah yeah, that's good. Yeah, it was like old times good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
And then after that, like he had a bunch of
parties to go to New Year's Eve happened and I
was like, oh, I might not hear anything anymore about
that guy.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
You know he might Yeah, you never know, we might
meet somebody, so life right.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah. I just left it like that and then a
couple of days after he called me back and said, hey,
you know, I really had a good time, like could
we see each other again? And I was like, oh, okay, coffee, yeah,
yeah it was Where.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Was the coffee? Where was that? Do you remember?

Speaker 1 (11:59):
At my mom?

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Wasn't even not a coffee?

Speaker 1 (12:02):
No, that's well.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
It wasn't even my coffee to be did you even
have coffee?

Speaker 1 (12:07):
I do, I do have coffee. But I ended up
having him for dinner.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Okay, yeah, and then worked pretty good.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm a good cook.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Shoe cooked. Yeah, yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
I love cooking.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
So that's part of what brought him back.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, I got him hooked on by the gut exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
That's how men get attracted the guns.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah. It was a good one, so that's good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And then at that point, obviously you guys have got married,
started a family. Were you interested in going back to
Costa Rica? Was he did he say I want to
bring you back there?

Speaker 1 (12:43):
I think he always had it in the back of
his mind because he kept saying saying, you know, with
the right partner, you can do whatever you want, and
like you can go far, you know, and and when
you don't when when you're not supposed to be together,
well the universe takes charge and ends up, you know,

(13:06):
separating you or whatever. Something happens that it doesn't work out.
Your plans fall apart or you know, your dreams like
crumble or whatever, but it doesn't work. So he's like,
I think, you know, you would have liked it there,
and I'm like, I bet I would have.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
So you went there with him?

Speaker 1 (13:25):
We went back? Yeah, or yeah, well there was.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
I would assume when you guys got married, you guys
got married in a fancy location or was it here?

Speaker 1 (13:34):
No, we're not married yet. We've been together thirteen years.
We're engaged and everything.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, yeah, engaged.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
We just got engaged. This year took but yeah, it
was just you know, he had the big winning, I
had the big winning. So previously yeah, before a meeting
before each other. Yeah yeah, so we thought, you know, change,
we don't need that. But then thirteen years later I
was like, okay, like do you really.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Want to or well, now it's time for a big
production exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
So yeah, So we went to Costa Rica for in
May two years ago and I had a retreat over there,
which is pretty obscure. That's a totally different story. But yeah,
there was a week long stay at a place where

(14:27):
like spiritually and everything to do some inner work and
healing for just you or for just that. Someone had
proposed to me and the idea of and I said, yeah,
I think I would go, and he was like, I
don't think it would be a good idea for you
to go by yourself, Like it's such a big step,

(14:49):
you know, in a life. And plus it was my
first ever trip. So he's like, I think we should
make it a family thing so we could all go.
My daughter was living with us at that time. We
had our little boy that we we had together, and
we said, yeah, why don't we plan everything just to

(15:12):
go everybody and then you just you would just leave
for the week and then you'd leave that stress. Uh,
that would be a stress load off your shoulder pretty much.
So I said, yeah, that sounds good, and that's what
we did, and we all loved it. We all loved
like the trip. And it wasn't a resort. We booked

(15:32):
an our airbnb. It was a house in the jungle,
completely outside of on the Pacific side.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
What made you want to choose airbnb? Versus an actual
hotel resort for comfort.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
It's a lot less money.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, but safety wise or comfort wise, did you feel
that was going to be okay?

Speaker 1 (15:55):
I never really thought maybe call me naive, but I've
never thought about that side of things, like oh, are
we going to be okay? Or where is it?

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Or have the amenities or you know what you're getting
in a resort. For the most part, right someone's house,
it's just like, yeah, you're taking a chance.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, we saw the pictures before, we saw what was
inside the house and everything. They get a match, and yeah,
it was beautiful, beautiful. And then in the morning we
would get up and I saw like a flock of
parrots of all kind of birds. I'm like, what parrots?
And then we look further and there's like monkeys crossing

(16:36):
the like the jungle. They have like this path that
they take like twice a day or like in the morning,
I would see them, and then later on I would
see them like cross back from trees and everything. So
that was pretty insane. Yeah. And then on our property
that we were renting, there was they call it peyote.
It's like an ant eater, but it looks really it's

(17:02):
the size of a small dog.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
I guess yeah, I've seen them seen pictures pot.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
So that that was on the property itself. So every
like scrap of fruits that we were having, we would
just not the and then that one and the lizards
would come and eat the fruit. So yeah, all wild.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's amazing. How was your son at that time he
went with you?

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Did he? How old was he?

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Two years ago? He ys? Ago?

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Okay, So he got to experience that and like realized
that must have been pretty interesting for him.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
He loved it. Yeah, that's a good.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Experience for a child. I can imagine the experience for me,
but I'm also childish, But that sounds like a good
childhood for him to experience that too. That's a lot
of that's an opportunity that a lot of kids don't get, right. Yeah,
that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, And there was a pool there. He learned how
to swim pretty much there because yeah, he was in
a pool the value he was the swim yeah early
in the morning too.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah that's cool. And the retreat itself that you went to,
did you find you got a lot out of it?
Was it beneficial to you? Did you feel like it
was all you were expecting, hoping for spiritual spirituality and
what you get.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Out of it, it was really good.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, you did that alone by yourself, without him and
your son, just went by yourself to kind.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Of and that that specific retreat. We couldn't take anything
with with us phones, no phones. I went with a
notebook thinking, you know, I'm going to journal. You know,
you can go with these expectations and say, oh, I'm
going to journal, I'm going to write everything every day,
and then they take.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Your You can't take that either. You can't document it.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, disconnect from.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Everything, no watches, no clocks, no nothing, so we didn't
know what time it was at all times. There. We
didn't have any contact with the outside world. But there
you know, And yeah, it was a total just to unclogged, unclocked,

(19:03):
disconnect completely from the modern world and the go go
go type of life. I think that's where they were
going for and there's.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Something really amazing about the idea of that, to just
let you forget it all.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah, I love. Some people were very very anxious and
not like comfortable at all with leaving everything. Some people's
work are on their phone.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
And they can they are the type of people who
need that exactly. They were they allowed to Were you
allowed to leave if you wanted to, if you couldn't
handle it, whether they let you go or were you
like no, you signed up, you got to stay, not
like jail, but like you did you have to stay
or could you leave?

