Ep 169 – From Politics to Paradise to the Voyascape Network: David Brodie’s Journey

If you want to watch the video, can check that out on Spotify and on YouTube. And we talk over his extensive travel career, if you like. He has worked for a prime minister in Canada. He has lived in Japan. He has traveled all around the world to about 50 to 60 countries. And he's got so many stories, tips, and he's got a travel podcast called Travel in Ten, which is a 10 minute snippet podcast of some of the destinations around the world that you might want to visit. And that is routinely in the top five in Canada.

I bring you travel tales, practical advice and interviews with travellers from around the globe. Whether you're planning a big trip or just dreaming about one, you'll find everything from hidden gems to epic fails. Because travel is not perfect and that is what makes it beautiful. So grab your backpack and let's wing it. New episodes every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube too. You can find Winging It and more fantastic travel podcasts from around the world at voyerscape.com.

The link is in the show notes. Let's go and explore the world. David Brody, welcome to the Wigan and the Child podcast. How are doing? I'm doing great. Thank you, James. Thanks for making the time and effort to make your way to West Vancouver. Happy to. Always happy to travel over to this part of the town. Where are you based? I'm based in a small town just outside of Vancouver called Ladner. It's about a probably 30-minute drive from downtown Vancouver. Used to be a little fishing village and we've been there for probably about 10 years now. wow. And have you lived in Vancouver City?

Or has it always been on the outskirts? Mostly on the outskirts. When we first moved to Vancouver, we rented a loft apartment from an actor. So I think we had that for our first six months or so here. And then we were out in Steveston for a little while. yeah. Yeah. And then migrated from a townhouse in Steveston out to a house in Ladner. OK. And where you based or where did you grow up originally in Canada? Originally grew up just outside of Edmonton, a small town on the prairies called Spruce Grove, which is, if you're familiar with like

Jasper Banff National Park it was probably about a three four hour drive from there about a 20 minute drive from Edmonton Okay, have on your way to Jasper. that sounds like a middle of nowhere. Yes It absolutely is Because we drove across Canada last year and when you go through the middle part basically past the Rockies Yeah, that is it's desolate isn't it? There's a whole lot of not much for a good portion of that drive. Yes But amazing because you get to see different parts of the you go from like the amazing Rockies to

I guess farmland, but it's good to see that contrast, isn't it? For sure. I know it was a great place to grow up. I love Spruce Grove. Okay. And why did you settle in Vancouver or the Aero? Coming out of Alberta, I'd gone out to Eastern Canada and worked in politics for a few years. Then the guy I was working with lost an election. That's not good. As a result of that, had some time on our hands. So me and my wife went and spent about a year traveling around the world.

When we finished that, we spent a lot of time thinking about where we wanted to live in the world, and both of us thought that there was nowhere that appealed to us more than Vancouver, between the ocean, the mountains, the easy access to other destinations as well. It was just a place we loved. We're to come into your year trip just down the line, but before we get there, I'm quite intrigued, my guest, about hearing about how they grew up into travel, because there's so many different stories of...

my guess where they've been well into it as in the parents took them on the trips all the time to people who never went anywhere. So what was your upbringing like in terms of travel? Well, it's a bit of both in that we did a lot of travel, but it was all, I would say 95 % of it within Canada and mostly within BC and Alberta. It was a lot of camping trips. Every summer we would take a big two or three week trip out to Vancouver Island. Sometimes we would go down into the States a little bit, but...

but it was really those camping trips through the Rockies, through BC and Alberta that really first sparked my love for travel. And then our first international trip we did was sort of down to Disney in LA and across the border to Mexico on a day trip, which just blew my mind and changed my whole perspective on everything. Was that culture shock? Yeah, it was, but more than anything, it was just, you know, I can very distinctly remember it. It was doing a day trip.

on a bus from San Diego across the border to Tijuana. you get there, and I was six years old at the time, but for the first time in a place where everybody speaks a different language, where all the food is different, and it's this foods that I loved, but the authentic local versions of them. remember that first street taco, for example. And what really stands out in my mind is the first time going to a local market there and doing bartering for things. And it was just...

so wild, so different than anything I'd ever seen before, that I knew, wow, I want to do a lot more of that for sure. So that maybe was the start of your journey? 100%. Like that definitely was the thing that inspired me to want to travel a lot more, but then really didn't get a chance to do that until I was about 18, where I did my first big solo trip alone. OK, we're going to come to that. Just a couple more questions. Where does career fit into this in terms of growing up? Were you thinking of a career path, or was it?

Like most people, was very like, I don't know, I see what happens, but what was yours like? It was, you know, I had always gravitated towards sort of social studies, history, things like that, politics. So my career ended up very much going down that path was very, you know, the first 10 years of my career was all sort of working in politics. But travel was a big part of that. And, you know, I could see travel is something that I wanted to continue to have.

as part of my career. when I made a transition from working in politics to then PR next, travel was a big part of that. And now transitioning to running a travel podcast network, I'm assuming travel is going to be a fairly big part of that as well. I'm very surprised if it isn't. Yes. That's awesome. It's such an eclectic journey. For sure. Yeah. You must have experienced some different types of like workplaces, people, countries as well, or then just your career. Absolutely.

You know, very much gravitated towards elements of my career that would allow me to incorporate particularly international travel, know, and jobs that allowed for that was something that very much attracted me. And I've also been really lucky in a lot of the industries that I've worked in, particularly working in PR for a good portion of my career that got enough time for PTO personal travel as well that, you know, that was a big part of staying in some of those jobs probably as long as I did as well.