Speaker 1 (19:44):
I think I think you could, Like, yeah, a couple
of people who actually went back home a couple of
days earlier because they they thought it was enough for them.
And then yeah they obviously they talked to that, Yeah,
to the host and everything, and yeah they let them go.
But yeah, otherwise, yeah, you don't know. I had a

(20:06):
couple inputs, Like the facilitator, I think that's how you
call them. He and his wife were like, okay, you
know your husband called and he said, you know, he
misses you. Hope everything goes well. And you're like, okay,
that felt so reassuring and everything. But other than that,

(20:27):
you have no news or you don't know. You know,
you're there for eight days and it's eight days without
with just you.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah that's good. So what did that do for you
coming out of that? Did you feel like that changed
anything in your life? Did you find a way to
maybe spend less time on the phone, less time on
TV social media. Did that do anything going forward in
your life? Did you find yourself kind of pulling away
a little bit. What do you think you took away
from that?

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah? I think that's what it makes you realize what's
really important in life. You know, the social media is there,
it's a tool, but you don't really you don't absolutely
need it. It doesn't need to be part of your
life twenty four to seven like it usually is. It's
so easy to just like unplug yourself and just plug

(21:16):
yourself on the on the media, on the You don't
everything that's that's on your phone really well, whether it's
games or.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
The constant barde entertainment.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Now you turn events, you turn your brain off pretty
much and just you just become on automatic pilot pretty much.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
So yeah, that that helped quite a bit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Did you pass it on to your family? Do you
find that your family now also maybe has a little
bit less time on screen, a little bit more time
for family, social interaction between you guys, your person like
people in your in your life real life. Do you
find that's kind of passed on to your family because
we're a few years removed from that now, So going forward,
have you noticed that your family's kind of changed for
the better in that way or has it just gone back.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
To I mean, it always comes back, right because it's
so easy.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
It's easy to come back in your life.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, but you get the it's you know, like you're
in control and you can just like leave your phone
there and whenever you have visitors, while your phone stays
upstairs or downstairs or whatever. And then really yeah, I
mainly use it now to take pictures of everyone. I'm

(22:28):
just like the picture.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Picture, the document while journal, you like journals. This is
like a photo journal of your life and you've been
to some cool places.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, I'm big on taking pictures, whether it's just like
on the walk, like when I came back. When we
came back to Canada, the big thing for us was
like seeing the greenery everywhere and just the trees and
everything because we've been away from that so long and
seeing you know, sandy scenery and beige and fifty shades

(23:00):
of beige, it becomes you know random.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
The podcast to fifty shades of beige.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah that's what it was. So, yeah, that was different.
It's amazing, so I caught myself taking pictures of everything,
you know, taking a walk in the morning and oh wow,
this is a nice flower. But I'm I'm the clouds
of sky. Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
But I'm like that everywhere I go, So even here
in this country, there's a lot of beautiful places you
can find if you travel. Do you travel a lot
in Canada at all? Like, I know you go other
places around the world, but it's Canada. Been something you've
explored nowhere? We don't do that a lot as Canadians.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
It's expensive in Canada, it's expensive. It's less expensive to
go somewhere.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
The idea is always we got to go somewhere and
see the world. But look at what we got here
in our back door. Right, But are you going to talk?
It's going to be in the microphone. I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
I can I can fess.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
It or no, you gotta get in it. This get
on the mic Okay, let's do professionally here someone that here.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
It's like you can go to to b C. Yes,
the scenery is like super different in here and very beautiful,
but it's still Canada. There's still like pines, it's still
like mountains to do like ski or so when you
when you travel, you want to be how do you say, actually,
like you.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
Want wowed by something else. You want to see different sceneries.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
You want to have different cultures, different filture like Asian
cilture or you know.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well, there's tons that live here. If you just go
in Ottawa Capital City, there's tons of Asians and people
from There's tons of people everywhere. I'm saying there's many cultures.
I don't know what that's for. Montreal is an email
Toronto Vancouver. You mentioned it has a lot of Asian population.
That's where I'm from. Me advice, Yes, the culture again,

(25:02):
if you're going to.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Talk, our daughter did it with her partner. She they
bought a Westphalia and then they went west and they
visited everything. Yeah, so they did it.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
But yeah, so where's the most interesting place around the world.
Will assume that you've been to that's really like, that's
a culture that really wowed you. Where have you gone
That's like, Wow, I can't believe whatever stereotypes you had
going in. We all have them for different places around
the world. Everybody has it against us. But when you
went somewhere for the first time and you saw it
where were like? Which place made you so like? Culture

(25:42):
shock for a life?

Speaker 1 (25:43):
I thought, I thought I fell in love with Costa
Rica because of the scuba diving and the sea life
and the reefs, and then all the colors that were
underneath it, like this see in the sea. Yeah, and
everything that we saw there. It was so beautiful. But yeah,

(26:08):
I'm sorry, but Thailand was like it took it.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
That takes a lot of Yeah, did you have a
pre impression before you got to Thailand what it would
be like I went to Bangkok, I assume.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah. We went to BANKUK. We thought, well, I thought
I had this idea that it was going to be
very city like an urban, and so I was I
had a little apprehension about that city.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
There was going to be overcrowded, like that's what I thought.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
It's going to be, yeah, like Montreal or Toronto, more
like Toronto. Actually that's that's what I thought. But it wasn't.
It wasn't. There's not like of course, if you go
to the malls to like the the sites where everybody
goes to, well that's what you will find a lot

(27:00):
of people and everything. But like everything else, you know,
they have.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
They have.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
They they mixed nature with the city urban the urban
and everything was beautiful. Like wherever we went, it was
really really beautiful. And of course we saw like a
couple of places there was a lot of uh, poor

(27:28):
people like ya, beggars, homeless people, homeless, Yeah, we see
that pretty much everywhere. But yeah, we saw that there,
but it was very minimal. And I thought that the people,
every people that I saw there, every person that I
met there, seemed to be really really happy with nothing.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
So they are the actual residence people who are from there,
they seem like they're even they were happy to be there,
even if they had nothing. They're just happy to be there.
That's really like a little.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Stand, you know, the little fir stands or the vegetable stands.
The old woman that's walking with the stand and she
has a hard time like just putting up like the
and everything. Yes, setting up the shop is hard. You
can see. You can tell that it's hard for them
to do, but they're just like doing it like it's nothing,

(28:20):
and they're they're all smiles always.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
You know, how did they treat you with the people?
Good for foreigners, super warm, Yeah, for travelers knowing that's
the thing too about certain countries, they know why you're
coming there. You're just coming to your traveler, your foreigner.
You're not going to stay, You're just there. They're like,
and then leave and they're still stuck there. So sometimes
there can be resent but they were welcoming. I really

(28:44):
thought they treat you guys well. Spoke English, I guess, and.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, most because then we went a little outside the
Bangkok at one point, and there it was very difficult
to communicate because we had this very very basic knowledge
of like saying hi, like greetings, you know, hi, thank you,

(29:08):
and delicious, oh my pet, my pet, which means not spicy.
So for me, I think that's one of the first
words I taught myself to Yeah, because the food there
was spicy, so spicy.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
What's the word again, my pet my pets? Yeah, I
mean it's not spicy.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah. So if you're a girl you say sawadika to
say hello and copunka to say thank you, And if
you're a guy you say saadika and copunka wow. For
a male, yeah, it's different, but yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Much like in French too. French has those male and
female terms right for certain things.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, but the word itself changes for if you're a
male or female there. Yeah and yeah, so we were
outside and there was barely any English and we had
to use our translator quite a bit on our phone.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
We had a translate the phone, Okay, not an actual
will translate. We have our own person.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
We're traveling very light. Yeah, we're traveling another way. There's
another way of traveling that we're doing. Yeah, so it's
not for everyone the way we travel. Yeah. It's like
Jonathan is really hyper focused when it comes to research.
So whatever it is, he's like, uh, not obsessing, but

(30:42):
like very hyper focused on finding everything. So he's going
to look very.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Well planned out, very well meticulously kind.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Of yeah, research, meticulously researching everything that like he's going
to compare prices. He's going to find like this place
looks fine and you know it's not where all because
we like to do it different as well. So for example,
when we went to the south of Thailand where all

(31:13):
the islands were, we didn't do all the islands that
everybody does. We we went to specific ones. And when
we went on both tours, you know there's a guy
that that well, our daughter was there at that point.
Maya my daughter, and he's like, I'm going to take
you to Maya Bay because it's like it's really beautiful.

(31:36):
And then we see this lineup of people. It was
like two streets of people just lining up to go
see this. You know where you you climb a lot
of stairs to see this from from. Yeah, yeah, that's
exactly what it was. And we're just looking at it

(31:57):
and I'm like, no, that's not where we're going, sorry, Maya,
but we saw Maya Bay from Afar. But we asked
the guy, like, take us where there's no one and
he was like what, yeah, the dangerous place you know,
and where there's no one and he's like, no one. Yeah, no,
no people. We don't want no people. Take us where

(32:19):
there's no one. It was the same thing, but I
guess we would have had to pay to go to
go on the lookout or whatever it's called. And so yeah,
he took us to this place and they're they're happy
that you asked that because they know all these little
special places. So he took us where there was no

(32:42):
one around and we could just dive in the sea
and go snorkeling and everything. And again like there, I
thought Costa Rica was nice and beautiful, and I didn't
I hadn't seen anything yet. This was just like whoa, okay,
turquos water. The colors on the like underneath were just

(33:03):
like spectacular. All the fishes that I saw, I saw
like like tons of fishes, different fishes like sting raise,
a buffer fish, like the dory. I saw like plenty
of dories. You know, it's amazing, that's where they come from.
And we were just like we were pointing to each
other like with our masks, like we look there and everything. Yeah,

(33:26):
so it was amazing and yeah, so that's what we do. Usually,
we go outside the box and we just look for
maybe not not the most.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Visited place, Oh yeah, the place is the standard. There's
like a usual amount of place or usual tour places
that people go to, right, the standard places where people
will go to expected places. But you guys go outside
the box of that, which is cool, which maybe not
always a great idea depending on where you go. But
it sounds like this was a say, uh safe everywhere

(34:02):
it was safe.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, I assume they would tell you if you say, well,
let's take me somewhere where nobody goes. Well, sometimes there's
a reason for that, so they would tell you ahead
of time, Hey, maybe don't go here tourists. You know,
it could be dangerous.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah, you read about it. And there's a couple of
streets that are really really busy, and again like with
tourists and everything. And then they warned you about pickpockets.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yeah, exactly, things like that, people trying to take advantage
of tourists. Right, we weren't paying attention too. We're busy
because that's the idea. They're looking around, they're trying to like,
well wow, you know, and people don't realize that's when
they can you know, you know, do something right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Why Yeah, because when we were when we were at
that place where like barely anyone spoke English, every night,
there was a kind of like a food market right
next to the condo that we were renting, and so
we would just go and then we would point to
We had to translate the signs to know what the

(34:56):
food was first of all, and then of course you
can tell like when you're looking. But sometimes you look and.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
You're like, what is what is this?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
I don't know what kind of meat is this? You know,
I know plai is a fish and move I think
or momo is pork. But then yeah, like the big lines,
you're like, okay.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
You don't want to what is surprised. You need to
know what what might be, Yeah, what you might be served.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yes, so we would translate everything. But then you get
to know the people and then then recognize you going
there when you go like two three times.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
There to become a regular at that point. Yeah, more than.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Happy to see you and everything.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, how long were you therefore, and.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Talk about about three months?