PTO is a of a nightmare, isn't it? Because you are kind of restricted, you? For sure. A lot less, I think, here in North America than normally what you get in the UK and over in Europe. Although, luckily, in the public relations industry, tends to be pretty generous in terms of most of its PTO policies. Yeah. And then I've got lot of lists from the states. I mean, that's only two weeks, if you're lucky. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Although I know that the agency that I worked for, for example, which we had offices in the states and in the UK, we used to give people...

three weeks vacation right off the bat. Plus we shut down the office for about two weeks over that Christmas New Year period. So that was a pretty good start. then every few years you accumulated another week as well. So a fair bit of flexibility. Wow. Okay. We're to go into what you called your travel resume, which I love that term. Yeah. Because I don't even know where to start here. It's going to be so much I'm going to pick out because I'm reading tree, but we are going to start what you mentioned before about your year backpacking trip.

with your wife, was that a conscious decision just to go for a year? Was it circumstance that you went for a year? Was it planned much? How did it come about initially? Well, that was an interesting trip. that came in our probably kind of late 20s, early 30s. I had just come off, mentioned, I'd worked for the Canadian prime minister for a number of years. I was doing a lot of like tour and logistics of travel with him as part of that. I'd left that job and had gone and started a

government relations firm with a couple of partners. did that for about six months and I'm like, this is not for me. I want to be doing something that allows a little bit more travel again, a little bit more excitement. And we were, we were kind of, we'd gone out for dinner one night at a Thai restaurant in Ottawa. And we were kind of talking about wanting to do something different. And the waiter started telling us about this, New Year's festival.

that they do across Thailand and across a lot of Southeast Asia every year called Songkran. I don't know if you've been there for that. But it's like the biggest water fight in the world. is a tremendous amount of fun, a huge party. And as he was telling us more and more about it, and we're having dinner, we're like, we should really go there. And by the time we had finished the dinner, we had decided to...

sell our house, sell our car, put everything in storage and away we went and you know then spent the next year exploring all throughout Southeast Asia and probably about six months of that exploring Southeast Asia doing some volunteer work there and about six months of that living and working in Japan. Wow okay so I want to go to Southeast Asia first I've covered it a lot on my podcast it's very popular place to travel

But I just love hearing about it. So what would maybe be your top three favorite parts of Southeast Asia? wow. That's tough. And I've been back more recently to Southeast Asia. This year as well. this year? Yeah. mean, Thailand is for sure one of my favorite places in the world, from the food to all that you can experience there is incredible. Cambodia was a place that my perception of it before going and after going really

It is, I think it's one of the most remarkable places in the world. It's well known, but for how good it is, I don't think it's well known enough. Yes. I mean, I think it really is one of the wonders of the world. so that was definitely, I would say that another favorite in Southeast Asia. And then probably the third would be Bali, Indonesia. I like Bali. I love Bali. mean... I'm not a fan. No? No. How come? Why not? I didn't like my experience then. It was horrible. Really? State of weak.

All that's still there, but there's also 20,000 Instagramers taking pictures of it and a traffic jam in the middle of Ubin in the middle of the day. But it's still got amazing surf beaches. It's still got great food, incredibly friendly people. And one of the things I love is some great resorts and five-star hotels and things as well. It's definitely part of the attraction of Bali as well. I think I was put off by the traffic.

It's almost like a party destination for Australians in Cuta. It is. stayed in Cuta for weeks and maybe that's not the best place to stay. It's definitely, it's its own thing for sure. It's like a great party destination. I should have got out already. Uluwatu, completely different, really enjoyed that. Even Ubin still wants things that I enjoy there. But I can see if you'd spent a week in Cuta why it may not be your favorite destination in the Great parties. But I was thinking, I was thinking what it's like is what you experienced 15, 16 years ago. Yeah. It just didn't turn out that way.

And that makes that that is always makes a huge difference in travel your perception of a place versus what it's like when you arrive. I just had that experience in Nepal here a couple of months ago. really? It was a lot different than I expected. OK, we're coming to that. I've been there twice. Let's go for this trip. So one place in Southeast Asia, got Thailand, Bali. said Angkor Wat. Cambodia. Cambodia. And you went through Australia, New Zealand, Cook Islands and Fiji. Now. The reason why I touch on that is because.

That was like a popular route to do and book through a tour company in UK called STA Travel. They're now bussed from COVID. But what they would do is they convinced us to go Southeast Asia for three months, which we said yes to. Then they parked on top of that, Australia. I had a work visa so I stayed, but my friend went back. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Cook Islands. But Cook Islands we kind of sacked off because we're like,

Well, isn't Fiji and Cook Islands the same? But I'll come back that in a minute. So I went to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji and I absolutely loved Fiji. I couldn't believe this place existed. And this is before smartphones are really a thing. So what's your experience of maybe like Fiji first? Well, that was my first big international trip. This is, you know, I turned 18. I was taking off a gap year between, you know, high school and university.

And the deal with my parents was if I did well enough, I would get a plane ticket to anywhere I wanted to go in the world. So I tried to find the most costly ticket at the time, was a Circle Pacific ticket, which took me to Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, and Fiji. And I managed to get on a program which I think still exists called SWAP, Student Work Abroad Program. Okay. They have that in calendar here, like people coming over here, Yeah. SWAP and what? I think it was basically between Commonwealth countries, if you were under 35 years old.

You got a year working visa. yeah, the working visa, work permit. Yeah, that's still going in. So that was what drew me to Australia. And that was just a hugely transformative trip to have a year at 18 years old where, you know, waking up every day and could go anywhere I wanted and do anything I wanted for the first time. And on the complete opposite side of the world, it was incredible. And this is the mid nineties. So this is going back. This is long before people were posting a lot of pictures of Fiji online at the time.

But like you, I mean, I found Fiji to be one of the most remarkable places in the world. The Cook Islands, which I haven't been back since that trip, I would put right up there with Fiji as well. just have a ton of time for that part of the world. So you worked in Australia? I did. I worked at Club Med on Lindemann Island for a while, which I don't think that Club Med is still there.

And I worked on a sailboat taking people on tours of the Whitsunday Islands. which boat was that? The M-Appeal II it was called, sailboat. I on the Clipper. Okay. Have you had the Clipper? I think I remember the Clipper from when I was there. It was good fun, but I kind of regretted it. All it was was partying. I really don't actually want to see the surrounding area. Yeah. Which sounds a bit crazy, but yeah, loads of boats. That was the one we chose, but being young, just picked a party boat.

That was a pretty good gig. mean, that was basically there were two people who worked on the boat, the captain who sailed the boat and me who my job was basically to do the cooking, the cleaning, snorkel tours and make sure everybody had a good time for 10 days on the boat. And when you're 18 years old, that's a pretty good gig. Australia is one of my favorite countries. That's up there because I lived there and I always talk about it. New Zealand is also up there. Yeah. I mean, what a place to road trip that is.

For sure, and definitely some similarities with Canada, think, in terms of like incredible natural environment, great, you know, it's a place where I did a lot of hiking and bungee jumping and, you know, rafting tours, things like that. Did you do the Kiwi experience? I did. same. Okay, yeah. Are they still going, the Kiwi experience? It is, yeah. Wow. It's still going. Yeah, that was super cool. I mean, I managed to get lucky where I rolled into New Zealand and I had two fortuitous things that happened when I arrived. One was...

Air New Zealand was selling, and because I was flying on Air New Zealand, I could buy tickets to a Paul McCartney concert that was in town that was completely sold out. I was super happy about that. It was my first day. And then I got to my hostel and there was a guy who had done like, I think he had like a 30 day Kiwi Experience pass and he'd only done five days of it and had to go home for whatever reason. So I bought it for half the price of the board like me and it was awesome. That was a great trip. I always think about that Kiwi Experience because that is a pretty magical time because you got to...

Popping off a bus, you'll become, hopefully become friends. You do these amazing experiences, so you kind of get closer because of that. There's nights out in there. There's probably a bit of drama as well. quite a cool three or four weeks, isn't it? And you see New Zealand. It would have a great reality show. Yeah, Yeah, it was good fun. Yeah, amazing. I still speak to some people today actually from that. Yeah? Yeah. That's like every 10 years ago now. Cook Islands. So we went...

So we lived, well I lived in Australia for a year, then I met my partner and we went to New Zealand, that was our first place to live abroad. And part of that was we have to go cook hardens, because I kind said no years ago. The first time around, yeah. So we booked, I think 10 days to go to Rarotonga and Atutaki. And when I got to Atutaki, I could not believe what I was seeing. Like that clear water, turquoise blue, no one on the beach is really popping, I guess the tourists and some locals, but.

I just couldn't believe that was paradise. thought that was paradise. I thought I'd actually reached it. I think you're right. I mean, it was 20 plus years ago that I was there now, but it was untouched. mean, it basically had one flight, international flight a week at that time coming in via Air New Zealand. One a week. Yeah. And it was, it was remote. It was untouched. It was still a lot of people living by subsistence agriculture. Okay. Yeah. You know, I think there wasn't a single

chain hotel on the islands at the time. It was all just, you know, locally owned small resorts. Yeah. And the best snorkeling and diving I'd ever seen anywhere in the world. Right. I mean, you you put your face in the water and you're surrounded by.

amazing sea life everywhere and like you say some of the clearest water you could ever find. you go to Atutaki or stay in Rurotonga? I was just in Rurotonga. I was on Rurotonga for probably about two weeks. That was at the very tail end of my year-long backpacking around the South Pacific. So I was running out of money. I didn't make it to Atutaki that time around. But it's funny. The Cook Islands has since then always been at the top of my list of somewhere to go back to. But so many other destinations around the world, I still haven't made it back.

But even then I thought Fiji was backwards in terms of that because there's no internet. No internet. You can pay by credit card, cash preferred. you kind get told what to do, or not do. You can't wander to a shop. can't go out for an excursion because you have to wait for them, the people who stayed at the resorts, who run the resorts. You're on their time, I guess the island time, but on Fiji time. And that's quite a different way of traveling because up to that point, you've been wandering around Southeast Asia on the Q experience.

And now, yeah, we're kind of stuck on this island for four days until the ferry comes. Until the next ferry comes through. then make your to different vibe. Is that what you experienced as well? Yeah. I mean, I would say our most recent trip to Fiji, it's certainly a lot more developed than that now. There's great internet and you can get around fairly easily, but it is still a very, very laid back place. it's, one story I remember is we were there probably, well, almost exactly 10 years ago.

And we went into a local shop and we lost my daughter for about five minutes. We were quite like, what's going on here? And she'd been playing with some local toys, trying on local dresses. And a couple of local women had just taken her along and introduced her to all the local kids and they were all out playing. Anywhere else in the world you would have been horrified. But there it was just like, that's just how Fiji People were so friendly, so welcoming, super laid back place.

Think everybody should go to Fiji at least once in their life absolutely. Yeah, we kind of went never one night with my partner I think in between I can't remember now where there's a stopover essentially so she didn't get to see Fiji So I do have to take her back there because they are incredible and you can go off grid if you want to for two weeks Yeah, still now I think that's great. Did you ever do I mean one of the things we did probably my favorite experience in Fiji was a Company which unfortunately is going

out of business I think this month called Captain Cook Cruises that used to do... yeah, is that the... Cruises to very remote islands all throughout the island chains in Fiji. You would go on this small ship with 40, 50 guests and do sort of anywhere from five to seven night cruises around more remote islands in Fiji. That was an amazing experience. think there's still a competing company I think that I can't remember the name that does it as well. Is that the same as just a generic...

cruise travel in between the islands or was that separate? No, this is, mean this one you're actually staying on the boat. Okay, no, we And it's like a cruise ship, but a small cruise ship. They're not the same company who I went to one of the islands, I can't remember what it's called, where they had like a little mini submarine.

And you walk onto it and they sort of go not too far down but just underneath water and that is incredible because you're looking at windows, these fish are flying here. And it's just little submarines going around underneath the water. you do that? I didn't do that but I think it's either them or the other cruise company in Fiji that owns it's yellow of course because of the Beatles, yellow submarine. But yeah that was an interesting experience because we got kicked off an island for one night. Yeah. We went to, can't remember the islands. I think it's called Small Island or something. It's literally a five minute walk around the island.

but some company had bought that for a night after we booked it. So management sort of come and said, look, hey, there's actually an event now going on this day and this night. You've all been taken to another island. And this was like one of the resort islands. And we got to stay in this resort for one night, which was incredible because we're kind of backpacking that point. But that was part of that package was we get to go in this little submarine. So that's why that happened. Very cool. Very different experience from going to maybe the budget islands to this huge resort.

lots of Americans, lots of families. Yeah, it's like different vibe for sure. Yeah, but amazing. Okay. I want to go to I want to touch on Japan actually. So I want to also touch on the ship for world youth program because that seems quite an interesting story again includes Japan and

some more islands. Talk us through what that scheme is. that was something I did in my mid-20s, a program through the Japanese Prime Minister's Office that they organize every annually or semi-annually where they basically bring together 300 youth from around the world between ages of 18 and 35. Every year they select a different cohort of countries that they invite to send over a delegation to Japan.