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah, that's a long time. It is so you were there.
It to you, your husband Jonathan, your son, and your
daughter is there too. Yeah, so three months is a
long time to be away. You must have a lot
of vacation hours at work or he does.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Well, yeah, here here, I've been well. I was doing
massages here, reiki, uhmo therapy. Yeah yeah, but I was.
I went to school for daycare teachers, so I was like, yeah,

(36:16):
I was working in day cares for sixteen years. Uh.
Then I put that aside and then I went for
the massage course on the Quebec side.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Then I took the big course on the Ontario side.
But I did not graduate on the Ontario side because
I did not pass my physics bluntly like that.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yeah, your physics, that's different. Yeah, it's like the actual physics,
like the math.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
It was like ions and neurons.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
I really like that scientific stuff. The therapy. You have
to know all that.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, it's pretty intense and deep.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
My neck to stop. Yeah, ions and protons in my neck,
I want to stop the ache in the back of
my legs. Yeah that's weird.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah. But I knew, like all my practical and everything,
the myology and everything I knew. I just didn't, you know,
graduate the big thing. And so I was practicing with
my knowledge that I had from the Quebec side, and
the courses and the qualifications that I had on the
Quebec side. I was part of the of an order

(37:29):
of massage therapist on the Quebec and that's what I
was doing for a while. And then I just put
that on hold. And Jonathan had the luxury, if I
could call it that, of working on his laptop.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Working from home. Yeah, I call that luxury too. So yeah,
so he could work from anywhere, so he could still
work when you guys were over there, I still connect
do the same work, and you could. You had your
own business so I guess you could afford to be
away from it, or you could even find clients therapy
add to I guess, but I assume he didn't.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
No, No, I didn't want to interfere with the laws
and everything.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
So if you're working over there, it's a whole different
work via.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
I didn't really know, Yeah, exactly, visa wise, we just
went for you know, the travel or the vacation, vacation
mode and yeah, so I just like went along.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, I get you. So that's good. You were able
to go there for three months. But at three months,
did you plan to go just for three months and
come back or did you just have enough of it?
Did you want to go somewhere else? Why? Three months?

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Because we said we're going to see how we like it,
and if we really do like it, then we're gonna
we're going to stay here, and.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
You're applying to move there if you.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, we sold everything before we left, so sold the house,
sold the car, sold everything. Yeah, we sold everything.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
It's gonna pause.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
What's the move is the winter here? Yeah? The last
winter was so brutal that we're like, okay, never again.
Do you do you agree? Well, we're not spending another
winter in Canada.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Anymore at that point, Well, we're not really.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
I don't ski and you know I hate the cold,
so I don't go out to walk in the snow
and everything in snow shoe. No, thank you, I don't
you know. I love like if it if it was
to snow two days in the year, I would be
fine with that. It's really been.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Christmas time around Christmas, that should be good now, yeah, exactly,
and then that's it.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
I've had it.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
So how did your family, like your parents, his parents, whatever,
you brother, if you have brothers and sisters, do they
feel like, oh, you're gonna go? You really want to
leave us all behind and move to Thailand? Like they're not.
Can't just come over and visit you anytime?

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Like?

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Were they supportive of that? Did they try to convince
you to stay?

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Well, I'm an only child and I have my mom
left and well the family on her side obviously in
my dad's side, but my dad passed away when I
was younger, so and Jonathan has his dad and the
family on that side as well.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
But then supportive of you, like your mom did? She
was she worried about you moving away? She will be
able to see you.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Obviously she was she was concerned, of course, she was
asking at first, like how long we were gonna be therefore?
And at first we were just going, really going with
the flow, not really knowing for how long we were
going to be gone for. And we would just like

(40:36):
we'll see where life takes us. Pretty much, we were
just like kind of floaters, right right, So that's what
we said.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Did you just sell all your stuff like you sold
your home, sold your stuff, you moved with nothing, just
we're going to set up shop there and buy things. Yes,
like here we go. How was your ho was your
son at this point?

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:54):
So how was he about leaving his friends at school
going to a place where they don't always speak English?

Speaker 1 (40:59):
And that was a thing because we homeschooled him since
he was very young, because male had a diagnosis of autism,
but he's highly functional and ADHD. He had a couple
issues as well because I had him prematurely. So yeah,

(41:21):
because of that, you know, he's followed by a team
of like specialists and geo and everything. And when we
went to first enroll him at school, we were pretty
because when he was younger, he had a lot of
trouble with his balance and he had a very low
muscle tone, so because of that, he would like fall

(41:44):
often lose his balance, and it was like he's he
wasn't fast at all. So we were quite worried that
in school, you know when there's a recess, how all
the kids just rush and were like, he's going to die.
He's going to fall down the stairs and it's cement
stairs and everything like, yeah, well, I was really scared.

(42:07):
And Johnson is like, okay, well, let's meet you know,
the the people, principal, people in charge and talk about them.
Talk to them about about it. And that's what we did.
And while we're in the principal's office all together with Mail,
we're five adults and there's like teachers, the principal and

(42:32):
there's a lot of adults and he falls.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
In the office standing.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
There. Yeah, he was just he just wanted to sit
on this little rolling toy or whatever and he missed
and he fell so right there. You know, it showed,
it showed that like and what they were offering us,
like it wasn't for us first of all, and they
were saying, yeah, you could have help, but it would

(42:59):
be only we can only afford to give him one
hour per day of assisted like someone following him all
the time.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yeah, like an educational assistant.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Sometimes I was like, okay, well how does that work
with research recess? Then you know, to go down the
stairs because it was all stairs first of all. So
I'm like, this is this is an issue?

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Is this in kindergarten or is this a lot later on?

Speaker 1 (43:26):
No, it was going to be in kindergarten first, and
then he and then we decided to switch schools and
it was going to be just adapted for autistic and
behavioral issues. And that was another thing because it was
a lot how do I wear this a lot more

(43:50):
severe the behaviors? And we're like, I don't think it's
such a good idea for him because it's he's very
highly functional. It's hard to see actually that you know,
even maybe when you speak to him, he's going to
ask you, like the the first couple of random questions

(44:11):
that he usually asks people. But like he won't throw
chairs or anything, right, you know, So we didn't want
him to pick up anything that we were and.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Being around that environment, he could be susceptible to that
environment right that too, you know, not being like realizing
it he's just becoming, he's kind of taking on some
other challenges, right.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, we didn't want that. So we're like, okay, so
it's true. Yeah, it's not adapted to him. So we
both have our own schedule. I had my own schedule
and Jonathan could make his own schedule. So we're like,
we're there, so why not just like go with the
flow and see Because that too, was like a bit

(44:54):
of a groundhog day where you would teach him something,
whether it was the let or the numbers, and you
go in the loop and then the next day it
was or a couple days after it was all gone
as if he never learned it. So there was a
lot of frustration as well. So we said, you know what, no,

(45:15):
we're not going to do that the typical way anyway.
We're just going to wait for him to be ready
and show us that he is, and when he is,
then we're going to go with it.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
So because it's a lot on you guys too, it
was it.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Was on everyone. It was putting his stress.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, and it's not the right environment for him to
for conductive, for him to learn and for you guys
to feel like you're reaching him. Right, it's hard because
you've got to have all those needs met and it's
not easy. Guys aren't teachers, You're not you know, yeah,
that's not your thing. You want to you can tell
anybody anything, but what they learn it that's a big
difference right now. It's not reaching him. No, you're just
wasting your time in his And we're.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Like, yeah, just to move aside, like all the stress
and the frustration from everywhere everyone, because he felt like
he was in capable enough and we felt like, what
are we doing wrong here? And we were trying, try
and trying. So yeah, we pretty much went from that
point on to a very lax, lax homeschooling kind of

(46:17):
schedule and everything.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Still done by you guys or just did you help you?

Speaker 1 (46:23):
We were just going with his interest in feeding that.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, and how long were you doing that for before
you moved? How many? How many years? Like all through
his basic like one grade through grade one, two, three,
four or five up until.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, we were talking to the specialists and everything. We
weren't following any curriculums per se. But you know, he
was really advancing music. He was coordinating his little v
tech cars. There was one in English and one French,
but they had the same tomb, the same metal melody,

(47:02):
and he caught that right away, so he was coordinating
them to play together. Yeah, the same melody. So I
was like, why is that car so loud? And then
I just noticed that he was just like pressing like
exactly the same Look how cool it is and everything
and instruments were like a savior because he really focused

(47:25):
on that.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Does he play Did you get an instrument? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
He drum set one of.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
The most intense ones.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Yeah. Well it wasn't the big loud ones because he's
not big on those.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
It wasn't. It was electronic ones.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Yeah, the electronic one a keyboard where he could like
play around with the sounds and everything and just like
we create the just the volume and recreate the uh
whatever he was hearing and uh those little round things
that they have sound and beats.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
It's kind of like, look, the symbols are the tops
or the tabourines or.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
But you can you can bring it everywhere. So we
brought that like with us, and he had he had
pretty much everything that you can think of. Oh, ukulele,
guitar and.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
French horn, recorder, maybe piccolo.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
We didn't go that far, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
The Australian did you do you get one of those?

Speaker 1 (48:25):
And then his big thing was like watching someone playing
a game in commenting on YouTube. That was his big change.
And that's when he caught all his English pretty much
on his own. So he's fluent in English.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Like that's I heard him speaking when we were outside too.
He I think he spoke to you, like he asked
you questions that it was in English to start off.
I'm saying he couldn't, but I'm just saying that's that's
random for French speaking, native French speaking people to start
off with English. From my experience.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, well he caught it right away, so like he
can read and write in English. Because at first we
installed not the Facebook but another app so he could
FaceTime with his sisters because Maya ended up going back
to Canada and then Tally our eldest daughter, Jonathan's there's

(49:18):
another daughter. Well, she came to visit us in Thailand too,
and then for a couple of weeks, but then they
went around and visited Vietnam and everything and her boyfriend
and yeah, for him to communicate with them, it was
really important. So we installed I think it was Instagram
at first for for the FaceTime, for him to have
FaceTime with them, and then not too long after, he

(49:41):
started writing to me like private messages like Hi, Mom,
how was it, how did you sleep? And I was
like what he can he can write and yeah, that's
when we So it was all on his own terms,
on his own.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Ready, that's my youngest on camera. It all happened automatically.
If from being potty trained, he just one day decided
I'm done with this and it was over. They're on
my two youngest spectrum too, for those who listen to
know high function as well too. They're both in they're
both in Catholic school right, they're teenagers now, but they're
in regular Catholic school. But they have education assistants, they

(50:19):
have resource teachers, they have people, they have extra time
provided for their class for their projects. One of my
older one, Sebastian, doesn't like giving oral presentations in front
of a class, so he's allowed to just do it
in front of his teacher alone and you still get
the same mark. So there's things like that. There's a lot,

(50:40):
but I had to fight and work hard at that
and get people to understand that and reshow them his
file it as you can imagine, it's a big in
the corporate school system too. You got to fight for that.
It is to stand up for it because they can't.
You got to advocate for that.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
He's atypical in the way that he's super social, so
he wants to talk to everyone. And it's almost like, okay.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
You can't exactly, but you can't.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Talk to he can't just stop to everyone yet exactly,
but he wants to engage and he wants to talk.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
On a whole. That's good though at least it's not
introverties an extrovert in that way that he wants to
engage with people. So for the most part, that's great.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
Because you know he can interact and he's got no
shyness whatsoever with when it comes to adults. You know,
he sees you as the same as him and just another.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Big posit for that too, exactly. There's a lot there
that's good.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yeah, and that was fun to see, especially.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
When you're going to a new country a new place too.
For him to be outward like that, you don't want
him to and even me, I'd be there as a kid.
I can tell you for a fact, I'd be like
standing in a corner somewhere and be like, this is
the people I don't know. I don't recognize honestly, they
don't look like me. It'd be quite the culture shock
and I probably back off. So for him to take
that leap right off the bat at his age, it's

(51:55):
pretty impressive.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, and he made us meet wonderful people. Yeah that
we that we met parents exactly, that's what he did.
Like he connected with this little thy boy in the ue,
and then we met his parents because he wanted to
bring him home with us. He's like, oh, can he

(52:16):
can we have a.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Play date with the parents and the kids.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
We meet his parents and the parents said, well, actually
we have a pool, so it would be easier for
Mail to come to our place. So we're like, okay,
well wherever he goes, we go, so we'll go. And
then they became our good friends. And that's that's been
like that wherever we went, like on your Facebook, yeah,
yeah they are Yeah. And then when we were staying