You spend a few weeks learning about Japanese culture, Japanese history. Then they basically take all those delegates from around the world, pair them together with an equal number of Japanese youth of the same age, put you all together on a cruise ship together with lecturers from the United Nations University in Tokyo. And you basically spent the next three months, four months traveling around the world together. And you know, you're taking sort of university style classes, but you're also expected to

teach classes about your own, whatever your expertise is or your country. The participants are really responsible for planning kind of 80 % of the programming when you're on board. And we went from Japan to the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tahiti, Ecuador, Mexico, and Hawaii. And other than Mexico and Hawaii, every country we to, met with like the head of state in that country. We had these amazing, you know, receptions for us as the boat arrived. It was...

It was a really unique experience and the network of people who you get to meet through that experience, mean, they're lifelong friends who I continuously see on trips around the world all the time, continue to be in touch with on a weekly or monthly basis. was incredible. And that scheme's still going? It is. It was probably about five, six years ago. It was a bit in jeopardy where the Japanese economy wasn't doing as well and the Prime Minister's office had looked at winding it down. it's created this, it's been a...

huge success in terms of soft diplomacy for Japan because a lot of the alumni of the ship have gone on in some cases to be leaders in their countries around the world or heads of companies in places around the world. So I think Japan has continued to see the value in it and has continued to do it. How'd you apply to go in it? It was just an open call. It was, know, when a thing in the, my sister sought in the Globe and Mail and said, Hey, you should apply for this. And I went in and applied and now being

an alumni of the program, get to help be on the selection committee for all the delegations that continue to go from Canada going forward. If you want, you can participate in that as well. That's an incredible experience. never knew it existed. For sure. It's a very cool experience. mean, Japan has a lot of great exchange programs, the JET program where they let people come over and teach English in Japan. think it's still going. But I would say the ship for world youth is really sort of their flagship international.

exchange program and yeah, a great experience. we'll come to Japan because you lived there as well for a bit but quickly on this trip, I mean what is the Solomon Islands like? Solomon Islands is very cool spot. mean it's somewhere that you you still saw, you can still see a lot of the impacts of World War II there, right? I mean you had all these shipwrecks all around the island. was somewhere that's still, it was still a very remote

destination, not a lot of travelers there. And not a lot of development in terms of tourism infrastructure, at least when I was there. But, you know, a naturally beautiful place, great snorkeling, great diving again, like a Fiji or some of the other places that we've talked about. And one of the things that stands out in my mind, I remember being with the delegation from the Solomon Islands in Tokyo.

and them experiencing Tokyo for the first time was wild. I can imagine. They would see these massive cranes and skyscrapers and just like they couldn't even comprehend what they were seeing when they first arrived. Or when we had fireworks on the boat and they all dove under the table. It was a very eye-opening experience for their delegation for sure. I do wonder about that sort of experience. I thought that in Nepal last year, sorry, which we'll come to in a second.

When I was with my guy doing one of the hikes and he's never been out of Nepal, I was like, imagine if you just dropped him into some of Tokyo or New York. What would his reaction be? Because it's so different from Langtown Valley. Kathmandu is very different, right? Yeah. I can't imagine. That is obviously a culture shock for them, I guess. Absolutely. And you saw some of those delegates from the Solomon Islands then. know of least three of their delegation of 10. I think at least three of them ended up spending the rest of their lives in Japan. wow. Okay. Because they were just...

Got in the bug and saw something so different from what they'd experienced the rest of their life. were were hooked. I a lot of people haven't hooked with Japan. One quick question about another country that is Tahiti. Yeah. Polynesia. Yeah. That is on my sort of like bucket list in terms of that's somewhere down the line somewhere else because it seems such a long way to go. Expensive.

and just idyllic, probably be like Cokardians, but to a level. Is that what it is? Did you go to the classic Bora Bora and stuff like that? Yeah, I mean, was we only had a day there, really, on the ship. But that day was phenomenal. Right. I mean, I remember getting together with some of the other delegates. quickly rented a rental car, got out to this amazing waterfall in the mountains that you could swim in with, you know, just beautiful views of the beaches and mountains around.

It's a place that not only great diving but great surfing as well. And because of the French influence great food as well, you don't often found. Some of the other South Pacific islands are not known for their necessarily as great dining destinations. Where I found Tahiti the food was phenomenal there. So if you like Fiji, you like the Cook Islands, you would love Tahiti. I think for me it's always been an obsession from younger, I don't know why. I watched when I was really really young, Tom and Jerry. Yeah.

And there's an episode where they go to Hawaii. I don't even remember that episode if you've watched it. And when I heard that Hawaiian music, and I know it's cartoon, you see the palm tree in the sand, I was like, is there anyone that actually exists like that? So that's always been in my mind. So I think the journey from that six, seven year old to now is trying to find paradise. That's why I was obsessed with Cook Islands. So I thought, maybe I've reached it. But I think I'm still on the quest. How can you know unless you've been to...

Not everywhere, but a lot of places. Sounds like we have a lot of the same travel inspiration there, James. And next year on my YouTube, I'm going to do an island theme for the year. There's lots of islands around Vancouver, right? And I'm going to a few islands abroad next year. like, OK, let's do an island themed year and see what I can find. But that's part of the thinking as well. OK, and Japan. Yep. Absolutely love the place. think I've been, yeah.

Once, yeah. For month, so I went on the Shinkansen for a month. Okay. Dotting around the country. That is a crazy place in terms of trying to comprehend how it all works. I remember going to Osaka thinking, I don't know, what's the middle ground in terms of, are we level here? Is it somewhere underneath? Yeah. There's something above? I'm like, this is crazy. So where did you live in Japan and what was your first experiences?

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and TikTok. Simply just search for Winging It Travel Podcasts and you'll find me spreading all my social media content for traveling, podcast and other stuff. Thank you. Well, my first experience was that that exchange program, the Ship for World Youth. And the good part about that is that gave me such a grounding then, you know, in Japanese culture and Japanese history, living with, you know, this delegation of Japanese youth who I got to travel around the world with.

taught me so much about Japan that then I was fortunate to be able to return back there a couple times when I was working in the Prime Minister's office in politics, a couple times when I was working in PR, and then a few times just on personal travel. So altogether, it's probably been about...