(52:45):
at the hotel the last week, there was a lot
of different people there and Mayol was just chatting away
in the pool, like what's your favorite year, Like what's
in your life, you know, the random, like very the
question that the guy said, still, wow, you're making me think.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
I'm keeping that write that down on taking order. I'm
keeping that as one.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Of my exactly you know, like those specific specific questions
where you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
That's interesting. So it was fun to He made a
good adjustment there totally. So when you guys you only
end up staying there for three months, kind of ask
you why you decided to leave and how hard was
that to leave for him? I guess I assume he
didn't want to leave at this point.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Ah, he was fine, just like going wherever we were going.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yeah, that's good too.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah, in Thailand, we didn't meet a lot of people there,
Like there was a lot of people, but we didn't
actually meet and make friends there. We were talking to everyone,
but we didn't stay long enough at one place to
just like okay, you know.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Really built a connection exactly foundation.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Yeah, and then we went to Cambodia for another month.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
But then right after Thailand he went right after, I
assume you sold everything that you had there and.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Just yeah, we just renting away, and.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Then you had no possessions of your own furniture like anything.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Everything that we rented were furnished. So we went around
and then we went, oh, where where do we go
from here? Do you want to go there? Or there?
And then Cambodia was okay. Cambodia seems seems cool because
it was closed and yeah, it seemed that it was
that or Malaysia, and I felt more comfortable with yeah,

(54:42):
because I didn't know Malaysia all that, right.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
I assume your husband did. Jonathan did research. You guys
made this decision. He looked into it. Where should we
go from Malaysia versus Cambodia exactly?

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, And so we went we opted for Cambodia. But
then the mail and I got sick like right away, wait,
right from the start, and we were sick like for
almost three three and a half weeks.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Of this wasn't COVID times, was it?

Speaker 1 (55:08):
No? It was the last year maybe for the month
of May. Yeah, for the month of May last year
we went to Cambodia.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
So when did you move to Thailand first?

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Awa years of February of last year.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Yeah, this is all after COVID, So you never tried
you never did any of this during COVID. This is
all after.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah, I don't think I would have been able to go.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, I don't think so, Or how you would have
done it, I don't know. That would have been a
big question. But you stayed here in the country of
Canada for the COVID Yah, gotcha?

Speaker 1 (55:38):
And then yeah, so I went to Cambodia, got sick
there because the the system over there, there's no U
you know, the manholes and everything. Yeah, there's none of that,
and it's all hidden for some reason. But there's then

(56:00):
there's creases in the in the street and then the
odor that comes from there. We were in the capital,
maybe it's not the same.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
As in Cambodia.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Yeah, so there was a lot of smells, like really
really bad smells, uh sore smells.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
But like so you think you got like an infection.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
I think it was something that we're really sensible that way.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
So what kind of healthcare were you provided when you're there?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
That's another thing that we don't realize in Canada. I'm
going to say something very contradictive, and we should be
the third world medically speaking.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Here in Canada. Yeah, worth our world for as far
as our health care.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Why do you say that, because I've never seen an
efficient system as I've seen everywhere else but here in Cambodia,
In Cambodia, in Costa Rica, in Thailand and the UAE,
we all had something to we all needed something at
one point. There was always pharmacists everywhere that we could

(57:05):
just ask away. You tell them the symptoms and then
they prescribe you whatever you need on the spot. You
pay very little and then you go home with everything
that you need. If you do need to go to
the hospitals. Yeah, So my daughter had to go to

(57:25):
the hospital in Costa Rica because she had something in
there like a toothache, and I think she had that
strip and it took them fifteen minutes. It took them
so fat such not long time that I was like, oh,
you guys weren't seen. You know, you couldn't you were

(57:47):
turned around, That's what I thought. You were turned a
right And they said, no, no, we have everything. I'm like, what, Yeah,
they had mets, they had the prescription, they saw the doctor.
Like the efficiency is incredible.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
So is there no overcrowding, there's no long wait times.
Why do you think that is? Is there more doctors
on staff at one time most people going to the
hospital and.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
As well, it's like totally different too, Like I don't
want to put shade on Canada. But so.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
That's kind of surprising about the hospital. Do you think
it's with your insurance on travel insurance? Do you think
it's a special Did you go to a special hospital
just for tourists or was it the main hospital? Did
you see locals at this hospital?

Speaker 1 (58:35):
M hm, it was everyone. The locals were there as well,
and not just.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Staff at actual patients. Yeah, there was locals being served.
Was there more than one hospital where you were in
the town, village whatever I.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Think it was? I think there was, but yeah, like
close to where we were, we went there. It was
on the Pacific side where we went. Maybe on the
Atlantic coast it would have been the Frint because it's
a little poorer on that side.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Perhaps were you told to go to this hospital buy
your insurance or somebody when you needed it, or you
just found the hospital that was there and went like
did anyone direct you there or you just go there yourself?

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Yeah? No, we just went to We asked the locals
where's the hospital, and they guided us the nearest hospital
and then that's when we went.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
How far is the other back from coast to coast.
How far is the distance?

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Oh, it's so small, but it's far. It's like six
hour drive, Like.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Could be enough for two hospitals. Basically there's a hospital
in one region. Like let's say there's different there's three
hospitals in at all, right, so there are different sections,
so it would be like that.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
I'm assuming that there is. Yeah, each coast there must
be hospitals.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
And then in Cambodia, because we were so sick, mail
and I that's the other thing. We didn't take any
insurance in anything.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
So travel. Yeah, it didn't cost you, like body parts
to get seen.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
That's another thing. Yeah, so you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Seem to have all your hands there, your arms, I.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Am I'm fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that arm in my back,
but yeah, that's not from there. I hope it's it was. Yeah,
in Cambodia, we didn't see anyone. But like, I'm like,
this is a cold. This is a bad one though,
and where you know, you have muscle aches and everything.

(01:00:24):
So he Jonathan had to go physically to see a
pharmacist in the street. Where where's the pharmacy? And then
you told you tell the Okay, I have a son
and my wife. So we had medication for me and
medication for male and that wasn't too expensive.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
It was asking I'm just saying that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Okay, So for me I had antibiotics and something for
the fever and everything, and it cost about sixteen dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Canadian No, well yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
And about the same for male. So and then in
the u A E. He had a cold as well,
and he had three days of fevers. So we're like, oh,
this is a little.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
So was this sorry, was this after kimbody went to
the U A. Because when you're talking about yeah, yeah,
she went there after how long we in camboded for
for a month? A month?

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
And then we went back.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
To there and then you saw what was like, Yeah,
the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Were there were wild dogs and everything as well. So
when we were walking and well, I'm going to say
it was a bit like that, yeah, because they seemed
they seemed I'm not scared of dogs, but when they
run at you like they want to eat you. Yeah, exactly.

(01:01:49):
So they were all like that, and it was all
at night they were.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
They would come out and cotes or something.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
That was exactly like that. And at some point we
had to us a field not cross it, but we
were longing the field to go to go where we
wanted to go. We were going on walks at night,
and then these three dogs started running towards us from

(01:02:16):
the other side of the field. I could hear them,
but there was aggression of barks, and I flipped out.
I was just screaming, and Jonathan was like, you know,
well you have to stay calm and don't scream, and
I was like, yeah, exactly. But they stopped right at
the sidewalk. They stopped there. I don't know if they

(01:02:38):
had masters over there or whatever, or they were called back.
I don't know, but they turned around. But that was
it for me. That was enough for me not to
go on walks at night anymore. I was done. I
don't want to be nipped that or you know, because yeah,
because one time we crossed this little street vendor guy

(01:03:00):
and he had a dog there and he was just
as aggressive as the other dogs, and I could feel
that breathing on my calves, you know. Yeah, so I
didn't I didn't like that. And Cambodia is not on
my top places to visit. Maybe cm Reap would be
would have been better. We started in Dubai. It is beautiful,

(01:03:23):
it's clean, it's very safe. People are going to say
some different there's contradicted stories, but okay.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
So from what I've seen and what I know from,
Like I said, a person that I've been friends with
that I know from that region, Uh, he's also showed
me pictures too. There's the police over there are actually
quite friendly, especially to tourists and tourist kids. They have
really nice police cars, like the best of the best,
and they'll actually have them sit in the car and

(01:03:54):
take pictures and do rise with the kids, right just
to kind of show off what the police did to
make the police seem more warm and friendly and inviting
and that they're here for you and your safety and
you can come to them and make them feel more
personal and approachable. Is that what he experienced over there?

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Not necessarily like what well, not with the police officers
or anything. We didn't see any uh no, no, yeah,
we just we saw a lot of luxurious cars, obviously
a lot of but they are they have an acceptance
with kids, especially foreign kids. Yeah, maybe that's that's the tool.

(01:04:36):
Because the place where we stayed last there was an
Italian restaurant and mele of course like was asking a
lot of questions and the manager just like took him
under his wing, and yeah, he took pictures with the crew.
The whole staff was like taking pictures with him, and
they gave him a chef hat and yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
It's amazing. Yeah, it made you feel welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Yeah, totally. And everywhere we went it was like the
Muslim community is really really polite and always willing to help.
They stay with their own, if I can say it.
Like the women, well it's separated, right, So if you're

(01:05:25):
going to any clinic or medical center, there's a waiting
room for women, there's a waiting room for men.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
And do they make you guys as foreigners, as tourists
abide by that or they take okay, yeah, they make
sure you even standards.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
The train or the metro, which is like it's not
like our metro which is under on the ground, but
it's over ground overpass.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Yeah, so there's a severe for men and women.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah, some of them are Did you have.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
To separate from your son and husband to go? How
did you feel about that?

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
It was just like we said, okay, we we have
to get out at that place and we know and
the wagon it wasn't far enough so I couldn't see them,
and it wasn't full so I could always see them.
And he was like waving to me, okay, like we
have to get out here. But yeah, because at first.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
We didn't try to coordinate all that would be well yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
And we didn't really think about that at first, and
we just sat together. And then this woman, this Muslim woman,
told politely Jonathan like this, this is the woman's wagon,
so you have to go over there. And he was like,
oh my god, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
It's almost like you told him. It's almost like she said,
you were in the women's bathroom. We need to move. Yeah,
pretty much, that's kind of how I would have got
to this is the women's wagon. Oh my god, there's women.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Yes, Yeah, that was pretty much what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Bumping into everything. He's trying to run out the door exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
And as foreigners as well, Yeah, they know, they know,
and they're really they're they're okay, they're really respectful and
they weren't. They won't ever make you feel bad for anything.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
They must experience it, like a million times over. There's
tons of tourists, people who are moving over there for work.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Otherwise, and we were respectful enough, like I've never like
what I'm wearing today that I.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Couldn't wear your tattoos. You can't show off anything you got.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
We saw people do it anyways.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Like tourists, foreigners.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Especially Europeans, Russians, and like we saw a lot of
skin sometimes and it was like, I don't But they
never say, don't feel comfortable doing that, because it's just
not culturally acceptable acceptable over there.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
They ever say anthing to what you never did. I
guess you never showed your tattoos. You never showed your arms.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Well, I had short sleeves, but that was the limit,
and I had long long skirts all the time, or
pants like to the to my ankle. They were covering
me at all times. We did go to the beach,
but yeah, yeah, you get eyes sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
When did you want to cover your head or anything
or cover your face?

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
No, not at all. Like we were the areas we
were at were accept accepting that. You know, there's other
areas where it's a little bit more stiff, culturally rigid, rigid. Yeah,
and we we decided.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
To avoid opt out. Did you ever go anywhere that
you felt like you were mistreated as a woman.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Never No, I had all these ideas increested in me
from from preconcession that that are just not true. And
when we went there, actually we had an argument that
Jonathan and I about that when we first got there,
because I was like, you know, the women are oppressed

(01:08:58):
and everything, and that's well, that's that's what we think
tell us that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Media makes believe.

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Yeah, but then we met this woman from France over
there and she was like, no, like, women here have
have it nice.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Right, they own proper I don't know if they own
probably owned property, they have owned businesses women there or
they do. I sound completely ignorant, but I'm asking also
in case people don't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Know listening, they have allowances from their husband and you know,
they're treated really really well, and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
We just allowed to work. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Yeah, my my. The neighbor that we had, the woman,
when she introduced herself, she said, I'm so and so
and I have a back. How do you say that? Back? Back?
Gloria back?