I mean, it inspired me to do a podcast and, and you know, I could have spent, I think from then until now, just podcasting in Tokyo and easily had enough content to do a weekly show about just Tokyo. mean, it's, is, and I don't know, there's any other place in the world that I can say that about. yeah, it's a good question actually. Yeah. I think about it. I mean, I remember my wife and I, we would often get up, you know, any day we weren't working, we would pick a random subway stop.

We would go there and just explore and every time it was like a different city different country that we were arriving in there's just so much variety there. It's amazing Wow. Well, the one of the biggest travel youtubers is abroad in Japan, right? Yeah, so I think people just intrigued about what it's like to live there and be there for a long time What you said there there's so much content you could do I mean no one needs to keep on going because like say you could pick one tiny little area on a metro station in Tokyo alone. Yeah

Forget the rest of the country. And that's a YouTube episode in itself, right? Did you experience a lot of culture shock being there? I mean, is like stepping onto another planet in many ways. Yeah, like a different type of culture shock, though. Bangkok was the first culture shock. Yeah. Because I've never been anywhere else, apart from Australia and England and bits of Europe. But that was the first culture shock. India was another culture shock. Yeah. But in a totally different way. Maybe more culture shock in terms of how poor it looked. Yeah. And how there is literally in front of your face the

Homelessness and people begging stuff. Yeah But Japan was the other thing culture shock, but how futuristic it looked I'm like, I don't understand what's happening here. Yeah, my friend calls it He goes all the time. He says it is this organized chaos, but there's a there's a pattern to it But we can't really comprehend it cuz we're used to it. Yeah, so it's a very strange Phenomena, think and just the way the whole society is organized and managed. Yeah It's so different than here and so much of a focus on the collective good rather than the individual good. Yes that impacts

everything that they do and how everything you see is impacted by that. That's nice to see as well because we can be bit individualistic. We could learn a bit from Japan. Yeah, I think we can. I've interviewed Matthew Baxter on the podcast who lives there in Japan and Tokyo. He's been there five years and he's written a few books about it. But he says Japan you get to the four year mark. you stay in Japan, the initial hit is great, you do your job. Then you sort of realize that working in Japan is quite hard.

It's quite hardcore. long hours, proper hours, know, proper work ethic and all that sort of stuff. And then you sort of question it at four or five years. And he said, Yeah, had to like just go to Australia, New Zealand to see something different. And they went back to Japan. Yeah, so think you do get to a point if you're gonna live there long term.

where you do need to go somewhere else to make sure you're going to miss it. And most people do go back, I think. I remember learning about the working culture there during that six months that we were living in Tokyo. My wife found a job first and she was working with Hyatt Hotels there, setting up an international sales team for them, but she was working in an entirely Japanese team. I ended up, so I started my podcast, was cruising around Tokyo doing that, and then I landed a job probably two months later with the Canadian Embassy. And that was, you know,

a much different environment where her working in that fully Japanese environment, had rules like, you know, the color of her hair needed, not just the length of her hair, the color of her hair needed to be, they had like sleeping pods where if, you know, there was a extra, you know, difficult job to be done, then you stayed over at the hotel in the basement in the sleeping pod, and then you were back to work later that day, and it was just so.

so entirely different than working culture here for sure. That's for sure. Yeah, know TikTok can be hit and miss, but I saw TikTok last night randomly about Japan. I think it's Tokyo as well, actually. Some person said they were late for work. So the TikTok and as they go, I think this person had an alarm for 5 a.m. and wasn't at the metro until 9. So he's well late. Yeah. And he tells a story that he got there late. Everyone ignored him for the day. And then at end of the day, he got a written warning for being late.

task of more work just because he was late. And he's just saying this is really hardcore, you can't do this again. But what I found fascinating is that the collective are ignoring him. Like if someone on my team came late, I'm like,

It's not really a thing, is it? It's not big thing, but I guess it's the collective there. For sure. That responsibility to the collective is such a big thing as part of Japanese How do you sleep in when we have to get in it? Everyone else has to work harder than that. Exactly. Did you visit much else of Japan around that six months? Yeah. I guess you've been back many times. A little bit. I've been back many times as well. So I mean, like you have done the Shinkansen for a couple of weeks, traveling up to Kyoto and Osaka and Nara and...

yeah. haven't got to what one of things I haven't done is I've done more to the south of Japan I really like to get to the north. I'd love to go skiing there at some point. Is Sapporo up there? Not yet. Not yet. Yeah, my friend lives up there. Yeah, I was actually gonna visit him when we were there, but then an earthquake happened. Yeah. They said don't come. Yeah. Fair enough.

He yeah, only McDonald's is open. Yeah, but yeah, we went south as well. Did you go to Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Yeah, know that was a very impactful experience, obviously seeing the atomic stuff. yeah, that's an awful thing to read actually, isn't it? You get down there and you can see some of buildings that still there. Absolutely. Yeah, crazy. What I found crazy about Japan is the contrast in budget. I don't know if you found this. So Shinkansen can be expensive for foreigners.

But then day to day, if you go and get your breakfast from a shop, you can get those little sandwiches and it comes really cheap. So I couldn't get my hand on, is this an expensive place or not? What do you think? I mean, there definitely is both ends of the spectrum. mean, I remember that six months we were living there, we lived in an apartment near Ginza, which is one of the most expensive districts in Tokyo. And it was, I think at the time we were paying about $3,500 US a month for a place that's about as big as the room we're recording in right now. Very, very small apartment.

So that was, you know, obviously very costly, but then food was less than what we were paying in Canada or going out with friends and stuff. So yeah, it's just there's all ends the spectrum in Japan, I think for sure. Okay. You mentioned before in this podcast that you've worked with the Prime Minister of Canada. Yep. That's quite a cool thing to say.