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Bachelor, oh, bachelor place, no university, the bachelor's degree degree?

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Okay, she had like she was proud to tell that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
She had an education that she educated.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Most people are yeah, a lot of high achieve.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
And they're pretty outgoing in the YE.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
There's a lot of it's a big industry there and
a lot of people, like a lot of people from
North America, as we said, go over there and move
and live there and start their business or continue their
business or like Jonathan works from home, works from anywhere.
You can pretty much lived there today.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
Yeah, so he incorporated a business over there, so.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
He has a business there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Can you say what it is?

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
It's a mobile gaming okay.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
Yeah, you want to say the name of it. Do
you want to share it? You can promote it?

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
If you're luned, you don't want to, you don't have to.
You can say what it is or you don't have to,
but that's cool. Yeah. How long has he been doing it?

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
For a couple of years now? Yeah? Uh, well he
started before we left Canada, so I.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Read like before you went through Thailand and everything before,
he was.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Doing it all along. Yeah, but then he like he
decided to start his like his own thing. He's already
in the field right when we when we left, but
then he started doing his own thing in the UAE
where like he incorporated it and like started from scratch everything.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
And does he have a physical office building, physical location
there or is it all just online?

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
That was that was a place where when you start
your business over there, where you could go and u
for example, if you have meetings and you want a
specific place.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Where like now you can rent the space basically to
have public meeting like not public, but to have available
business meetings right space like a studio. And everybody loves
Canada over there. Yeah, they all say, I.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Got I got that a lot. You guys are so
nice and yeah, it's so nice.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
In Canada, right like my friend Nazier nas hif you're listening,
he's I'll tell him. Yeah, they all you got a
shout out Shamas. That's very cool. That's good to hear.
Are you going back you don't? Do you live there?
Do you have a residence.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
There or you just we all got our residency over there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
As a citizen as a like a or I guess
it's a working citizenship or not a.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Yeah, the working visa I think. And then yeah, it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Only lasts for so long? Is that you have to
keep renewing that or what are you doing with that?

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
We could go back in twenty twenty six. Permanently, not permanently,
but for I think it's about three a couple of
months maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
Yeah, well then you gotta leave and come back here
to Canada.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Then go back here, yeah, can you or wherever you want?

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
But like you can't stay extended period of time over there,
Like you could live six month once a year. You
couldn't stay there right now?

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Or could you?

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
We could? You could, yeah, because we had our residency.
But yeah, with the visa we had to renew. We
have we would have to renew and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Everything every two months.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
No, not every two months. I think we took when
we took them, it was for the year, so residency
and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Every year. Yeah, okay, so what is okay? So as
we will wrap this up, we'll get close to the
end here, So tell me, is that the future plan
then for you to move over there or just keep
traveling or what is your uh life plan at this point?

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Yeah? For now, we love, we love to travel, so
we're just going to keep going. Yeah, we came back
to Canada because we're newly grandparents my daughter. Yeah, I
had a little boy and we wanted to meet him
and everything, and you know, it's hard to be away
from both the girls were doing their own thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
And your mom, my mom, his dad.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
Yeah, she just turned eighty. You want to be nineteenth
of July as well. So yeah, we wanted to see
everyone as well. And but the main goal is to
just to discover discover and then the way we're traveling
is just to immerse in the culture. I'll call it that.

(01:14:24):
We dive head first and then we and that's how
you learn the most.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
I think. So, where's their next place that you plan
to visit? You have you decired that yet?

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Yeah, we bought the tickets and everything and we're leaving
September first for Japan.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Japan, claud I got you before you left. Do this
now I want to hear about Japan. You got to
come back and do a part two here, come back
most like you if you if you get me away
over there, I can come to Japan. It likes to
do it all.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
We could fly you there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
To your house. Yeah, we're going to have a little
place to meet with.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
Chopsticks and Japan they have a do some karate this
thing with the houses there. The population is declining and
people are abandoning their their house. So there's a lot
of house cheap houses.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
Depends on where are you right where in Japan are
going exactly where in Japan.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Oh, we're gonna land in Tokyo, stay there five days,
but then we're going to move a little north to
Nagano and visit a couple of cities around that, and
we're going to end up in Fukuoka before going back
to Thailand because we haven't seen the northern part of diag. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
That amazing. Yeah. I don't know if you're into this,
but if you're in Japan and you like this kind
of thing, CDs, if you're into music, they still have
a tower records there, I believe somewhere. I'm probably in Tokyo,
but probably in every city, and they have one play
shirts in Tokyo where it's nine stories high of CDs,
of tapes, records, like all physical media like CDs are
a big deal still Wow in Japan, big cellar for music.

(01:15:58):
If you're in the I don't know if you collect
city or your husband or your son who likes music.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
Maybe we love music, doesn't love music.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
People don't like CDs anymore now because of streaming, because
of Spotify and all that garbage right now. But if
you want to, I feel how I feel you if
you ever love CDs and or just the experience of
going there to see what they have, like all those
Japanese what we call here, we call them Japanese imports there,
they're just CDs to go to discover that. I think
in it South would be pretty cool with something that's
on my bucket list for sure. That's the nine stories

(01:16:28):
High have of tower records. I'm very sure it's tower records,
and it's just it's amazing. So if you get a chance,
definitely go see that. I would love to do a
one vacation.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
Bring me out there somehow, get me meet your travel
see me and your.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
He's really good at getting cheap tickets, that's for sure,
because we were we were supposed to leave the second
week of September, but the tickets just like.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
People like to before the school starts, when school starts,
like the travel, right, So yeah, it's a thing too.

Speaker 1 (01:16:58):
It's like, okay, we're leaving the Yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Time to do it. Yeah. I think it does a
lot of research, very very cool, so I know there's
more to cover. I can't wait to talk to you
again when you come back, if we get a chance
about your Japanese trip.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
And thanks for having me for sure, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
I appreciate you. Following Nobody's radio station heavy rock Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
No problem You've been listening to the Nobody's or Somebody's
podcast with Chadvice and this podcast has been voted as
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