How did you get into that and also what was your job? It was a very cool gig. It was right out of university. I'd been quite active politically in sort of university clubs and stuff and volunteering on campaigns. And as I was getting ready to graduate, I really wanted to work with the Canadian Foreign Service. And I wrote the Foreign Service exam. And I think the year that I wrote, were literally tens of thousands of people who wrote the exam and they hired

Maybe eight that year? I did not make the eight. okay. But I did as part of that. I had been doing a lot of volunteering and work on political campaigns and was offered a job, a summer job working on the guy who Paul Martin, who at the time was our finance minister, to be basically a summer student in his office. When that summer ran out, his former chief of staff had taken a job with the World Bank in Washington.

his former advisor for Western Canada, became the chief of staff and asked me if I wanted to stay on as the Western Canadian advisor. Which for a first job with a poli sci degree out of Alberta was pretty good gig. And, you know, I was working both as a policy advisor, but also as part of political jobs in Canada. mean, most elected officials have pretty small staff. So you're also doing a lot of, you know, tour, logistics, planning of travel. I was doing a lot of that.

doing a lot of the travel around the world with him. Then when he decided to run for leader of the party, I was director of operations on his national campaign and then became the senior advisor for Northern Western Canada in the prime minister's office as well. It was pretty good run. It was good fun. And lots of travel. Tons of travel. I was lucky that, you one of the things that was great about traveling with Paul is that

You know, he worked incredibly hard. But also when we arrived in a new destination, if you found out, you know, there was an iceberg in the harbor in Newfoundland, he's like, okay, we got an hour between these meetings. Can we, let's go check out the iceberg. So we would wander down and go check out the iceberg. And so he loved traveling with me. And as a result, I did a lot of the international travel. went to, you know, to Germany, to Japan, to China. And because he was sort of the perceived prime minister in waiting at the time when he was finance minister.

we would be treated very, well. We arrived in Japan and Beijing, they shut down the Forbidden City for me and him to go on tour for the day. It was pretty remarkable, some pretty unique and wild travel experiences for sure. I'm not an expert in Canadian politics, but I guess he didn't make it as leader. Well, he got elected prime minister, he made it through one successful election into a minority government. that's when I then, so at that point I'd been working with him for about seven years.

sort of resigned and decided to go start a government relations firm with some partners. He then made it through to one more election and that was happening when we were in Japan and that's actually why I came back was to help him on that final election. didn't win that one. So, can't win them all. That's right. And it's big for Canada because think next year is the general election, right? That's right. Yeah. Well, it could be another one. We're back in a minority government situation. it could be one any day here.

And they asked my agency to come up with the PR component of that what we could do in San Francisco to sort of peak interest in traveling here. So we came up with the idea, myself and our team, of creating this giant sort of 15 foot high vending machine that just, you know, this was, know, as social media was just really becoming a big thing and San Francisco was really the hub of that. So our idea was, can we do something that will kind of surprise and delight people in the middle of San Francisco? They're not expecting.

that will capture some buzz and interest in traveling to BC. So we created this massive vending machine that we dropped into the busiest public square in the middle of San Francisco one morning that people would go up and choose any one of these 100 BC moments from the vending machine and something related to that moment would come out. So for example, if you picked golfing at the Jack Nicklaus Design Golf Course in Whistler, you might get a sleeve of customized golf balls.

But if you chose, you know, mountain biking and Fernie, a mountain bike might come out or two tickets to get you there or whatever. was all different things that would come out of the vending machine. like six people inside the vending machine, a number of us outside the vending machine. We invited every sort of blogger in San Francisco at the time to come check it out on every YouTuber. And so it got massive social media coverage. And as a result, I mean, we could see a clear uptake in those.

direct flights between BC and San Francisco that bookings increased. And we also gave away a discount on flights and lots of people who booked using that. So it had a real impact on travel that year to BC and went on to win all kinds of PR shows around the world. That's amazing. And kind of relating to that, in BC, have you traveled much?

A ton. mean, from right when I was young, this was the place that my family always came on our family vacations. then having lived here now for a little over a decade, chance we get, we're traveling somewhere new and busy. What's some of your favorite spots? I mean, one of the places that really impressed me that we went during the pandemic was Alert Bay. I don't know if you've been up there on just off of the sort of north of Vancouver Island.

no, we've been up to Port Hardy? Not sure. We drove up there last year on the island to Port Hardy. Port Hardy, yes, yes. We were going to do, there's something on the west coast I saw on social media, but it's actually a dirt road, it's not like a paved road, so we didn't go in the end, but yeah, kind of been up that way. well this alert bay is sort of on your way to Port Hardy. Yes, because I keep thinking I saw it on a sign somewhere. But you have to take a ferry to get there. Got it. had elements of sort of anchor watt-like.

elements to it, It's got, it's it's covered with all these traditional First Nations artifacts, totem poles and long houses and it's got an amazing museum. I love it. Great, great destination. That whole North Vancouver Island, as say, there's some great beaches that are only accessible by dirt road there. There's really cool caves you can explore up there. So yeah, I really enjoy North Vancouver Island.

How many campers only a Toyota, a Sienna? So, couldn't risk. That's the start of our road trip across Canada, right? So we couldn't risk going on a dirt road and getting a tire. So, we just stuck to Port Hardy. But, I'll tell you what was a nice little find on Vancouver Island was Telegraph Cove. I never knew it existed. We thought, what is that? And then, lovely little enclave of just like some restaurants, sort of boardwalk along the water. It was very misty. went there. Did well watching there as well.

Very nice. We tend to find a lot of people who love travel from around the world do end up here, right? In British Columbia. Sure. And you can certainly see why, right? Yeah. There's a lot to explore here. Yeah. We started our trip in Tofino. I that's a classic. Yeah. Classic. And take one place I've not been to. on my list. Haida Gwaii. Yeah. Have you been there? I haven't yet. It is very high on my list as well. high. Yeah. I think that would be an amazing place to experience. I've seen some really cool boat trips you can do up there where you do multi-days sort of exploring throughout the region.

I think the north part of the islands you can drive this road. Yeah, the southern part you can't right? you get boats Just looks incredible. Yeah, and I've just discovered recently too when we were looking at planning a trip there last summer There are some surf beaches up that way. yeah, I'm too. So yeah Amazing. Okay, and We've got it five ten more minutes. That's finished a travel resume with Scotland. Your last name is definitely Scottish as I mentioned as you came in. Yeah Which part of Scotland is your family from?

Well, the town of Brody is our last name there, Brody Castle there is somewhere that we went and explored a bit. But I think most of my ancestors are actually from closer to Glasgow, just outside of Glasgow. And do you feel Scottish? Probably more after having done that trip. I mean, was, went over together with my mom and sister and niece over and spent some time there and really tried to dig into our family history a fair bit.

look up the genealogy of where all of our ancestors were from. And one really cool experience was our family castle, Brody Castle. had a number of relatives who had visited over the years and had sent back pictures and told stories about it. But as I was researching, I had found out just in last few years, they've essentially converted about half of the castle into like an Airbnb that you can rent. it was actually quite affordable. And that was awesome to stay at our family castle there.

for a few nights. That's amazing. Scotland is a special place, isn't it? It certainly is. We had about two weeks there and I could definitely do a ton more. It was just really a taste of it. There's so much to explore there. Yeah, I've never really done it apart from Edinburgh, so need to go back big time. My friend who used to live here on the island actually, he's got an Airbnb in Norfolk, Aberdeen, right on the 500 Road. And his view out of his house is the water.

the biggest Apple store in Tokyo. And I remember being there the day that they released the first iPod. right. Okay. wow. So I was checking that out and saw, they've got these podcasts on there. And my idea initially was, you know, as I was walking around exploring Tokyo, was thinking, it'd be great to have something you could listen to on your iPod that sort of told you more about the city. And I saw, nobody's doing this. Why don't I start doing like 10 minutes every week about things to see and do in Tokyo? And then that evolved from

you know, as we left Tokyo and traveled more around the world to start incorporating other destinations as well. have you done it regularly or was that quite spirally? Very irregularly, be honest. So, I mean, well, my wife and I were living in Tokyo there and started it. I mean, I did a ton of episodes there initially and as we sort of continued to travel throughout Southeast Asia. Then we moved back to Canada and I probably didn't do anything for a year or two, but I was seeing even in years where I wouldn't update the podcast at all, it would still get 20,000, 30,000 downloads.

there's an audience here, right? Try and keep this up. But because I was so busy in my professional career, I kept it up very sporadically. I would do a few episodes here, a few episodes there. And it was really this year where I partnered together with Tim Johnson, a travel writer who I met during some of my work in PR, that Tim and I were saying, yeah, we should do something together and we should do something with this thing. And we decided to first relaunch the podcast.

But then also saw that there was a real opportunity to build out, a podcast network in the travel space. There's a ton of podcast networks out there that are doing really well, but nobody who's really done it that we had seen yet, at least in the travel space, who was really sort of dominating that space. And we thought there's, there's a ton of opportunity there to be able to create educational content, stuff that's going to inspire people that's going to educate them.

So that's what we've really been building out over last few months and just started to launch this summer. Yes, and that's interesting because I mentioned before we started recording, my friend Ted who lives in Quebec, he's a travel podcaster as well. And we both had the same discussion about podcast network. We just thought, there's not actually a travel specific one out there. And I think, isn't travel podcasts, they're never going to be competing with the classic genres of true crime, news, sport, entertainment, right? Because...

They always. aspire to have more people listening to where to travel next rather than listening to who's killed who. That's what I like to think. But yeah, maybe one day. Maybe we should work on that together. It's interesting too. mean, just since we started this, I've seen some of the really large

podcast networks that are out there. know, people like Barstool Sports just launched a travel podcast yesterday. And I forget the name of the network, but Tom Sagira, the comedian who's got a whole series of podcasts he launched. had one of the comedians, Ari, I'm forgetting his last name now, but who just launched a travel podcast a few weeks ago. So they're clearly seeing some opportunity in the travel space. And I think it's, you know, coming out of the pandemic, travel has just continued to boom.

And I think audio is just a great medium to be able to inspire people when it comes to travel and to help give them very accessible information on how to travel more and travel better. Yeah, that's an interesting combination because we always assume travel with YouTube, right? And rightly so, you can show YouTube what you're doing. Yeah. And you can narrate whatever you need to do. But I think there is a space for travel podcasts for what you just said about giving information. Travel in 10 is your podcast name. So in 10 minutes, I'm going to hear...

specific thing. Yeah, I think there's a middle part which I'm sort of veering towards with my trip coming in November where I want to do like an immersive audio experience where you sort of get the sounds from location you do the odd narrating over the top some information but not too hardcore you know not too much speech but there's enough you got some sounds. It's a really interesting idea I've often wondered is there an audience for an immersive travel podcast that is nothing but just that

The sounds of the sort of an AMSR type podcast. Yeah. Well, there's a different destinations around. I'm a true explorer. think Portia Jones and travel goals. She does that as well. That's a fair bit. Yeah. But those are the only two I can think of top of my head. Far from home from Scott Gurion. He's a great podcast as well, but he's very season based. Right. Which is fine. But like, think they're the ones I can. They all still do. They're still like storytelling and commentary though. I wonder if there's not pure, pure, immersive audio. It's just, you know, here's.

half an hour on the streets of New York or here's a half hour. No speaking? wow, that's an interesting concept. Because you think of some of the AMSR videos on YouTube that do really well. don't know if there would be an audience for that in the podcasting space or not. I'll you another idea my friend came up with, see what you think about this very quickly before we wrap up. He's like, why don't you create a podcast episode for let's say West Vancouver, And you have a start point. you say, you listen to this podcast episode, you've got to start here. maybe Marine Drive and Fifth, whatever.

And you time, you you time how it takes you to walk to places and that's your timing on the podcast to explain what you're seeing as you go. Has that come across? been done? That was exactly my idea when I first started Travel in 10 in Tokyo was to do exactly that. But I just found for me the logistics of that technology weren't really, think that now that would be much easier to produce that type of show. And I know there's a few apps that do exactly that. of course. But I do think there's totally an audience there for that type of like

very audio tours essentially, right? mean... an audio tour, yeah. But there aren't, I mean I've seen some people dabble in that in the podcast space, but there's certainly nobody who's done a big catalog of that type of show and I think it could do great. You get the audio immersive stuff in there as well. Absolutely. Something to think about. So to wrap up, can you tell listeners where and the viewers where they can find your podcast and your network, websites and social medias?

For sure. Well, our main podcast, Travel in 10, you can find on iTunes, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. But you can find that and really all the podcasts we're bringing together from around the world, all the travel content that we've got at voyascape.com. Okay. And what's coming up for the podcast, of interest? This year, going into next year? Yeah. we've got Travel in 10 that Tim and I relaunched earlier this year where...

We're doing weekly shows now at different destinations each week. One thing we're finding really challenging is now that it's got, you know, with the co-host, 10 minutes is a constraining format. So it ends up being more like 10 minutes each for 10 minutes-ish. Can you change it to 10 minutes-ish? Traveling 10 minutes-ish. I think I'll have to put that qualifier in our show description because we do go over the 10 minutes often. But your idea with that show is just to give people that quick, you know, why to travel to the destination.

and then really get into the practicals of where to stay, what to do, what to eat, you know, of our experience having, you know, Tim having traveled to 150 plus countries around the world. with 50 some countries, trying to bring that practical experience to people. We then have just started taping a new show that we're doing that's going to be more longer form, interview style, that we're probably going to do as a limited series where we've got a few.

really interesting travelers from around the world that we've lined up to do that sort of longer form, more inspirational type content that we're calling journey telling. And then we're also experimenting a little bit with AI podcasts as well. And where I thought AI and, you know, I wanted to make sure in doing an AI podcast that we were using AI ethically. And I was really trying to think of how best to do that. And to me, you know, a medium and format that I thought could work really well is sleep stories.

So we're looking at doing a series of travel-focused sleep stories that will be all destinations that our editorial team has been to, all focusing on real places, real destinations, and still giving you practical travel advice, but in the format of an AI-generated sleep story. It sounds amazing. Because think AI voice can be kind of boring, so we thought it would work well for a sleep story. So we're going to experiment a little bit with that and see where that goes.

And then we're talking to a bunch of independent podcasters to look at how we can bring them into the network to really, you know, our goal is to help independent travel podcasters. really trying to find those who are putting together high quality, you know, educational content that's going to help inspire people, help them travel better is really our mission. And, you know, trying to bring it together as much of that type of content as we can in one network where people will be able to find it all in the same place.

You know, on our new channel we've launched on the Apple Podcast Store at Voyascape, on our website, and also for, you know, my experience working with a lot of advertisers in my work in PR, knowing that they're also looking for that to be able to, you know, it can be hard for a travel brand to work with a single influencer, whether that's a YouTuber or an Instagrammer, right, versus going to a collective that all are creating the same type of content, the same quality of content, is a lot more appealing from a brand perspective.

using some of those contacts that I've built in the travel industry to try and connect them with independent travel podcasters. It's amazing. think we both have the same ideas and same values really with the podcast. I think I just see storytelling as a great way to inspire people, right? But also the travel tips and the sort of, yeah, maybe not obscure tips, but something that you just can't read and on Google, right? Something a bit more realistic and real life, so.

Yeah, I think we both did same things. I mean, I think we've both seen in our experience in our lives that travel is just so transformative. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, to me, we live in a world now that is probably more divided than it has ever been. And I think travel is one of the things that can most help facilitate better connections and bringing us together and educating people and, you know, really making the world a better place in a lot of ways. And so to me, that's...

really exciting to be able to bring together content creators who are helping people inspire their travels and getting them to travel better. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing. time about it. Yeah, I think you're totally right. I travel is one of the only things that can actually really solve that because a lot of the divisions are for people that aren't. that person says this person's bad or, but have you actually hang around with these people or gone to their country or saw the way they do things? Like how else can you experience that outside of what you've been told? Let them travel. I don't know what else there is.

Absolutely. Okay. Sounds exciting times at Voyescape. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. I checked out your website earlier. A sort of different pillars of what you just mentioned. It's like, wow, you're doing that, that. And then the guesting is coming up. The sleep things is, sounds great. Basically what me and Ted talked about. There you go. Awesome. Good to see it. Okay. I'm going to finish the episode with some quick fire travel questions. Just two minutes worth. Okay. These are normally your favorite things worldwide. What first comes to mind?

It's travel question time. So I'm going to kick off with top three favorite countries. that's hard. Because snorkeling and diving is such a big part of my travel experience, my list is going to skew very heavily that way. But I mean, Fiji would definitely be in the top three. The Maldives would definitely be in the top three. And then away from snorkeling and diving, mean, the place that I find just

Inspires me more than anywhere is Japan. I love Japan. Okay, and three countries if you can go to tomorrow, we're gonna go new countries new countries Yeah, I really want to I haven't explored much of Eastern Europe yet. I really like to Croatia somewhere that really interests me. I would like to spend some time All throughout all throughout that region There's a ton of countries that are sort of clustered together that I just haven't spent nearly enough time in that that part of the world so

Probably all three countries could be there, but if I was gonna go somewhere else, the other place that's very high on my list is Egypt that I have not yet been that I wanna get to as well. Okay, what's your top three favorite cuisines? Probably Thai, Japanese, and Mexican. Okay, and what about the place that's the best for the budget? Sri Lanka is pretty good from a budget perspective, but I think where you get probably the most value for your money is

probably still Thailand. mean, Thailand is, yeah, in terms of like quality of the travel experience, ease of travel, food, hotels, you can do pretty phenomenally well on a pretty limited budget in Thailand. A sunrise or sunset? Definitely sunset. Okay. A favorite landmark? Probably Angkor Wat. Yeah. Okay. And the last question is going to be if you could inspire someone to travel tomorrow with a few words or sentences as to where they should go, maybe somewhere new.

What are going to say? It's part of the question, why to travel or where to go? Why to travel? Why to travel? I think just because it will change your perspective so dramatically. really is, you know, I think something that can improve and enrich the quality of your life more than almost anything else. And I think, you know, people who, you know, invest their money and their time in travel.

just get so much back from that investment of both time and money. don't think there's anything you can see a better return on investment from than your time traveling. you go. That is a great way to finish the episode. David, thanks for coming on the podcast. been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Thanks. Really enjoyed it. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the podcast episode today. If you've been inspired by today's chat and want to book some travel, if you head to the show notes, you'll see some affiliate links below which helps support this podcast. You'll find Skyscanner to book your flight.

You'll find booking.com to book that accommodation. Want to stay in a super cool hostel? You'll see Hostel World down there too. You'll find Revolut to get your travel card sorted. Click the GIGSky link to get your eSIM ready for your trip. And more importantly, you'll find Safety Wing Insurance to get that travel insurance for your trip. There are many more to check out. So when you click that link and book your product, a small commission goes towards me and the Wigginit Travel Podcast. Thank you in advance and enjoy your travels.